Monster Company Tycoon - 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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Monster Company Tycoon
Chapter 1
When I’d just graduated from university, I thought all companies were essentially the same.
Of course, I understood that large corporations were supposed to be impressive places, but I believed anything smaller would be more or less identical.
As the eldest of three siblings, I carried a certain urgency with me—the pressure to find work quickly and become independent.
So I convinced myself that as long as I landed a job anywhere, I’d have fulfilled my duty.
I got hired the moment I finished university.
A company in the Seoul Metropolitan Area with fewer than twenty employees.
I had no dreams, no burning desire to leverage my degree. A steady paycheck was enough—that was all I needed.
“Choi, the company your professor recommended? You’re not really going there, are you? It’s not even a major corporation—it’s mid-sized.”
“The professor said it had strong growth potential. He said I’d develop right alongside the company.”
“That’s just what they tell everyone. You’re going to have a really hard time there, trust me.”
The company I now worked for had been recommended by my professor just before I finished my degree.
Everyone around me had strongly discouraged me from accepting a professor’s recommendation.
But the condition that I could start immediately after graduation drowned out every objection.
“Making money was never supposed to be easy anyway. I’m fine with it.”
“What are we going to do with our Chihuahua….”
“Stop calling me that on the sly.”
For the first three months after joining, I thought I was genuinely lucky.
My friends were struggling through job searches while I’d become a proper member of society.
Going to work felt so admirable, so impressive.
For exactly three months, that is.
Right when my probationary period ended, to be precise.
Looking back, the warning signs were everywhere…….
Clear signals screaming at me to escape that place before it was too late…….
“Wait, there was actually a shaman sitting in during your interview?”
“Not a shaman—a physiognomist.”
“Hey, come over here and listen to this. She had her fortune read during the interview—can you believe it?”
My interview became the talk of the department, picked over and analyzed for years to come.
By now even the new students knew the story—that I’d interviewed in a gukbap restaurant and that there’d been a physiognomist among the executives.
Still, the physiognomist had said plenty of flattering things.
Apparently I overflowed with fortune with people.
“You have an exceptional capacity to attract noble patrons, and your face shows the kind of fortune that draws luck itself. Your destiny reads like self-made success—put someone with a face like that in a room where important decisions are made.”
“Put her in charge of hiring. She’ll pick the right people and build this company into something great.”
Thanks to the physiognomist’s mystifying praise, the company representative decided to hire me on the spot.
I was assigned to a hastily created Management Support Team—a one-woman department, naturally.
I received a handover from the representative’s wife, who’d been handling all the relevant work until then….
And from that day forward, I’d been single-handedly managing everything the company needed—personnel, accounting, general affairs, the whole domestic machinery.
For a full four years.
It took four years for me to snap out of the fog…….
Four years to realize this was one of those infamous Black Companies, the kind the internet calls a corporate hellhole!!
So much for all that fortune with people—shouldn’t the professor who shoved me into this place be cursed instead of blessed?
“Wa-wa, where are the plastic bags?”
The sound pulled me from my thoughts, and the dreary office reality snapped back into focus.
“Man, Section Chief, it’s been how long since Choi became team lead? You’re still calling her ‘assistant manager’? Team Lead Chihuahua. Oh wait, my mistake. Team Lead Choi—did the representative really say that’s all the holiday gift is? Are you sure?”
“Team Lead Kim! If you come late, all the kitchenware will be gone. You said the madam told you to make sure to grab dish soap!”
“Wait! Anyone with three years or less here—hands off the shopping bags! All you get is the styrofoam box! Take some fruit and go!”
Needless to say, my company didn’t provide holiday gifts.
Presents that came from outside were unwrapped and redistributed in envelopes every holiday—that was the tradition.
And more gifts arrived addressed to me than to the representative.
The kitchenware came from a client who’d found out I was washing everyone’s cups every morning…….
The boxes full of fruit, the supplements—they were all sent by people concerned about how pale and worn my complexion looked.
“A one-person team? What good is a team lead anyway? Wa-wa, are there any gift vouchers? I saw you going to get gift vouchers from the representative not long ago.”
“There are some…. But they’re one thousand won vouchers. Would that be alright? The representative said the maximum is five per person.”
“Five of them… so five thousand won?”
“Yes…. But if you take a voucher, you can’t also take an envelope. The representative said you have to choose one or the other.”
I watched Park’s departing back with a hollow expression, then went back to work.
A pen in one hand, a job application form spread across my desk—one I’d printed at home.
I couldn’t use the company computer since that would leave a record, so I was planning to handwrite it at home after drafting it on paper here.
Yes. I was going to change jobs.
