"Hey, Reporter Hwang! Did you fact-check that?"
"I'm waiting on a reply from their PR team. They said they'd put it together and send it within 30 minutes."
"How long are you going to sit around waiting? If another outlet runs it first, you're seriously dead."
"Hello, this is Jo Han-seong from Proin News, calling for the person in charge. Yes, it's about the material I asked you for last time. When can I expect it? I'm on a tight deadline for this one too."
"The embargo on this Friday's H Corporation event press release......"
8 a.m.
Beyond the partitions drifting slowly past me, I could vividly hear the clamor of reporters trying to take over the internet portals at 9 o'clock sharp. Press release, cross-check, beat, off the record, kill, every kind of word pierced the thin walls. Familiar words. Only a few weeks ago, I'd been mixed in among them, shouting those same words.
I passed through the noisy office and entered the small room attached to it, an office like an equipment storeroom with barely enough space for three desks. I put my bag down on the outermost desk and turned on my laptop.
-Whirr.
A shabby old laptop, its body quick to throw off heat.
The moment I logged into the intranet, the email occupying the very top spot greeted me. A thing like a malignant tumor that had been sitting in my inbox for two weeks.
-[Personnel Order/Department Transfer] Online News Team Seo Jae-won department transfer order (newly formed IT/Games News Team)
Fuck, this fucking shitty thing.
I glared at the email until I couldn't stand it and slammed the laptop back shut. My stomach throbbed with nervous gastritis.
***
"Still, it could've been worse, Jae-won. I was seriously on pins and needles watching it back then."
"Why are you the one on pins and needles? Mind your own business."
"But the higher-ups were in a complete uproar over one article of yours. Do you know how much the editor-in-chief and the desk busted their asses cleaning that up back then?"
"Do I need to know? About the people who said they'd clean it up by cutting off one reporter like a tail?"
Hwang Hyeon-seok. My fellow new hire from the same year, and a member of Proin News's Online News Team. A rare reporter with a good-natured face and such outstanding social skills that even his beats and the PR agencies weren't very wary of him.
He was also the strange guy who, alone among everyone, called me a friend and shared evening drinks with me, even though my personality was supposedly a total shitshow.
Hyeon-seok filled his empty glass and smiled bitterly.
"Well, for rank-and-file reporters like us, the company's decision is a little hard to swallow, sure."
"Must be nice to be able to call it a little hard, Reporter Hwang. I'm the one who got demoted to some pathetic IT department, not you, so I guess you can take it easy."
"Don't talk like that, Jae-won. I'm having a hard time on the team too, still walking on eggshells. Even so, they did say they're worried because Industry Desk articles don't seem to be getting many views without you."
I snorted. Views.
News had changed a lot with the times, too. Outlets that put out print editions might still hold the power of traditional media, but in the end, it was online news that made the money. Provocative titles, exclusives, negative stories. In a word, the views business.
"I was the one there who cranked out the most dogshit headlines."
"Dogshit headlines? How many times did your articles make the portal's main page? Who won Reporter of the Month the most? It was all you, Jae-won. Before long, you might even have moved to the General News Team."
"Quit saying stuff that puts me in a filthy mood."
Clack. The sound of me setting down my glass was unusually loud. On the grill, the edges of the meat sizzled and burned pitch black.
"General News is great. But if you were them, would you go out of your way to pull in some guy who got demoted? I'm already finished."
"Jae-won."
"Changing companies won't help either. Once a rumor goes around that Goldcrest is barring you from its beat, other places will quietly take your name off their media conference invitation lists too."
"You never know. At the Ministry of SMEs or on the venture side—"
"Besides, imagine you're the desk or the editorial department head. Sure, you'd be happy when a reporter brings you a scoop. But later, because of that scoop, you have to pull the article and go around bowing from the waist. You know how proud people get after making a living as reporters for 20 years, don't you? They're people from the days when saying the pen is mightier than the sword still held true. You think guys like that would meekly bow their heads to the company on their beat?"
The sharp words just popped out. Hyeon-seok looked at me, at a loss for words, then closed his mouth and silently tilted the bottle to pour for me.
"......Yeah, I'm sorry. You must be the one who's most upset about this. I shouldn't have said that."
"If you know that, shut up already. You're killing the taste of the drink."
"But I'm only saying it because of something I heard. ......If things go well, I heard I might get into the General News Team in your place at the regular personnel reshuffle next year."
"Huh?"
For a moment, the hand that had been lifting my glass stopped.
Hwang Hyeon-seok. In my place. Going to the General News Team.
At Proin News, going to the General News Team ultimately meant coming directly under the Editorial Bureau. A club of reporters the editor-in-chief favored. The most guaranteed career track at Proin News.
All at once, I thought of the old days, when my article first made the portal's main page. What the editor-in-chief had said while pouring me sake at a Japanese restaurant came back to me.
-You've got a fighting spirit, unlike the rest of your generation. How great would it be to have talent like you in the Editorial Bureau? Keep churning them out like that. I'll be looking forward to it.
......I'd been swapped out.
For the crime of making the editor-in-chief bow to some company's PR team. And now they meant to bring in my fellow hire instead.
Realizing that, the pit of my stomach started aching again. Chronic stress gastritis. My insides stung as if to prove that all my time as a reporter had gone completely to ruin.
