Descent of the Demon Master

“Bloody hell, now that’s a lot of people…”

Jo Gyu-Min frowned reflexively at the sight waiting for him.

People in his near vicinity sneakily distanced themselves from him. They couldn't be blamed, though, as Jo Gyu-Min was wearing a pitch-black business suit and a pair of dark sunglasses to hide his eyes while frowning suspiciously.

“Oh, uh… M-my apologies. I'm not involved in that kind of work.”

Jo Gyu-Min sheepishly bowed and tried to apologize to his surroundings. Unfortunately, that didn’t improve the nature of the gazes landing on him.

It was as if the crowd was suspiciously staring at a member of an organized crime syndicate! Jo Gyu-Min panicked slightly and hurriedly took off his sunglasses before stashing them in his front pocket. Only then did the glares soften somewhat.

‘Gimme a break…’

Jo Gyu-Min never felt comfortable being around so many people. His condition wasn't bad enough to be considered a social phobia, but his discomfort level still increased exponentially whenever he found himself in an environment with lots of eyes.

Jo Gyu-Min groaned deeply, then scanned the surroundings. He discovered a smoking area in the far-off corner and trotted over there. It was a smoking booth, so he quickly slipped inside.

It was nice that he could find shelter against all the outpouring of inquisitive gazes, but the situation inside the smoking booth was just as stuffy as the outside.

The place was jam-packed, and grayish smoke had completely filled the booth's interior.

Everyone in the booth must be experienced smokers, yet they were still frowning in discomfort at this smog-like environment while doggedly puffing away at their cigarettes.

‘What a sad reality this is.’

Even though all these folks were trying to pay more tax while ruining their lungs, they weren't even afforded the small luxury of a spacious public smoking booth. Jo Gyu-Min's heart ached at this unfair reality.

However, what could he do about it? If he felt it was unfair… Then he should just quit smoking, no?

Unfortunately, he couldn't do that, and that was why he crawled inside this raccoon's den to shorten his lifespan a bit more. While despairing slightly at his own lack of willpower, Jo Gyu-Min finally mouthed a cigarette and lit it up.

“Fuu-woo…”

Sucking in all the unhealthy smoke deep into his lungs did the trick, and Jo Gyu-Min felt a little calmer than before.

‘Gee whiz. Seriously, gimme a break!’

Jo Gyu-Min couldn’t really whine here since Kang Jin-Ho was trying to do something good for the kids.

Kang Jin-Ho was nominally overseeing the efforts to establish a welfare foundation. If he said he wanted to do something for the kids regardless of whether it was the weekends or the middle of the night… Jo Gyu-Min couldn’t exactly say no.

...Even if the location this time happened to be overflowing with one thing Jo Gyu-Min avoided the most: big crowds!

Jo Gyu-Min hurriedly finished his cigarette, tossed it into a nearby ashtray, and hastily escaped the smoking booth. He didn't mind sucking in all the smoke through his nose and mouth, but his clothes absorbing the same smoke? Now that would be a definite no-no.

He was about to meet up with a group of kids who hated the smell of cigarettes, after all!

After spraying himself with a deodorant he had prepared well ahead of time to remove as much cigarette odor as possible, Jo Gyu-Min sucked in a deep breath to calm himself, then glared sharply at the aquarium's entrance.

Unfortunately, the sight of the bustling crowd was still enough to drop his heart to the pit of his stomach. However, there was no retreat in Jo Gyu-Min's vocabulary!

He could've waited right here, in this exact spot, and moved on to the next part of the schedule after Kang Jin-Ho led the children outside the aquarium. However, doing so didn't align with Jo Gyu-Min's principle.

Taking the first step back was never easy.

If you were ill-matched to a particular 'trifling' task and had zero desire to do it in the first place, sending it down your list of priorities was only difficult for the first time. Once the precedence had been set, doing it for the second time wouldn't be as difficult. By the third time… It'd come as naturally as breathing to you.

‘However, there is no such thing as doing things in half measures!’

One should clearly differentiate between a task that couldn't be completed due to the lack of time, willingness, and manpower, and a task that you didn't want to waste one second of your time if you could help it.

Today’s task quite clearly fell into the latter category.

However, even if the task didn’t really require him to be around, Jo Gyu-Min should still confirm the situation with his own two eyes. If him being here could improve the matters, even if only by a little bit, what was there for him to think about?

“Alright. I’m going in!”

