Chapter 1 · 4 min

Chapter 1

1. I Came Back from a Business Trip and My Desk Was Gone.

My desk was gone.

What the hell? Did we move offices while I was away on my business trip?

“Assistant Manager Lee! Do you know where my desk went? ”

“Huh? Ah, well······. ”

“What? Why'd you stop talking? ”

At such a simple question, Assistant Manager Lee scratched his head and avoided my eyes.

Ah.

A sudden sense of foreboding flashed through my mind.

“Fuck. ”

Clinging to the hope that surely it couldn't be, I sprinted straight for the rooftop.

People really do become pathetic when they're backed into a corner.

Even when the ending is obvious, we still cling to that one-in-a-million hope until the bitter end.

And it took less than three minutes for that tiny sliver of hope to snap.

【Sales Team 5 Temporary Dispatch Office】

『Manager Kim Woo-jin』

Of course.

Beside the smoking room, my familiar desk greeted me from a spot furnished with nothing but a lonely nameplate.

- Creeeak. Click.

As I stood there in a daze, the rooftop smoking-room door opened and a familiar face appeared.

“Huh? Manager Kim, when did you get back? ”

“Good afternoon, Director. ”

“Come on, I told you to take the whole day off when you got back from an overseas business trip. ”

“······. ”

“Ahem. You know there was nothing we could do, right? The company's about to go public, so apparently the task force has been riding HR hard. What power do I have? I just do what I'm told. ”

His tone was deliberately sympathetic, but the corners of Director Park Tae-hwan's mouth were subtly turned upward.

With things this obvious, I didn't even bother wondering why it had to be me.

There were more than enough reasons.

I was the only indefinite-term contract employee in the department.

On top of that, I'd been specially hired for a project spearheaded by Executive Director Choi, who had since been demoted.

They were simply throwing out office equipment that had outlived its usefulness.

“Still, isn't this great? You can sit here for a month or two and take your time looking for another job. The company may seem heartless, but we've got compassion, you know. Compassion. Well, good luck. ”

And with a single pat on the shoulder, my seven years at the company came to a hollow end.

***

“Haah, this is fucking bullshit. ”

Needless to say, I hadn't actually been fired yet.

More accurately, I was just about to be.

With unemployment this terrifyingly high, firing a perfectly good employee was practically the same as slapping the current administration across the face.

That was why employees had to resign of their own accord no matter what.

For ‘personal reasons,’ of course.

And naturally, until I resigned, I had to keep sitting in this miserable excuse for a workplace.

While scrolling through job sites on my phone.

- Hanbit Solution Co., Ltd.: 6+ years experience, Salary (According to company policy)

- Kairos Tech: Entry-level/Experienced, Salary (According to company policy)

- Daesung Trading Co., Ltd.: 5+ years experience, Salary (According to company policy)

- Orbis Lab: 2+ years experience, Salary (According to company policy)

···

“Oh, come on! Are you kidding me? How the hell am I supposed to know your company policy?! ”

All of them were out.

I'd asked around through every connection I'd built over the years, but with the job market frozen solid, there was no chance some company would suddenly have an opening to spare for me, so my phone remained stubbornly silent.

- Snap.

A crumpled piece of paper fell from the phone case I'd irritably slapped shut.

“Oh, right. I had this. ”

It was a Powerball ticket. I'd seen a huge billboard on my way back to the hotel and bought it almost as if I were possessed.

How did I check this again? It'd be annoying if I'd won some awkward amount like fifty thousand won.

After fumbling my way around a foreign website, I scanned the crumpled Powerball ticket.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

QR Code Recognition Complete

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Drawing No. 1,043 Results

Drawing Date: 2026. 07. 25 (Sat)

My Numbers

● 07 ● 12 ● 19 ● 25 ● 33 ● 41

+ Powerball ⑥

Winning Numbers

● 07 ● 12 ● 19 ● 25 ● 33 ● 41

+ Powerball ⑥

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

☆ 1st Prize Winner ☆

Prize Money $ 2,364,271,300

(Before Tax / Sole Winner)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

※ 1st prize winnings must be claimed in person

at headquarters.

※ Bring valid ID and the original winning ticket

※ Claim deadline: 1 year from drawing date

[ Claim Instructions ] [ Screenshot ]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“Huh? ”

I won.

Ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten thousands··· hundreds of millions.

“Two-point-three billion dollaaars?! ”