"Good for you. Knock yourself out. So you called me out here, saying you'd buy me drinks, just to tell me that?"
"It's not like that. I don't feel good about it either. That's where you should have gone in the first place."
"I couldn't care less about that crap. If you want to brag, brag all you want. I'll at least listen, call it payment for the drinks."
I was irritated.
At Hwang Hyeon-seok, squirming as if he'd committed a crime? Or at the editor-in-chief? At Goldcrest, who'd said they'd sue Proin News and me? Or at someone else? At myself, for writing that kind of article?
When I put down my chopsticks for lack of appetite, the guy hurriedly spoke up.
"I told you I didn't call you here to brag. I'm saying this because of something I heard from the chief."
"What did you hear?"
"A tip came in recently, and it seems it's a bit awkward for even the Society Desk or the Industry Desk to verify. So they need someone to check it out for them. You know— like on-site reporting."
"On-site...... what? Are you telling me to go to some remote mountain backwater? Am I going to interview a serial killer? Why don't the other reporters want to take it?"
"You know how it goes on the Online News Team, 'Four Articles a Day.' So it's hard for us to look into anything in detail. We physically don't have the time. And the reporters under the Editorial Bureau, well, that goes without saying."
Hwang Hyeon-seok rummaged through his pocket and placed something on the table. A small USB drive.
Tips usually come in by email or text, don't they? Was there a recording of a phone call on here or something? When I picked up the light USB drive, he smiled as if relieved.
"Just take a look. If this one goes well, getting back isn't out of the question. I was actually thinking it's just the right job for you, too."
"Why's it just right for me?"
"You're good at picking provocative titles, you've got incredible stubbornness and persistence, once you make up your mind you push it straight through, and you've got a quiet sense of justice. And also."
The guy, who'd been pulling out embarrassing remarks one by one with that good-natured face, tilted his head and smiled. His brown eyes folded into half-moons.
"The department you got transferred to handles games and IT, you know. This one seems to be a tip from that side too."
***
I came home to a place no different from a garbage dump. I roughly cleared away the cup noodle containers and wooden chopsticks and turned on the computer.
There wasn't much on the USB drive. One Word file. It listed brief personal details of people reported missing in the last 3 months. From this alone, it looked like a job for the Society Desk, but.
The tipster's comment, attached at the very bottom of the personal details, caught my eye.
[Common factor: All missing persons were users of the game 'Brigantes Chronicle' released by Goldrish Games. Confirmed common response from family and acquaintances that play time was long enough to suspect game addiction. Hardware collected by police, who said it required investigation.]
"......What the hell is this bullshit?"
If you suspect game addiction, you go to a hospital. Why tip off a news outlet? You really see all kinds of weird people. No, wait. They'd already gone missing, so there was no sending them to a hospital.
Skimming the file, I could roughly guess how the tipster felt. That the missing people's common factor was heavy use of one specific game could, of course, be suspicious.
But the problem was hard evidence. You can't call the police or force an investigation on a hunch alone. They'd probably petitioned the police a few times, but there wouldn't have been anything the police could do either.
So in the end, they chose to tip off a news outlet.
'What the hell do they think a news outlet is?'
A reporter isn't a detective. Not a police investigator, and certainly not the FBI.
Even so, pushy tips like this did come in every now and then. It was probably out of the hope that once the matter went public and spread across the internet, countless strangers would see it, the company would be put in a tough spot, and so it might deal with things quickly.
Even then, game addicts, or their mass disappearance, weren't my problem. The department I'd been demoted to covered IT and games. Not the society section.
After agonizing for a long while, idly spinning the mouse wheel, I ran a search on the internet.
[Goldrish Games]
All sorts of news poured down the screen. Scrolling far down past some award they'd won and the press releases the game company must've scattered around, I came to an article from 3 years ago. A press release celebrating the Korean launch of Goldrish Games, headquartered in North America.
I was checking the article out of occupational habit. At the last paragraph, the wheel stopped.
[......Goldrish Games, founded in 2020, is a comprehensive entertainment company with Goldcrest as its parent company.]
Goldcrest. Goldrish Games. Parent company. So Goldcrest had split off Goldrish Games as a subsidiary and set it up as a comprehensive entertainment company.
My fingers drummed on the desk. Tap, tap, tap.
"......A smell."
There's a smell. A strange smell.
Launching a subsidiary was no big deal, but this wasn't just anywhere, it was 'Goldcrest.' The reason I'd been demoted to a newly formed department. The reason the people at my company had started pretending not to see me overnight.
Was this really scoop material, just as that guy had said? Or a stupid gamble with my career on the line?
But now that I'd seen this file, there was nowhere to retreat. If I didn't grab hold of at least this, I'd just waste meaningless time in that equipment storeroom until I quit. And changing jobs would naturally be out of the question, not even in my dreams.
I picked up my phone, its battery barely hanging on. A short ring, and a voice slightly slurred with drink mumbled an answer. Had it been too late to call?
No. None of that mattered.
-Jae-won? Did something happen?
"Hwang Hyeon-seok. I'm taking this. Keep it secret from the chief for a while and cover for me. For now, you're the only one who knows."
Goldcrest, Goldrish Games.
Let's see whether I die first or you come to bang your heads on the floor for me.