Jo Gyu-Min bought a ticket and bravely stepped inside the aquarium. Although he did flinch a little when the kid manning the ticket booth asked him if one ticket was enough, such a question was never going to discourage Jo Gyu-Min, a man with over a decade’s experience in cooking dinner for one.

He watched movies alone in cinemas. He ate dinners by himself. So, he’d visit the aquarium by himself, too! That was the solo player’s way!

Jo Gyu-Min stubbornly stuck to the path he had walked on until now. It did feel like a slightly pitying gaze landed on his back just then, but he still ignored everything and resolutely looked ahead.

Despite his heroic determination, however, the throngs of crowds clogging up the entrance still rapidly drained Jo Gyu-Min's stamina.

‘Huh. This place is making a killing today, isn’t it?’

Apparently, this aquarium had opened its doors recently. That could explain why there were so many visitors here.

‘How much are they making, then?’

As Jo Gyu-Min was a part of the business world, he naturally began calculating the potential revenue of this aquarium. By dividing the number of estimated visitors by hours operated, he was able to think of a rough amount, and his jaw almost immediately dropped to the floor.

‘Wow. That’s a lot.’

His rough estimate indicated a potentially massive revenue stream.

‘This is why large corporations insist on operating places like theme parks and theaters…’

Large corporations boasting similar levels of market presence to Jaegyeong often owned subsidiaries that ran entertainment venues like this aquarium. Some of them had even directly gotten involved in the sector, too. On the other hand, Jaegyeong… faithfully stuck to manufacturing.

Of course, Jo Gyu-Min was being generous with the "faithfully" evaluation here. It should be more like 'outdated' in the current era.

As the era changed, the public began demanding something new. And that something new usually equaled new business ventures to rake in more money.

Although an aquarium could not be seen as something new, a never-before-seen concept, this kind of venture was still something Jaegyeong had never attempted before since its founding.

‘Should I… submit a business proposal later?’

While thinking about this and that, Jo Gyu-Min followed the ocean of people and entered deeper. The entrance might have been crowded, but his immediate impression after entering the aquarium was… that it was rather sparsely populated. That could only mean the interior was far larger than he thought.

‘Okay, let’s see… This neighborhood is known for being expensive. So, if I add that to the cost of construction…’

While everyone was entranced and enthralled by the sight of the colorful marine creatures and the fantasy-like interior, here was Jo Gyu-Min, stupefied after calculating the potential cost of buying and feeding all these fish and constructing this expansive interior.

Money was figuratively floating around in the water and embedded in the ceilings!

‘Just how much did everything cost?’

Jo Gyu-Min felt an onset of migraine after estimating the cost of this aquarium’s construction and how much it could potentially make in sales today.

The revenue might be spectacular, but the investment and upkeep costs were so enormous that it felt similar to using a bucket to empty the ocean. In Jo Gyu-Min's estimation, this place needed to operate for twenty years, at least, with this level of momentum and zero accidents to barely recoup the investment.

‘Sure, it might not take twenty years since you can sell the land and all the infrastructure already in place for a tidy sum later on. However, if I consider the upkeep and labor costs, plus the drop in visitor numbers after the opening day rush ends…'

Jo Gyu-Min slowly shook his head.

This type of business must've made enough money to justify all these new theme parks popping up seemingly every other week. However, it didn't suit Jaegyeong's style. It never shied away from making massive investments in big-scale projects, but it also didn't venture into businesses requiring a long-term commitment to recoup its initial investment.

‘It's a missed opportunity, but…'

Jo Gyu-Min ruefully smacked his lips.

Whether a business venture made a profit or not wasn't the be-all and end-all. The average Joe on the street probably thought corporations wouldn't hesitate to set up shop in Hell if it was profitable down there, but the truth was anything but.

As an example, an oil company wouldn’t jump into a chain restaurant business, no matter how profitable it might be. A company would primarily consider whether a particular business venture suited its operational structure and where it wanted to go in the future.

It wasn't because entering a different sector of business was annoying. No, such a thing would have required extensive hiring of a brand-new workforce and the restructuring of existing departments.

Unless Jaegyeong was serious about joining the recreational and entertainment industry and was prepared to dump shed-loads of money, it made no sense for them to set up a new department or subsidiary. This level of revenue stream simply was not good enough to justify the time and resources spent.

‘Although, this level of revenue is still nothing to scoff at.’

This aquarium was well-designed. So much so that even Jo Gyu-Min, who wasn't interested in things like this, couldn't help but exclaim reflexively after setting foot in here.

