The Return of the Ruined Chaebol's Third-Generation Heir - 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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Regression of a Fallen Chaebol’s Third-Generation Heir — Chapter 4
Third floor of the Seonjin High School Annex.
A skybridge connected it to the main building, but students rarely bothered to come this way.
The deeper you went down the hallway, the more the silence pressed in around you.
“Here it is.”
Lee Min-jae had stopped in front of the very last classroom at the end of the corridor.
Taped to the door was a sheet of paper with [Stock Research Club] scrawled on it in marker — barely legible, clearly an afterthought.
Not even a proper nameplate. What a sorry state of affairs.
‘Not bad, actually.’
No flash meant no attention. This was exactly the kind of place where I could sharpen my blade without anyone noticing.
Rattle—
Min-jae slid open the worn door.
“Hey, everyone, I’m back.”
The room was smaller than I’d expected. A makeshift central table cobbled together from four or five desks, and in the corner, two chunky CRT monitors humming away.
Three people occupied the space.
“Oh, Min-jae, you’re here?”
“You’re late today. The water in your cup noodles has gone cold, you know.”
The club members, each slouched in their own comfortable pose, turned their heads — but the moment their eyes landed on me standing behind Min-jae, every movement in the room froze at once. Chopsticks hovering over a cup of noodles, a hand mid-turn on a newspaper page — everything locked in place, suspended in the air.
“……Kang Seon-woo?”
Someone breathed my name in a daze. My grandfather had founded this school. My aunt served as chairman of the foundation board, and even the principal tensed up whenever he saw me. For someone like that to walk into a dusty little club room in the annex — it was more startling than seeing a ghost.
“Sorry, everyone — bit of a shock, I know.”
Min-jae stepped forward and broke the uneasy silence.
“Seon-woo wants to join our club, so I brought him along. You all know him, right? Kang Seon-woo, from my class.”
The members looked as though they couldn’t quite believe it. I didn’t bother explaining myself — just gave a casual dip of my head.
“Hello, everyone. I’m Kang Seon-woo, second year. I look forward to working with you.”
At that, they all rose awkwardly from their seats — caught between wanting to return the greeting and not quite knowing how to respond to it.
Min-jae, quick to read the mood, began pointing out each member in turn.
“The one holding the cup noodles is Park Dong-hun, first year. Great with computers.”
“Oh — hello, senior……”
“Hey.”
The chubby-cheeked first-year hurriedly set down his chopsticks and bobbed a bow.
“And the one with glasses over there is Jung Jin-su, second year.”
“Nice to meet you.”
The second-year shifted awkwardly and looked away from my gaze.
They all seemed like decent, unassuming kids.
Charitable interpretation: genuine and unpretentious. Less charitable: they looked like people who’d wandered in here because they couldn’t find a real club and needed somewhere to kill time.
But they weren’t who I was looking for.
“And……”
Min-jae’s gaze drifted toward the window.
I followed it naturally.
“The person by the window is Han Jae-yi, third year. She’s our club president.”
Han Jae-yi.
The moment I heard that name, a faint smile tugged at the corner of my mouth.
‘Just as I thought. She’s here.’
In the future, Han Jae-yi would become the manager of the largest private equity fund in Yeouido.
She had a reputation for being someone coiled tight with fierce determination, driven to overcome the disadvantages stacked against her — yet the person in front of me looked nothing like that.
Regardless, thirty years from now, Yeouido would be shaped in no small part by alumni of this very club — the Seonjin High School Stock Research Club, rising to prominence in their own right.
And the club itself would keep its name alive all the way until then.
If I secured a connection with her now, before any of that happened?
“Kang Seon-woo?”
Han Jae-yi turned toward me with a smile and extended her hand.
“I’m Han Jae-yi, club president. Third year.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
“You can just call me by my name.”
She greeted me without a trace of surprise, completely composed — so composed, in fact, that I was the one caught slightly off guard.
“So Min-jae says you want to join? Have you sorted things out with your previous club? As you know, overlapping memberships can sometimes cause issues.”
“I’ve never been in a club before, actually.”
“What? Is that even allowed?”
Han Jae-yi asked, genuinely surprised, while the others watched me with expressions that said, ‘Well, it’s Kang Seon-woo — probably.’
“Still, as you can see, there’s not much to offer here. Funding was cut a long time ago, and the computers are so outdated that real investing is just a pipe dream.”
