I Will Raise This Family to Greatness - Chapter 1

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

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※This novel is a work of fiction unrelated to any real persons, events, or organizations.
Prologue
Everything was perfect.
By unanimous vote at the shareholders’ meeting, I was finally granted the position of chairman.
News of it spread swiftly.
Though the industry had anticipated this ever since I became vice chairman three years ago, the consensus was that I wouldn’t ascend to the top seat quite so rapidly.
I deliberately asked Secretary Yang to bring me the economic newspaper in print.
It had been far too long since I’d held a paper newspaper, its ink still fragrant and fresh.
【In an era where third-generation chaebol heirs shuttle between scandals and mismanagement, ultimately losing their positions to professional managers, Jeon Sung-guk stands as the rare exception—the sole surviving heir of the Samjeon Group. At last, he claims the throne of Samjeon.】
Jeon Sung-guk, now master of the Samjeon Group throne—ranked fifth among Korea’s largest conglomerates. That is me.
Tomorrow, the chairman’s office of Samjeon Group will be mine.
I tossed the economic newspaper onto the table.
From the suite room at the highest level of the Samjeon Hotel, I gazed down upon Seoul.
Everything lay beneath my feet.
I loosened my necktie and took a sip of wine.
Forty years of running toward this moment.
Even born into a chaebol family, reaching the pinnacle required blood, sweat, and tears—a privilege granted only to the few. I had to surpass fiercer competition than anyone else.
From the moment I could babble, anything less than excellence meant utter contempt, even from family.
I seized top grades through sheer ability, graduated from Korea’s finest university, studied abroad in Japan, and earned my MBA in America.
My younger brother was a fool, my younger sister merely perceptive—neither could keep pace. My achievements were always the highest.
I neutralized my greedy uncle’s family with calculated carrots and sticks, and personally cleaned up the messes of my reckless cousins.
I did not neglect forming solid political and business connections through a loveless strategic marriage.
A prodigy acknowledged by all.
Outstanding business performance.
And matrimonial ties to the political sphere.
I spent forty years constructing a flawless résumé—lacking nothing to become the heir of Samjeon Group.
Not a single minute wasted, not even in the bedroom satisfying my wife, daughter of an influential politician.
The corners of my mouth rose slightly.
The wine tasted sweeter than ever tonight.
And now, I am perfectly alone.
My father’s words echoed in my mind: learn to savor joy in solitude rather than share it with others.
The throne of Samjeon Group is the loneliest seat of all.
So I chose to remain alone in this suite rather than spend the evening with family.
I sipped my wine slowly, gazing at Seoul spread beneath me.
My heart surged with exhilaration.
‘I am now the king of Samjeon Group! The king of this world!’
A sharp twinge—
Suddenly, pain pierced my chest.
What is this?
I took another sip of wine and gently rolled my neck.
I had been running frantically toward the shareholders’ meeting, unable to sleep properly for over a month.
A sharp pain pierced through me.
Once again, a stabbing sensation erupted in my chest.
I clutched at my chest with my hand.
Could it be?
An ominous premonition flickered across my mind.
My Grandfather, the founder of Samjeon Group, had also suddenly departed from this world due to a heart attack.
I hastily grabbed my phone and dialed Secretary Yang’s number.
The moment the dial tone sounded, strength drained from my wrist and the wine glass slipped from my fingers, tumbling to the floor with a soft rolling sound.
Red wine spread across the carpet.
– Chairman, this is Secretary Yang.
Secretary Yang’s composed voice came through the phone.
When I didn’t respond, Secretary Yang’s voice rose slightly.
– Chairman, are you alright?
I couldn’t speak and simply stared at the spreading red wine from where I lay collapsed on the floor.
My eyes grew heavier by the moment.
Since Secretary Yang had answered the call, someone would find me soon enough.
Just until then….
Please, just until then….
It had been such a perfect day….
Episode 1
What is this wonderfully warm sensation?
It seems Secretary Yang responded swiftly as always.
My favorite Canadian goose down comforter was wrapped around me—I could tell from its familiar embrace….
Even my perpetually heavy shoulders felt considerably lighter.
It felt as though all the accumulated fatigue had vanished overnight.
Now that I had finally claimed the chairman’s seat I had so desperately desired, perhaps this was only natural.
Well then, shall I head to the office?
Chairman of Samjeon Group, Jeon Sung-guk.
Today marks the beginning of my legend as Jeon Sung-guk.
I stretched luxuriously with a long yawn.
“Ahhhhh!”
Wait, what is this sound coming from my throat?
Suddenly, a young woman’s voice reached my ears.
