Episode 5. That’s the dog bone that was in my bowl! 1.
President No Hyeoncheol spoke while looking at the pot where the water was beginning to boil.
“A war of the princes, you say······. You’re saying something rather frightening. That’s something the chairman will decide on his own when the time comes.”
“Isn’t it our position that we have to line up properly before that decision is made? And look at the decision the chairman made this time. He entrusted Mancheon Shipbuilding and Mancheon Heavy Industries to his youngest son. If he had intended to cleanly settle the management succession structure, would he have done that? He would have handed at least one of Shipbuilding or Heavy Industries to another son and given him strength.”
“So? Are you saying the chairman deliberately made the board this way?”
“Everyone sees it that way. If they prove their ability, he could hand Mancheon over to any one of his children······. That’s why everyone’s busy figuring out which line to stand in.”
Shiiiiik—
It was the sound of the water boiling in the pot.
He poured the boiled water into a teapot filled with dried chrysanthemums, brought it over with a teacup, and set it down in front of Choe Jeonggeun.
“Drink.”
“What about you, sir?”
“I just had some. Coffee.”
“Still, you should drink with me.”
“Forget it. If I drink too much, I keep needing to piss.”
“······.”
Choe Jeonggeun poured the tea, and No Hyeoncheol ground the ink again, letting silence flow for a moment.
Then No Hyeoncheol suddenly set down the ink stick and asked.
“So who are you going to line up behind?”
“I already have.”
“Who?”
“President Min Byeongsu.”
“The second son?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm······.”
If he had already lined up behind someone, it was obvious why he had come to see him.
Min Byeongsu had sent him to draw Mancheon Mulsan, a joker card in the management succession, over to his side.
“What do you think, sir? About backing President Min Byeongsu with me.”
He spoke subtly, but resolve stood in his eyes.
Originally, if one intended to get involved in a fight over management succession, one had to be prepared to stake everything.
No Hyeoncheol looked into Choe Jeonggeun’s eyes for a moment, then gave a faint laugh, squeezed the moisture from the brush he had left soaking in water, and dipped it into the ink.
The yellowish brush was immediately dyed black.
Then, on the spread-out hwaseonji, he swept out the characters in cursive script.
‘吾不關焉’
“Obulgwaneon. It means it has nothing to do with me. I don’t care who it is.”
“B-but still······.”
He cut off Choe Jeonggeun, who was about to say something.
“Don’t bother me for nothing. Tell President Min Byeongsu that too. Not to bother me.”
“······.”
“Ah, and tell him this as well.”
No Hyeoncheol opened his mouth with a languid yet somehow cold look in his eyes.
“At Mancheon, I’m someone like this ink. They grind me down and dissolve me······. But I don’t think of it as sacrifice or taking a loss. In the end, I remain as characters like these.”
As No Hyeoncheol spoke, tapping the characters he had written with his middle finger, Choe Jeonggeun’s gaze turned back to the brush calligraphy.
‘Obulgwaneon’
I will have nothing whatsoever to do with that matter. I will pretend not to know······.
Choe Jeonggeun knew what this four-character idiom meant, but he did not understand the true meaning behind No Hyeoncheol’s words.
* * *
Having more or less finished his first day at work, Hyeonu left the company.
No one showed it openly, but they were quite wary of him.
But he did not particularly care.
He said nothing at all to ease their wariness.
The head office’s Personnel Coordination Office had said that Chairman Min Yanghong had instructed them not to talk about his past, and Hyeonu knew well that people’s perceptions would not change with a few clumsy words.
Doing that would only make trouble for no reason.
The best method was to naturally blend into the team.
If he happened to be of help when some problem arose, it might be even faster.
In any case, Hyeonu’s goal was to harmonize well with the team, work at Mancheon Mulsan for the rest of his life, overcome his peculiar symptoms, and live an ordinary, good life.
That alone was enough.
After buying a TOEIC book and returning home, Hyeonu immediately signed up for one-on-one English conversation with a native speaker.
