I Will Raise This Family to Greatness - Chapter 129

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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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Chapter 129
“You’re Fired!”
What on earth was this absurd situation?
Mark kept attempting to access FaceNote on his laptop, but it was futile.
“Sung-guk, we’ve been properly hacked. What do we do?”
“What do you mean, what do we do….”
I ate my hamburger with composure.
“Sung-guk, how can you eat a hamburger at a time like this? Some lunatic hacked our FaceNote!”
“We’ll catch them.”
“Let’s report it to the FBI. We should catch this bastard and let him rot in prison for a hundred years!”
“No….”
I shook my head calmly.
“Sung-guk, what are you saying? We need to catch them quickly like Mark said. Do you know how much damage one small incident like this can do to our corporate image?”
Elon was equally bewildered.
“I think… this person just sent us their resume.”
“What?!”
Both Elon and Mark were shocked by my words.
I liked this audacious person.
This person clearly hacked us to demonstrate their skills among countless other resumes.
All kinds of SNS platforms naturally carry hacking risks.
FaceNote is no exception. So the person we needed most was precisely this person!
“Mark, I’ll contact Bill right now. Bill should be able to help us catch this person.”
“Sung-guk, you really scared me. You’re thinking straight now, right?”
Mark let out a breath of relief.
“Let’s catch them first and ask questions later.”
I called Bill.
* * *
Bill Gates mobilized Microsoft’s entire security team just to restore FaceNote’s servers.
It was past three in the morning.
Mark and I returned to the hotel and stared at the laptop with haggard expressions.
“Sung-guk, it’s finally restored.”
“Yeah…. This person is incredible.”
Elon, who had come to the hotel with us, woke up at our voices and looked at the screen.
“Is it finally restored?”
“Yes.”
“Ugh—.”
Elon let out a wide yawn and offered an awkward smile.
“Looks like I’m going to take up one of the hotel beds. I’m sorry about that.”
“I’ll sleep on the sofa.”
[Elon, when you make a lot of money later, you better buy me something delicious. I’ll remember this.]
Only after FaceNote was restored did drowsiness finally begin to creep over me.
Mark got up and pulled a beer from the refrigerator.
Elon extended his hand as well.
“Mark, I’ll take one too.”
Mark grabbed another beer and handed it to Elon.
[Hotel minibar prices are ridiculous….]
A former tycoon worried about hotel minibar prices—clearly, this stingy habit was something I’d inherited from Father.
“Sung-guk, I feel like I got punched in the gut today.”
Mark chugged his beer with a dazed expression.
“Mark, when you’re running a business, all sorts of things happen. If anything, dealing with this kind of incident early on will help you strengthen your security.”
Elon offered us advice while sipping his beer.
[Elon’s earning his keep with that beer comment….]
I reclined halfway on the sofa.
“Mark, but who do you think it is? I’m really curious.”
“Probably some weirdo holed up in his room coding all day. Obviously never went to a single graduation party! No girlfriend either!”
“Are you describing yourself?”
I threw out the joke, but Mark didn’t laugh. The hacking had clearly wounded his pride as a programmer.
I bolted upright.
“Mark, I’m going to get revenge on that bastard for you.”
“How?”
I quickly logged into FaceNote and posted a message.
– We are looking for the hacker who breached FaceNote. Anyone with information about the hacker, please contact [email protected]. Reward: One thousand dollars!
“Sung-guk, you’re offering a thousand dollars?”
Elon nearly spit out his beer in surprise.
[Elon, the world’s richest man is incredibly stingy. Won’t spend on hotel minibars, but doesn’t hesitate on something like this.]
Mark shook his head too.
“Sung-guk, it’s a waste of effort. Even Microsoft says it’ll take a few more days before they can extract an IP address.”
“Well, if we don’t find him, we save a thousand dollars—that’s a win. Mark, Elon. I’m going to sleep now.”
“Yeah. Sleep well, Sung-guk.”
“Sleep well, Sung-guk!”
I closed my tired eyes.
* * *
We wrapped up our San Francisco schedule early due to the FaceNote hacking incident and returned to school a day ahead of schedule.
When I opened the dormitory door, Dennis, who had been typing on his laptop, jumped up and embraced me.
“Sung-guk, are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
[Please, Dennis. Can you back off a little? Really, let’s not do this between guys.]
I gently pushed Dennis away.
Dennis immediately bombarded me with questions.
“Sung-guk, what happened to FaceNote? Did it get hacked?”
“Uh….”
“I put out a bounty, but have you heard anything?”
“Nothing yet.”
“Can we catch them?”
“Microsoft traced the IP, and it led to Hawaii.”
“They hacked FaceNote from Hawaii?”
“I’m not sure about that.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
That was genuinely unclear to me.
“Sung-guk, couldn’t you say in a good way that FaceNote has spread all the way to Hawaii?”
“Hmm… anyway, I need to catch that bastard and interrogate them. Dennis, what’s going on? Why didn’t you go on a date?”
Now that I thought about it, Dennis looked unkempt—his beard unshaven and his hair unwashed.
“Sung-guk, check out my FaceNote.”
Don’t tell me…
I quickly pulled up Dennis’s FaceNote.
He was back to being single.
“Dennis, congratulations.”
“Sung-guk, you really… have a talent for rubbing salt in the wounds of the heartbroken.”
“Dennis, life is meant to be lived alone anyway. Use this opportunity to focus on your screenplay.”