“Honey, our Kook-ie just stretched. Come quick.”
Kook-ie?
Could it be that she’s calling me, Jeon Sung-guk, by that nickname?
Me, at forty years old, the chairman of Samjeon Group?
Something is clearly wrong.
I immediately tried to spring up from the bed, thrashing my body, but someone’s hands gripped my body firmly, pressing me down.
This time, an unfamiliar man’s voice reached my ears.
“This little one’s thrashing around like crazy. Is he going to be a soccer player or something?”
At that very moment, my eyes snapped open.
A soccer player? Why would I be?
Since birth, I’ve never thought about anything other than inheriting the company!
I glared at the woman holding me.
Wait! I’m being cradled in a woman’s arms?
I’ve held countless women, but I have no memory of being held myself….
[Let me go! Do you know who I am?]
I screamed at the top of my lungs.
All that came back was the delighted laughter of a man and a woman.
“Honey, our little Kkuk is babbling.”
“So-young, isn’t this kid a genius? How is a baby not even a hundred days old already babbling?”
Several pieces of information flooded my mind.
Babbling.
A hundred days old.
Genius.
And Kkuk.
I rubbed my eyes frantically with my hands.
“Honey, Kkuk keeps scratching his face with his hands.”
“So-young, the doctor said all babies do that—you need to put mittens on him, remember?”
“I was worried it might feel uncomfortable….”
“The doctor said that at this age, babies can’t control their bodies properly, so scratching their face with their hands is actually more dangerous.”
“Understood, Father.”
Before I could finish processing, the woman slipped mittens onto my hands.
“Waaah… waaah… waaaah.”
This was all I could manage to say.
The man picked me up and began rocking me wildly.
“Kkuk, don’t cry. If you cry, Mom and Dad will be sad.”
The man carried me over to the mirror.
“Kkuk, who is that?”
Only then did I see my reflection through my blurry vision.
A three-headed baby.
Could I really be a hundred days old….
That was me.
I stared at the man.
The man gazed at me with a constant smile.
“Kkuk, I’m your dad. Can you see Dad?”
“Waaah, waaaah!”
I struggled to break free, but this man called Father simply smiled with joy and shouted to the woman.
“So-young, our Kkook’s babbling is truly extraordinary. He really sounds like he’s talking.”
“Kkook’s father, don’t say such things in public. People will think you’re being ridiculous.”
“So what if they do. Kkook, it’s daddy. Do that babbling again. Urrrr, peekaboo~!”
“Waaah… waaah waaaah!”
If I were to translate that cry, it would be this:
What the hell!
* * *
Monotonous days drifted past.
Upon waking, I fed on milk from a bottle.
Once I finished the milk, the woman would pound my back relentlessly.
Then an embarrassing burp would rise through my throat, and after burping, drowsiness would wash over me.
Whenever my diaper grew damp or heavy, irritation would surge within me, and I would cry out in frustration.
At such moments, I would wail like a madman.
The woman called mother would rush over frantically, check my diaper, and swiftly strip off my pants to change it.
“Even our Kkook’s poop is pretty.”
Sigh… I had endured hearing such remarks for months.
Fortunately, the man and woman raising me were deeply affectionate.
They held me often and constantly showered my cheeks with kisses.
Is this what comfort feels like?
It was an emotion I had never experienced from my mother in my previous life.
Before my regression, my mother earned the nickname “Iron Lady.”
She never flinched in the face of any storm or hardship.
The daughter of a renowned politician who had served multiple terms in the National Assembly.
An elite graduate of South Korea’s finest university, yet she entered into a political marriage with my father, the heir to the Samjeon Group, in keeping with the customs of that era.
My father was a notorious philanderer, known to all.
He had even publicly acknowledged one half-brother and lived with him.
There were several more half-siblings he never publicly recognized.
I personally managed the thorough elimination of their claims when they demanded a share of the group’s equity or inheritance after Father’s death.
Born with a half-diamond spoon in my mouth, those who could never become heirs were weak and riddled with vulnerabilities.
“Sung-guk, remember every weakness of every person without exception.”
These were words my grandfather spoke to my father, and my father to me.
Following my father’s teachings, I exploited the weaknesses of my half-siblings and silenced them with endless streams of money.
Of course, compared to the Samjeon Group shares they could have claimed in an inheritance dispute, it was mere grains of sand in a desert—but most of them were too foolish to realize it.
Occasionally, a clever one would emerge, but the Samjeon Group’s legal team was ten times sharper than any individual.
In such a household, comfort was a luxury.