She glanced around the room and laughed softly, a trace of bitterness in it.
Rather than embarrassment over her own circumstances, it sounded more like a consideration for the newcomer — a quiet warning so he wouldn’t be disappointed.
“If you still want to join, I won’t stop you…… but are you really sure about this?”
I studied her for a moment.
This was unexpected.
She was so different from the future version of herself — the one who would stop at nothing in pursuit of success.
But that sense of responsibility.
That stubborn resolve to hold together a club that was crumbling at the seams.
‘This side of her…… isn’t bad at all.’
If someone with that kind of dedication became one of my people? There was nothing more reassuring than that.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
My voice came out steady, certain.
“If anything, this is exactly the place I was looking for.”

* * *
After a brief round of introductions, we left the club room and headed back toward our classroom.
Min-jae chattered beside me the whole way, the excitement still buzzing off him.
“Man, you really made the right call joining. Everyone was already nervous the club might get dissolved.”
“Dissolved?”
“Yeah. School policy requires a minimum of five members. Fall below that and there’s no funding — and eventually they take the room away too.”
Min-jae let out a long breath of relief and pressed on.
“But with you joining, we’re exactly at five. You’re literally our savior.”
A short laugh escaped me as I kept walking.
“By the way — other than the club president, no one else seems particularly interested in stocks.”
“Ah…… well.”
Min-jae scratched the back of his head, looking sheepish.
“To be honest, Jae-yi took pretty much anyone who showed up because no one was coming. Those first and second-years you saw? Yeah, they’re not into stocks at all. They’re just here to kill time.”
“What about you, then?”
“Me?”
“Yeah. Did you join because you’re actually interested, or did someone drag you in?”
His eyes lit up and he answered without missing a beat.
“Me? I’m really into it. It’s fascinating.”
That wasn’t a word I’d anticipated. A small, involuntary laugh slipped out of me.
“Fascinating?”
“Yeah, why are you laughing?”
“Nothing — it’s just amusing to hear someone describe the stock market as fascinating.”
The market is a battlefield.
A pandemonium where some people weep until they can’t breathe and others scream with elation.
And here was someone calling a place like that fascinating.
But Min-jae was serious.
“Isn’t it, though? The IT Bubble rises and bursts, companies rocket up and crash down…… all of it starts in the stock market. Doesn’t it strike you as remarkable — that the way the world is changing can be read in numbers?”
I found myself looking at him sideways.
‘Can’t help being the top student, can he. He’s approaching it academically.’
Not greed — pure, uncomplicated curiosity.
Had the class president always had this side to him? What had he done with his life the first time around?
Just then, Min-jae turned to me as if something had just occurred to him.
“By the way, why did you join our club? You always said extracurriculars were too much of a hassle.”
His eyes were full of genuine bewilderment.
Fair enough, really. The school outcast and heir to a chaebol fortune had just walked into a club on the verge of disbanding — voluntarily. It was the kind of thing that begged an explanation.
I gave an easy shrug.
“It wasn’t that I found it too much trouble. It was more that wherever I went, people always seemed uncomfortable around me. I figured staying away was the right call.”
“So you’ve changed your mind now? How come?”
“Hard to say. I just have a feeling this club is going to be legendary in about thirty years.”
“……Legendary?”
Min-jae repeated it like I’d said something absurd, but instead of answering, I flashed a grin and walked on ahead.
‘That’s right.’
Right now they were just a ragtag bunch crammed into a dusty back room.
‘But the day will come when alumni of the Seonjin High School Stock Research Club run Yeouido.’

* * *
The next morning.
The only sound at the breakfast table was the faint clinking of spoons against bowls.
Nothing about the meal itself had changed, but the absence of my father loomed as large as ever.
My younger sister Seon-ah sat across from me, pushing rice around her bowl, grain by grain.
“You two.”
It was my mother who finally broke the heavy quiet.
Seon-ah and I both looked up at her at the same moment.
She set down her spoon and spoke in a composed, measured voice.
“I’ve decided to go into the company starting today.”
Seon-ah’s eyes went wide.
“The company? You mean Dad’s company?”
“That’s right. It’s the place he devoted his whole life to. I can’t just leave it as it is.”
“B-but Mom…… you’ve never worked before.”