“I’m already working hard on it. Michelle said if I use even a single line of the idea she gave me, she’ll sue me later, so I’m trying to remove all of it.”
“Dennis, but why did you two break up?”
Until we left for San Francisco, the two of them had been overflowing with affection.
They even posted couple photos on FaceNote every day. The pictures were still up.
[Tsk tsk, Dennis still has plenty of lingering feelings.]
He’d even posted a song on FaceNote about not being able to forget an old lover. As if he wanted Michelle to see it!
Dennis sat on the bed with a dejected expression.
“Michelle got a good offer and it looks like she’s going to Los Angeles. She was offered a position as a head writer for a talk show where she’d be doing the main work. Los Angeles is completely the opposite direction.”
“Everyone’s chasing their dreams to Los Angeles….”
“Exactly. Michelle asked me to go with her, but you know I can’t give up school. Michelle told me that if I’m going to write screenplays, real-world experience is better than school…. Honestly, I don’t even know if I can make a living from movies in the future.”
“You don’t want to go to Los Angeles?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. I want to follow Michelle…. But being left behind feels so lonely…. I can’t decide.”
[Dennis, you’re like a reed swaying in the wind….]
I sat down at the desk across from Dennis.
Even for a student at Harvard, America’s finest university, early twenties were always uncertain.
“Dennis, can I give you some advice?”
“Of course. You’re my roommate.”
I stroked my chin thoughtfully.
“Dennis, I hope you learn to stand on your own two feet.”
“What do you mean, Sung-guk?”
“You asked me to write a screenplay together. Then Michelle showed up and you wrote one with her instead.”
“Uh….”
Dennis nodded with a serious expression.
“From what I can see, you’re perfectly capable of writing scenarios on your own, but you seem afraid of doing it alone. It’s the same with relationships. Michelle obviously has better reasons to go to Los Angeles, so there’s no reason to hesitate. But are you really going to lock yourself in a room and write scenarios while she’s working?”
“That’s….”
“And look at FaceNote right now. You clearly marked yourself as single, but you’re waiting for Michelle to come back. You haven’t even deleted a single photo….”
“That’s… that’s….”
Dennis was at a loss for words.
“Dennis, think about whether Michelle is truly worth staking your entire life on… I really hope you learn to stand on your own two feet.”
“Sung-guk….”
[My advice is perfect, right? Pretty cool of me, isn’t it?]
“You’re really… a terrible guy!”
[What? People always hate it when you tell them the truth….]
Dennis stood up and suddenly embraced me. Then he began to sob against my shoulder.
“You’re really… such a good friend….”
[Dennis, even if this hoodie looks cheap, it’s actually expensive. Could you cry into a tissue instead?]
Click.
The dormitory door opened and Mark walked in with both hands full of beer.
An unmistakable smile played at the corners of his mouth.
“Dennis! Congratulations on becoming single again!”
Dennis finally lifted his face.
“What? You were crying on Sung-guk’s shoulder? Dennis, you live life alone.”
“Mark, you’ve been getting close with Sung-guk, and now you’re even starting to talk like him.”
“Is that so….”
Mark tilted his head curiously and pressed a beer into Dennis’s hand.
“Drink this and let’s die today. Here, Sung-guk—your beloved white milk.”
[It’s not that I like it; I just have no choice. At least it helps with growth….]
I picked up the milk and offered a wry smile.
“Now our trio is finally back together!”
“Mark, you seem like you were waiting for me to break up.”
“That can’t be, Dennis.”
But Mark was grinning from ear to ear.
[What a jellyfish this guy is….]
Just then, an alert popped up on my email.
I quickly checked the message.
Finally, the email I’d been waiting for had arrived.
– I know the hacker who breached FaceNote. I’ll come to the FaceNote office by 10 a.m. tomorrow. Have the reward ready.
“Mark, Dennis! We finally caught the hacker.”
I broke into a smile.
* * *
Mark stared at me with a tense expression.
“Sung-guk, we should call the police right now. This could be a thief after the bounty.”
I shook my head firmly.
Mark had positioned a baseball bat beneath the table at his feet.
On top of that, Dennis stood deliberately tense beside the door, gripping a hammer.
“Mark, let’s wait a moment. Once I see who it is, I’ll know what to do.”
“Sung-guk, I really think we need to get a gun. Something like this might happen again down the road.”
“We’ll think about that when the time comes.”
I glanced at my watch.
At precisely ten o’clock, the doorbell rang.
“Who is it?”
“I’m here to report a fugitive.”
In that moment, Mark, Dennis, and I were all taken aback.
It was a woman’s voice.
I peered through the peephole to see outside.
A petite woman with black hair stood there wearing a hoodie pulled over her head.
I exchanged glances with Mark and Dennis, then carefully opened the door.
The woman finally lowered her hood and stepped inside.
She was barely under 160 centimeters tall.
Black hair cut short in a bob.
And unmistakably, she was East Asian.
Mark, Dennis, and I stared at her in surprise, speechless.
“I said I’m here to report a fugitive. Why are you all looking at me like that?”
“Are you Chinese? Or Japanese?”
Mark asked.
“I’m here to report a fugitive—does it really matter which country I’m from?”
“Oh, it’s just that this friend here came from Korea.”
The woman suddenly looked at me and spoke in Korean with unmistakable clarity.
“I came from North Korea.”

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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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