I surrendered comfort in exchange for wielding the money and power that ordinary people could never grasp in their entire lives.
‘Those days… they were truly wonderful….’
I smiled, lost in those memories.
“Kkook, are you smiling for mommy?”
The woman’s voice snapped me back to awareness.
I furrowed my brow deeply and glared at the woman.
This woman called Mother seemed kind enough, but why was she always staring at me?
The man called Father went out to work somewhere every morning and returned late at night.
Meanwhile, the woman spent all day caring for me, a three-headed dwarf.
It was natural for her to care for me, Jeon Sung-guk, but surely this household wasn’t so poor that they couldn’t afford a nanny?
Was I really born into such a destitute family?
Me, Jeon Sung-guk!!!
But with my vision still blurry and my body too weak to even flip over, there was no way to verify anything.
Having been reborn, I had no choice but to wait for everything to become clear.
* * *
At some point, my vision began to sharpen.
My arms and legs, which had only flailed weakly, gradually grew stronger.
Once I could flip my body over and crawl, I explored every corner of the house like an adventurer.
From that exploration, I realized I had been born into a wretchedly poor household.
The place where I lived was a cramped one-room apartment where the bedroom and dining room weren’t even separated.
It had the same structure as the university dormitory where I had briefly lived.
Of course, I had lived there alone, and my time in the university dormitory was a kind of performance to provide good material for the news.
‘Jeon Sung-guk, eldest son of Samjeon Group, lives in Seoul National University dormitory. The chaebol’s pro-citizen actions draw attention.’
After one semester in the dormitory, I left immediately.
I remembered seeing both the classmates who wondered how to impress me and those who wondered how to mock Samjeon Group in front of me—all of them later at Samjeon Group’s interview venue.
Of course, they were interviewees, and I was the interviewer.
“Sung-guk, what are you doing?”
The woman called Mother embraced me, continuously stroking my head and kissing my cheeks.
It was something I learned only recently when my ears finally opened properly, but the man called Father apparently worked in a restaurant kitchen.
The woman had quit her job after becoming pregnant while working.
So this was the life of commoners I’d only heard about.
What frustrated me even more was that I had no idea what time period this was, crawling around on the floor of this one-room apartment.
The TV in front of me was slowly coming into view, but it was still out of reach.
But I was not one to give up, Jeon Sung-guk.
Upon spotting the TV, I pushed my round belly forward and crawled desperately with all my might toward it.
What I was most curious about was what year it was now and whether my Samjeon Group was doing well.
There was hardly a day when Samjeon Group didn’t appear in the news.
At the very least, news about Samjeon Group’s baseball team, volleyball team, or basketball team appeared at the tail end of broadcasts.
After wasting a week realizing this house’s TV had no remote control, I pushed a pillow with my entire body toward the shelf where the TV sat.
If I was lucky, I could stand on the pillow, grab the shelf, and turn on the TV.
I stretched my chubby, short arms as far as they would go toward the TV’s power button.
“Ugh!”
“Guk-ah, are you bored without your father too?”
The woman grabbed my torso and lifted me up.
[I don’t want to see that man! What I want to see is the news!]
“Does our little one miss daddy too?”
As expected, my words held no meaning for them.
The woman shook me vigorously.
My insides rattled, yet why did this feel so exhilarating?
Laughter burst from me unbidden.
“Who does our little one take after to be so adorable?”
[Money buys everything—including faces. Every woman I’ve dated had work done. You know Kim Mi-ra? That so-called natural beauty? Even she had everything done except her toes.]
Click-clack.
The stiff sound of a key turning in the lock echoed through the apartment.
It was obvious who had arrived—the man called Father.
As the door opened, Father stepped inside carrying something in his hands. He’d apparently prepared something from leftover ingredients.
“Our little one still awake? So-young, you must have been bored alone?”
“I’m fine with our little one here. Honey, what’s that?”
“I brought some spiced snails—your favorite. The expiration date was ending today, and there were leftovers after closing.”
“No way! Honey, should we have a glass of soju too?”
“Why not?”
[Great. Eat snails with an expiration date about to expire and you’ll end up dead. And did you even ask the shop owner’s permission?]
Father looked at me and smiled warmly.
“Were you waiting for daddy?”
[How sentimental. Man to man.]
“So-young, looks like our little one was really waiting for daddy.”
[How touching.]
Mother set out the soju and side dishes with a laugh.
At the sight of the cold soju, I swallowed hard.
In truth, I preferred the wine produced at my vineyard in Napa Valley, California.
The taste of wine—commoners like these would never understand such refinement in their entire lives….
Gulp.