‘That’s weird, though… I heard this place isn’t owned by a large corporation, so how did they do it?’

It didn't take a genius to figure out that a project of this magnitude would require significant investments. Such an amount of money was not something a lone individual could afford. Besides, someone with that much wealth wouldn't need to build an aquarium in the first place, anyway.

Owning a couple of nice buildings in Gangnam would've been enough to set them up for life, so why would they venture into a business this risky?

‘Which means there must be a lot of investors.’

Jo Gyu-Min could more or less see it now. The real operator of this aquarium must be some other entity. The investors probably installed a puppet boss, set up a nice little corporate body, then dumped considerable money into this place. And most of the revenue this place generated went straight into the pockets of those people.

‘I guess the boss of this place is having a torrid time, then.’

A company that wasn’t upfront about how it was structured always had some kind of issues festering away somewhere.

As the money invested wasn't the boss's own, troubles would've inevitably crept into the planning and construction process.

Practically every construction project experienced a cost exceeding the initial estimate. Such a thing was almost a guarantee at this point.

That was because variables always came into play in everything humans did. Obviously, most of these variables would've been taken into consideration during the planning stages. However, when those variables were also spiced up with people's greed and unhealthy drive on construction sites, unexpected additional costs would inevitably follow.

In projects the construction companies had plenty of experience in, such as building apartment complexes, such cost overruns were rarer. However, something as uncommon and unique as constructing an aquarium would often encounter unexpected and costly expenditures.

In cases where a corporation was footing the bill, it’d have no choice but to swallow the bitter pill and pump the required funds into the project. However, the story would change somewhat when the case involved a puppet boss and investors in the shadows.

The private investors would not be as inclined as the project owner to fork over the additional expenses. Meanwhile, the puppet boss would be less than keen to beg them for extra cash, too.

Which would naturally lead to…

‘Sub-par construction!'

Jo Gyu-Min's gaze became icy cold as he scanned his surroundings. He could tell that every piece of furniture, construction material, and equipment was rather high-class. So much so that even he had to wonder if all this was even necessary.

After studying the surroundings like a hawk, a helpless chuckle leaked out of Jo Gyu-Min’s mouth.

‘Yup, I’m a helpless workaholic, aren’t I?’

It seemed he’d been a Jaegyeong man for too long. As proof, look at him studiously inspecting how an aquarium unrelated to his company was being run!

Jo Gyu-Min was freshly reminded of how deeply the mindset of a salaryman had become embedded into his soul. He slowly shook his head to chide himself. What did it matter to him if this place was running at a loss or had been built poorly? It wasn't like he was in charge of this place, anyway!

Jo Gyu-Min continued to shake his head, albeit a little ruefully this time. While others came here to have fun and enjoy themselves, it felt like he came here to conduct due diligence instead.

After getting rid of distracting thoughts from his mind with a shake of his head, Jo Gyu-Min closed his eyes for a second or two before opening them again. That was when all the floating money in the water morphed back to their original forms, marine creatures.

“Well, I admit that it’s impressive in here.”

The spectacular sight of many varieties of fish lazily swimming around inside massive water tanks was not something he could easily witness in other places. And that wasn't all. Jo Gyu-Min even spotted creatures that couldn't be called fish anymore but as large monsters, too!

If he was living somewhere nearby, maybe it might not be such a bad idea to stop by once in a while to destress. Even if the entrance fee was on the pricier side…

‘It’s not a bad place to bring your date, eh?’

In other words, Jo Gyu-Min would likely never come here again. When that realization struck him, he inexplicably grew sad.

That was when he heard… some kind of a commotion up ahead.

‘Mm? Maybe the aquarium’s putting on a show?’

An aquarium didn’t just let visitors stare at fish the whole day. It also presented various fun little shows to keep the paying punters entertained. However, Jo Gyu-Min quickly realized this commotion didn’t sound joyous at all.

He spotted a large crowd of concerned people gathering near a narrow passageway up ahead. Jo Gyu-Min furrowed his brow and hurriedly approached the crowd. Despite being uncomfortable in a crowd, he was also the type who simply had to resolve his curiosity as soon as possible.

“Excuse me, what is…”

Just before he could ask the person nearby to figure out what was happening here, his hearing caught a familiar voice.

“Will it be okay?”

‘Mm? Wasn’t that Han Jin-Seong’s voice?’

Jo Gyu-Min hurriedly pushed past the crowd after catching on to Han Jin-Seong’s loud voice. While getting anxious, he tried to listen more closely.