He had studied well enough to rank nationally until his first year of high school, so his English was fairly good, but he thought he needed more fluent English skills if he wanted to do well in company life.
* * *
He went to work for the second time.
He arrived at the office an hour before work hours, but Assistant Manager Gim Byeongjun had come in first and was typing away while looking at his monitor.
“Good morning, Assistant Manager.”
“Oh! You’re early.”
“I thought I’d come in early to avoid rush hour and study some English.”
“English? You’re not good at English? Guess you didn’t study abroad. Most people usually do.”
He was saying it with Hyeonu’s being the chairman’s parachute in mind.
Children of the upper class usually went abroad to study or at least for language training as if it were a required course.
Well, ordinary people did that these days too.
“Far from studying abroad, I’ve never even gone on an overseas trip.”
Gim Byeongjun tilted his head.
“Really? That’s a bit unexpected.”
“Do you normally come to work this early, Assistant Manager?”
“No. Something urgent suddenly came up that I need to take care of. It’s still before work hours, so don’t mind me and study your English. English is essential for the sales team of a general trading company. Then, study hard.”
Gim Byeongjun turned his gaze back to the monitor and resumed his work.
Just like yesterday, he was not conscious in the slightest of Hyeonu being the chairman’s parachute.
This was all he said inwardly.
[What’s with this guy? With those connections, he’s never even been overseas······. Is he some unusual case, different from what people think? Tch, whether he is or not, what does it have to do with me? Well, still, he’s got the right attitude. Coming in an hour early to study English and all.]
When work hours began, Team Leader Yang Gyeonghun and Senior Clerk Song Gaeun came in together.
“Good morning. I hope you’re having a good one.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Yang Gyeonghun half acknowledged Hyeonu’s greeting and immediately walked over to Gim Byeongjun.
His eyes and gait somehow looked urgent.
The atmosphere felt as if something had happened.
“Did you see the news?”
Gim Byeongjun was calm.
“SHS Shipbuilding?”
SHS Shipbuilding? He had glimpsed it on the portal’s real-time search rankings.
An incident where hundreds of employees who had eaten at the company cafeteria suffered mass food poisoning.
“Yes! SHS Shipbuilding! They said the cafeteria outsourcing company caused the accident. Isn’t this a total opportunity?”
“That’s why I came in this early and made a proposal. Haa~”
As Gim Byeongjun yawned and pressed the keyboard, the printer began printing with a whirring sound.
It seemed he had just finished the proposal.
“Haha, our Assistant Manager Gim really does his job well. The way I see it, this is an opportunity sent from heaven. Let’s land a big one for the first time in a while.”
Song Gaeun chimed in as well, her voice excited.
“That’s right, Assistant Manager. How could things line up so perfectly? This really is an opportunity sent from heaven.”
Since they had talked about this all day yesterday, Hyeonu also roughly knew what it was about.
It was a proposal created by Gim Byeongjun, and its contents were roughly as follows.
Mancheon Group had a total of eighty-two affiliates, including eight major subsidiaries, and there was said to be an affiliate of Mancheon Mulsan that supplied food ingredients to all those affiliates and even outsourced the operation of their company cafeterias.
The company’s name was Mancheon Food Distribution.
Gim Byeongjun’s proposal was to expand Mancheon Food Distribution’s business domain beyond just Mancheon Group and into the outside market.
Even to Hyeonu, who knew nothing because it was his first day at work, it seemed like a fairly good proposal.
And in the midst of that, a food poisoning incident had broken out at SHS Group, which had not only shipbuilding but also steel and heavy industries!
The outsourcing company responsible for the accident had no choice but to take responsibility and be thrown out.
If they could squeeze into that opening, it would be an extremely good opportunity that could give the business considerable momentum right from the start.
At last, the proposal and business plan were printed out.
Yang Gyeonghun received the proposal placed in an approval file and said as he walked out.
“I’ll go get the department head’s approval, so Assistant Manager Kim, get ready to contact the person in charge at SHS. Once approval comes through, we’ll have to move right away.”
