My onboarding meeting with the departmental director lasted an agonizing hour. By the time he finished speaking, my brain felt entirely overloaded with the corporate secrets of an empire.
There were digital calendars stretching over the next eighteen months. Private interview schedules, global travel arrangements, closed rehearsals, high-security photoshoots, emergency contact lists, and thick project folders. The sheer volume of data they dumped into my lap was terrifying. The physical master folder alone looked heavy enough to be weaponized.
I flipped through the crisp, heavy pages while desperately trying to maintain a calm, professional mask. Inside, however, I was on the verge of a full-blown panic attack.
" How am I supposed to protect all of this?"
The responsibility felt monumental, suffocating. One minor logistical error on my part wouldn't just ruin a schedule; it could affect an entire team, a multi-million-dollar company, and completely incinerate my own future.
But backing out wasn't an option. I needed the steady income. More importantly, a dark, stubborn part of me desperately "wanted" this job. For once in my pathetic life, I wanted to prove to the world—and to the family who had cast me aside—that I could take up space. That I could do something bigger than what was expected of an invisible boy.
So, I looked the director in the eye and tightened my jaw. "I'll do my absolute best, sir."
The director smiled—a sharp, corporate expression that didn't quite reach his eyes. "That's all the company asks, Mr. Kim."
The rest of the morning dissolved into a blur of absolute isolation.
I organized digital databases, updated Rider's internal schedules, memorized the names of their primary stylists, and triple-checked confidential security protocols. Whenever the anxiety threatened to drown me, I locked my focus onto a single task. That was how I had always survived difficult environments. One small step. Then another. Then another.
Eventually, around three in the afternoon, I looked up from my desk. An older manager was typing furiously at a workstation nearby. Trying to sound casual, I cleared my throat.
"Excuse me... when will Rider be returning to the building?"
The man didn't even grant me the courtesy of looking up from his monitor. "They're on an elite modeling block in the province."
My stomach tightened slightly. "Oh."
"Two days," he muttered flatly.
I blinked, a massive wave of relief washing over my chest. "Two days?"
"Yep."
He went right back to ignoring me. But inside my head, I was practically celebrating. Two days. I had two entire days to master the database, two days to learn the labyrinthine layout of the building, and two days to mentally prepare myself to stand in the same room as Charlie without looking like a trembling child. I could handle forty-eight hours.
I thought it was a mercy. I was entirely wrong.
The hospital's private encryption number flashed across my personal phone just after lunch. The second the screen lit up, my spine went entirely rigid. It wasn't because I expected a tragedy; it was simply an ingrained biological reflex. Whenever the facility called, I answered. No exceptions.
I slid the green icon. "Hello?"
"Is this Kim Sok-joo?" The nurse's voice was soft, immediately easing the tension in my shoulders.
"Yes, it's me."
I heard the distinct rustle of medical charts on the other end, followed by a gentle, fond laugh. "Your grandmother is making a scene at the nurses' station again, Sok-joo."
A genuine smile broke through my stress before I could stop it. "Again? What is it this time?"
"I'm afraid she's refusing her medication," the nurse sighed, though her tone remained warm. "She keeps demanding to see 'Mr. Snuggles.'"
I let out a quiet laugh, leaning back into my office chair. Of course she was.
My grandmother was fading, her brilliant mind slowly being eroded piece by piece by Alzheimer's. Some weeks were better than others. Some days she looked at my face and remembered my name, my childhood, my voice. Other days, she looked right through me as if I were a ghost. But no matter how much of her identity the illness stole, there was one sacred fragment it could never touch.
"Mr. Snuggles." Me.
To this day, I had no earthly idea where she had conjured that ridiculous nickname. I had never dared to ask her, terrified that if I questioned the logic of it, the memory would dissolve into the ether. It was a secret dialect that belonged entirely to the two of us. And that was more than enough.
"She's been incredibly restless all morning," the nurse murmured. "I think she senses a change. I think she genuinely misses you."
A sharp, poignant ache tightened deep in my chest. My grandmother was the only human being in existence who had ever loved me without conditions or expectations. She was the only one who had never made me feel like I was too quiet, too strange, or too fundamentally broken to be valued. Even now, on the dark days when her eyes were entirely blank, her fragile hand would still instinctively seek out mine the moment I sat beside her bed. She still loved me, even when she didn't know who I was.
"I'll come directly to the clinic the moment my shift ends," I promised.
"I'll tell her right away," the nurse replied, sounding immensely relieved. "Thank you, Sok-joo."
When the line went dead, I stared at the dark screen for a long moment. At least someone in this unforgiving world was always waiting for me to take up space.
Unfortunately, the executives and senior staff in this office weren't quite as enthusiastic about my existence.
