4:00 AM. The hour when a janitor’s day begins.
Munyeong rose from his worn-out bed and started getting ready for work. He was used to waking at such an early hour — washing up, changing his clothes, going through the motions without thought. The narrow clothes rack held only a handful of outfits. All of them black, so he grabbed whatever was closest and headed out. The sneakers he’d been wearing for over ten years were visibly faded, but they still did their job just fine. They were a knockoff of some brand design that had been trendy ages ago.
There were more people out and about at this hour than one might expect. Everyone had their own lives and their own reasons for being up — there was nothing particularly unusual about it. In the cold early morning, the pojangmacha cart in front of the bus stop was already in full swing, run by an auntie who woke even earlier than he did.
“Good morning.”
Munyeong greeted her with a polite bow and filled his empty stomach with a single fish cake skewer. He downed a cup of the broth and handed over a crumpled thousand-won bill.
“Good work out there, young man.”
“You too. Keep it up.”
He bowed just as respectfully on his way out, then took his place at the bus stop where a small crowd had gathered. As headlights swept across the stop in the dark, sparse traffic, people began clustering toward the curb one by one. Most of the people waiting for the bus were either too tired from not having slept enough, or too tired from a night they were only now finishing.
Early morning public transit is quiet even when it’s crowded. Munyeong hugged his backpack to his chest and fished out his earphone cord. It was the kind of earphones you didn’t see much anymore, but to him they were the most familiar thing he owned. He’d heard people remark more than once — offhandedly — about who still used wired earphones these days, but every time, he just smiled mildly and said these were the most comfortable for him.
From the earphones came the old pop songs he’d saved since his school days. Picking out a few newer tracks to buy felt daunting — the songs popular these days were unfamiliar and hard to navigate, and downloading new ones wasn’t easy. On top of that, streaming required a monthly fee, and Munyeong couldn’t afford to spend over ten thousand won a month just for music. His phone, too, was a model he’d been using steadily since he was twenty. It had its little quirks, but since all he ever did was make calls, send texts, and listen to songs through his earphones, he never felt the need to replace it.
When about ten songs had played through, he reached his stop. He slung his backpack onto his shoulders again and took the familiar route out. About two hundred meters from the stop was his workplace. A building that seemed to pierce the sky. Even among the high-rises packed into downtown Seoul, this one seemed the tallest. It was a company whose name appeared on the news every single day — the Baekil Group, with well over a thousand employees commuting in daily, ranking among the very top on the stock exchange listings. And he was the janitor hired to keep the environment clean and comfortable for all those impressive employees.
He entered through the back door, greeted the security guard who’d been on night duty, and headed down to the locker room in the basement. He changed into the uniform — the same shade of blue as the bathroom walls — and started gathering his cleaning cart. Trash bags, glass cleaner, freshly laundered rags, disposable supplies, and so on. Once everything was accounted for, he made his way to the staff break room where the morning briefing would be held. 4:50 AM. All the cleaning staff assembled under the section chief’s direction to receive their assigned areas.
4:40 AM. Munyeong, the first to arrive, sat down and quietly watched the clock on the wall. Five uneventful minutes passed, and then voices began spilling in from outside the door — a signal that the others had arrived.
“My goodness, our young man’s first again.”
“Don’t you ever sleep? Never once seen you drag your feet.”
Most of the staff were older women. That was also what the company tended to prefer. Large corporations had a welfare policy as part of a government-supported initiative to provide employment to seniors without jobs, so the majority of the staff were middle-aged. But every now and then, there were young people like him in the mix.
“Did you eat? I made this misutgaru at home — have a cup.”
Sunggil pulled a paper cup from the break room dispenser, filled it with hot water from the dispenser, and handed it to him with warm hands. Munyeong smiled softly and accepted it with both hands.
“Thank you.”
“I packed some separately, so take it home with you.”
Sunggil had been on the team the longest and was the most seasoned veteran. She looked after the other staff just as well as she looked after her work, and she was a leader Munyeong genuinely looked up to.
“A young man with not a scrap of fat on his face — what good is that? Tsk, tsk. Eat properly — !”
Jeongmi was known as Sunggil’s right hand — the next most senior employee and the next longest-serving. Her way of speaking was more blunt than Sunggil’s, but that was really just because she worried the most. Munyeong nodded and let the warm cup of misutgaru thaw out his cold hands.
“Yes. I will.”
