Chapter 2: Guilty (2)

The curtains opened automatically.

The warm light woke me up with a quieter ring than any alarm.

However, as always, getting up was unpleasant.

I had to realize that I had fallen into this world.

I had to figure out what to do.

I wanted to keep lying down, but I couldn’t block the sunlight seeping through my closed eyes.

In fact, it wasn’t impossible.

If I just said, “Close the curtains again,” the voice recognition system installed throughout the room would listen to me and close the curtains.

But that was an escape.

A short escape that wouldn’t last more than a few minutes.

I had to get up.

There was a lot to do.

As Hansanwoo, a member of the Hansan family, there was something I had to do.

“First… I have to wash up.”

The enormous technology and the money to spend it made my body comfortable, even in the smallest of places.

As soon as I got up, the computer that controlled my room started working.

As soon as I entered the shower room, warm water poured down in front of the shower head.

“I will perform the shower procedure. Time: Morning. Please place your feet on the designated spot and wait until the machine stops working.”

In order to keep my body warm, the showers placed in front, behind, and above my head sprayed warm water.

Then, the fourth shower moved silently, wetting my body here and there.

It soaked every nook and cranny of my arms, legs, armpits, groin, thighs, and feet.

“We will perform the next procedure. Please close your mouth and wait in a comfortable position if possible.”

Foam poured out from the fifth robot arm, thoroughly washing away the waste left on my body.

Finally, water poured out from the shower head.

Without even lifting a finger, the shower was over in an instant.

“It’s comfortable.”

At this moment, I could forget how sad and miserable this world was.

As I came out of the shower and entered the drying room, warm air blew out in an instant.

The air did not dry my face too much, but it wiped away the moisture left on my body in a few seconds.

Aside from getting dressed, there was nothing I had to do in the shower.

At best, I had to stand in a designated place and wait for the machine to wash my body.

Even that could have been done by someone else if I wanted.

People are cheap, and there are many who will take on hardships to join the Hansan Group.

If I hired someone to serve me or spent a little more money on a powerful Al maid, I could even get away with putting on clothes.

The owner of this body was probably the same until recently.

Until I was possessed.

However, I kicked out all the employees who were always on standby in my space for reasons of stability and security.

I needed time alone.

I couldn’t completely hide the analog notes or monologues I wrote, but I had to make sure they weren’t caught by people.

However, I couldn’t solve my meals alone.

It was a matter of continuity.

I was able to act freely.

However, there were limits even there.

It was a world where rumors of ‘human switching’ were circulating, even if they were jokes.

It was a gruesome story of a body snatcher who would digitize a person’s personality, store it in a computer, and then put that personality back into the brain of an ordinary person, turning them into someone else.

Of course, it wasn’t that easy.

Not from a technical perspective, but from a capitalist perspective.

At least the stories that the poor people were thinking of, like “I woke up and found out my wife had changed into someone else,” were nothing more than groundless rumors.

But in other words, even if I were the successor of Hansan, it wouldn’t be strange for me to hear such a story.

In order to avoid suspicions that I was a victim of that, I had to act as similarly as Hansanwoo had acted before.

Fortunately, he wasn’t a model student who tried to follow society and rules and maintain order.

Strictly speaking, he was more like a rascal.

He never skipped meals, and even among them, he was a gourmet who never ate anything but the best.

Since saving on food costs wasn’t going to help much now, I accepted it.

“Ready, my lord.”

A vivid holographic view of the door in front of me unfolded before my eyes as I sat at the table.

“Come in.”

She didn’t open the door after receiving my permission, but the house moved on its own in response to my words.

The door to my room slid sideways.

A beautiful woman in a suit entered the room, accompanied by a room service cart.

“What’s for dinner today..”

“Okay. There’s no need to explain. Do you think this body is so stupid that you need to take a liberal arts class?”

“Sir, excuse me!”

Actually, I don’t know.

Even if I were to listen to the explanation, I wouldn’t have known.

I know it in terms of knowledge.

Fortunately, thanks to the memories left in my brain, I knew what each word meant.

However, I can’t remember the taste.

I can’t feel memories or expect the dish to be prepared after hearing the explanation.

In that case, it would be better to just eat it without listening.

The steak was beautiful, as if it were alive.

There must have been a lot of technology involved here.

It’s different from Korea.

If you have a stable job and no debt, you can buy pork shoulder in the country I was in.

But here, raising pigs or cows was a miracle in itself.

Maybe you could eat dogs or rats wandering the streets or birds flying in the sky sometimes.

If you didn’t have an artificial stomach implant, you would get sick from the poison concentrated in the body of that beast.

It was the price of neglecting environmental destruction.

Sadly, the price was paid not by the corporation that was the main culprit of the crime, but by ordinary poor people.

The meat that came to my table was made from cattle raised in a place as clean as a semiconductor factory without a single speck of dust.

The meat was genetically modified to maximize its flavor, and the food that came to my table was made using preservation techniques that the poor could not even imagine.

