- Why didn't you contact me? Didn't you say we should eat? Didn't you say you'd definitely call?
A text came from Gwon Jua.
“Sorry. I was a bit busy. How about today? Are you free?”
I really had been busy.
I’d spent a lot of time taking down the Samhap-hoe.
So absorbed in the pleasure of lording it over them that I didn’t even notice the axe handle rotting away.
- Today? I'm busy, but I'll try to make time.
“Then I'll come pick you up this evening. Let's eat together.”
- Okay.
After making plans with Gwon Jua, I spoke to Scott.
“Scott.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I have a date this evening.”
“If I may ask, what kind of date is it?”
Scott asked politely, in a way quite unlike him.
“You know that doctor I met at the hospital? I'm going to eat with her. Can you book a decent restaurant?”
“I'll take care of it.”
Having received my orders, Scott stepped outside and quietly spoke into his radio.
“Code pink. Code pink. I repeat. Code pink. Code pink.”
The Obsidian Unit was bewildered by Scott's radio call.
Code pink was a code not found in any manual.
Their confusion at the nonexistent code lasted only a moment.
Soon, they understood what it meant.
Pink.
The Obsidian Unit members clenched their lips and struggled to hold back the laughter slipping through.
Allen spoke into the radio on behalf of the Obsidian Unit.
“Roger. We'll prepare.”
.
.
.
Screech.
A car stopped in front of me to take me to the date.
It was the car I usually rode in, yet something was different.
It was unusually shiny.
Had they washed it?
When I got in, a pleasant scent wafted out.
It was a fragrance I had never smelled before.
“What is this? Did you spray something?”
“It's a natural diffuser that helps relieve stress,”
Scott answered.
“Isn't this too much?”
“It was simply time to replace the diffuser, that's all,”
Scott replied nonchalantly.
Somehow I doubted that.
I had a bad feeling about this.
I felt like I shouldn't have casually mentioned I had a date.
I should have just gone quietly on my own.
I had asked because I didn't know where to make a reservation, but it seemed like I'd blown the whole thing out of proportion.
Regardless of my worries, the car we were in arrived at Gwon Jua's hospital right on time.
After waiting a brief moment, Gwon Jua came out.
Instead of her white coat, Gwon Jua was wearing a neat knit sweater and a coat.
The look suited her incredibly well.
I got out and raised my hand to signal her.
Gwon Jua smiled brightly and came toward me.
I wondered if Gwon Jua had always been this pretty.
“Sorry. Am I late? Did you wait long?”
“No. I just got here too.”
Gwon Jua asked me with a smile.
“Sorry. They asked me to check something on my way out, so I was held up.”
“It's fine. Get in.”
Gwon Jua looked at me once.
She looked once at the car I had come in.
She also glanced at the security vehicles positioned in front of and behind the car I was in.
For the first time in a while, I was dressed in a full suit.
On the way, because of Scott, I'd had no choice but to stop by a department store, buy a suit, and change into it.
I had bought the car recently.
I had been renting before, but after deciding to stay in Korea a bit longer, I purchased a new one.
Allen had handled it, saying there were things that needed additional reinforcement for security.
He bought three Maybachs and ten Escalades for security.
With them lined up like that, it certainly felt different.
The cars were too big.
Gwon Jua seemed to have a lot she wanted to ask about me, but she didn’t.
She substituted her questions by getting into the car.
.
.
.
“How did you book this place?”
A quiet French restaurant overlooking the Han River.
We were guided to a table by the window.
As she sat down, Gwon Jua asked in surprise.
What did I know.
Scott had made the reservation.
“Huh?”
“This place is famous for being incredibly hard to book. I heard there's a waiting list of several months. How did you get a reservation?”
“I just...??”
I had nothing particular to say, so I just smiled vaguely and mumbled something.
I sat down and surveyed my surroundings.
It was an old habit.
My military experience had only been four years, but I still couldn't shake the habit.
A small laugh escaped me.
The three tables around me were all Obsidian Unit.
Those bastards could tone it down a bit.
Why were they deploying security operation formations while I was just eating?
I didn't know why these guys were getting so worked up while I was just having a meal.
But I decided not to pay attention as much as possible.
I would focus only on Gwon Jua in front of me.
I looked at Gwon Jua again.
Gwon Jua asked as if she was truly curious.
“What... do you do?”
“Huh?”
“What do you do... to live like this? Didn't you say in the hospital room back then that you worked as a guide in the Philippines?”
“Maybe? I do guide... work... and this and that?”
I was slightly flustered by Gwon Jua's blunt question.
