They say there's a special kind of Hell for people like me. Good thing I'm an atheist, I suppose.
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I didn't choose the CEO life. The CEO life chose me, or rather, it was imposed on me by my parents, who decided to retire and travel the world with the sick amount of money they've made in the 35 years of being on the Top Management of Choi Industries, aka one of the most influential companies in South Korea. They could have chosen one of their trusted and navigated employees to take their role, but their traditional asses couldn't let anyone sit on the leather throne who wasn't a Choi. God forbid I suggested my elder sister Haneul for the role of CEO. "Only a man could take such a role. Haneul can be your advisor as your mother was to me, if you want.". That was all I could say in the matter, before they announced to the world I would take the lead of the company at the young age of 24, with no experience or knowledge whatsoever of how the industry worked.
The start was rough, and that is sweetening the pill for you. Those who used to be the closest men to my father hated my guts for taking their only possibility to become leaders of the company, and the others simply knew I was too young and naive for such a world made of sharks. And that was sadly true. It took a lot of blows to our finances and wrong investments to grasp even the minor rules of how the financial and commercial world turned around, and a lot of patience and swallowing down my -huge- pride to ask for help and basically being taught my own work by other people. Haneul wanted nothing to do with it at first, but after seeing me near to a burnout only six months in, she decided a friendly presence was a need.
She was everything I was not: friendly, compassionate, a mood maker. I was mostly silent, proud, but, after a while, and thanks to Haneul's calming presence, capable of understanding everyone's weakness to turn it into a weapon to manipulate anyone around me to my will. After a year, you could say people started being scared of me, as they never were of my father. And it showed, looking at old paperwork and archived files: there was money missing from here and there, and it was obvious the source of the leaking was internal. The point was, my father trusted those people so blindly, he would never think of them so dirty as to steal money from the very company which hired them and gave them their daily bread.
The turning point was during the first annual review, where I pointed out the money leaking, and brought out the old papers as well, and people started sweating when I said that heads would roll if I found out who did that. And I made myself very clear on the fact that if something of the sort happened ever again, I would install stricter monitoring on the workplace, which is something I wouldn't like to do, but would do if necessary. No one batted an eye, and not one single won leaked from our bank account and our transactions from that moment onward.
At some point, the load of work became unbearable for just me and Haneul, and I already felt guilty for dragging her into this mess when she didn't want any of it to begin with, even though she always said she was fine and it was her choice. So, I decided to hire an intern. Opening a position at Choi Industries was something quite rare, and something anyone who just graduated would kill for to add on his resume, and if they could keep it, even better. It meant a stable job for a lifetime. I received an absurd quantity of resumes, as expected. I left the sweet job of slimming down the initial list to the HR department, telling them I would only see five people. Whom they would be, it was up to them. If none of them fit my personal taste and requirements, then they would choose other five. I saw 15 people in total, before making my choice. A choice I would soon find more interesting than I initially anticipated.
