TSG 73

Ha Jin-seong remained quiet while Se-hyun was looking at the documents. All he did instead was roll the candy on his tongue, often putting it between his teeth and making a crunching sound as he bit it.

“Still can’t decide?”

When he finally asked, wondering how much longer he would have to wait, Se-hyun looked up and met his gaze.

“I refuse.”

“Is that what you say to someone who’s been waiting all this time?”

Ha Jin-seong took a bite of the candy and swallowed it.

“The candy you’re eating should suffice.”

“Don’t try to brush it off. Explain to me, why are you refusing?”

Ha Jin-seong asked, and Se-hyun gave a very simple answer.

“Because I don’t know what you’ll demand next if I accept this.”

“I told you. I’m giving this because I want us to be on good terms again.”

Ha Jin-seong acted as if he couldn’t believe Se-hyun was still suspicious, but Se-hyun had already been tricked by him once.

“When I spilled wine on you, you asked me to pay for the shirt.”

Have you forgotten that you demanded payment even after I helped you?

“Oh, right. I did.”

Ha Jin-seong reacted as if he’d just remembered, but his face showed no surprise. He had simply been pretending not to know.

“But this is different.”

“It looks like a similar situation to me.”

“So you’re refusing?”

Ha Jin-seong stared at Se-hyun with eyes of disbelief. As if looking at him like that would lessen Se-hyun’s caution.

“I thought Secretary Ahn would show a more interesting reaction. In the end, it’s all wariness. Like a cat showing its claws.”

In response to Ha Jin-seong’s complaint that he was very disappointed, Se-hyun just laughed and hit the nail on the head.

“It’s because it’s you, Director Ha, that I’m being cautious. I never know when you’ll stab me in the back.”

“How petty. Are you like this with CEO Shin too?”

“Of course not. This is exclusively for you, Director Ha.”

Rejecting everything. He wanted to avoid any entanglement with Ha Jin-seong, so he declined and kept his distance.

“So you have no intention of getting along with me in the future.”
“Thank you for understanding so well.”

It wasn’t pleasant being involved with him, and from now on, Se-hyun wanted to avoid any personal conversations.

Inwardly bidding farewell to Ha Jin-seong, Se-hyun took a step back. It might be a coincidence, but the candy he ate being the same as the one Se-hyun had given him before was the reason for his choice.

Se-hyun didn’t know what kind of relationship he would have with Ha Jin-seong if he accepted this document here. Right now, even sharing official time was burdensome enough.

At Se-hyun’s farewell, a sharp glint appeared in Ha Jin-seong’s narrow eyes.

“Can’t be helped then.”

Ha Jin-seong’s smile became even brighter. As his eye-smile narrowed, accentuating his fox-like features, it was suspicious what his ulterior motive might be.

“If you don’t take this, it means I can use it as I please, right?”

“You’ll be responsible for the consequences.”

Se-hyun turned around without hesitation as if it was none of his business.

‘Let’s not get tangled up with that bundle of problems anymore.’

For now, that was the best course of action.

As Se-hyun left the café, he glanced back at where Ha Jin-seong was sitting. Seeing him wave with a smile that seemed to say everything was settled, Se-hyun couldn’t help but mutter to himself.

“Who’s the real petty one here?”

Ha Jin-seong had acted as if this was everything, but the printouts weren’t all. The trap was that the full details were on the USB. To verify everything, Se-hyun would have to accept his offer.

It didn’t matter since he figured out the clue anyway. Se-hyun immediately took out his cell phone and sent a message to someone.

“I need to say that Director Park and Managing Director Cho committed corruption.”

Though he didn’t take the documents, the details were etched in his memory. He typed out everything he remembered about the embezzlement and bribes on his phone and then walked away as if nothing had happened.

With this, he neither accepted Ha Jin-seong’s forgiveness nor let the two men’s misconduct slide. Killing two birds with one stone.

⍣⍣⍣

Lee Jin-ho read the message from Se-hyun several times, but he looked at it as if he could not understand it at all.

“What’s the matter?”

Shin Tae-oh asked Lee Jin-ho while carefully transferring each flower into a vase.

“Well… I got a message from Secretary Ahn, but I’m not sure what it means.”

“Read it to me.”

As Shin Tae-oh was busy looking at the flowers now and had no time to check the message himself, he instructed Lee Jin-ho to read it. Lee Jin-ho looked hesitant.

Those daffodils were definitely received with the meaning of ‘self-love’, no doubt about it.

“He says there’s something to look into regarding the Ulsan factory. He’ll explain the details once he gets here.”

Lee Jin-ho was trying to predict what Se-hyun was going to say, but Shin Tae-oh told him in an indifferent tone.

“He’s probably discovered that Managing Director Cho and Director Park had embezzled funds.”

