I died without ever using my family name.
Not because I didn't have one.But because, for most of my life, that name meant nothing to me.
I was born as the grandson of a man whose decisions once moved ports, ships, and governments.A founder.A patriarch.A name carved into the backbone of Korean logistics.
Yet I grew up far from that world.
No skyscrapers.No boardrooms.No chauffeurs waiting by the gate.
Only a quiet village near the coast, where the air smelled of salt and oil, and the loudest sound every morning came from the metal shutter of my father's workshop rolling open.
My father fixed engines.
Not luxury cars. Not imported machines.
Old trucks. Rusted generators. Fishing boat engines that had already lived too long.
He never spoke about his past.
And I never asked.
As a child, I used to sit on an overturned toolbox, watching his hands move with calm precision. Bolts loosened. Gears aligned. Engines brought back from silence.
I didn't know why I liked it so much.
Only later did I realizemachines were honest.
They failed for reasons.They worked for reasons.
People were different.
My mother worried about money. My father worried about time.
I worried about nothing.
At school, I was average. Not slow, not brilliant. Just… forgettable.
I had friends, but no one who truly depended on me. Dreams, but no direction.
And somewhere deep inside, a quiet sense that I was standing slightly out of place in my own life.
I only learned the truth after it was too late.
After university. After drifting from job to job. After ending up as a low-level employee inside a massive corporation one I entered through exams and paperwork, never knowing it was connected to my blood.
I worked quietly. Observed quietly.
And when the company began to rot from the inside, I understood too late who was loyal, who was corrupt, and which small decisions would eventually destroy everything.
By the time the Asian Financial Crisis swallowed us whole
I was just another name on the list of people who survived without ever changing anything.
The night I died, there was no drama.
No accident. No final conversation.
Just exhaustion… and regret.
Regret for not understanding sooner. Regret for never asking my father the questions that mattered. Regret for realizing that I had been standing at the edge of something vastand never stepping forward.
When I opened my eyes again, the first thing I heard was the sound of metal.
Clang, clack. The familiar rhythm of tools hitting concrete.
The smell of oil filled my lungs.
I sat up.
My hands were smaller. My body lighter.
And outside the room, my father's voice called out young, steady, alive.
"Did you eat yet?"
I looked around the old house.
The cracked wall. The wooden desk. The window facing the sea.
This wasn't a dream.
I had returned.
Not to power.Not to wealth.
But to the beginning to a life where I still didn't know who I was…
And where I had one chance to understand why my name had been wasted.