WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Arsène

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The Conglomerate Heir Just Wants to Fail ◈

Chapter 2

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“Now that you've played around long enough, it's time to work.”

My grandfather’s voice was languid as he lay in bed.

It was not something that should have come from the mouth of a man who had been swinging a golf club just moments ago.

No, more than that.

‘Played around?’

That one word tore through my mind.

The past six years flashed before my eyes.

From when I stormed out of that sickening house at twenty to now, at twenty-six.

Six years of struggling without a single day of rest.

The moment all of it was dismissed as “playing around,” I could no longer suppress the rage boiling inside me.

“I am working.”

Even to my own ears, my voice was stiff.

The smell of the meat restaurant that had seeped into my body seemed unable to blend with the costly air of this luxury hospital room, hovering apart from it instead.

My grandfather snorted as if my answer were ridiculous.

“You mean that part-time job?”

His eyes narrowed.

It was a look I had received endlessly before leaving the mansion.

“Is that work? Work is something that makes money.”

Squeeze.

I clenched my fist so hard my nails dug into my palm.

Veins stood out sharply on the back of my drained hand.

Money.

You had to make money for it to count as work?

The moment I turned twenty, I ran away with nothing but the clothes on my back.

I started with day labor at construction sites.

I carried cement beneath the blazing summer sun and tied rebar in the biting winter wind.

The calluses on my palms split open and healed over, again and again.

Overnight shifts at convenience stores. Loading and unloading delivery trucks. Kitchen work at restaurants.

I worked whatever jobs I could find, cutting into my sleeping hours.

And I saved every penny with desperate determination.

After drifting between moldy basement rooms, when I finally scraped together the deposit for a rooftop room of my own.

That was the first time I cried.

Those six years.

My grandfather must have known it all.

Where I was scraping by, how I slept, what I ate.

He must have seen everything as clearly as the palm of his hand.

And yet.

“Stop playing around and get to work.”

Six years of my life, every effort I had made, had been denied in a single sentence.

Treated like trash.

“No.”

It was a refusal spoken with everything I had.

I did not want to be tangled up with this man anymore.

I did not want to become part of the world my grandfather judged as he pleased.

Even at my firm refusal, my grandfather’s expression did not change in the slightest.

If anything, a faint smile touched his lips, as if everything had gone exactly as planned.

“Yes. I thought you’d say that.”

My grandfather opened the drawer in the bedside table, took out a document envelope, and casually tossed it toward me.

“...”

The envelope fell to the floor.

Thud.

I had no desire to pick it up.

“I know that stubbornness of yours well.”

My grandfather sat up.

As though he had never pretended to be sick, his eyes were once again filled with their old, piercing force.

“So I proceeded regardless of what you wanted.”

“What...?”

“The share inheritance has already been completed.”

For a moment, I stopped breathing.

I could not understand what I had just heard.

Shares?

Inheritance?

“Twenty-three percent of Daeseung Holdings.”

My grandfather continued speaking, but the words did not reach my ears. They simply drifted through my head.

It felt unreal.

As though I were hearing someone else’s story.

As I stood there blankly, my grandfather drove in the final nail.

“The gift tax has been paid cleanly, so nobody can find fault with it. You’re an undeniable major shareholder now, you brat.”

“Who gave you the right?”

My furious shout echoed through the hospital room.

The anger of having my past six years entirely denied, along with every emotion I had kept buried, burst out at once.

But the reply I got was painfully calm.

“My ears haven’t gone bad yet. You can speak quietly.”

My grandfather, lying in bed, did not even blink.

That calmness drove me even crazier.

“You... You...!”

The words would not come out.

Rage clogged my throat.

To this man, my six years had been nothing but a child’s runaway stunt, a passing bout of youthful defiance, “playing around.”

The sweat and tears I had shed during that time meant nothing to him.

Then I realized it.

There was only one way to hurt this monster.

To destroy what he treasured most, as much as I had suffered, no, even more than that.

As if he could see straight through me, my grandfather delivered the killing blow in a languid voice.

“Daeseung Group is yours now.”

“What did you say?”

“It means you can do whatever you want with it.”

At those words, one thought flashed through the fog in my mind.

Revenge.

The most perfect, most painful way to take revenge.

I let out a trembling breath and looked my grandfather straight in the eye.

He must have seen clearly what emotion filled my gaze.

“You’ll regret today for the rest of your life, Grandfather.”

My voice was cold.

“Daeseung, which you built over your entire life.”

It had sunk like ice.

“I’ll destroy it with my own hands.”

It was a declaration.

A declaration of war staked on everything I had.

At my words, the corners of my grandfather’s mouth slowly rose.

Then.

“Heh heh heh...”

An unpleasant laugh filled the hospital room.

It was neither mockery nor anger.

It was the laugh of someone who found everything amusing, who seemed to stand above it all.

“Do as you please.”

The monster stopped laughing and looked at me.

His gaze was like an abyss with no end in sight.

“Then Daeseung must be fated for that as well. I’ve already given you everything, so there’s no need to ask permission. Do as you please.”

It felt as though I had been struck in the head with a hammer.

I could not understand it.

I had said I would destroy the company that was practically everything to him, and that was his response?