Just as the physiognomist said, during those four years I worked there, the company expanded tremendously.
We filed plenty of patents, added new clients, and sales grew substantially to match.
It was all thanks to our capable former employees.
Each time passionate, skilled people with sharp instincts joined or left, the company leaped forward another tier.
If they’d kept showing up, we might’ve become a mid-size firm or gone public before long.
The thing is, every single ace we had walked out the door.
“I only lasted this long because I loved the people there. Especially because of you,” one of them told me as they left.
“Who’d make this place their lifetime career? But thanks to you, I got to pursue my dreams a little. Let’s definitely see each other again. I want to work with you once more.”
Sales climbed, but salaries froze, and the performance bonuses we were promised kept falling through every single time.
Because of the director’s miserly attitude, a few employees who’d simply fallen into the habit of coming to work still believed our company was struggling for money.
“Gong Choi, just hear me out as a friend’s advice. Transfer. There’s no future here. I hate to see you wasted like this. Wherever you go, you’ll do brilliantly and get treated so much better.”
When that close colleague resigned, the scales finally fell from my eyes.
“Ask for a raise. If he won’t give it to you, don’t look back—just go.”
The director refused my request, and I made up my mind to leave.
White is paper, and black is ink.
Writing a resume after years away, my stiff brain wouldn’t cooperate.
I wrote to the soundtrack of employees arguing over holiday gift distribution, and somehow the page filled itself with decent content.
‘Would any company even take on a career like mine? All the people who left kept saying anywhere else had to be better than here, but…’
Even if I squeaked past the document screening, the interview terrified me.
‘Hello, my name is Gong Choi. At my previous company, the work I handled was… everything.’
“Hey, Chihuahua.”
‘I even cooked rice every morning at the office. Thanks to that, I can boil pretty much any soup… But should I really mention that?’
“Chihuahua! What are you thinking so hard about? Aren’t you taking your holiday gift?”
I startled and hastily scattered the papers.
They didn’t catch me writing a resume, did they?
“Oh? Um… the gift. You can take my share, Director. I don’t mind. I’m swamped with accounting…”
“Right, no backing out! You work so hard.”
From his reaction, it seemed he hadn’t noticed anything.
As I was shoving the resume into my bag, I spotted the name field filled in.
Chihuahua.
Without thinking, I’d written exactly what the director calls me.
I felt a flash of irritation and wanted to tear it up, but I let it be—I’d just rewrite it anyway.
Quitting time was coming soon.
I killed the remaining hours watching people still squabbling over the holiday gift distribution.
Tick.
The minute hand of the founding anniversary clock hanging on the wall—from someone else’s company—pointed exactly at twelve, and I stood up.
“Huh? Manager Wa-wa, clocking out on time?”
“Oh… something urgent came up.”
In four years, I’d never once left on schedule.
The director believed the longer you stayed, the better you worked.
Normally I’d have timed my departure to the director’s schedule, but now that I was about to resign, there was no need.
“I’ll be going now.”
Even though it was something anyone would do, it felt like such a transgression that I felt a small pang of guilt.
The bus I usually had to wait forever for came right as I stepped out, and I even got a seat.
Today felt like it was going to be tremendously lucky.
“Wow, I’ve never seen that shop open before.”
By the time I left work, it was always already closed—I’d only ever seen it that way.
I thought I’d stop by and reached into my bag for my wallet, when the resume I’d crammed in haphazardly suddenly popped right out.
Though there wasn’t a breath of wind, the resume that had escaped my bag seemed to drift away as if it were fleeing.
“No, where are you going!”
Embarrassed that someone might see, I rushed to retrieve it, but the resume kept slipping just beyond my grasp, always a few steps ahead.
This bizarre chase extended all the way to the end of the alley, and just as I was about to finally catch it—
Silence.
Suddenly a hole opened in midair, and the resume vanished straight into it.
‘What… what is this? Am I so tired I’m seeing things?’
Too shocked to move, I stood frozen, when a voice came from the other side of the hole.
A strange voice with tremendous resonance spoke.
“I’ve received your resume. I’m hiring you.”
Before I could even fully process what was happening, an enormous chasm opened beneath my feet.
Below was nothing but a pitch-black void.
“Nooo!”
In the next instant, I plummeted into that void. There was no time to escape—it all happened in a heartbeat.
Monster Company Tycoon
Author: Suha Suha
Published by: Pillyeon Management
E-mail: [email protected]
Price: Serialized Edition
UCI: G720:N+A038-20260918105
* This work is protected under copyright law. Any reuse of all or part of this book’s contents requires prior written consent from the copyright holder.

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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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