It was dirty, but delicious.

The formal meeting was over.

Most of it passed by in an instant without my intervention.

It was natural.

It was hard for Hansanwoo to say that he worked hard, even in empty words.

It was more Hansanwoo-like behavior to not go to the meeting than to go.

Nevertheless, the reason I went to the meeting was because I needed to start a fight.

I had already laid enough groundwork, so I had to wait for his patience to run out.

“Sir. Why on earth are you doing this?”

Officially, my title was the president of Hansan Electronics.

It wasn’t a very meaningful title.

The previous Hansanwoo had given me a high position, but the company’s work was being done in an instant without me.

But this meeting wasn’t just a meeting of people from my company.

It was a meeting of executives from Hansan Group, and among them, executives who were relatively high-ranking.

Stella City was a free city located in the United States, and the core personnel of Hansan Group were in Korea, not the United States, so they weren’t really that high-ranking.

“What, are you dissatisfied?”

And the person who tried to judge right and wrong in front of me was someone who could be called loyal if you really wanted to.

It didn’t mean that he was morally perfect.

In the first place, people who can empathize with the pain of others don’t survive long in a company.

No, they don’t survive long in society either.

But his loyalty was real.

He was a true talent who truly cared about the future of Hansan Group and could give advice to the Hansan family at the risk of his life.

If he hadn’t been pushed down to a low position for talking the talk, he would have been in a much higher position than he is now.

“Mr. JangGuhan. Why are you so dissatisfied that you’re yelling at me?”

He looked young, but he was probably much older than me in real life.

The appearance management and anti-aging technology through body modification had such a certain efficacy that 21st century Korean plastic surgery was considered naturalist.

For the rich, appearance and youth were merely factors that could be chosen.

Just as the rich bought luxury clothes, they could buy their appearance by paying a high price.

“The chairman… was very worried. Do you know how heartbroken I was when the president couldn’t get up?”

“So what?”

It wasn’t very comfortable to spit out harsh words to someone like that.

However, it was necessary.

This was the kind of behavior that Hansanwoo would do more than anyone else, and right now, he needed to be agitated.

“Seriously… Think about the future of Hansan Group. Aren’t you the chairman’s grandson?”

“Did you call me just to say that?”

“…Please.”

Of course, I knew that.

It took a lot of groundwork to touch his innocent heart.

I would openly pick a fight with an employee he cared about, and I would sarcastically sneer at him loudly when he spoke.

Besides that, there were countless things he did that made me look bad.

However, the position of a member of the Hansan family is absolute.

Even for him, it would be difficult to specifically mention what I did wrong.

“Hey, Guhan. You were the branch manager of Hansan Foods Stella City, right?”

“Not Stella City, but the US branch manager.”

“Oh, that’s not my concern. Then, why don’t you do your job properly?”

His face hardened, perhaps because he had guessed that what I was about to do would not be normal.

“Sir. What the heck…”

“No, as you said, I’m also an executive of the Hansan Group. Then I should also manage how hard the kids under me are working, right?”

That was an overstep of authority.

However, the conglomerates of this world were closer to empires than companies.

Even if the prince were to conduct an inspection that exceeded his authority, it would not be easy to raise a problem unless it was from another member of the royal family or a subject of comparable rank to me.

“Hey, Suhwa!”

“Yes, Master.”

He tapped my shoulder and called for the secretary who followed me around like a shadow.

“Cancel all of today’s schedule. It was near the Hansan Foods factory, right? I should start from there.”

I smiled viciously.

I was half sincere. I didn’t mean it to be particularly malicious, but they would take my smile for another meaning.

“S-Sir!”

“Oh, that’s fine. You chose it?”

The frivolous words that were hard to come by as a descendant of a conglomerate family came out too easily.

Seriously, this wasn’t my problem, but the poor quality of Hansanwoo’s mouth that was the problem.

He was a punk who hung out with the problem children of conglomerates or the heads of criminal organizations, so he couldn’t have spoken formally.

He was needlessly protected by Hansan Mok, the chairman of Hansan Group, so there was no one to guide Hansanwoo on the right path.

“Get the car ready. Let’s go right away.”

Since our goal was achieved, there was no reason to waste any more time here.

“I’m sure you won’t find anything to criticize. It’s important to listen to the voices from the field, so I’ll accept it.”

JangGuhan nodded heavily, realizing that it was pointless to hold me back.

“It’s good that you understand quickly. That, the scene? The scene is good.”

I thought he might follow me in a hurry, but he surprisingly didn’t move.

Well, in a way, it was natural.

Unlike me, who could brush aside schedules like dust, he was a real businessman.

With so much work left to do at Hansan Tower, it might be difficult for him to take a light step.

Maybe he thought it would be easier to clean up after himself than to just face me.

For now, I got off to a good start.

I desperately tried to hide my trembling expression and left Hansan Tower.

I had to start the safety inspection.