Chapter 17: First Steps
Dojun Junior’s first steps happened in the NexGen cafeteria during an all-hands meeting.
Hana had brought him for a visit—she did this occasionally, partly so the employees could coo over the baby and partly because she was working on a neuroscience paper about infant spatial cognition and needed “field observations” (this was, Dojun suspected, an excuse).
Junior was sitting on a blanket near the stage where Dojun was presenting Q3 results. He’d been wobbling on his feet for weeks, teasing the possibility of walking without committing to it. Hana had a camera ready at all times.
Midway through a slide about revenue projections, Junior grabbed the edge of a chair, pulled himself up, and took four steps toward the stage.
Three thousand eight hundred employees watched the CEO’s son walk for the first time. The applause was louder than anything the revenue numbers had generated.
Dojun abandoned the presentation, scooped up his son, and held him high. “Ladies and gentlemen, NexGen’s most important product launch of the year.”
Jihoon, who was filming, later said it was the best all-hands meeting they’d ever had. The Q3 numbers were never formally presented. Nobody cared.
That night, Dojun sat in the nursery and watched Junior sleep. Four steps. Four tiny, wobbly, magnificent steps.
In his first life, there had been no son. No first steps. No tiny hands reaching for a stage. Just code and ambition and the slow, terrible march toward the end of everything.
This life was better. Infinitely, immeasurably, four-tiny-steps better.