SURE 31
by soapa‘Even if it’s temporary, isn’t it a success just to lower the target demographic to teenagers?’
People would know. They would know that it takes more than ordinary effort for this tteokbokki place, with only 37 locations nationwide, to register in their minds. The number of customers that these stores—many if you think they’re many, few if you think they’re few—will handle through this event… And the choices of potential small business owners who hear about it. It’s all a strategy to inject the brand into their minds through aggressive marketing. Behind this continuous exposure stands the master of the mark on the seasoning packets that everyone has in their homes. After all, Shinwoon was a familiar brand even to the elderly.
Trust. That was the promotional effect Shin Taeyoon chose after putting away his calculator.
“So the ad storyboard.”
Team Leader Im, having gotten over his reddened eyes, was now panting with indignation.
“He said he’ll do it. Ah, just saying it pisses me off. As he said, our companies are just different in size, but he and I are both team leaders, the same level, so who is he to approve or not, ha. Really. If only we had spent 100 million less.”
I thought he would have rejected that one first.
…Ah, no way.
Just then, a push notification popped up on my iPhone screen. It was an iMessage from an unknown eleven-digit number.
What time do you want to meet?
It can’t be.
“Did Team Leader Shin touch his phone during your meeting with him?”
Team Leader Im, who had been on a rampage, paused and blinked his eyes as if rewinding time.
“…Uh. Yes. He suddenly looked at a text and laughed? Freaking creepy. Ah, right. He was tearing my proposal to shreds at that moment, and then he suddenly acted like he’d switched faces and said to proceed, so I was like, what the hell is with this bastard.”
Ah…….
“Why? What is it? Were you, by any chance, texting with him, Mr. President? But then why would he laugh?”
“No. It’s nothing. Keep going.”
“You know what pisses me off the most? Park Joosung had already okayed all of this…….”
I could no longer hear Team Leader Im’s passionate speech. My face was burning, so I was covering half of it. What he said about having a change of heart wasn’t a joke.
“Once this project is over, I’m never buying a single seasoning made by Shinwoon again. For real.”
“…”
Shin Taeyoon’s unsaved number was displayed on the screen. I just stared at it, motionless, as if that one silent phone call was creating a shock intense enough to bring down the entire office. A man who never compromises and pushes forward when it comes to work had acted like a different person because of a single text message.
“Mr. President.”
“…”
“…Mr. President, are you angry by any chance?”
I pointed past the closed door for Sojeong, who was cautiously watching me.
“I get it, so put your personal feelings aside and just report the finalized details in a presentation. You can go now.”
“Ye-es… Oh, but.”
“Team Leader Im. That’s enough.”
“Yeees……. Understood.”
The silent scream continued to ring until Team Leader Im reluctantly left. It was the moment I was talking to Shin Taeyoon on my personal phone, not my work one. I was the one who gave him the number, but… He really makes me dazed in so many ways.
“Yes, Team Leader Shin.”
—Are you in your office?
“Yes.”
—I was passing by for a meeting. I called to see if I could see you for about five minutes.
Shin Taeyoon must have been calling from his car, because apart from the faint sound of rain, it was quiet around him.
“Since you called on this phone, does that mean you won’t be talking about work for five minutes.”
—It wouldn’t matter if we did. Didn’t Team Leader Im Sojeong give you the report?
He did. And because of it, a problem arose only in my heart.
“Did you really approve a proposal you were going to reject just because of the text I sent.”
—It was a text worthy of that.
“Ha……”
—Why. Did you feel like I lost my objectivity or something? But I couldn’t help but lose it at that moment. Of course, it’s not like I have zero desire to reverse the decision.
His voice, tinged with laughter, sounded a little lower, overlapping with our kiss from the early morning. Shin Taeyoon’s approval of Team Leader Im’s proposal probably wasn’t one hundred percent because of the text. Although Team Leader Im has a short temper, he’s a meticulous person down to the small details, so he must have asserted his arguments sufficiently in the one-on-one presentation.
Rather, it’s because he’s openly attributing meaning to it that I’m getting dizzy. It feels like he’s making it clear that it wasn’t a proposal defended by my employee’s skills. No matter how much Shin Taeyoon is on my mind, my company’s employee comes first.
“Where are you?”
—The underground parking lot. Section C.
I grabbed my jacket and left the president’s office faster than I answered. Manager Han, who was sitting at his desk taking a call, covered the receiver and called out to me as I was about to pass.
“Oh! Mr. President, where are you going? I think we might have a meeting with the tax accountant in an hour.”
“Schedule it. I’ll be right back.”
“Yes, yes. Yes, Mr. Tax Accountant. You can come over.”
I straightened my clothes while going down in the elevator that arrived quickly. As soon as I got out on the underground level, the humid air clung to me, and I felt the dress shirt under my jacket stick damply to my skin.
Shin Taeyoon’s car was parked neatly at the end of Section C, and inside, through the front windshield, he was on the phone while looking over a tablet PC. A cynical look crossed his intellectual face, which was focused on work. It seemed he wasn’t pleased with the phone conversation.
We’re going to see each other tonight anyway, so wouldn’t it be better to go back up than to interrupt him? Deciding it would be better to go back since he hadn’t seemed to see me yet, I turned around, but at that moment, the car horn honked lightly.
