I Became the Youngest Daughter of a Chaebol Family-Chapter 20: Economic Boom (2)

There were two main reasons I decided to stash money in Japan.

The biggest reason was that just leaving the money there would make it grow automatically. And since it was money earned overseas, laundering it would be easier—meaning even my family wouldn’t be able to tell how much I’d made.

Considering that the reason I constantly kept my earnings discreet was to avoid drawing my family’s attention, that alone was a huge advantage.

And..., the second reason was that I’d been given an even bigger slice of cake—so much so that I didn’t need to push myself to earn more.

Semiconductors.

I could stake a claim in Daehwa Group’s semiconductor industry.

***

The Plaza Accord was signed at the end of September. And time, as always, flows forward.

Naturally, it wasn’t long after that when the season returned—when brittle leaves mixed into the soil and began to rot.

The season when everything freezes and people go hungry. The time we usually call winter.

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But thanks to the progress of civilization and a long-awaited economic boom laying a thick layer of asphalt over the earth like tar, it was hard to find patches of frozen ground anywhere.

Leaves settled gently on the pavement, briefly blanketed by cold snow, only to be crushed beneath passing car wheels.

—Screech.

A dazzlingly polished car crushed the piled leaves as it pulled up to the mansion entrance.

“We’ve arrived, miss.”

A tall, well-dressed beauty in a suit opened the car door and held out an umbrella for the child stepping out.

It was Yoo Ha-yeon, the youngest granddaughter of Daehwa Group.

“Thanks. Si-hyun, it’s been a while since you’ve visited the secretary’s office, hasn’t it?”

Time had moved on, and it was now December.

I was returning home for a family gathering.

“Yes, I’ll escort you to the entrance first.”

Over the past few months, Lee Si-hyun had grown quite refined in her conduct. No longer the stiff, awkward manners of a fresh graduate, but something more natural—elegant, even.

If before she’d looked like a servant following me around, now she felt like a true member of nobility.

A boyish beauty with feminine lines and a sharply tailored suit—it gave her an air of sophistication.

See, a servant who’s too feminine or too macho isn’t suitable as an attendant. Either way, they end up outshining their master.

‘I really picked a good secretary.’

Thanks to her elevated presence, I looked more dignified as well.

Since I was young, I lacked personal charisma—but Si-hyun compensated for that perfectly, allowing me to somewhat pull off the role of a proper young lady.

Thanks to that, most people didn’t dare speak to me carelessly.

“Hey, Yoo Ha-yeon. You’re here.”

Well, there are always exceptions. Like the direct heir of the Yoo family and Daehwa’s legitimate successor—he could speak to me however he liked.

He was a high schooler with an overall delinquent vibe.

He wasn’t walking around like some end-of-the-century punk (that trend’s still ten years away), but he still had that lazy, rebellious student aura.

By chaebol standards of the time, he was dressed rather poorly.

“Seon-jun oppa, what got into you...”

I naturally frowned. Did this guy have a reason to eat dinner this late...?

“Ugh, quit nagging. Honestly, you’re worse than an old man. I stayed up all night gambling, okay? Satisfied?”

Yoo Seon-jun, the eldest son of Yoo Jin-seok and heir to Daehwa Group, groaned as he covered his ears.

“Are you going through puberty?”

“...”

Seriously, what does a future chaebol chairman lack so badly that he ends up going down this path?

I mean... sure, if he just sits still, I’ll steal the chairman’s seat from him, but it’s not like he knows that.

I stepped a little closer. He reeked of cigarettes.

“...So you’re smoking now.”

He gave me a baffled look.

“What, isn’t smoking fine? A man’s gotta smoke, right?”

...Right, this is the 1980s. A time when not only °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° were men encouraged to smoke—if they didn’t, they were ostracized.

There’s one more reason to be glad I’m a girl besides the whole military thing.

“That may be, but don’t touch drugs.”

I’d seen it in the news in my past life. This guy was a regular headline in all those ‘third-generation chaebol drug charges’ stories.

Yoo Seon-jun.

Due to the stifling family atmosphere and expectations, he drowned himself in alcohol, drugs, and especially gambling... I couldn’t stand him.

I get that he was under a lot of pressure, but...

Maybe it’s because the way he lived so recklessly, bothering everyone around him, reminded me too much of my father.

“Hey, cut the nagging already. You’re not my dad. Just ‘cause you grew a few centimeters, you think you can talk down to me? And come on, I’m in my senior year of high school now. Even Grandpa’s gonna cut me some slack. He wouldn’t hit a student preparing for college exams, right?”

“...Fair enough.”

“But more importantly, hey—spill. I heard you made a hundred billion through gambling? How’d you do it?”

...So this is why this useless guy came all the way here.

I sighed internally as I looked at my cousin, who was now staring at me with sparkling eyes.

“I wasn’t gambling. Hmph, it was all investment.”

Yoo Seon-jun gave me a look of disbelief.

“You call something where you can lose everything or win a hundred billion an investment? If that’s not gambling, what is? And look at you—an eight-year-old brat who’s already gambling telling me...”

Haa, I can’t exactly say I’ve seen the future, so I can’t refute that properly.

