SURE 12

The way he changed the subject was incredibly natural. If I wasn’t careful, I might have asked how he was doing, like an old friend. This is absurd. The man just doesn’t proceed as expected.

“Haa…”

Maybe I should just not sign the contract. The moment I sign it, it feels like I’ll get dreadfully entangled with Shin Taeyoon. But if I kick away the good fortune that has rolled into the company because of the CEO’s personal opinion, it would be a real sight to see the employees’ faces. Shin Taeyoon knows my difficult situation, which is why he shows no hesitation. I’m in a tight spot.

—We can decide on the model meeting after the contract is signed. It won’t be too late. Are you free this weekend, Mr. CEO?

“I don’t have time to meet with you separately, Mr. Shin.”

—Then I’ll just have to pull out the work card again, won’t I?

“Do as you please.”

—Do you check the delivery app reviews regularly? There was an interesting one posted on the Gwangmyeong branch of Jungwoon’s.

“What…”

There was nothing unusual about the Gwangmyeong branch in the report I received this morning. More than that, I was curious why Shin Taeyoon was checking the reviews of someone else’s business, and whether this was also considered part of analyzing a business partner and consumer trends. Should I ask? Or would it be right to handle this quietly with my employees on my own?

—Don’t you want to see me?

He took my momentary silence as agitation. I can never beat Shin Taeyoon when it comes to being quick-witted.

“Your method is wrong.”

I no longer interpret Shin Taeyoon’s advances in my own way. That is also the reason why I confront him head-on, even when I want to avoid him because he keeps coming to mind. This man is absolutely not gay.

Shin Taeyoon spoke in a voice tinged with laughter.

—I’m curious. About that method.

I’ve never encountered such a puzzling person before. There have been plenty of people who put on layers of false fronts to try and scam me, only to back out, but I’d never met someone like Shin Taeyoon who, even after laying bare his objective without addition or subtraction, didn’t change his attitude, making things confusing. Only then did I realize why I was so overly conscious of Shin Taeyoon, and why dealing with him was particularly tiring. It was because I didn’t know how to handle him. I’ve met all sorts of people, but this type was a first for me.

“I’ll consider the meeting canceled. If you have no other business, let’s hang up.”

—Mr. CEO.

“Go ahead.”

Ignoring him is actually the best policy, but given who I’m dealing with, I can’t do it openly. Pretending to give him a moderate response, I accessed the delivery app on my other phone and changed the address to Gwangmyeong City. When I set the snack food category to sort by sales, ‘Jungwoon’s Gwangmyeong Branch’ popped up right away. I kept scrolling down the reviews. They were generally unremarkable, what could he have seen to…

This review has been hidden.

Below it, the owner’s reply was written as follows:

Dear customer. I personally taste-test the tteokbokki I cook every morning. Because the food you eat is the food that goes into my mouth. The tteokbokki you received today had no problems in the cooking process. …

What could the original review have been to warrant such a comment? I unconsciously started to call the FC department on the extension line, then realized I was still on the phone with Shin Taeyoon. He let out a low laugh over the receiver, as if he had predicted all of my reactions.

—You can’t see the review now, can you?

There was no need to ask if he had seen the Gwangmyeong branch review before it was hidden. He had brazenly stated that he himself had handled the hiding of the review. I was dumbfounded.

“Was this your doing, Mr. Shin?”

—Doing… I didn’t expect to hear that kind of expression. Yes, it was my doing.

“Mr. Shin, you hid a single customer’s review, but in the long run, this could lead to a boycott. You have violated their freedom of expression. Why would Shinyoon arbitrarily hide this.”

—Hmm, I wouldn’t say arbitrarily. You know very well how difficult it is to take down a customer review, Mr. CEO.

…Not arbitrarily?

Suddenly, an article I had recently come across came to mind. Last year, the app company’s name changed from MR Communication to HR Retail when it was acquired as a subsidiary of Shinyoon F&B. I remember it because, during a meeting with a managing director from the head office’s planning team, he had boasted that thanks to the parent company, they were able to establish much more stable promotions than before and that we would be able to see a definite sales effect compared to other companies’ app systems.

“I see it doesn’t matter if a parent company has its subsidiary wrapped around its finger.”

—Such scandalous words. It’s strictly give and take. You have to give one to get one for smooth communication between companies.

Whether that’s true or not is a separate matter from our situation. If he simply silenced them because the review’s content was bad, I would have to reconsider the contract itself. It would strictly be an overreach of authority from the subordinate party. Or should I take this to mean that, beyond just scouting me, they now intend to tailor my company to their tastes?

