The Genius Construction Worker Who Moved to America - Chapter 4

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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 4

The Beginning of an Unlikely Partnership

“Unbelievable! I can’t believe it! Oh, Jesus Christ!”

Breaking the silence came an exclamation from Leo, the blue-eyed site manager.

“What exactly are you? And what was that impossible wire trick just now? What should I call you? Huh? Mister? Boss? Or Master?”

He was louder than expected.

Leo circled around Kang Jun without even thinking to remove his dirt-caked hard hat, pouring out praise as he went.

The man who, just moments before, had been tearing out his hair at the brink of disaster now stood with palms pressed together like a true believer who’d found salvation.

The Mexican laborers around them, too, stared at Kang Jun with wide eyes, making the sign of the cross.

The sight of several tons of concrete pressure being restrained by a single length of wire was, for them, nothing short of a miracle.

“Choi. Just call me Mr. Choi.”

“Oh! Mr. Choi! A name sent from heaven! I’m Leo. Leonardo—like Leonardo da Vinci! You just saved my company from bankruptcy, which is as good as my own life….”

Kang Jun let Leo’s fanfare wash over him unheeded.

After Kang Jun took over site control and secured a promise of double pay, the construction site transformed.

It took him just half a day to complete the gate columns for the Village Entrance.

When Kang Jun first reviewed Leo’s blueprints, he’d scoffed openly.

Flat, amateurish sketches, drawn carelessly by a designer with no field experience, trapped in his own theoretical world.

According to those plans, the columns would be microscopically misaligned with the Village Entrance, subtly obstructing the view each time vehicles passed through.

Kang Jun threw the blueprints onto the ground.

Then, following the golden lines that appeared in his vision through the Architect’s Vision, he tore apart the site and rebuilt it.

He drove the workers hard, resetting the formwork angles from scratch.

It was Kang Jun’s intuition alone—calibrated to account for the road’s slope and curves, even the shadow lengths cast by the surrounding palm trees.

He handled the concrete pour himself, gripping the vibrator and working it between the rebar.

With brutal precision, he tamped the cement down until not a single air pocket or void remained.

And now.

Six o’clock in the evening. California’s crimson sunset poured down toward the Village Entrance.

The gate column pour was complete.

The massive wooden formwork was locked firmly in place around the columns. A few more days would be needed for the concrete to cure.

But in Leo’s eyes, the finished form of the gate pillar was already unfolding before him.

“It’s art…. This isn’t construction—it’s art!”

Leo ran his trembling hand across the formwork’s surface, his voice breaking with emotion.

After over a decade working construction sites, he could sense it without even stripping away the forms.

The perfect vertical and horizontal lines Kang Jun had set. The density of concrete packed so tightly there wasn’t a single air bubble.

Days from now, when the formwork came off, the smooth surface of that concrete would be revealed—and Leo could already see it shimmering before his eyes.

And that wasn’t all.
The angle of the sun and the curve of the road leading into the village formed a perfect symmetry with the gate pillar at its center.

It was the god of manual labor, Kang Jun, carving his first masterpiece into American soil.

“Mister Kang! You’re the finest craftsman I’ve ever laid eyes on. I’d wager there’s no one like you in all of America—not anywhere.”

Leo drew a business card from his pocket and pressed it into Kang Jun’s hands.

[Golden Gate Interior & Construction – CEO Leo Spencer]

“This is my card. I’m begging you—come find me tomorrow, come find me today! I’ll give you a vice president’s seat on the spot.
With that—with that insane skill of yours…. No, with that masterpiece-level technique, we could be the best in the West!”

Watching Leo pitch his company with spittle flying, Kang Jun felt a quiet laugh bubble up inside him.

Whether in Korea or America, the eye of a seasoned foreman spotting good work was always the same.

That was when it happened.

Ding!

A mechanical chime rang through Kang Jun’s mind, and a system window materialized before his eyes.

[You have perfectly completed the Linked Quest ‘Building Connections’!]

[Result Assessment: SSS Grade (rescued the site from crisis and demonstrated flawless aesthetic judgment)]
[The System expresses profound satisfaction with your overwhelming performance.]

The reward notification followed.

[Distributing rewards….]
[You have acquired absolute rapport with Leonardo Spencer.]
[Special Reward Passive Skill Activated: Irresistible Proposal]

*Effect: When you request that Leonardo Spencer accept a ‘repair contract for the next location,’ he will accept with 100% certainty. (Single use only)

Kang Jun’s eyes gleamed.

‘There it was.’

The reason the System had pushed him into this concrete-pouring operation in the first place.

It was groundwork—a way to gain access to the mansion at 1242 Elm Street, the location of his first quest.

He was nothing but a stranger who had just fallen into America.

No matter how skilled a craftsman might be, an Asian man without a builder’s license, business registration, or even credit in America would find himself reported to the police the moment he knocked on a stranger’s door offering to repair their roof.

America, after all, was a country that took private property and trespassing with particular severity.

But if he put Leonardo Spencer—a modest construction company owner in this area—at the forefront, everything changed.

He would have a legitimate means to proceed.

Kang Jun turned the business card over once in his hand, then smiled and looked at Leo.

“I’m not interested in a vice president position or anything like that. You said you wanted to work with me, didn’t you?”

“Oh! Of course! If you desire it, Mr. Kang, I would even sell my….”

“I don’t need your soul. Can you draw up a preliminary contract right now?”