Seon-ah’s voice wavered almost imperceptibly.
It hadn’t been long since we’d lost our father — and now the thought of our mother stepping into something so difficult clearly unsettled her.
My mother’s expression flickered with a brief, weary sadness, then softened as she spoke, clearly trying to put Seon-ah at ease.
“Your uncle suggested the same thing…… but I see it differently. The lengths your father went to in order to protect that company — how could I hand it over to someone else?”
The moment those words reached me, something cold and derisive stirred in my chest.
‘So Kang Tae-yong made that pitch. Just as I suspected.’
A Professional Management System.
It sounded reasonable on the surface, but in practice it was a transparent play — install his own people and pull the company’s strings from behind the scenes.
If my mother had shown even a flicker of weakness, she would have taken the bait.
‘But she made the same choice she made in my previous life.’
That was a relief. History hadn’t been altered.
My mother was preparing once again to become the iron woman — to walk a road lined with thorns.
I set my glass down quietly and spoke.
“That’s the right decision.”
Both my mother and Seon-ah turned to look at me.
“You’ll do well. And it’s what Dad would have wanted.”
“……Seon-woo.”
“Besides — the moment you let someone else’s hands in, what was yours starts to become theirs. You should be the one looking after it directly.”
Something in my mother’s expression eased at my words.
“Thank you. Hearing that from you gives me strength.”
She picked up her spoon again.
The atmosphere at the table lightened, just a little.
“Mom.”
“Yes? What is it?”
“Do I happen to have a brokerage account in my name?”
My mother’s hand stilled mid-ladle over her soup bowl. She looked at me with a puzzled expression.
“A brokerage account? You probably do. After your father passed, there were things reorganized because of the inheritance…… and there’s also the equity stake your grandfather left in your name and Seon-ah’s.”
She studied me with a faintly concerned look.
“But why are you asking about that all of a sudden? Do you need money?”
“Oh, no. I’m not looking to touch the stocks inside it. I just need the account itself.”
“The account?”
“Yes. Actually — I joined a club recently.”
I added it with a carefully practiced air of mild embarrassment.
“It’s called the Stock Research Club.”
“The Stock…… Research Club?”
My mother’s eyes went round. Seon-ah, still eating beside me, glanced over with an expression that said, ‘My brother joined a club?’
It made sense. For the past two years, I’d been little more than a ghost haunting the hallways of that school.
“They said it’d be helpful to have an account in my own name. I was wondering whether I could just use the existing one — without touching what’s in it — or if you could open a new one for me. Either works.”
By the time I finished, warmth had spread across my mother’s face.
It had nothing to do with stocks or money.
The simple fact that her son had joined a club on his own and was trying to do something with other people — that alone seemed to fill her with joy.
“My goodness — Seon-woo actually joined a club?”
“Yes. A friend asked me to join together.”
“Well, good. I’m really glad you did. I was actually starting to wonder whether I should transfer you to a different school.”
Some cousins from the family had perhaps reveled in the status that came with their name — but I never had.
The way people looked at me at this age had always been a weight, and it had always stung.
‘My head really was in a bad place back then. Putting Mom through all that worry.’
My mother nodded, a smile of relief finding its way onto her face.
“Of course you can use it. It’s yours — you don’t need my permission. Though wouldn’t opening a new one be easier?”
“Yes, I think that would be better too.”
“Then I’ll write up the consent form and have Secretary Kim take care of it for you.”
“Thank you, Mom.”
I gave a short reply and lifted my spoon again.
It took biting the inside of my cheek to keep my expression from giving anything away.
‘Done.’
She would have handed it over even if I’d asked outright, but this way I’d also taken a little of the worry off her plate — when she was about to be buried in work at the company.
And I’d gotten myself the means to make money.
‘Now I can finally get started in earnest.’
The real reason I’d chosen the Stock Research Club wasn’t only about Han Jae-yi or the groundwork for Kim Seok-jun — it was to build the infrastructure for actual investing.
Knowing the future meant I had to put that knowledge to use and build up my own war chest.
‘If I’d just announced out of nowhere that I wanted to invest in stocks, that would’ve raised eyebrows.’
Joining the club had solved everything at once. All that was left now was to start putting the information to work.
‘Right then — eat fast and get to school.’
I started mixing rice into my soup. My stomach needed to be as full as my resolve — there was a lot of work ahead.

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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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