“Yes, Team Leader.”
“Oh, and if this goes well, dinner’s on me. We can make it a welcome dinner for the new hire too.”
Kim Byeongjun gave an awkward little laugh, and Song Gaeun lifted the mood by saying, “Team Leader, you’re so cool~ Fighting!”
Once Yang Gyeonghun left, the strangely urgent atmosphere settled down as if it had never been there.
Song Gaeun said,
“You came in early to put together the proposal, didn’t you?”
“Well, a little.”
“I’ll make you a cup of coffee.”
“Haha, thanks. I’ll enjoy it.”
As Song Gaeun turned and walked away, Hyeonu followed after her.
“It’s all right, Hyeonu. I can go by myself.”
“You’ll be drinking coffee too, Senior Associate. And so will I. Then two hands won’t be enough.”
As expressionless as ever, Hyeonu found himself rather liking Sales Team 9 of Mancheon Corporation, the place where he was beginning his career.
He could feel a sense of teamwork there, and for some reason, a pleasant sort of enthusiasm as well.
* * *
Yang Gyeonghun was about to knock on the Sales Department 3 director’s office when the door suddenly opened.
His startled face soon hardened.
It was because he had come face-to-face with his bitter rival, Sales Team 11 Leader Jin Seonghun.
Seeing Yang Gyeonghun, Jin Seonghun raised one corner of his mouth and grinned.
“Hey, Senior Yang.”
The bastard glanced at the approval folder in Yang Gyeonghun’s hand.
“Looks like you’re here to get approval.”
“Move. I’m busy.”
Jin Seonghun gave a snort of laughter as he watched Yang Gyeonghun brush past him and go inside.
Yang Gyeonghun held out the approval folder to Kim Inseop, the Sales Department 3 director, who was looking at something on his monitor.
“I need your approval on something urgently.”
Kim Inseop asked without taking his eyes off the monitor.
“What is it?”
“It’s a sales proposal regarding Mancheon Food Distribution. The gist is that we expand beyond internal group sales and into external sales. And as it happens, there was a food poisoning incident at SHS Shipbuilding yesterday. If we take this as an opportunity…”
Kim Inseop’s brow furrowed slightly, and he turned his gaze to Yang Gyeonghun.
“You want to make a sales approach to SHS?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Good grief, this…”
It was by no means a bad proposal, but Kim Inseop’s reaction was strange.
His face did not say whether it was good or bad—it said he was dumbfounded.
“In my opinion, it’s not a bad business opportunity. We can expect to generate significant profits without any additional investment…”
Kim Inseop cut him off.
“I already approved that.”
“Pardon?”
“I’m saying another team is already pushing that forward.”
“Wh-which team?”
“Sales Team 11. I approved it yesterday, and after the news broke overnight, Team Leader Jin just reported that he would contact SHS. Whew, what a shame, Team Leader Yang. You were one step too late.”
* * *
Hyeonu was heading out to the copy room when he saw Yang Gyeonghun, eyes bloodshot, striding past Sales Team 7 toward them.
Judging by the atmosphere, something bad had definitely happened.
Had there been something wrong with Assistant Manager Kim Byeongjun’s proposal?
Seeing Hyeonu standing stock-still at the entrance, Kim Byeongjun spoke up.
“Hey, new guy. What are you doing there? We’re busy today. Before the team leader gets back, hurry up and copy that…”
At that moment, Yang Gyeonghun came into view, and he stopped speaking.
“Ah, Team Leader.”
Without so much as glancing at him, Yang Gyeonghun shoved the approval folder at Hyeonu as if throwing it and walked right past.
At Yang Gyeonghun’s ominous appearance, Kim Byeongjun and Song Gaeun exchanged looks as if asking what was going on, while Hyeonu’s gaze followed Yang Gyeonghun as he passed by, looking as though he were on his way to fight someone.
Stopping in front of Sales Team 11, he immediately spat out a curse.
“Jin Seonghun, you son of a bitch!”