It was the attitude of someone indulgently accepting a child’s tantrum.

That composure twisted something inside me even further.

I forced myself to hold on to my confused thoughts.

If I stayed here any longer, I felt I would be drawn into that old man’s pace.

Without another word, I turned away.

The document envelope on the floor caught my eye, but I ignored it and headed for the door.

“Young Master.”

Secretary Lee Jinju stood in my way at the door.

At some point, she had picked up the envelope and was holding it out to me respectfully with both hands.

Her lowered head hid her face behind her falling hair.

I glared at the envelope in her hands for a moment, then snatched it roughly away.

I left the hospital room just like that.

Until I heard the door close behind me, I did not look back even once.

My mind was a battlefield throughout the elevator ride down to the first floor.

What was my grandfather thinking?

Why me?

Why now?

Countless questions rose in my mind, but there were no answers.

Only one thing was certain.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

Whatever my grandfather intended, my resolve would not change.

I crossed the hospital lobby and stepped outside.

The cold night air pierced deep into my lungs.

The familiar black sedan was waiting with its hazard lights on.

The driver got out and opened the rear door.

I ignored it and simply began walking.

Step. Step.

I had no destination.

Gangnam’s glittering night streets came into view.

Buildings rising as if to pierce the sky.

Corporate logos shining across them.

A vast forest built from capital.

Until now, it had been a world completely unrelated to me.

A world that belonged to them, one I had only ever seen on television news.

But now.

They said part of this vast forest, no, its very heart, belonged to me.

I stopped walking.

Under the streetlight, I looked down at my hands.

Rough hands covered in calluses and small scars.

Hands that had carried grill plates at a meat restaurant and changed charcoal.

And in my other hand was a thin document envelope.

Twenty-three percent of Daeseung Holdings.

Worth trillions of won.

Proof of the empire my grandfather had built with his entire life.

A hollow laugh escaped me.

What a pathetic farce.

I took my old smartphone from my pocket.

The screen was cracked, but I opened a web portal out of habit and typed several letters into the search bar.

[Daeseung Group]

Countless related searches and news articles filled the screen.

I ignored them all and scrolled down.

The Group’s ownership structure, its list of affiliates, its asset status.

The pillars that made up my grandfather’s empire.

Extensions of himself, bearing his blood and sweat.

“What should I ruin first?”

Turning that cold question over in my mind, I wandered without purpose.

I had nowhere I needed to go.

I simply followed my feet in a familiar direction.

.

After walking for a long while, old, steep stairs came into view.

They led to my rooftop room.

I climbed the creaking stairs one step at a time.

When I reached the rooftop, I stopped.

A figure stood on the wooden platform in the faint darkness.

It was Secretary Lee Jinju, whom I had parted with at the hospital not long before.

As if she had known I would return, Lee Jinju waited for me without moving.

Her posture remained perfectly composed despite the night chill.

Even in the darkness, her neat silhouette seemed out of place.

She did not belong on this shabby rooftop.

When I approached without a word, she spoke first.

Her voice had the power to erase every surrounding sound.

“Let’s start by moving you to the Chairman’s residence.”

A direct proposition.

At those words, revolting memories I had forgotten rose from deep inside me.

The Chairman’s residence.

The enormous mansion my grandfather had brought me to after my parents died.

A beautiful prison that controlled and oppressed every part of my life.

I gave a bitter smile and shook my head.

“No. I’m never going back there.”

At my answer, Lee Jinju’s eyebrows moved slightly.

But after a brief silence, she made her next offer as if she had expected this.

“If that is the case.”

Lee Jinju took a tablet from her jacket and turned on the screen.

Its bright light shone over her expressionless face.

Photos of a luxurious home filled the display.

“The Chairman has prepared it. It is a penthouse in Gangnam. He said it would be more comfortable for the Vice Chairman to stay there.”

I did not miss the last word she said.

“Vice Chairman?”

It was the first time in my life I had heard a title used for me.

Lee Jinju nodded as if it were obvious.

“Yes, Young Master. As of today, you are the Vice Chairman of Daeseung Group.”

It was absurd.

The inheritance of shares, the appointment as vice chairman, all of it had proceeded without the slightest regard for what I wanted.

I muttered hollowly.

“Not once did anyone ask what I thought? You’ve all been doing something ridiculous.”

The words dripped with sarcasm.

But Lee Jinju bowed without the slightest flicker of emotion.

“I apologize.”

The apology was mechanical.

After all, my grandfather had planned all of this.

She was only his faithful representative.

There was no point in getting angry at a representative.

‘A penthouse.’

I could not keep living in this rooftop room forever.

If I was going to enter their world and fight them, I would have to use their methods.

This was simply one of them.

With a short sigh, I made my decision.

“Let’s go, then. To this penthouse.”

The moment I gave permission, Lee Jinju put away the tablet as if she had been waiting for it.

I went into my room and began packing.

There was barely anything to pack.

A few old T-shirts and some underwear from the dresser.

Six years of my life fit entirely into one worn sports bag.

Before leaving, I looked around one last time.

A cramped space that had been like an oven in summer and freezing cold in winter.

But it had been my own complete castle, free from anyone’s interference.

That castle.

I was leaving it behind with my own hands.

Without regret, I shut the door.

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