I stammered.
Laughter could be heard from the surrounding tables.
These bastards are all dead today.
.
.
.
Allen was checking the CCTV.
The tables surrounding the boss were occupied by the Obsidian Unit.
Operatives capable of providing sufficient protection even if a terrorist attack occurred had taken their positions.
They were agents Allen had trained and raised himself.
They could be trusted completely.
Honestly, if you were to pick the strongest person among the Obsidian Unit, it would be the boss,
and the boss would probably be safe even without the Obsidian Unit,
but nonetheless, eliminating even the smallest unforeseeable risks was the reason for the Obsidian Unit's existence, and their pride.
That was why Allen was still checking the CCTV even now.
Preparing for any possible contingency was the Obsidian Unit's duty.
While watching the CCTV, suspicious movement was detected.
A man in his forties was shouting at an employee.
Allen picked up the radio.
“Table 12. Forties. Glasses. Suit.”
“He seems to have drunk a lot. Cat. Handle it.”
“Cat. Copy.”
.
.
.
“Hey, are you ignoring me right now? Huh? Do you know who I am?”
A man who seemed slightly drunk was hurling abuse at an employee.
The people around him frowned, but no one intervened.
The staff came out and apologized repeatedly, but the drunk man's abuse showed no signs of stopping.
“How dare people who don't even know French dining etiquette serve at a French restaurant? Huh? Do I have to eat at a place like this? Huh? Huh?”
The man's voice grew louder, and his companions, perhaps ashamed of him, turned their heads away.
“We're sorry. We will retrain our staff.”
The manager apologized to the man once more, but the man remained unmoved.
“Get the owner out here. Get the owner~!”
When the manager apologized, the man's voice grew even louder.
He showed no sign of letting up.
At that moment, the water glass on the man's table toppled over.
As the glass fell, it wet the man's pants.
“U-hahaha. Is this what they mean by getting slapped when you want to cry? And who are you?”
The man laughed.
The man shouted.
His voice went up an octave.
The man stood up to vent his anger even more dramatically.
“Oh my~ I'm sorry~. I must not have been looking properly~. Hing. What do I do about this.”
A beautiful woman in a black dress apologized to the man.
The man's expression changed when he saw the woman's face.
He had looked angry, but now he was smiling before anyone knew it.
He had been screaming just moments ago, but now he had adopted a dignified voice.
It took less than a second for anger to turn to desire and aggression to become bluster.
“Well. These things happen in life. It's fine. Clothes dry, don't they? Hehehe.”
As if this was nothing at all.
He leisurely shook the water off his pants.
“No. It was my mistake~. I want to apologize properly~.”
“An apology? How?”
“Hmm...”
The woman took a step closer to the man.
The woman's perfume was provocative.
“I could buy you new clothes, or we could find a good solution through conversation~.”
At the woman's words, the corners of the man's lips rose.
“Then conversation sounds better.”
The man smiled a sinister smile.
“It's a bit noisy here, so shall we step outside for a moment?”
The woman whispered seductively into the man's ear.
“Very well.”
The man grabbed his coat.
He glanced around.
No one stopped the man.
With a victorious smile, the man followed the woman outside.
The moment he stepped out of the restaurant door, the atmosphere changed.
A hand appeared from somewhere.
“Huh?”
But he couldn't finish what he was about to say.
A handkerchief covered his mouth.
He wanted to resist, wanted to struggle, but he couldn't.
His arms and legs were subdued.
In the meantime, his consciousness quickly faded.
The man's memory ended there.
The place the man woke up was a garbage processing facility in Incheon.
.
.
.
Allen, who had watched the scene through CCTV, said something to Scott as if throwing a tantrum.
“See? I told you we should've cleared out the whole restaurant.”
Scott snorted at those words.
“Y-y-you... you young punk, you haven't dated before so you don't know a woman's heart. If a restaurant that's famous for being hard to book is completely empty, can a woman comfortably enjoy her meal? Didn't you see she was already suspicious just from the reservation?”
Scott leisurely brushed off Allen's point.
“No, the boss ends up getting distracted. We should have blocked this in advance.”
Allen groaned.
“That's why you guys should have screened people like that out from the beginning. This happened because people like that got in.”
Scott raised his voice.
But soon he comforted Allen again with a warm voice.
“Still, we handled it cleanly. Good work, Allen.”
“Keke. Thanks.”
Allen burst into a short laugh.
“But if this happens again next time, you're dead.”
“You just worry about your own work, hyung.”
The two's bickering didn't stop.