“Are you going to interfere in this manner even after signing a contract with us?”

I don’t have a talent for beating around the bush. When I asked directly, Shin Taeyoon paused for a moment. A noise like the rolling of a lighter flint came from over the receiver. Then, a breath like a sigh spread out evenly.

—Of course not. It wasn’t interference; I helped because I didn’t want the proposal that many people worked so hard on to fall apart. You’ll have to be even more thorough about hygiene and make more of an effort so that the branches don’t create issues like this. Then we can run our marketing more aggressively, don’t you think? This isn’t a project involving a penny or two.

A text message arrived at the same time. It was from Shin Taeyoon. I switched the call to speakerphone and opened the messaging app to find a single captured image had arrived. It was the original review posted on the Gwangmyeong branch.

The picture of hair and spat-out tteokbokki was enough to make anyone considering an order lose their appetite and leave immediately after checking the reviews. Furthermore, if Shin Taeyoon had been a regular customer instead of a business partner, it would have been the same as losing a potential customer.

It was a review that could have turned the company upside down, yet things were quiet, and even I didn’t know about it, which means Shin Taeyoon discovered it and took action faster than anyone. In other words, it also means he is always watching us.

His low exhale as he breathed out cigarette smoke settled in my ear.

—We compensated that customer at the company level. I know that according to procedure, we should have contacted JW Foods first, but there’s no reason to take the long way around when there’s an easy path, is there? As for the review, well, I thought it would be better for it to go viral if we left the owner’s reply, so I just hid it.

He is a more meticulous person than I thought. For a moment, my vision went dark thinking about how much JW Foods, a small company, had been run through the calculator in this man’s head. His calm voice, as if he had grasped everything from the company’s vision to its work processes, dug into my gut.

—How was that? Did I score some points?

If it hadn’t been for Shin Taeyoon, we would have had to first meet with the person in charge of the app and beg, and we would have been busting our asses trying to find the customer who wrote the review. The marketing team employees would have had their eyeballs fall out from monitoring the Gwangmyeong community forums while pushing aside their own work, and the CS team in particular would suffer several times over. The FC in charge of the Gwangmyeong branch would have had a huge fight with the frustrated store owner, regardless of the truth. I could picture the entire scene for something that hadn’t even happened. The blow would never be limited to just that branch.

The other ‘procedure’ he mentioned was this painful and troublesome. A sigh escaped me. The inner incorrect answers piling up against Shin Taeyoon are about to transform into a new danger I have yet to even experience myself.

This isn’t an overreach of authority, it’s help.

“…I’m indebted to you. However, I must ask that if something like this happens again, you just give us a heads-up. I’m truly grateful for your help, but we also have a well-established issue manual, so we are more than capable of handling it.”

—Yes, I like that side of you, Mr. CEO. Not groveling too much, not flattering, but knowing how to show it. So, are you free this weekend?

Damn it…

“When is convenient for you.”

—This Saturday at 8 PM. Let’s have a late dinner and a simple drink. That place we ran into each other last time, um, was it the smoking area? Let’s meet there.

Is he talking about the place next to the skewer house? Even if I wanted to refuse, I don’t have a good reason, and Shin Taeyoon is the type of person who wouldn’t even pretend to listen to any excuse for refusal. I have no choice but to accept.

“You don’t have to come to my area. I’ll go to you, so please tell me a place that’s convenient for you.”

—That place is convenient. I’m telling you just in case, don’t come dressed up. I’ll be in my pajamas since it’s my neighborhood.

“…I understand.”

—See you then?

“Yes.”

Shin Taeyoon ended the call with a laughing voice until the very end. As soon as I hung up with him, I ignored my aching head and picked up the extension phone. The FC Team Leader answered the phone cheerfully.

“Tell the FC in charge of the Gwangmyeong branch to come up to my office.”

On the way home from work, I got a call from Jinwoo and stopped by Seokhyun’s bar. It’s called a bar, but it’s closer to a lounge since the types of alcohol it serves are mostly whiskey and wine.

“Oh. You’re here.”

Jinwoo, who had arrived earlier and was having a drink, waved his hand. Seokhyun, sitting opposite him, also clapped his hands as soon as he saw me, letting out a sound of admiration before a greeting.

“Hey, Jungwoon. You’re really going through a lot because of that psycho.”