Leo stared blankly at Kang Jun’s words.

“A contract? What kind of contract are you talking about?”

“Pull up a preliminary contract form, and we’ll land a repair job at a property I point you to. We’ll put it under your company’s name, and I’ll handle the actual work.”

It was a one-sided set of terms.
More than that—he was ordering Leo to bring in contracts without even asking his opinion.

Any reasonable businessman would turn and walk away, calling it madness.

But the words that fell from Kang Jun’s mouth carried the unmistakable force of an Irresistible Proposal.

In that moment, Leo’s blue eyes rippled. His expression took on the quality of someone entranced.

Yet even without the System’s magic, Leo was already captivated by Kang Jun’s talent for construction work.

A smile spread across Leo’s face.

“Yes! Just give me the address! With my sales skills, I’ll absolutely land that contract!”

“Good. The address is 1242 Elm Street, Pasadena. We leave right now.”

And so began the partnership between a middle-school dropout from Korea and a talkative California businessman.

Thump.

Leo’s Ford F-150 Pickup Truck rattled as it bounced over a speed bump in the road.

They’d been driving on the outskirts for about ten minutes now, having left behind the dense residential neighborhoods at the heart of Pasadena.

The landscape visible through the windows grew increasingly desolate.
Shadows cast by gnarled old trees stretched across the asphalt.

“Mr. Kang, is this the right place? The 1200 block of Elm Street has been locked in redevelopment for years—it’s like a ghost town full of abandoned houses.”

Leo glanced at Kang Jun through the rearview mirror. The hastily printed preliminary contract fluttered on the dashboard.

“Well, if that’s what the GPS says, it must be.”

Kang Jun rested his arm on the passenger window frame and gazed out at the passing landscape.

[Tutorial Quest: Foundation of a New Continent]
▶ Time Remaining: 4 days, 2 hours, 15 minutes.

The numbers on the System window floating in midair ticked down, minute by minute.

“There. That must be it. 1242 Elm Street.”

Leo swallowed hard and pressed the brake. The tire came to a halt on the gravel with a sharp screech.

“What the…. Is this place abandoned?”

Before them stood a weathered two-story wooden house that looked as though it had been built in the nineteenth century. It exhaled an atmosphere far grimmer than any of its neighbors.

Paint peeled from the exterior walls in places, and the wooden deck leading to the porch looked so precarious that a single step might send it collapsing.

But the roof was the worst of it.

The asphalt shingles of the gabled roof had been ripped away by the wind, exposing bare wood underneath.

Weeds choked the yard. Not a trace of human warmth lingered anywhere—a forsaken house.

Now Kang Jun understood exactly why the System had described this place as needing its roof and walls rescued.

To his eye, the building was already a time bomb in the final countdown to collapse.

“M-Mr. Kang, nobody seems to live here. Contracts and all that aside, I’m pretty sure a raccoon’s going to come flying out if we knock on the door….”

Leo spoke while gripping the Preliminary Contract tightly.

“Keep quiet.”

Kang Jun opened the truck door and stepped out. His hand carried the Tool Box, as it always did. Leo splashed some water on his face to compose himself, then followed.

Crunch, crunch.

The moment Kang Jun’s foot touched the wooden deck stairs—

Creeeeak.

With a grinding sound like unoiled metal teeth meshing together, the mansion’s door slowly swung inward.

“Ah…!”

Leo started and retreated behind Kang Jun’s back. Kang Jun himself stopped and fixed his gaze on the open doorway.

From the darkness emerged a smell of mold. And from that same darkness, someone stepped out.

An old man with white hair, dressed in a faded checkered flannel shirt and bib overalls.

He appeared to be well into his mid-sixties. His frame was small, his face etched with deep lines, yet there remained in his angular jawline a stubborn determination from years long past.

The problem was his eyes.

“Who’s there?”

Yet there was no focus in the old man’s pupils.

His clouded gray eyes seemed to be looking at Kang Jun’s face while simultaneously piercing through the back of his head into the empty space beyond.

To call him blind would be false—his gaze fixed too precisely on the two visitors. Yet to call him sighted would be equally wrong, for his eyes held no spark of life.

It was as if his body remained here while his spirit wandered in some other dimension altogether.

“I asked who you are. Uninvited guests who park without permission and track mud into my home.”

The Old Man spoke again, his tone now laced with hostility.

In that moment, even Kang Jun—who had weathered countless trials and prided himself on skepticism toward the supernatural—felt a chill crawl down his spine.

Leo was already trembling beside him, his teeth chattering.

Preventing the house’s collapse was one problem, but obtaining construction approval from this old man with those eyes seemed an insurmountable barrier.

Ding!

Before the entrance of the decrepit mansion, silence hung thick in the air.

A red System notification blinked into view in Kang Jun’s field of sight.

[First encounter with target confirmed.]
[Tutorial Quest deadline accelerating. Time remaining: 99 hours 59 minutes 59 seconds….]

Kang Jun swallowed hard and took his first step toward the Old Man.

“I might actually have to risk my life for this….”

The Genius Construction Worker Goes to America · Episode 4

Author
Kalman
Publisher
Titan
Planning / Editing / Production
Lee Seong-guk
Cover Design
Studio Innus

UCI
G720:N+A036-20260819030.0004

ⓒ2026, Kalman

※ This e-book is protected under the copyright law of the Republic of Korea.
No part of this work may be reproduced, modified, or redistributed in any form without the permission of the author and publisher.

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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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