[Why is the sound of swallowing so loud? How embarrassing.]
My body had regressed, and my behavior grew increasingly childish. Was this survival instinct…?
“Oh my, our little one must be hungry. Look at those fingers!”
Suddenly, a bottle was thrust into my mouth.
“Mom and dad will have soju, so our little one should have milk. That’s only fair.”
[Fair would be drinking soju together!]
But these were merely the cries of my heart.
Mother and Father drank their soju refreshingly.
“Honey, the spiced snails you made taste like the best thing in the world.”
“So-young, do you think I could open my own restaurant someday and make snails like this?”
“Of course. Your cooking is the most delicious thing in this world to me.”
“So-young, I brought you here when you were so young, and now we have Sung-guk… I’m so sorry we have no money.”
“Don’t say that. Honey, I’ll work once I raise Sung-guk a bit more, so don’t worry.”
My name was Jeon Sung-guk, identical to before the regression.
But my life had transformed by one hundred eighty degrees.
Before the regression, I was the eldest son of the Samjeon Group.
Now, however, I was born into a family so desperately poor that we had nothing.
The woman held back her tears with effort as she picked up a glass of soju.
“You work so hard, honey. We’ll become rich someday. Eventually we’ll be able to buy an apartment like everyone else, won’t we? And a car too?”
“So-young, I’ll work even harder.”
I could see the man pressing his lips together, fighting back his own tears.
I removed the bottle from my mouth and exhaled a quiet sigh.
They didn’t understand something fundamental.
Poverty only begets more poverty.
Especially when you have a child without a single penny to your name—escaping that abyss of destitution becomes infinitely harder.
The woman looked down at me with pitying eyes.
“Kkook, mommy and daddy are sorry we’re so poor. But we promise we’ll really try our best so our little Kkook can study whatever you want and do whatever makes you happy.”
My chest suddenly ached.
Had the genetic illness from before the regression carried over into this life?
Yet strangely, my eyes grew hot.
Could I actually be moved by such pathetic words? Me, Jeon Sung-guk?
I, who was called the only rational mind among South Korea’s conglomerates?
I shook my head violently.
“So-young! Our little Kkook seems to understand what mommy’s saying. His eyes are getting red.”
“Really? He is. Honey, maybe our Kkook is actually a genius. You got scholarship money for grades throughout high school, didn’t you?”
“So-young, let’s make sure our Kkook can study whatever he truly wants.”
The man swallowed hard, his nose running.
“Honey, don’t cry.”
“Okay. Sorry. The tears just keep coming… So-young, let’s watch TV.”
The man pressed his heated eyes firmly with the back of his hand, embarrassed, and reached toward the television.
Were they finally turning on the TV?!
I stared at the screen with an excited heart.
The moment the man pressed the power button, the late-night news began to play.
A familiar face appeared on the screen.
An elderly man in a wheelchair, his hat pulled down low.
It was my Grandfather, the founder and first chairman of the Samjeon Group.
[Grandfather! Grandfather! It’s me, Sung-guk!]
I quickly crawled toward the television.
The man called Father immediately picked me up.
“Sung-guk, that grandfather is one of the top five richest tycoons in South Korea. But he got caught because he put money in apple boxes and gave them as bribes to powerful people. That man is really a bad person. Sung-guk, even if you make a lot of money later, you must never become like that man.”
[Tsk, tsk.]
I clicked my tongue.
This was the mindset of ordinary people.
A naive delusion—that living cleanly would earn respect and accumulate wealth.
The world is mired in filth.
Standing alone with integrity in this cesspool only invites ostracism.
My Grandfather had shuffled through the courts multiple times before receiving a mere two-year sentence, and he served his time in prison.
Yet even that didn’t last—within three months, he was released through a special pardon, justified by the losses Samjeon Group suffered during the chairman’s absence and the resulting damage to South Korea’s economy.
After that incident, Grandfather discarded his long-favored apple box and established a new bribery route.
One that no one could ever trace.
Various social organizations and charitable foundations.
On the surface, they appeared to be charitable organizations, but in reality, they were money-laundering fronts designed to funnel cash to those in power.
I refocused on the news broadcast.
Grandfather had pushed that wheelchair into my hands—I was only ten years old, the eldest grandson of Samjeon Group—to evoke public sympathy.
Which meant the current year was 1992.
I caught sight of the small child pushing the wheelchair.
[That’s….]
Words escaped me.
The one now pushing Grandfather’s wheelchair was none other than Jeon Tae-guk—my younger brother by two years, the most foolish and greedy creature in this world.
[Why is that idiot even there?]

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

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