Rain tapped softly against the high windows of the 19th floor. A gray morning had rolled over Seoul, draping the skyline in mist and serenity. Water ran down the glass in rivers of ink from a sleeping brush.
Monitors flickered to life one by one inside the office. The overhead fluorescent lights buzzed softly. Most of the workers arrived wet down to the knees, pounding umbrellas at the door and trading tired looks with paper cups of convenience store coffee. Wet polyester and cheap coffee were the scents of the morning.
Yoo Minjae was already seated, dry and calm.
He had taken a cab before the downpour began—not out of arrogance, but calculation. Weather patterns weren't unpredictable; people were. Rain was only a variable. Reaction to it, however, was a metric.
"Minjae-ssi, you're always early." Seori's voice drifted in as she slipped out of her raincoat, shaking droplets off like a cat. She dabbed her hair with a napkin, her bangs still clinging to her forehead.
Minjae didn't look up. "It's easier to think before the noise starts."
Seori chuckled as she hung her coat. "You say that like the rest of us are a chorus of jackhammers."
"You're not. But time changes tempo when more people arrive."
"Philosophical today, aren't we?" she said, settling into the seat beside him.
He did not answer, but the corner of his mouth quivered ever so slightly. The company started gearing up for its quarterly performance review, and of course, the Strategy Team was in the hot seat. But Minjae had rewritten his own job without anyone even noticing. While other people worked obsessively from templates filtered through mid-management, he learned things no one instructed him to—such as the company's debt schedule or changes in foreign exchange exposure.
He saw holes. Risks that did not belong in boilerplate reports. Opportunities that senior managers missed because no one had time to see.
Joohyuk walked in, umbrella coiled in one hand, breakfast sandwich in the other. His bottom half was wet.
"Rain's awful out there," he grumbled around a bite. "Roads near Mapo are jammed due to some accident. Two cabs zoomed past me as if I were a ghost."
Minjae nodded but continued to type. "Should've left fifteen minutes ago."
Joohyuk gave him a glare. "Saw the crash coming too, oracle-nim?"
"No," Minjae said in a tone of absolute seriousness. "Only that morning traffic density plus rain tends to cause delay by Mapo Bridge. There's data to prove it."
Joohyuk gave Seori a glance, then flapped his sandwich in Minjae's direction. "Why does he sound like he's advising the Ministry of Transport in hush-hush?"
Seori grinned. "Because he probably is."
Minjae stepped in one final critical, then spoke to him.
"Joohyuk, has anyone updated the price assumptions for our logistics partner over the past year?"
Joohyuk blinked, in mid-sip of his coffee. "Uh. don't think so. We just roll forward the current framework unless procurement raises a flag. Why?"
Minjae pushed a printed memo across the table to him. Neat, highlighted. The cells were correctly aligned.
"They've been changing their rates in different distance bands. It's subtle. Could be an overcharge scheme."
Joohyuk set down his sandwich, frowning. "You. you just discovered this?"
"I've been analyzing patterns," Minjae said matter-of-factly, like discussing the weather. Like a person saying a plant was in need of watering.
Joohyuk looked at the paper. "This is insane. You do all of this yourself?"
Minjae shrugged, uncommitted. "I had time. I was curious."
"Curious," Joohyuk grumbled. "Guy, when I'm curious, I Google lunch restaurants."
Later in the morning, as the rest of the team was absorbed in slideshow design and adjusting color in PowerPoint templates, a manager from Accounting wandered by and dropped a report on Seori's desk.
"Jang director told me to cross-check with Strategy's projection and this model of cash flow," he said, already halfway out the door.
Seori sighed as she opened the file. She would be pulling an all-nighter again.
Joohyuk moaned even more vocally from two seats over. "I barely recovered from the last late night. My back is still positive that it's in this chair."
Minjae didn't comment. He was already scrolling through the spreadsheet, carefully reading through it.
Three mistakes. Lost cell link, missing discount factor, stale assumption in receivables turnover. Rash. But normal.
He fixed them in seconds, scribbled marginal comments in plain language, and then sent the scrubbed-clean revision to Seori.
"You already did it?" she growled, eyes flashing at the file attachment.
"I just simplified what they made complicated."
Seori scowled. "Do you ever blink when you're working?"
Minjae finally looked up. "Occasionally. But only when there's something worth blinking at."
She rolled her eyes, but smiled. "You know… you're kind of strange."
He smiled faintly back. "Only compared to what you're used to."
Their conversation was interrupted by a ripple of movement through the office.
A team lead had just arrived—Kwon Daeho, known for his short fuse and thin patience. He walked like a man perpetually late to a meeting no one invited him to. His voice carried even when he wasn't shouting.
"I heard we're getting merged with the New Ventures division," he said to another manager, loudly enough that everyone around paused.
The second man fidgeted uncomfortably. "Unconfirmed. But. tension, yes, tension. Nobody knows who's staying."
The air around them grew heavy. Conversations faltered. Keyboards crept slowly. The usual chaos of a shared office fell by half. Jokes dangled in mid-air before they could be turned into punchlines.
Minjae observed in silence. Mergers were unusual. Panic reactions were unusual too. But the little bit—the way stress made people let slip critical information—was something he noticed.
He had no plans on using it.
Not yet.
His boss leaned over his cubicle partition mid-day. "Minjae-ssi, would you reorganize the team presentation deck? We have a meeting with Director Jang tomorrow."
"Okay," replied Minjae, already cracking open the file.
Thirty minutes later, he handed back a revised version. The data was sharper. The graphs realigned to highlight volatility zones instead of raw numbers. The narrative arc drew focus to cost mitigation, not growth fluff.
The manager flipped through it, page by page, mouth slightly open.
"You're… good at this," he said slowly.
Minjae met his eyes. "I read the trends. They explain more than people think."
The man nodded weakly, muttered something about letting it rise up, and departed.
Most of the team had hard rain at the end of the day, plodding home under umbrellas and half-hearted crosswalk lights. Laughter had faded now, everyone weighed not only with rain but with doubt.
Minjae enjoyed staying behind. Not for any work remaining. He just liked the quietness after exertion.
Seori passed by on her way out, umbrella in hand. "You're not heading out?"
"Soon."
"Going to predict tomorrow's weather too?" she teased.
He glanced at the sky through the window. "Likely clear by morning. But traffic around Banpo will be bad again. Some schools have testing."
She gave him a curious look. "You really do live five steps ahead of everyone."
"Only five?" he murmured, more to himself than her.
Outside, the city pulsed with unseen webs—of choice, danger, expectation, and timing. Underneath the skyscrapers, the subways and buses and automobiles flowed like veins on an alive body.
A world of no mana, yet power nonetheless.
And Yoo Minjae, once Valmyros, was getting used to navigating it.
Step by step, in quiet stealth.