Honestly, derivatives are even more ruthless than gambling. They’re what ruined me in my past life, too.

Insanely low probability. Huge return. Euphoric highs. Countless lives ruined. Mine included...

No matter how you look at it, they have almost all the same characteristics.

So it wasn’t unreasonable for him to say that. Though, when did he even learn all this?

“But oppa, how do you even know about that? You don’t know stocks, let alone options. Last I checked, you were great at cards, but this is a whole different ball game. Hmm, are you studying because of exams?”

He nodded.

This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.

“Yeah, I’m planning to major in business administration. I mean, losing in gambling to a kid who’s not even ten? That’s just ridiculous. So I’ve started studying again for the first time in a while.”

“...Seriously?”

“Next year, I’m even planning to quit gambling for a bit. That’s why I went all in yesterday, just for one last perfect round.”

The Daehwa Group’s resident gambling addict answered with a refreshing smile. His looks were actually quite good—handsome, in a rugged sort of way—so even when he said dumb shit, it somehow sounded cool.

What a gambling-crazed lunatic.

“...Well, do your best.”

I gave a half-hearted nod and led Si-hyun inside.

It’s always best not to get involved with a crazy person.

Still, it was fortunate for me. If he ever truly came to his senses and started charging forward, he could actually become a threat.

By the time of the foreign exchange crisis, he’d be thirty. That might not sound like much, but you never know when some strange coincidence could work against me.

Even the immediate implications were obvious—if Yoo Jin-seok no longer had to constantly clean up after his son, he’d have more time to focus on opposing me.

That was... another reason I refrained from making too much money.

Spreading seeds in secret was one thing, but if I openly built up my power and showed off my abilities, the family would get riled up.

Even something as simple as a butterfly effect could change people.

This time, it had taken a slightly strange direction—but still.

***

The extended Daehwa family’s genealogy was, at the moment, relatively simple.

That was because Chairman Yoo Seong-pil, the founder, had no significant relatives.

He hadn’t been alone from the start, but after most of his family died during the Korean War, I’d heard he took the opportunity to “clean house.”

...What that “cleaning” entailed, I didn’t know. Only that his nickname “the Iron-Blooded” mostly stemmed from that part of his past.

Anyway, the important point was that the Daehwa family had surprisingly few people.

Chairman Yoo Seong-pil’s children were limited to his eldest son Yoo Jin-seok, his second son Yoo Jin-ha, and his eldest daughter Yoo Seon-young. That’s it for the second generation.

Even counting the third generation—including me—there were only eight of us. Not many.

A modern-day person might think that wasn’t too few, considering the low birth rate, but this was the 1980s. And more importantly, this was a chaebol family.

Even when expanded with the ‘extended’ (범) Daehwa family, there were only eleven people across the second and third generations combined.

That was unusually low, even accounting for the family’s “rare bloodline” trait and the early death of Yoo Jin-cheol.

Compare that to Mirae Group, Daehwa’s frequent rival.

They had six direct-line second-generation heirs and over twenty in the third generation. That shows just how unique the Daehwa family structure was.

Even the extended Mirae clan had active branches in both political and financial circles, and their current chairman was already a second-generation chaebol.

If I’d reincarnated into that family, the family tree would’ve given me a migraine.

‘In that light, I can kind of understand Yoo Seon-jun.’

Chairman Yoo Seong-pil, who despised internal family power struggles, deliberately avoided expanding the family.

That had its downsides—but chaebol-style family management had its perks too.

Like the fact that it made seizing control of management easier, since all the top brass were family.

In a chaebol, it’s standard to hand out one title per family member and run the group like a feudal clan. But in Daehwa’s case, there were barely enough people to hand those out to.

And if there aren’t enough family members to assign as presidents or chairmen of subsidiaries, then either the family’s grip on power weakens, or the burden on one person grows too heavy.

Naturally, Chairman Yoo Seong-pil chose the latter.

—“Hey punk, did you even try it? Me? I did all that at your age!”

He’d say things like that.

The Iron-Blooded Chairman Yoo Seong-pil, champion of human willpower, had such an extreme self-discipline mindset that he thought everyone else could—and should—act just like him.

What made him scarier was that he actually could do those things himself.

If I hadn’t gotten the reincarnation perks, I would’ve been stuck wondering, how the hell am I supposed to do that?!

As a result, Yoo Jin-seok and Yoo Jin-ha were already burdened with a massive workload, and even Yoo Seon-young, as a woman, along with the daughters-in-law who had officially joined Daehwa, each received and ran a subsidiary of their own.

The reason there was relatively little gender discrimination in the Daehwa family—especially for this era—was exactly that.

Just like how World War II had elevated women’s rights, Daehwa women gained economic power out of sheer necessity.

They literally didn’t have enough people.

This family was in no position to discriminate between men and women.

And even that wasn’t enough—so now they were eyeing Seon-jun, who was still a minor.

He must’ve felt like he was dying inside. As soon as he graduates college, he’ll be forced to play president under his terrifying grandfather.

Sigh...

With a cousin living such a burdensome life, how could I—known for my deep filial piety—just sit back and watch?

Really, when you look at it this way...

I have to take over.