Shin Taeyoon, having carelessly tossed the tablet PC into the back seat, looks at me. As if to prove that his claim of being busy wasn’t a lie, he takes the call with his fingertips and gaze fixed on me. No matter how I look at it, it seems I’ll only be a bother…
As I opened the passenger door and sat down, Shin Taeyoon hung up the phone. The phone also flew carelessly into the back seat.
“Why did you see me and turn away.”
“You looked busy.”
“I’m never not busy. So whether I look busy or not, just ignore it and butt in.”
No sooner had he finished speaking than the phone he’d thrown into the back seat rang. Shin Taeyoon didn’t even look in that direction and only looked at me. To the point where it was a bit embarrassing.
“Is there something on my face?”
“It’s strange.”
“What is.”
“After we rubbed dicks, you got more tense?”
“What…”
There were only the two of us in the car, but I looked outside, wondering if someone had heard. People from other companies with ID cards around their necks were entering the elevator. Shin Taeyoon, hugging the steering wheel, had turned his head completely towards me and fixed it there.
“Your tone has gotten stiffer. It was less so just this morning, but maybe I’m mistaken…. Or is it because we’re in your company building?”
“This is how I normally am.”
“I know. That this is how you normally are. But it’s even more so now, as if you’ve put up a thin film in the meantime.”
Shin Taeyoon’s eyes, filled with interest, slowly scan me from my head down to my knees as I sit there. A ticklish sensation bloomed along the path of his gaze.
“…Team Leader Im is a capable person. You’ll be encountering him often for work, so unless you have a valid reason, please don’t break my employee’s spirit.”
“Ah. I was wondering what you were going to say.”
Shin Taeyoon lets out a hollow laugh, as if deflated. Even his broad, heaving back and shoulder blades looked dejected.
“I have a duty to protect my employees. I want to at least prevent them from resigning due to stress.”
“You must have heard. Do I have to hear that even after I let him win?”
“It wasn’t letting him win…”
“Jungwoon.”
My heart sank at the low call. As if the falling rain was drenching my entire heart.
Mr. President, Mr. Lee Jungwoon, Mr. Jungwoon…. Until now, Shin Taeyoon’s forms of address had been flexible. But now, he had gone beyond all these titles and dropped the formal speech altogether.
“Just say you came down because you wanted to see me. I really only have five minutes, and I came here to spend them on you.”
“…”
“There, that face. I like your dazed face.”
Shin Taeyoon reaches out and fiddles with my cheek, then lightly presses my lower lip with his thumb. I stared blankly at his languid face, then grabbed his hand and pulled it down.
“Don’t drop the formal speech.”
I hate the feeling of my heartbeat moving to my ears. Even if our relationship develops in a serious direction, wanting to draw an appropriate line is an unavoidable dating habit of mine. That age difference is practically nonexistent, but the feeling of suddenly getting closer, as if we’ve shifted into a couple’s atmosphere just because we had some skinship, was not welcome on my part.
“Was it unpleasant?”
Shin Taeyoon took the hand I had pulled down and, in reverse, clasped it, interlocking our fingers.
“I think it’s been five minutes. Drive safe and have a good meeting. I’ll see you later if I can.”
“Would it be less unpleasant if I called you Jungwoon hyung?”
Haa. He totally understood but he’s pretending not to, really.
“Mr. Shin Taeyoon. Let’s not get close too quickly.”
Shin Taeyoon pulls the corners of his mouth up into a smile.
“It’s one mountain after another. I get your iPhone number, and now I’m wasting five minutes on dropping formalities.”
“Think of it as a difference in values.”
“Don’t be so guarded. Like someone said, I have a shitty personality, so when someone tells me not to do something, it makes me want to break them down even more.”
That was exactly what I had said after we had mixed lips. Guarded… What am I afraid of that I’m being so guarded against Shin Taeyoon? The people passing by? The small, confined car with just the two of us? Shin Taeyoon himself, who has dropped the formalities and approached me so suddenly?
“Your phone keeps ringing. Have a good meeting.”
“Mr. Lee Jungwoon.”
“Yes.”
I was about to get out, but when I turned back, Shin Taeyoon was smiling.
“See you later. I’ll call you.”
The sound of the rain hitting the building grew louder.
The executive conference room on the 17th floor of the Shinwoon F&B headquarters was as large as those seen in dramas, with a microphone at every seat. Unlike our company’s shabby conference room, the beam projector was as clear as an LCD screen, and the floor was laid with marble, adding to the intimidating atmosphere. To think that Team Leader Im had a war of words with Shin Taeyoon in here for nearly six hours…
We were the first to arrive and were sitting one seat apart in the spacious conference room.
“Mr. President. You know what ‘lost well, fought well’ means, right?”
I know. It was a question in the new-word quiz we played for prizes at last year’s workshop.
“You didn’t lose.”
“Anyway. After a day, I’ve become otherworldly calm. I’m just thinking, it’s something to have salvaged even one or two proposals while sitting across from Team Leader Shin in a place like this.”
He was back to the Sojeong I knew, with his round, gentle way of speaking. Right, that’s how you gain experience. I wanted to pat his head and tell him I was proud, but there were four CCTV cameras installed, so I just smiled.
“But it’s about time for Tae’s group to arrive…”