Shin Tae-oh, who had moved all the flowers was now carefully cleaned each of the daffodil petals. The hand caressing the petals was very gentle. The expression on his face was so serious that he was concentrating all his attention on the daffodil, yet he understood exactly what Se-hyun was hinting at.

“Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“How can you be so sure?”

They say it’s the Ulsan factory, but why are Managing Director Cho and Director Park mentioned? No, why was he so calm when he knew about the embezzlement in the first place? Lee Jin-ho acted as if he couldn’t understand.

“That’s why I transferred them from the headquarters to the subsidiary company.”

Shin Tae-oh put the vase aside and opened the wrapping paper that had wrapped the bouquet. His hands smoothing out the creases were like those of a master paper flattener at this moment.

“They were always that kind of people.”

“Always?”

“They probably thought it would be easy to embezzle construction company funds. That’s how construction is. If you’re careless for a moment, the money you knew about becomes untraceable.”

In such a corrupt industry, Shin Tae-hh’s transparent management made him stand out even more.

“If you knew all along, why did you wait until now?”

“To take them down in one go.”

Shin Tae-oh, who had neatly folded the wrapping paper and put it in his inner pocket, smiled warmly. He lightly tapped his chest where the inner pocket was and looked at Lee Jin-ho leisurely.

“My uncles were small-minded, so they only took pennies. That’s not enough to keep them in jail for long, so I let them accumulate their karma bit by bit.”

Shin Tae-oh gave a kind explanation to Lee Jin-ho, whom he trusted to handle the corruption in the future, and then mumbled a question that came to his mind later.

“But how did Secretary Ahn know?”

Shin Tae-oh hadn’t given any specific instructions to investigate those individuals.

“Did he accidentally notice the circumstances? Or did he sense something was off? Well, he is Secretary Ahn, so he could figure it out. There’s never been a secretary as excellent as him, right?”

Shin Tae-oh listed one or two likely possibilities before wrapping up casually.

“I’m also a secretary.”

Do you think the person in front of you is far from great?

Ignoring Lee Jin-ho’s incredulous look, Shin Tae-oh got up lightly. He circled the president’s office, looking for a place to put the flower vase.

“Where should I place it to make it stand out?”

“That really is self-love.”

Lee Jin-ho muttered aloud, regardless of whether Shin Tae-oh heard him or not. At times like this, he was glad Shin Tae-oh was his junior from school, allowing him to chew him out.

⍣⍣⍣

Se-hyun returned to the company and looked for Lee Jin-ho. He wanted to explain directly, unsure if Lee Jin-ho had properly understood his message.

Shin Tae-oh happened to come out of the CEO’s office, so Se-hyun approached him without delay.

“Have you seen Chief Secretary Lee?”

“If you mean Chief Secretary Lee Jin-ho…”

Shin Tae-oh pretended to look for Chief Secretary Lee Jin-ho while closing the door that was open just a hand’s width with his body.

“No, I haven’t seen him.”

Se-hyun looked behind Shin Tae-oh at the groaning sounds like “Ah! Sh… my nose…” leaking from the CEO’s office.

“Didn’t you just hear something?”

“You mean this sound?”

When Shin Tae-oh tapped his chest, a small rustling sound was heard.

“What is that?”

“The flower bouquet wrapping paper.”

Shin Tae-oh took it out as if to show it, and Se-hyun unconsciously stepped back when he saw the wrapping paper neatly folded like a handkerchief. He’d never seen someone carry around wrapping paper folded like that. And of all things, the wrapping paper this strange person was carrying came from the gift he had given.

“Why are you looking for Chief Secretary Lee Jin-ho?”

When Shin Tae-oh asked, clearing his voice, Se-hyun straightened his posture and replied.

“I have something very important to report.”

“If you have anything to say to Chief Secretary Lee Jin-ho… can’t you tell me?”

Se-hyun had sent a message to Chief Secretary Lee Jin-ho, but ultimately, Shin Tae-oh was the one who needed to know. He had planned to explain the situation in detail to Chief Secretary Lee first before reporting it.

“I might be able to give you an answer faster if I hear it.”

Shin Tae-oh was right. So, just as Se-hyun was about to speak, he looked around.

“Is this something that other people shouldn’t hear?”

Seeing Se-hyun’s serious reaction, Shin Tae-oh also stiffened his face and looked around. It was an open space where anyone could hear, including people from the secretary’s office.

“Yes, it is.”

“Then we have no choice. Let’s go somewhere private.”

Shin Tae-oh took the first step as if he knew such a place, and Se-hyun followed.

Se-hyun’s mind was confused as he heard that someone was committing corruption at the company run by Shin Tae-oh.

So it was only after entering the private place Shin Tae-oh had led him to—a place where privacy could be completely guaranteed—that he realized he was a mouse that had entered the lion’s, no, the CEO’s mouth.

“No place is safer than home.”

As if to say ‘isn’t that so’, Shin Tae-oh smiled with his eyes and gestured at Se-hyun to enter.

Come on in. Into my mouth…