The Father's Visit

Yun Donghho hadn't come to hear his son's apology.

He'd come with the overdue payment dates and the workers' pay schedule.

The emergency desk's public review board listed vendor names in a row. Yunseong Precision was one of them, and next to it alone sat the label related-party transaction. Donghho looked at that label once, then set the slip down on the desk. Wiping his hands before touching paper was a habit that carried from the factory floor to the conference room.

"So because we're family, we get paid last?"

Taegyeong turned the screen toward him. "Because you're family, you can't be paid first."

"Then what about payment for goods already delivered?"

Hyerin turned over the slip. "The inspection signature and delivery record check out. But the standard for breaking today's wage lock to pay you early would have to apply to other vendors too."

Donghho didn't nod. "Do other vendors match my tolerances?"

"Being a critical supplier is factored into the score," Taegyeong said. "But we also have to weigh the workers whose payday is today, and deliveries where stopping breaks a customer order immediately."

"I don't see my factory's people on your list."

"That's why we got the worker and process schedule from Foreman Jiseok."

"Only Hallim Living's people."

At that, Taegyeong went quiet for a moment. Yunseong Precision had people too. A single slip might carry a payment amount, but on the factory floor, whose paycheck stopped when was its own separate matter. Marking something as family or not family wasn't enough.

"We'll bring Yunseong Precision up in the same format. Worker paydays, essential processes, whether they're replaceable."

"By today?"

"Only what can be confirmed by today."

Donghho took the slip back. "Then I'll close my own factory myself."

The air in the conference room stopped. An executive tried to say something, but Hyerin raised her hand first.

"Is that a closure decision, or a review?"

"A review." Donghho said it curtly. "No money, the machines stop. I'm not going to hold onto a stopped machine like it's a person's life."

Taegyeong knew his father wasn't threatening them. In his first life, that line had come much later. Back then Taegyeong had scraped together money to try to save the factory, and by that point Donghho had already been unable to tell the workers there was a way out. Now Donghho was saying he might close it first. It wasn't a statement of giving up on the factory. It was a statement that he would decide, with his own hands, what got to remain.

That afternoon, Taegyeong and Donghho went to the Yunseong Precision plant. Beside workstation 2 stood a jig storage cabinet. An old key sat in Donghho's palm. He opened the cabinet and took out a steel jig. Small scratches and a drawing number remained on its surface.

"This isn't a company signboard. It's the thing that holds the tolerances," Donghho said. "Without this, the same part can't come out the same shape twice."

Three workers stood in front of the workstation. Even after hearing the word closure, none of them asked their boss's son to send money right away. One of them asked.

"Boss, if we close, what happens to that tool?"

"Not decided yet."

"Can the same process run somewhere else?"

Instead of answering, Donghho set a bundle of drawings on the table. Dimensions, inspection standards, delivery requirements. Even if the corporate entity closed, if the hands and the tools carried on, the production function could survive. Taegyeong didn't hear that as an explanation. He saw it in the hands of the workers leafing through the drawings. They weren't only asking him to save the factory. They were asking where they could work, who could hold the tools.

"What if the money doesn't come in today?" one worker asked.

Donghho pointed at the pay calendar. "We confirm by tomorrow morning. If it doesn't work out, closure review starts. But the tools and drawings don't get buried."

Taegyeong didn't stop him from saying it. He couldn't use saving his father's factory as an excuse to take away the workers' right to wait and see.

That evening, the Donghae Distribution deposit reappeared on the cash desk screen. The locked account could only release funds for essential deliveries needed for today's orders. Taegyeong didn't put the entire Yunseong Precision payment into that slot. If an old debt got paid off with customer money, the family favoritism they'd disclosed would just come back under another name.

"We're separating out only the process costs needed for today's order," Hyerin said. "Quantity, tool usage fees, inspection staff. The existing overdue payment has to stay as is."

Donghho appeared on the video call screen. "If you only give me part of it, don't record that as me forgiving the debt."

"I'll put that line in," Taegyeong said.

"Putting it in isn't the end of it. The workers need to know who's getting what money too."

Hyerin added a line to the payment terms. "This payment covers specific process costs required for the customer order and does not constitute repayment, waiver, or reprioritization of the existing overdue balance."

Donghho read the screen and, after a long pause, said, "Money is debt. Tools are a choice."

He sent over the jig list and drawing numbers. The list noted which tools each process needed and who knew how to use them. As Taegyeong received the file, he understood his father still hadn't handed the key to anyone. That choice wasn't something to be bought with his son's money. It was something to be decided together with the workers.

