Another week went by. The sessions picked up again. Rumor made the rounds. To the outside world's view of Seojin Capital Solutions' daily rhythm, it was business as usual—a seamless beat of keycards swiping, humming fluorescent lights, and project updates distributed in the same tidy efficiency.
But in the whispered spaces between the normal cadences of work—where all-night audits doubled, and accounts were scrutinized by departments with no right to glance their direction—there existed an unspoken undertow. A subdued irritation came to rest upon the highest floors.
They found nothing.
No fissures in the building. No oddness in ownership. No openings to lead one to the shadow behind all.
Minjae, of course, knew precisely why.
The foundations of the company had been laid centuries before his present legal existence even started. Shell accounts, several layers of holdings, and sleeping corporations were established with a patient predator's wait of centuries to strike. He had schemed it with the wisdom of a man who had witnessed empires crumbling—and how only what was buried deepest could survive their ruin.
Outside, Seojin Capital was spick and span. Complicated, but not fishy. Clean enough to get through state audits, but mired in enough complexity to confound regulators for generations. Inside, it looked drab, even bovine-like. The perfect cover: perfect corporate dullness.
And so the hunters grew restless.
---
That day, Rennor again stood in the executive review room, eyeing a sweeping heatmap of internal access logs posted on the wall. Red lines coursed through the digital model, marking the blind alleys his people had been pursuing.
His assistant hovered behind him, quiet at first, then little more than a whisper.
"Nothing yet?"
"Mere nothing," Rennor grumbled. His voice had the enforced severity of a man trained to keep himself from despair, but the simmer beneath was practically palpable. "Whoever constructed this either does not exist—or figured out how to delete themselves out of the digital realm entirely."
His aide wrinkled his brow in doubt. "Then is it real, even? This. 'ghost shareholder' you're so certain of?"
Rennor did not glance away from the screen. His eyes were fixed on the white areas where there ought to have been trails. "It's real. But whoever they are, they never had to be seen."
The words hung in the hot, recycled air of the conference room. For Rennor, the search was no longer about proof—it was about gut feeling. He *knew* something was out there. The nothingness was evidence in itself.
---
Below him, Minjae sat at his desk, the epitome of tranquility. He opened a vending machine can of ice coffee, the icy fizz slicing through the desolation of re-circulated office air. His eyes scanned a pile of IT maintenance tickets—tedious, uninteresting things he could have farmed out but didn't.
Redundancy was a habit. Paranoia masquerading as diligence.
One of them was different. Not from what it said, but from where it was put.
Rennor's team had asked for historical project authorization logs. Secret interrogation. Unobtrusive to the naked eye. But all the logs led to the same destination: a spotless, notarized handover document a decade earlier.
A document Minjae himself wrote.
Every sentence of it was spotless, validated, and by the book. No loophole. No misplaced reference. No mistake.
The system didn't remember him. Intentionally.
To the rest of the world, Seojin Capital was a headless hydra. Executive orders came flowing in, with senior brass taking orders without ever asking where they were going. A leaderless company. A ghost in command.
The same fortress Rennor wanted to break into. was the one Minjae constructed stone by stone.
---
In the break room at the company, two junior engineers huddled behind cups of instant coffee.
"Hey, did you hear? They're still searching for the founder."
"Founder? That dude was a legend, huh? Some sort of ghost hedge fund from the past?"
"Seems not. The director's office has people sifting through logs all week."
The other guy laughed, shaking his head. "I'll bet they don't find anything. Just a legend.".
Their giggles were small, benign—though pained Minjae a little in his ears as he walked by.
The legend was true. The spirit they teased was sitting a few feet off, drinking coffee as though he had every right to be there.
He did not stop, did not speak to them, did not have to. Their ignorance was his cover.
---
Later that night, storm clouds rolled in over Seoul, and city lights glowed off wet pavement. In the stillness of his apartment, Minjae opened a second ledger—a one that wasn't connected to Seojin's networks. His own vault.
There, the figures lived differently. Investments stretched across continents. Donations streams were tracked with attention. Independent ventures operating off the books. He doesn't keep them because he must, but because *discipline required it*.
A treasureless dragon was nonetheless a dragon—but a dragon who recalled the fire that once devoured kingdoms.
He darkened the tablet display and reclined, eyes following the raindrops rolling down the windowpane.
It wasn't concealment.
It was not having to be found.
The dragon in him previously spat fire to demand notice. Armies knelt in devotion. Crowds shuddered. Gold accumulated.
But on this day? Quiet was armor. Anonymous was empire.
He.spoke to the dark room, his words heavy with a secret nobody else could feel.
"Even if they dig, there's no treasure buried here."
The rain pattered a slow beat on the window, the drop by drop clicking away in a world that still did not know what was really hidden beneath it.
Outside, the city throbbed with indifference, neon signs flashing, cars slicing through rainy roads. For them, it was a normal night.
For Minjae, it was evidence that the greatest power lay not in being noticed—but in not being noticed.
The storm he harbored inside remained hidden.
For now.