But their eyes remained fixed on the CCTV.
******
Daehoonpa's Incheon factory.
A large trailer carrying a container stopped in front of it.
Today was the 1st.
It was the day Zhonglian Tongda Trade officially delivered 10 million Ascend.
I was at the Incheon factory to check on the delivery status.
A black sedan pulled up behind the trailer,
and Maoqin threw the door open and got out.
He glanced at me once and spoke irritably.
“It's ten million. Done?”
Maoqin had a lot of anger in both his tone and expression.
Was it because of the last phone call?
Could someone who let his temper run wild like that survive in this field?
He was the perfect character to end up dead.
Even with two bodyguards standing behind him.
It was meaningless.
Right now, with just one finger,
I could kill Maoqin.
Allen would be looking this way with a sniper rifle from afar.
The moment I made a gun shape with my finger and went “bang,” Maoqin's head would be blown to pieces.
But I wouldn't do that.
Because my hobby isn't murder.
My hobby is power-tripping.
“No. Not yet.”
“Huh? Ten million on the 1st. That was the condition. We brought ten million. What's the problem?”
Maoqin fired back.
Looking at Maoqin, whose face was full of irritation, I answered slowly.
“Are you sure this is ten million?”
“What?”
Maoqin made an expression of disbelief.
“You're truly petty beyond compare. If you're going to nitpick, nitpick about something worthwhile.”
“It's not nitpicking, it's verification. Does Zhonglian Tongda Trade just believe it when someone says, 'This is ten million'? If I handed you a bag of payment and said this is 80 million yuan, would you take it without checking?”
“Th-that's...”
“It's a natural verification process. Dropping off the goods and leaving without such a procedure is bad manners. We have to check while we're together. That's how you avoid disputes. It means nothing if we say 'it's short' or 'there's extra' after you've already left.”
Maoqin was taken aback.
Wasn't he just supposed to hand over the Descend and get the money?
Why was this so complicated?
Maoqin had glanced at the contract.
He hadn't cared about things like supplementary agreements.
He hadn't even considered reading the 138-page supplementary agreement.
Even if he read it, he wouldn't understand what it said.
But his confusion lasted only a moment.
Now that he thought about it, there was no problem at all.
It was Descend brought directly from the factory.
There was no chance of a problem.
He had simply been surprised.
He had simply been momentarily flustered by the complicated process.
Mao Qin steadied her startled heart.
It did not matter whether they conducted a full inspection or a sampling inspection.
There was nothing to be concerned about.
At least, that was what she thought.
Until she saw Daehoonpa’s verification system.
Daehoonpa took the D-Sand out of the containers and carried it into the warehouse.
The inside of the warehouse was already packed with machines.
They poured the D-Sand they had brought into a large bin.
Then the D-Sand in that bin moved one by one along a conveyor belt and was placed onto an ultra-precision scale.
On the ultra-precision scale, each piece of D-Sand had its weight measured one at a time.
If it passed, a green light came on, but if it was underweight or overweight, a red light came on and it was automatically sorted out.
The D-Sand marked with a red light went into a basket labeled “Return.”
Seeing this sight, Mao Qin was appalled.
‘They’re weighing every single one of these?’
But I kindly explained it to Mao Qin.
“We created a verification system for confirmation purposes.”
“What? You created a system?”
“It’s a valuable product, so shouldn’t we be thorough? So there are no misunderstandings between us.”
I answered with a smile.
“No, but still, this is…”
Her expression seemed to go pale.
You never imagined we’d count and weigh all 10 million one by one, did you?
Still, don’t look so sick of it already.
We haven’t even started yet.
Even at that moment, the D-Sand was being placed onto the conveyor belt one by one.
Quite a large amount of D-Sand was sorted out separately for weight defects.
“There are quite a few weight defects, aren’t there?”
“Ah… That shouldn’t be possible…”
Mao Qin made an excuse first.
“Let’s watch a little longer for now. The products with no weight issues will be packaged separately in units of ten thousand.”
“So they’re distributed in units of ten thousand?”
I looked at Mao Qin as if asking what she meant.
“Distributed? We haven’t even done a component test yet.”
“A component test?”
At the words component test, Mao Qin flinched in surprise.
“Why do you keep making me repeat the obvious? We can’t taste these ourselves. Component analysis is essential. Pick just one from here.”
I opened one of the plastic bags packaged in units of ten thousand.
Mao Qin hesitated.
There was no problem.
It was D-Sand properly made at the factory.
And yet, in front of this verification system, it felt as though that lie would be exposed at any moment.