Yunseong Precision's old overdue balance stayed on the ledger. Instead, only a narrow slice of process cost for today's order was released. It wasn't saving the factory. It was only buying time to choose, tomorrow, which line to stop and whose hands to keep.

Donghho didn't hang up the video call. He turned the camera toward the workstation. The jig cabinet, the box of drawings, the hands of one worker who hadn't clocked out yet. Taegyeong read through the process cost line items one by one on the screen. Cutting time for a specific batch of one hundred units, two inspection staff, tool usage fees, pre-shipment packaging. None of the lines said Yunseong Precision overdue balance.

"Does opening this get next week's wages?" Donghho asked.

"No."

"Then it's not money that saves the factory either."

"It's money that lets us make the hundred units we promised the customer today."

Donghho ran his palm over the scratches on the jig. "Tell that difference to the workers too."

Taegyeong nodded. Words that narrowed help could sometimes sound crueler. The old debt stayed as it was, while only the immediate necessary cost got released. But mixing the two together would erase who had given up what.

The workers' representative asked from off camera, "After we make those hundred, then what?"

Donghho answered. "Then we decide based on tomorrow's numbers. I'm not promising the factory survives. But we'll decide together where your hands can go."

That didn't sound like a boss's words. It sounded like the words of someone managing a workplace that might close. One worker wrote down a drawing number, and another took a photo of the asset label stuck to a jig. Preparation to make sure the tools wouldn't disappear even if the corporate entity closed.

Hyerin didn't write the payee on the payment draft as simply the Yunseong Precision corporate entity. She added four lines: detailed breakdown of process costs, payment after inspection, preservation of the existing claim, worker access to view the record. Donghho read the four lines and then demanded one more at the end.

"Don't use me taking this money as proof I've sided with Hallim Living."

"That won't be recorded," Hyerin said. "Only the purpose of the transaction gets recorded."

"If the purpose is wrong too, I'll fix it."

Taegyeong turned the signature field toward his father at that. Today wasn't the day for a father to approve his son's rescue plan. It was a day for each person to leave their name on record for what was being made and what still hadn't been received, for the sake of the customer order.

Donghho didn't sign. Instead he stamped his seal next to "confirmation of preserving the existing overdue balance." The seal wasn't a sign of cooperation. It was a confirmation that left him the right to give up on the factory too.

The clock on the cash desk kept counting down. Only now did Taegyeong understand. Buying time wasn't a promise of recovery. It was gaining one more space for someone else to write down their own choice.

Inside the factory, a circuit breaker tripped once. The workers looked up at the sound, but no one turned the machines back on. When Donghho folded up the pay calendar and set it on the workstation, one of them spoke.

"Boss, if we're closing tomorrow, I won't do overtime today."

Donghho answered immediately. "You don't have to. If the hundred-unit process opens up, we'll ask again just for that scope."

"Can I say no then too?"

"You can."

Listening to that exchange, Taegyeong thought about how easily the phrase essential delivery on the cash sheet could push a person aside. Having a customer order didn't mean someone's night shift could just be taken for granted. Opening up process funding didn't mean the workers' consent had been bought along with it.

A message came in from Jiseok. It said the shift plan on the Hallim Living side had stalled over the same problem. There were enough people to run the essential line, but not enough to keep the non-essential line running alongside it. Taegyeong wrote back, "Put the criteria for stopping non-essential lines into a public table." His father's factory tools and Hallim Living's shift schedule looked like different problems, but both started from the same place: not hiding who stays and who stops.

Donghho locked the cabinet and put the key in his pocket. "The tools don't go anywhere today."

"Why not?" Taegyeong asked.

"We haven't confirmed who'd hand them over or where they'd go."

That wasn't a refusal. It was a hold. Taegyeong understood the difference. The principle that neither money nor tools move before confirmation was now operating in his father's hands too.

That night, before closing the Yunseong Precision process cost approval screen, Taegyeong added one more line. "Execution not permitted before worker consent and inspection are complete." The amount had narrowed, and the time had shrunk further. Still, without erasing anyone's choice, he could account for whatever time remained.

Donghho read that line and didn't stamp it. Instead he said he'd meet with the workers again in the morning. Taegyeong felt uneasy about the hold, but he didn't rush the signature just to get rid of that unease. What remained between the factory and the money wasn't a promise. It was the next confirmation time.

Until then, no one decides on someone else's behalf.

That was the only condition left standing today.

And that condition wasn't a light one.

No one was smiling.