Jae-Min had never been this focused before. His eyes were glued to the screen in front of him, the numbers and graphs on his financial models filling his mind with a kind of clarity he had never experienced. There was no room for distractions, no space for the weight of his past. The relentless pressure of the job at Goldman Sachs became his fuel, his reason for waking up each day.
It was his second month at the firm, and the days had already started to blend together—wake up, analyze reports, prepare client meetings, conduct financial forecasts, attend strategy discussions. He was no longer just surviving; he was excelling. Each day, he pushed himself harder. The bar was set so high that he didn't have the luxury of slowing down or taking a break. In this world, you either kept up or fell behind—and falling behind wasn't an option.
He worked 12, 14, sometimes 16-hour days. Weekends were no longer sacred. The idea of leisure, of taking a moment to himself, felt foreign. The hunger for success gnawed at him constantly. It was a hunger that was never truly satisfied, no matter how many deals he closed or how many accolades he received. He had changed—his work ethic, his mindset, his identity—but there was still something inside him that longed for validation, for recognition, for the approval of those who had once dismissed him.
But that recognition would never come. Not from his family.
His phone had been silent for weeks now. His father, his mother, and even his siblings had stopped reaching out. At first, Jae-Min had ignored their messages, choosing to focus on his new life, but as time passed, the silence felt like a suffocating weight. His father's cold, terse texts had become fewer and fewer, and eventually, they stopped altogether. The family had moved on—without him.
Jae-Min had made a decision when he left for the US, a decision to cut ties with his old life. The last remnants of his previous self, the spoiled chaebol heir, had no place in this new world. And yet, the emptiness that lingered within him made him question whether he had truly escaped it all. He hadn't spoken to his family once since leaving for the US, not even to acknowledge his graduation. They had assumed he was out drinking, partying, and living the same shallow existence he had before. But Jae-Min had chosen to leave all of that behind. He didn't want them to know what he had become. He didn't want to answer their questions, their expectations, their pity.
It wasn't just that he wanted to distance himself from his past. It was that he couldn't bear the thought of them seeing him as anything but the failure he once was. The boy who had been rejected, abandoned, forgotten.
So he kept silent.
Each day, he buried himself deeper into his work. At Goldman Sachs, he was a rising star. His managers praised his sharp mind and his unwavering commitment. He had become an invaluable asset to his team, handling complex mergers and acquisitions with an ease that belied the immense pressure. He had become the kind of person who could solve problems that others couldn't even begin to fathom. His reputation was growing, and with it came opportunities that he had never imagined.
But the cost was clear.
His colleagues, the ones who had once looked at him with mild curiosity, had now come to see him as something of a mystery. They had heard rumors about his background—the chaebol heir, the spoiled rich kid who had turned his life around. But no one really knew the full story. Jae-Min didn't let them in. He didn't want them to know the real reason he worked so hard, the reason why he never took a day off, the reason why he would lock himself in his office, even on weekends, until the work was done. They didn't understand that this wasn't just about ambition. This was about atonement.
The work had become his penance.
His father's voice, once a constant in his life, was now a distant memory. Jae-Min didn't care to listen to him anymore. The man who had never believed in him, who had seen him as nothing more than a pawn to be controlled—he could no longer affect him. His family's indifference didn't sting as it once did. What stung more was the fact that he had never been truly important to them. Not once had they asked how he was doing. Not once had they shown genuine concern for his well-being.
The silence of their neglect was louder than any criticism they could have given him.
The only reminder of them was the occasional flash of guilt that gnawed at him in the quiet moments, when he allowed himself to think back to his past. But those moments were rare. He never allowed them to linger for too long.
Still, there was one thought that constantly lingered in the back of his mind—the one person he couldn't stop thinking about, even after all this time. Her. His ex-fiancé.
He had been unable to forget her, even after everything.
In a way, she was the final piece of the puzzle, the one who had sent him spiraling down this path. His love for her had been the catalyst for his transformation, the burning need to prove to himself and to her that he could be more than what he had been. But that love had been rejected. And now, it was the one thing he could never have again.
He had tried to move on, to bury the memories of their time together, but they always resurfaced, unbidden, whenever he allowed himself to pause long enough to think. He hadn't heard from her in months. She had erased him from her life, just as his family had.
The difference was that he didn't know how to erase her.
Despite the success he had achieved at Goldman Sachs, despite the respect he had earned in his field, there was still an emptiness inside him—a space that could only be filled by the one thing he could never get back. And so, Jae-Min worked. He worked until his mind was numb, until his body was exhausted. It was the only way he could keep that emptiness at bay.
He would never return to the person he was before. He would never let himself be the spoiled heir again. But there were days when the past haunted him, and on those days, all he had was the work—the endless, unforgiving work that kept him moving forward. It was the only thing that allowed him to forget, even for a moment, that he was still a man searching for something he would never find.
And so, Jae-Min continued to toil away in silence, unseen by the family who had once known him, his name fading into the background. To the world, he was a successful investment banker, a man who had turned his life around. But inside, he was still the same boy—broken, searching, and forever haunted by the one thing he could never erase.