"Director Choi Kang-min from Electronics is threatening to storm into Strategic Planning right now!"
Assistant Manager Lee had scarcely finished his near-hysterical report when it happened.
BANG-!!
The Strategic Planning Office's heavy glass doors flew open as though they might shatter.
"Department Head Park, you son of a bitch! Get out here right now!!"
There was no trace of Choi Kang-min's usual cold composure.
His eyes were bloodshot, his tie crooked, and he came in breathing furiously.
Without another word, he seized Department Head Park by the collar.
"D-Director! Please calm down and l-let me explain……!"
"Calm down?! You passed off worthless land occupied by gangsters as prime assets?"
Choi Kang-min roared, shaking him violently.
"And you tied up our Electronics funds with joint and several guarantees over that garbage?! Why should I have to cover a bridge loan that's going to blow up tomorrow out of my own pocket?!"
Before he had even finished shouting, hurried footsteps came pouring in from the corridor.
"Choi Kang-min! Have you lost your mind?! Electronics' funding is blocked, so now you're trying to plug the hole with our department store's cash?!"
"Kang-min, don't cross the line! Why should my affiliates have to bleed too?!"
It was Director Choi Seo-yun and Managing Director Choi Tae-young, who had rushed over after sensing the terror of the joint and several guarantees.
"Ha! Are you two blind? You stamped those documents too, and now you want to cut yourselves loose?"
It was a perfect mud fight, one in which they had to carve flesh from their siblings to survive.
'Yes. Tear into one another and fight just like that.'
Then it happened.
DING-.
The VIP elevator's arrival chime cut through the hush amid the chaos in the Strategic Planning Office.
A middle-aged man stepped through the open doors.
"……!"
His slicked-back hair was streaked with silver, and his cold eyes held no emotion.
It was Director Oh Se-dong, the absolute authority in Taeseong Group's Strategic Planning Office and Chairman Choi Man-ho's shadow.
For the past fortnight or so, he had been all but absent from the office.
He had been assisting the chairman alongside the affiliate presidents at Gyehyeonjae in Hannam-dong, closely examining ways to ensure the group's survival.
"……D-Director."
Department Head Park bowed, trembling like a leaf.
Director Oh slowly surveyed the disordered floor and the three furious siblings.
There was no blind respect for the controlling family in his gaze.
Only the icy contempt of a man looking at insects gnawing away at the chairman's assets.
"Managing Director, Directors. Why are you making a racket here as though this were a marketplace?"
"W-well, Director. There was a slight error in the acquisition of the construction subcontractors' sites……."
Choi Tae-young tried to excuse himself, sweating, but Director Oh raised a hand and cut him off.
"An error. I see. I was briefed on the broad outline of what happened on my way here. I understand you were trying to save your companies, but you let yourselves be thoroughly played by someone's shallow little scheme."
For a moment, Director Oh's gaze cut across the room.
"As a result, the chairman is furious. An urgent summons has just come from Gyehyeonjae (Hall of Worthy Succession)."
At his low voice, the three siblings' shoulders visibly twitched.
Even as members of the controlling family, they could not lightly disregard the authority of the head of Strategic Planning, the chairman's perfect agent and right-hand man.
"He wants all three of you at Gyehyeonjae immediately. Ah, before that."
His cold gaze landed on Department Heads Park and Jang.
"Department Head Park."
THWACK!
The toe of Director Oh's dress shoe struck Park's shin without mercy.
"Who gave you the right to handle a matter like this on your own authority without my permission?"
"Th-that is not…… Director, it was such an emergency……. I-I apologize!"
"Department Head Jang. You are no different. You head Team 2, which controls the group's funding. You simply stood by while the affiliates wove ropes to hang one another?"
THWACK!
Jang, too, was kicked in the shin, unable even to cry out.
"I apologize! I have no excuse!"
"Those documents concerning the 'grotesque joint and several guarantees' entangled under Taeseong Asset Management's name. Bring a briefing on the exact state of affairs to my office immediately."
Both department heads pressed their heads to the ice-cold floor.
The entire Strategic Planning Office was gripped by such extreme tension that no one dared breathe.
Holding the documents I had just gathered from the copier,
I walked toward Director Oh without the slightest hesitation.
"Director. Here is the report you just requested on Taeseong Asset Management's joint and several guarantees and each affiliate's liquidity shortfall."
His gaze settled on me.
Despite the coldness in his eyes, which seemed to freeze the air around him, I held his gaze and offered the documents.
His eyebrow twitched faintly at the unfamiliar new employee's bold appearance.
"Who are you? ……The new employee on Park's team?"
I answered in a respectful but unwavering voice.
"Yes, sir! Baek Do-jin, a new employee."
Director Oh looked between the documents and me.
"Baek Do-jin……. I am told you drafted the proposal that led to this situation and compiled this report yourself. Is that correct?"
"Yes, sir."
"Is that so? Follow me to my office."
Turning away, he added coldly to the three siblings, who were still standing in a daze.
"Managing Director, Directors. The chairman is waiting. You should hurry to Gyehyeonjae."
"A-all right! Let's go! Quickly!"
Choi Tae-young, Choi Kang-min, and Choi Seo-yun hurried toward the elevator like livestock being led to slaughter.
