WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: LilGuyBlastoise
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Mistaken for an S-Class Employee ◈
Chapter 1: Prologue
──────
The office, 10:10 a.m.
My phone vibrated in my pocket.
After checking that no one was nearby, I cautiously took it out and looked at it.
【Deposit】
【Mega Media: ₩100,643,231】
One hundred million!
I clenched both fists.
An amount dozens of times my salary had landed in my account.
The day I had waited for so long.
I thought I would only be happy, but all kinds of thoughts came to mind.
Four years ago, I had gone from simply reading web novels to writing a modern fantasy series set in an office.
It had started as a small hobby that earned enough for fried chicken each month, but things had exploded in no time.
My fourth work had received more attention than I could handle, and I had been thrilled when I received ten million won in royalties for the first time.
The world had looked different, and I had even written a resignation letter to quit this damned company immediately.
A life free from commuting.
Just imagining it had made me feel like I was floating.
But after some time had passed and I had calmed down, I thought it over.
Even if I earned ten million won a month, after living expenses and spending money, I could only save around seven million won.
If I got married, there was a good chance even that would become difficult.
And more importantly,
'Royalties aren't a salary.'
In other words, they were not stable like a salary.
I could make ten million won a month, then fail to put out a new work and go back to earning chicken money.
The more I thought about it, the more quitting over ten million won a month seemed like a gamble.
'I'll quit once I hit one hundred million a month.'
At that point, I figured I would not feel anxious even if my next work did poorly.
I had set that goal and kept up the side job...
Once I started earning another ten million won in royalties on top of my salary, my life at the company changed.
'I brought coffee and donuts~'
'Are you free after work? My treat!'
'What do you want to eat?'
As my spending naturally grew, I became close with more colleagues.
'Assistant Manager Go Min-hyeok! This isn't right!'
'Is the report still not done?'
'Hey! Come here.'
Even when seniors or team leaders occasionally spoke harshly to me, I just let it slide without taking much of a hit.
Words that had once hurt no longer hurt. It was as though I had stepped back and started seeing the same world from farther away.
Watching people act so important just because they had a slightly higher rank and earned a few hundred thousand won more, I could only wonder why fellow office workers behaved like that.
I wasn't stressed at work, and I got along well with my colleagues.
'Would quitting really be so great?'
As my perspective on office life changed, I started wondering whether quitting would truly make me happy.
Writing one five-thousand-character web novel episode took only three hours.
If I spent three hours a day on it, what would I do with the rest of my time?
Making money wasn't everything, was it? Most of my relationships were with people from work.
Besides, I was free to keep up my side job.
I had asked HR about the relevant employment rules.
They had confirmed that as long as I didn't disclose trade secrets or use important technology, the company could not force me to stop side work done outside working hours.
I never wrote at the office, so there was no issue there.
Furthermore, royalties were classified as business income and taxed separately at year-end, so there was little chance the company would discover my income.
Even if the company made an issue of it, the worst they could do was fire me.
Well... if that happened, it happened.
【Mega Media: ₩100,643,231】
I looked at my balance again.
Life at the company had become much more enjoyable after I hit ten million won a month. I wondered what it would be like now that I had reached one hundred million.
One hundred million won a month. I had achieved my goal, but...
'Maybe I'll stay at the company a little longer?'
* * *
“Assistant Manager Go! Team leader meeting!”
“Huh? Oh, okay.”
“What were you doing that startled you so much?”
I had been looking at the amount in my account, lost in all sorts of thoughts.
I blinked to pull myself together and answered.
“Nothing.”
I hadn't fully made up my mind yet, so I had been spacing out.
“You need to go now. You'll be late.”
No matter how I thought about it, it felt like a waste to leave the company like this.
Once I left, I would probably never work at a company again.
“Yeah, let's go.”
I rose from my seat and left the office with my junior colleague.
As we walked down the hallway, they kept grumbling.
“This meeting, seriously.”
“...”
“I don't know why we have them all the time when everything's obvious. Checking and checking again.”
They hadn't originally been the type to complain, but thanks to someone, they were becoming one more and more each year.
I smiled.
“Isn't that the team leader's only job? Just let it go.”
“It only feels right when we complain together, but at some point you've gotten way too mellow, Senior.”
“Mellow? I've just given up.”
“How do you stay so relaxed? Do you meditate or something?”
The royalties from my work had decisively changed me, but I couldn't tell them that.
“Ha ha, who has time to meditate?”
We had reached the meeting room.
After taking a short breath, I said,
“Things might change again, so don't be too surprised.”
“Who? Our team leader?”
“Let's go in.”
'GoPlay.'
For some reason, the company name written on the meeting room door caught my eye today.
I worked at the largest domestic OTT company competing against Nutflix.
Clunk.
When I opened the meeting room door and entered, a hollow-cheeked middle-aged man glared at me.
“Try moving a little faster.”
“Sorry.”
Kim Se-jun, the Operations Team Leader.
He was the classic type who was weak before the strong and strong before the weak, and he was excessively meticulous only about trivial matters.
He was an exhausting type to work under as a team leader.
The Operations Team I belonged to checked incoming content for problems with the video, images, and content information, then encoded it for the OTT service.
We had lots of meetings and lots of manual work.
We handled work that kept us busy but rarely got noticed.
“How's the SSB (American cable network) content intake going?”
Just as expected, he was checking again on something we had reviewed yesterday.
After listening to the person in charge report for quite a while, he said,
“The Curation Team wants us to handle the QA testing for their automated logic development project.”
The Curation Team arranged content in the app. It was considered the flower of OTT work. Put simply, they were the content curators.
My junior colleague asked,
“They're having something developed? We were never informed about it.”
“They said they had it built because they needed it.”
“...”
“They said testing isn't their job, so they asked us to do it.”
I hated the Curation Team for wielding unchecked power, but Team Leader Kim was even more irritating.
He was always like this.
Because he didn't want to get into conflict with cooperating departments, he accepted work our team should not have to do.
Only his team members were ever the patsies.
Everyone's faces flushed with dissatisfaction, but they kept their mouths shut.
He couldn't say a word to other departments, but he had superpowers when it came to his own team. No one knew what trouble one remark might bring.
Until now, I had worked the same way. I stayed quiet because I didn't want to create troublesome situations.
“Why do we have to do that?”
Everyone looked at me.
That had just come out of my mouth.
This was the company I had decided to stay at a little longer.
I wanted to work differently than before.
“Do you truly believe that is our team's responsibility, Team Leader?”
Team Leader Kim's rank was higher than mine, but my monthly income was far higher.
I was a salaried employee and an author making one hundred million won a month.
I had no reason to back down.
“Since you're always checking in, you know the team has been swamped lately with all the incoming content, don't you?”
It was my first time stepping forward and speaking up, so I felt myself shrink back.
'It's fine. I can let loose.'
A deposit of ₩100,643,231 flashed through my mind.
“If another team dumps work on us, are we supposed to just accept it? That isn't right! You should argue our case fiercely, like a proper team leader!”
Silence filled the meeting room.
Team Leader Kim's eyes went wide, and his mouth fell open.
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