I wondered why he was clapping as soon as he saw me… Yoon Sungjoon completely cut off contact after the whole scene in front of my house. I sat down next to Jinwoo, first loosening my tie and putting it in my pocket. On the table were a bottle of Ballantine’s 17 Year Old, on-the-rocks glasses, and a fruit platter. I hadn’t had dinner yet, so I reached for the fruit before the alcohol.

“What about your store?”

It was the time he should have been working at the convenience store. Jinwoo swirled his glass with the melted ice, then took a sip and made a face as if his nose was stinging.

“Oof, that burns the throat. I hired a part-timer for the store. Even I would die if I worked the full night shift.”

“He’ll probably run off without lasting a week again.”

Seokhyun chuckled. Jinwoo, telling him not to say something that would get his dick cut off, fiercely raised his fork. I ate a piece of melon, but it was so sweet that it killed what little appetite I had, so I poured a drink into my glass.

“Hey, did you sprinkle sugar on this melon?”

Even though it was a whiskey with a strong oak scent, the sweetness lingered, making my tongue feel coarse. Seokhyun looked surprised.

“Wow, you can taste that? Melons aren’t that tasty yet, so I sprinkle a little sugar on them and let them sit for 5 minutes before they go out. Then it soaks in completely and you can’t even tell. It’s our store’s secret, how did he know…? A guy who’s been in business for a long time really is different.”

“It just tastes good to me. Maybe it’s because I’m always eating discarded food.”

I pushed the plate in front of Jinwoo, telling him to eat it all. It just ruined my palate.

“Anyway, this bastard is so picky.”

Seokhyun got up and brought a newly cut melon and a plate of jamón from the kitchen. He said that unripe melon doesn’t have a grassy taste when you eat it with jamón. I told him to put it on my tab and ate just a couple of pieces of melon.

“By the way, how much did Yoon Sungjoon run up before he bolted?”

“238,000 won. The fucking bastard.”

“Wow, he ate a lot by himself. So, what about the money?”

“I called him the next day and threatened the hell out of him, saying I’d call the police if he didn’t transfer the money immediately. He sent it right away, you know? For old times’ sake, I was going to just take 230,000 won, but I figured he must have caused a scene with Jungwoon, so I took every last 8,000 won.”

“Good job. Woon is a saint for dating a bastard like that for so long. How long were you two together again?”

“About a year? Right? Jungwoon, it was about that long, right?”

Ah, why do I have to come all the way here just to hear about Yoon Sungjoon again. I’m so sick of it. The alcohol goes down like water. I dislike the taste of it diluted with ice, so I switched to a straight glass altogether.

“Oh. Lee Jungwoon is going hard. He must not want to talk. Drink up, oppa, and rack up a nice bill for me.”

Seokhyun giggled, acting with cringeworthy cuteness. His cute act ruined the taste of the alcohol, so I took out a cigarette and stood up.

“Hey, why are you going out? Just smoke here. It’s a weekday, so there are no customers anyway. You guys are obviously going to be the last ones here. Ever since Yoon Sungjoon threw his little fit and left, it’s like bad luck has stuck to this place, and sales have gone to shit.”

He fills a paper cup with water and hands it to me. I don’t refuse and light up. Drinking and smoking consecutively made my head feel dizzy. I felt the fatigue accumulated throughout the day circulating through my whole body. The velvet sofa felt particularly soft against my skin.

The exhaust fan on the ceiling quickly sucked up the cigarette smoke. I blankly watched the smoke, which rose like a heat haze, get sucked in, and then flicked off the long ash. I put the now-shortened cigarette to my lips and was about to fill my glass when Jinwoo snatched the bottle and filled it for me instead.

“Woon-ah. I’m telling you, let me set you up. I know a really great guy. Good-looking, and he’s an accountant.”

“Hey, then set me up instead of Jungwoon.”

“Ah, you’re a bastard whose nights and days are swapped. And your face is way inferior to Woon’s.”

“I’ve been listening and listening, and now I’m getting pissed. Hey, my face and dick size may be inferior to Lee Jungwoon’s, but I have a car, I have a house, and huh? My stocks are doing really well these days… Aish. Just drink.”

“Woon-ah, hey, that bastard invested in entertainment stocks and got stuck. No wonder he was suddenly trading domestic stocks after only doing U.S. stocks.”

“Ah! Just you wait! It’s because you haven’t seen the kids who are going to debut there!”

What are they even talking about. When it came to stocks, I only dealt with large IPOs and blue-chip stocks, so taking risks was literally someone else’s story. It was a bother, so I rarely even opened my stock app, so I don’t even know what condition my stocks are in.