That was why she was afraid.
Whether or not he knew how Mao Qin felt, the man before her urged her on.
“Go on.”
Mao Qin reluctantly took out one candy.
I handed that candy straight to the inspector beside me.
The inspector removed the wrapping and put it into the grinder.
The candy turned into a very fine powder, and the analyzer began running.
A moment later, figures appeared on the monitor.
“Oh dear. What should we do? Its effect is far too low. It’s defective. Every product in this plastic bag will be returned.”
They declared one sample defective and processed the entire bag of 10,000 pieces as a return.
In that manner, they took one piece of D-Sand from each bag containing 10,000 pieces and analyzed its components.
Each time figures appeared on the monitor, the inspectors stated the reason.
“The active ingredient retention rate is 19% below the standard.”
“The sugar content is 54%, which is 8% below the standard of 62%.”
“The moisture content is too high. In this state, it will deteriorate during storage.”
“The crystal structure is broken.”
“The cooling process was not uniform. The crystals are uneven.”
“The melting speed differs. The perceived effect will be inconsistent.”
“The fragrance has dissipated.”
“The seal is defective.”
Before long, every bag had a sticker marked “Return” attached to it.
Not a single bag passed the test.
All 10 million pieces were returned.
The inspector who saw that said,
“It is suspected that the entire lot is defective. It appears the issue is not with the sample, but with the process itself.”
Mao Qin could not lift her head.
It was not shame.
It was rage.
She had thought that once she sent the D-Sand, she would receive 80 million yuan (17 billion won) and use it as a foothold for a comeback.
She had been counting down the days, waiting only for this day. And now, returns?
The more she thought about it, the angrier she became.
When she sent it in installments, they bitched about it being sent in installments.
So she brought 10 million pieces on the 1st, exactly according to the contract,
and now they were weighing all 10 million pieces one by one.
Not only that, they were randomly selecting samples for defect inspection and returning them?
This made no sense.
She had to argue.
“No, where do you get off returning them however you like?”
“When did I ever return them however I liked? The contract clearly states that returns are possible if they fall short of or exceed the standards according to the component analysis sheet, so why do you keep saying I did it however I liked? Isn’t the one really doing as she pleases you, Team Leader?”
“What?”
“You brought defective products here and tried to force them on us, then got caught, and now you’re getting angry.”
Hearing those words, Mao Qin felt as though she had been struck on the back of the head.
From Mao Qin’s perspective, it was unfair, but from Daehoonpa’s perspective, they were all defective.
And Mao Qin had tried to deliver them.
But she could not back down.
“What did you say? Are you done talking?”
“No. I still have plenty to say. We truly gave Zhonglian Tongda Trading a great deal of consideration. But with the result turning out like this, it’s honestly bleak.”
I spoke with an expression as if I was truly drained.
“No, but where is there any place that receives goods while doing component analysis like this? This is ridiculous.”
“So what you’re saying, Team Leader, is that defects are fine, but component analysis is not? Is that what you mean?”
But it seemed Mao Qin still could not accept the situation.
She clung to unreasonable arguments until the very end.
“No… That’s not what I mean… This is too much.”
“Could you tell me what exactly is too much? That way, we might actually be able to have a conversation.”
But Mao Qin could not say anything.
All of the relevant details were in the supplementary agreement Alex had handed her.
And Mao Qin’s signature was boldly written there.
Far from earning 80 million yuan through D-Sand,
she had spent an enormous amount on costs such as factory expansion, logistics, labor, and production, yet had not earned even a single yuan.
Mao Qin calculated in her head.
A way to turn the returned D-Sand into money.
While Mao Qin was making futile calculations in her mind, I warned her.
“I’m saying this just in case. Don’t forget that Daehoonpa holds the exclusive distribution rights for A-Sand within the Republic of Korea. I’m telling you because you might think of just dumping these on the market now that they’ve been returned. If that happens, we will truly move while considering termination of the contract. We’re only holding back now because we’re contract partners. This is a warning.”
Mao Qin was thoroughly frightened by Alex’s chilling warning.
Unlike Mao Qin, I was relaxed.
As expected, what you see and learn matters.
We know all too well how Korea’s major corporations screw over small and medium-sized companies.
In truth, the bible is to make them take out huge loans to expand their factory, receive the recipe, terminate the contract, and then scoop up the company cheap after it collapses. But I don’t need that factory, and I don’t need the recipe either, so I only went this far.
So next time you do business in Korea, be careful of major corporations.
You may not know this, but Daehoonpa is a major corporation too.