Ma nodded toward Bu's seat.
“Please allow our new recruit to pour you a drink, President.”
From the opposite side, I sprang up, plopped down beside the client company's president, and poured soju into his glass with the bottle held in both hands. Lowering my voice until it boomed like a cavern, I winked and said things like, “You'll use our bank a lot, won't you?” The squat president looked at me and suddenly vomited where he sat. His stomach must have turned. More likely, he'd been plied relentlessly with liquor while trapped in the triangle formed by Kim, Hong, and Hwang.
I pulled handfuls of tissues from the box and wiped up his vomited alcohol. Then, still holding the tissues, I pounded his back. Putting some strength into it, I hit quite hard. He spewed out the liquor he'd poured into his stomach.
“President, you seem very unwell. Was the octopus spoiled? Your color doesn't look good.”
“Officer Eun! I'm starting to feel sick too. Sit far away! Don't look this way!”
Watching from opposite us, Lee and Hwang recoiled in horror. The manager's eyes doubled in size as he glared at me.
“I called Officer Bu. Why are you making a scene?”
“You said the new recruit at our branch. I thought you meant me. I'm hurt you didn't call me first. I'm her senior. I should offer the first drink. President, please have this and think kindly of us.”
I poured more into his glass, forced a toast, and made him empty it. Spouting bullshit about mutual growth, cooperation, and WIN-WIN, we ate and drank endlessly through the first round until the restaurant closed at ten or eleven.
The dinners were torment enough, but the filth made them harder to bear. Things happened at Taecheon that never had at Hwapyeong. Every employee would hand the manager the soju glass they'd been drinking from, say they wished to offer him a drink, and ‘present’ the liquor. He would put his lips to it, down it, and ‘bestow’ the same glass back on the employee, ‘granting’ a drink they had to drain before his eyes. This fXcking custom was called ‘passing the glass.’ I first learned it at Taecheon.
One night, Song told me to watch. He said, “I would like to offer you a drink, Branch Manager,” and held out his used glass in both hands. When Ma accepted, Song filled it almost to overflowing. Smiling, Ma said, “How could I refuse a drink from Manager Song?” and swallowed it in one go. He pretended to wipe the rim a little, handed it back, then poured generously into Song's glass. Song turned his head slightly and drank it dry. He repeated the ritual with the deputy.
Those two glasses were all Song drank for the entire dinner.
“There. Saw that? Do exactly the same.”
“What you just did?”
It was practically an indirect kiss. Sharing one glass? Why? Why not share spoons too? My first thought was what an excellent way to spread a virus. I stared at Song in disbelief, then noticed everyone else repeatedly offering and receiving glasses from Ma. Told to do it, I blindly followed Song's instructions. Bu stared at the glass for a long time with a look of nausea and didn't. For nearly a month afterward, the manager hounded her for poor sales and a bad attitude toward customers.
This spectacle, lethal to public hygiene even in the telling, applied to client dinners too. Hurry up and offer the president a drink. I thought only Taecheon did such fucking idiotic things, but apparently other branches occasionally did too. A bank circular had once prohibited this filthy practice because of an epidemic, but whether to obey was up to the manager. Ours shamelessly boasted that he'd caught the circulating disease four times.
“An epidemic? All lies! Vaccines, my foot. Alcohol cures it all. Only weak bastards catch things like that and die.”
Ma infected numerous employees and customers around him. Even a virulent disease couldn't kill him. Lunatics don't even die of epidemics.
The second round took us to karaoke. With alcohol being served, it didn't seem like an ordinary karaoke place. It was much larger than the coin-operated booths I visited with friends. Beer, soju, and fruit platters arrived on a huge table. It was so dark we could barely see our glasses, with only the mirror ball turning red and blue. That night's client was the president of a small or medium-sized company. Ma and Kim toasted him while talking nonsense. Hwang hissed in my ear to choose a song quickly, so I found a recent one and pressed it.
“I'll sing one first.”
I butchered a fast girl-group song. Hounded by Hwang, Ji hastily picked a poignant, heavy love song. Before three lines were out, Hong canceled it and queued her own, a very fast trot number.
“Shanghai~ Shanghai~ Shanghai~. Doing the twist!”
As soon as a line ended, she whispered something to Ji. Looking embarrassed, he flipped back and forth through the songbook. Gu urged him to pick quickly, while Bu searched beside him. Apparently, neither could find anything suitable.
Forty minutes passed while Hwang and Lee busied themselves plying the company president with liquor. I looked at the time, eleven, and sighed. When do we get back? When will this goddamn dinner end?
When I returned from the bathroom, Ma had chosen a song and begun singing. Hong whispered to the female staff, probably telling them to get up and dance. Bu and Kim Jin-ju stood and swayed like half-deflated balloons. Their faces were blank, their limbs merely moving back and forth. They clearly weren't dancing because they wanted to. They looked like mannequins marching in place.
Watching them beneath the red and blue lights was grotesquely frightening. Gu swung her limbs energetically and called encouragement to Ma's song. You're the best, Branch Manager! Yay! Yay! Ji and I rattled tambourines along with her voice, our faces empty.
Kim left to take a call. Around the time Ma finished the first verse, the company president, who'd been drinking, grinning, and singing two songs of his own, suddenly stood and began dancing. Ma declared that things were getting lively and sang louder. Then the president danced his way between the table and sofa and embraced Hong. I felt the surrounding staff's shock along with my own. Only the manager's singing continued.
After dancing with Hong in his arms for about thirty seconds, he approached Kim Jin-ju. The women seemed to realize what was happening. Kim moved beside Ji, but he turned away to avoid her. She hurriedly tried to use Bu as a shield instead. Bu threw herself to the floor as though the drunken president were an approaching zombie.
That left Kim directly in front of the man, who apparently made car parts. With him right before her, she looked frightened and flustered. I pushed her aside and embraced him. Then I forced the man in his fifties to dance with me.
“Teach me a step or two, President!”
I've never danced in my life. Damn it. Drunk as he was, the president realized he'd embraced a man more than 185 centimeters tall and struggled to escape. The more he tried, the tighter I held the balding fifty-something. I could feel him fighting to get away from my chest. This is fucking miserable. Really. I'll have to throw this shirt away.
I forced him into a slow dance. Whether it really qualified, I didn't know. I'd never learned. When he finally wriggled free, I let him go, then caught him again. I spun us around, released him as he tried to escape, caught him when he fled, embraced him, and spun once more.
After about five repetitions, the song ended. Red-faced, he announced that he needed a cigarette and rushed out. Kim Jin-ju was singing now, a recent dance song. Bu glared beside her, but Kim looked only at the lyrics on the screen. Bu spoke to Ma.
“Branch Manager, did you see that? The president hugged Manager Hong.”
“When?”
“Didn't you see him going around trying to hug the female staff?”
“I was singing. I did not see. I saw him dancing with Officer Eun, though. Officer Eun! You're quite a dancer! Very passionate. You really like men, don't you?”
I stopped the curse just before it left my lips. You son of a bitch. What the hell are you doing? I felt ready to shout that I was quitting this rotten company.
And what will you do if you quit now?
Have you got a better plan?
What about your immediate living expenses?
Won't you just be unemployed?
Have you got skills? Money?
Memories flashed past: sending thousands of applications to financial companies before I'd even graduated, despairing at document-stage rejections, struggling to prepare for first- and second-round interviews at the head office in Seoul. Angry as I was, I could only endure it. Even Hong, who'd been directly subjected to the touching, stayed quiet. The manager didn't care that the woman he was supposedly seeing had been targeted.