He answered with a pleasant smile. Besides Sunggil and Jeongmi, there were plenty of other staff members. It made sense, given the sheer size of the building that had to be cleaned top to bottom. In fact, even with a staff of fifteen-odd people, it was honestly still not enough.
“God, this is such a mess. Really.”
The section chief who handed out the cleaning assignments managed all the non-office contract workers — the cleaning staff, parking attendants, senior security guards, information desk staff, and the like. His mouth was rough around the edges, but he was a man in his forties who had never once been late despite the early hours.
“Good morning, everyone.”
“Good morning.”
The section chief’s greeting was echoed back in chorus by dozens of employees. The opening of the briefing. The atmosphere around the chief as he skimmed through the assignment papers was noticeably tense. Sunggil, the most natural leader among them, gently spoke up.
“Chief, what happened?”
Having known the section chief the longest of anyone, she was the one best positioned to speak to him casually.
“Ah, that Jang Yeongsu just up and quit — sent a single text and that was that.”
The chief clicked his tongue with a dismissive air. Employees not showing up or going out of contact overnight wasn’t unheard of, but the Jang Yeongsu he mentioned was the most long-standing of the male staff. He had fewer days on the job than Sunggil, but the length of his tenure meant his reliability was unquestionable — and with that came a different class of assignment. Sunggil was assigned to the floors housing the vice chairman’s and executive director’s offices, or wherever most of the senior executives worked, while Jang Yeongsu mainly cleaned the offices of managing directors and senior managing directors. High reliability meant being trusted with places where confidentiality was paramount.
The areas Munyeong handled were mostly offices used by general staff. Those tended to feel less private than executive offices, so the work was more straightforward — though the zones he covered were correspondingly wider. Executive offices demanded far more attention to detail and had to be done perfectly, which made them a much higher level of difficulty.
“So starting today, who’s going to take over Yeongsu’s section? The executives there are notoriously exacting — it’s no ordinary job.”
The vice chairman’s and executive director’s floors were slightly more manageable since desk staff assisted with some of the oversight. More so than the offices of the notoriously demanding managing directors, at least. And since the vice chairman and executive director were direct family members of the group chairman, they tended to have a gentler streak compared to the managing directors who’d climbed up through connections and ability. Though of course, Munyeong only knew as much as he’d overheard from other staff chatting during breaks — he didn’t know much at all.
“On top of that, there’s a new senior managing director coming in this time, so we need to be especially careful. Hmm….”
The section chief looked slowly around the staff list as if weighing his options, then suddenly looked up. His eyes landed on Munyeong, who happened to be standing straight without thinking about it. Munyeong didn’t look away — he just blinked back at him, mildly puzzled.
“Yeah. Good.”
“…Sir?”
“Our Munyeong. How long have you been with us?”
“Just over six months.”
The chief’s previously creased expression broke into a wide grin, and he dropped an arm around Munyeong’s shoulder.
“Our Munyeong hasn’t missed a single day, hasn’t been late once. And hasn’t he gone the whole time without a single complaint from the people in his section?”
The column on the paperwork for staff complaints was empty for Munyeong alone. Not having known this, Munyeong answered with a slightly dazed look.
“…Oh. Yes.”
“I don’t usually trust young guys these days, but Munyeong — you’re the only one I trust.”
The chief slapped Munyeong on the shoulder a couple of times and let out a hearty laugh.
“Starting today, you’re in charge of Section A.”
“Ah….”
Munyeong was caught off guard by the sudden reassignment, but soon nodded.
“Understood.”
There was no room to say whether he liked it or not. Munyeong accepted the assignment without complaint. Among the staff, this section was known as the cursed zone — they deliberately avoided assigning women there. Partly because if you ended up on the wrong side of the notoriously ill-tempered managing director, you could find yourself subjected to humiliating demands. Rude people who didn’t see janitors as human beings existed everywhere. Especially among those with elite education, elite credentials, and elite salaries — there were certainly those who saw people who cleaned up after others as failures.
“Try to avoid the executives’ arrival times if you can. And the senior managing director’s office is being completely overhauled this time, so you’ll need to pay extra attention. Got it?”
The chief patted Munyeong’s shoulder and wished him luck. When the briefing ended and Munyeong reached for his cleaning cart, Sunggil hovered nearby with a face full of concern and kept checking in on him. He left early in the morning, but he didn’t feel cold. A small act of kindness was enough to warm even the most chilled heart.