I followed the head of Strategic Planning to his office.
Once we stepped inside and the heavy wooden door closed, a weighty silence descended.
Only the steady rustle of Director Oh turning the report's pages cut through it.
"Baek Do-jin. Top of your class at Hanguk University, and straight into Strategic Planning."
He took off his glasses, set them on the desk, and looked directly at me.
It was the same cold, worldly gaze I remembered from thirty years later.
In that future, he had been an old man living in seclusion with immense wealth after an honorable retirement, but that chilling gaze and charisma had not changed.
"This 'Selective Survival Plan' you devised. On the surface, it looks like a stroke of genius that gave the three siblings of the controlling family exactly what they wanted."
TAP, TAP.
Director Oh lightly tapped a particular figure in the report with his pen.
"But when I look beneath the books, I catch a very interesting scent."
"You dumped the subcontractors' bad assets into a shell company called Taeseong Asset Management, and in the process, you tied the affiliates together through unlimited joint and several guarantees."
His sharp interrogation continued.
"Now the shit Construction spewed out is flowing back into Electronics and Retail in real time. Are you actually a spy determined to destroy Taeseong from within rather than save it?"
It was pressure that would have sent an ordinary new employee trembling to the floor.
But I gave a faint smile.
"Director. A hound does not decide whether the meat its master throws it is poison or medicine. It is loyal only to the command to 'fetch.'"
"Commands? Neither Department Head Park nor the controlling family would have given you such instructions."
"The three siblings were clamoring for their respective affiliates to be saved. Department Head Park needed a shield against their resentment."
I took another step toward him and lowered my voice.
"I merely designed the 'best possible escape route' that would satisfy everyone. However……."
I let the last word trail as I met his eyes.
"Surely I cannot be held responsible if the exit is so narrow that they get stuck and die while fighting to get out first, can I?"
At my audacious answer, Director Oh's eyes narrowed sharply.
"The best possible escape route……. Do you regard this immense hell called the IMF crisis as merely a liquidity crisis?"
His voice sank even lower.
"This is a process of dismantling the empire called Taeseong and reassembling it. Yet you deliberately scrambled the assembly plans. Well, a little hole like this will not bring Taeseong down immediately. But the chairman is deeply displeased."
"Director."
I answered in an unwavering voice.
"You must have felt it too while devising recovery plans with the chairman at Gyehyeonjae. You must have considered which limbs to cut from Taeseong's bloated body to keep the rest alive."
I drove the point home.
"The joint and several guarantees I arranged will be the surest shackles for silencing the three siblings' opposition the moment the chairman decides on that 'slaughter.'"
His pupils widened faintly.
"The chairman no longer needs to be a benevolent father to children whose own blunders have endangered the entire group."
A heavy silence descended over the room.
Director Oh stared intently at me, his gaze so persistent it seemed to probe the very bottom of my soul.
At last, his tightly closed lips slowly parted.
"Fifty points."
"……Pardon?"
"The score for the answer you gave to my question."
He leaned back deeply in his chair and continued.
"For now, I will let you keep that employee ID on your chest. What happens afterward will depend on your actions."
Neither of us looked away.
After that taut exchange of gazes, Director Oh finally spoke first.
"You may go. I will summon you again if necessary."
"Yes, sir. Understood."
I bowed respectfully and left, quietly closing his office door behind me.
Only after it had closed completely did I release the breath I had been holding.
'Phew. As expected, that old man is formidable.'
***
At that same moment, in Gyehyeonjae, Hannam-dong, the heart of Taeseong stood as a sanctuary from which every divine decree governing South Korea's business world was issued.
Although Chairman Choi Man-ho had a perfectly serviceable office at group headquarters, he had spent most of his time at Gyehyeonjae since his wife's death three years earlier.
His public pretext was that he was leaving management to Strategic Planning, the affiliate presidents, and his children.
But the truth was different.
He crouched here like a spider, meticulously managing and monitoring every part of the group and issuing his orders.
Then the front doors opened, and the three siblings entered with their heads bowed like livestock brought to a slaughterhouse.
"I've heard people say I failed at raising my children, but I never knew I'd raised thieves in my own house."
"F-Father, that is not……! The restructuring of the construction subcontractors was an unavoidable measure to lower the group's debt-to-equity ratio……."
"Unavoidable? Losing that paltry sum is nothing. Taeseong is hardly so fragile that an amount like that could bring it down."
"But my own children swallowed such a stupid piece of bait without even checking it properly? And made this mess?!"
His fierce gaze fixed on Choi Kang-min.
"Kang-min. You were supposed to be the clever one of the three. Instead of stopping your foolish brother and sister, you joined in that nonsense?"
"I apologize, Fath…… No, Chairman. Our funding situation was so urgent at the time……."
"Silence."
"Effective today, all three of you are relieved of your posts at your affiliates."
"……!!"
"Not just at the affiliates. For the time being, there is no place for any of you in the group. Stay at home and reflect on yourselves, you idiots."
"F-Father! That is too harsh!"
"Chairman! Please give us one more chance. Please reconsider!"
"D-Dad! How can you keep your precious daughter shut up at home?!"
"I have no mercy to spare for vermin that gnaw away at my empire, even if they are my own blood."
"Get out, now!"