At first, the hazing was subtle—small, toxic assertions of dominance that could easily be dismissed as standard workplace friction. A senior manager strolled past my cubicle and callously dropped a heavy stack of unformatted data sheets onto my clean desk.
"Rewrite these internal notes. I need them by five." Before I could even open my mouth to point out that I wasn't an assistant, his tailored back was already turning the corner.
A few minutes later, a different file clattered against my keyboard. "Check the coding formatting on these travel expenses." No explanation. No parameters. Just more dead weight.
Then another file appeared. And another.
By mid-afternoon, my desk had been transformed into a literal mountain of administrative paperwork. Most of it belonged to entirely different departments. I wasn't stupid; I knew exactly what this was. I was the new kid. The invisible boy with no backing, no powerful family name, and absolutely no industry leverage. I was the easiest target in the room—the person they assumed was too desperate for a paycheck to ever dare complain.
So, I swallowed the humiliation. I kept my head down, focused entirely on the screen, and told myself it wasn't worth instigating a war on my very first day.
Then, the boundary was crossed.
I was meticulously adjusting Rider's choreography schedule when the senior manager abruptly stopped behind my chair again. He cast a disparaging glance at my monitor, then at the towering piles of extra files he had dumped on my desk.
Loudly enough for the entire floor to hear, his voice cutting through the open-plan office like a whip, he sneered, "You've barely been on the payroll for six hours, Kim, and you're already proving to be completely lazy. Is this the kind of garbage work ethic we should expect from you?"
The entire office fell into a dead, suffocating silence.
Every keyboard stopped clicking. Every whisper died. Dozens of eyes turned toward my cubicle, waiting to watch the new stray dog take its beating.
I looked at the manager. Then, I looked down at the mountain of extra labor that wasn't even remotely tied to my contract. Then, slowly, I looked back up at his arrogant face.
The ancient, suffocating panic flared in my chest, urging me to bow my head, apologize for existing, and take the abuse. But something inside me—something that had been suppressed for twenty-one years—finally snapped.
Slowly, deliberately, I placed my pen flat on the desk.
And then, I stood up.
The senior manager actually took a half-step back, a flicker of genuine surprise crossing his features. He had clearly expected me to cower. Everyone always did. For my entire life, making myself invisible had been my ultimate defense mechanism.
But I wasn't a helpless twelve-year-old anymore. And I was tired. I was so profoundly, thoroughly tired of being treated like dirt.
"Just because you carry seniority in this building," I said, my voice carrying a terrifyingly calm, even resonance that shocked even my own ears, "does not give you the right to speak to me like that."
The manager's eyes widened, his face instantly flushing a violent, dark crimson. The entire floor seemed to collectively stop breathing.
"You have spent the entire day dumping external administrative tasks onto my desk that fall completely outside my contractual responsibilities," I continued, gesturing toward the towering stack of paper, refusing to break eye contact. "We both know exactly what you're doing."
"You arrogant little—"
"I was hired as a personal manager," I interrupted smoothly, cutting him off before his rage could boil over. "Not an assistant. Not a clerk. And certainly not your personal errand runner. If this toxic behavior continues into tomorrow, I won't hesitate to take these timestamped files directly to HR."
Silence. Absolute, deafening silence.
For three agonizing seconds, nobody moved. The senior manager stared at me, his jaw clenching so hard I could hear his teeth grind. Realizing he had entirely lost his leverage in front of the entire department, he snatched the stack of papers off my desk with a violent yank and stormed away without uttering another word.
The second his heavy footsteps faded down the hall, the office erupted into a frenzy of low, frantic whispers.
I ignored them all, immediately sitting back down and opening my laptop, desperately trying to mask the fact that my heart was currently trying to violently punch its way out of my thoracic cavity. I stared at the glowing screen, pretending my hands weren't trembling after challenging a superior on day one.
Inside, I was absolutely panicking.
A few moments later, a shadow fell over my desk. I braced myself for another confrontation and looked up.
It was one of the younger junior managers. Without saying a word, he placed a cold, canned coffee directly next to my mousepad.
I blinked. "What's this?"
He gave a noncommittal shrug, a faint, amused smirk playing on his lips. "For surviving the gauntlet. You looked like you needed the caffeine."
Before I could even voice a thank you, he turned on his heel and disappeared back into the sea of cubicles.
I stared down at the aluminum can, a soft, genuine smile touching my lips. Maybe this place wasn't entirely filled with monsters after all.
Gradually, the office returned to its standard corporate rhythm. Phones resumed their rhythmic ringing, keyboards began their sterile clicking, and the normal gossip picked back up. But something fundamental had shifted in the air. The way the passing staff looked at me was completely different now.