I quietly followed the division head to his office.
'Does he intend to take his frustrations out on me?'
The moment the heavy door closed, the silence grew so dense that it seemed to press against my eardrums.
The room was as cold and dark as the deep sea.
Division Head Oh Se-dong reclined behind his desk, smoking a cigar in silence.
His eyes gleamed through the haze, sweeping over me as though dissecting every inch of my body.
Beneath his fingertips lay a crumpled front page from the business daily Senior Department Head Song had been reading earlier.
It covered the craze surrounding Rubicon Pharmaceuticals' 'Tau-Max.'
"Baek."
His low voice broke the silence.
It sounded tight with suppressed anger. No. It was too cold for that, like the sharp ring of metal.
"Yes, sir."
"The Taeseong Pharmaceuticals sale proposal you submitted. I personally reported it to the chairman and obtained his approval."
He slowly rose and approached me.
He blew a cloud of cigar smoke into my face.
"We shed fifty billion won in bad debt and neatly washed away Executive Director Hwang's disgrace. At the time, we all called it a 'victory.'"
"And yet that 'trash' has become a monster raking in tens of billions of won in cash in barely half a year."
His hand pressed heavily on my shoulder.
It was a predator's cold threat, a reminder that he could twist my neck at any moment.
"The chairman asked me this morning why the RD, supposedly a gathering of Taeseong's elites, had slit open a golden goose's belly and offered it up to those foreign bastards."
"Did you know something about those Rubicon people that we did not? Or had you reached some understanding with them beforehand?"
The interrogation carried a serpent's chill.
But I did not look away. I met his eyes directly.
The seasoned hound within me stirred, its instincts cold and alert.
"Sir."
I spoke without the slightest tremor in my voice.
"It is true that the pharmaceutical company's value has risen. But that was a miracle that could never have occurred while Taeseong still owned it."
"Could a strategy as reckless and radical as Tau-Max ever have emerged from a closed system where Executive Director Hwang Gi-cheol manipulated the books for personal gain? The executives in place then were merely puppets, too busy watching their superiors' moods to act."
His eyebrow twitched faintly. I pressed the point in a calm voice.
"I merely proposed the best option available to Taeseong at the time. If we had not severed that rotten limb when we did, the prosecutors' blade would now be aimed at the heart of Taeseong itself, rather than the pharmaceutical company."
"That does not justify this loss. I need a rationale that will appease the chairman's wrath."
He tightened his grip on my shoulder, grinding the words out. I seized the opening and played the card I had prepared.
"That justification is already prepared. And it will offer far more than consolation. It will become a new weapon for breaking through Taeseong's crisis."
"A weapon?"
"Rubicon Partners. As I previously reported, they are merely speculative capital of unknown origin. Yet right now, they control the most formidable reserves of ‘dollars in cash’ in South Korea."
"Sir, what does Taeseong need most at this moment? Do we need bailout funds that trickle in at the Blue House's discretion, or vast dollar leverage that could move the market immediately?"
I held his gaze more intently and lowered my voice.
"Joo Yun-ha, whom I dealt with during the pharmaceutical sale, is a greedy former branch manager. He responds only to immediate profit. What if we could draw their enormous capital in to serve Taeseong's interests?"
The look in his eyes changed. Suspicion gradually gave way to greed and meticulous calculation.
"You mean……. You will serve as our official liaison with them?"
"I will be more than a liaison. I will be the channel through which Rubicon, that jackal, is tamed into Taeseong's hound."
"If headquarters moves openly, it will invite unnecessary suspicion in the market. But through a mere employee like me, we can wage a ‘proxy war,’ quietly directing their funds to the battlefield Taeseong chooses."
He ground out his cigar in the ashtray.
The heavy silence returned. This time, though, it was not pressure bearing down on me.
It was the architect's deep deliberation as he weighed every gain and loss.
"Baek. You are proposing an enormous gamble, with your position, no, your life as collateral. What if Rubicon does not act as we wish?"
"Then I will surrender my life along with my employee ID."
I answered without wavering.
"But, sir. Rubicon has already grown fat on the pharmaceutical company Taeseong cast out as bait. Reeling in the fish that swallowed the bait is now the task of the man holding the line."
He studied me for a long time, then sank back into his chair and gave a short laugh.
"I should withdraw my earlier score of fifty points. You are a fox that knows how to threaten its master, rather than a hound."
"Decide for yourself whether that brings you closer to zero or a hundred. For now……."
I could almost hear the tension slacken.
He irritably shoved aside the approval folder on his desk and continued.
"Very well. You will have sole responsibility for handling Rubicon, as you propose. I will tell the chairman we are building a 'strategic partnership' to bring Rubicon's capital under our control. Separately, I want a concrete result from you at once."
"What would you like me to do?"
"Taeseong Foods."
His eyes flashed again.
"I have intelligence that the bastard running Taeseong Foods, President Gu Jong-su, has been playing serious games with the books lately. Import costs have soared during the IMF crisis, yet the company is strangely still turning a profit."
"The chairman praises him for it, but my instincts say otherwise. If it is a poisoned apple that will disgrace Taeseong's name, go and peel it yourself."
"Understood. I will prepare for an on-site inspection immediately."
My steps were light as I left his office.
Taeseong Foods.
It was Taeseong's vast web of capillaries, controlling neighborhood commerce and distribution networks across the entire country.
I returned to the Restructuring Division Team 1 area on the twentieth floor.
Senior Department Head Song Jae-woong and Manager Lee Jae-hyeon, who had been holding their breath and waiting for my desk to be cleared, turned their eyes toward me at once.
"Baek……. What did the division head say? Did he tell you to pack your things immediately?"
At Song's cautious question, I sat down and answered calmly.
"No. The next target has been decided."
"The next target? Where?"
"Taeseong Foods. Please print the last three years of financial statements and raw material import records immediately."
At that name, Song's and Lee's expressions went blank for a moment.
"Taeseong Foods? It is one of the few profitable affiliates in the group right now. The chairman never stops praising President Gu Jong-su. Why go after it?"
"The profit is precisely the problem."
I roughly opened the folder Manager Lee handed me and coldly pointed out the issue.
"Sir. Flour, sugar, cooking oil. The core raw materials that form the backbone of a food company. Where do they all come from?"
"Where else? Every bit is imported."
"The exchange rate has skyrocketed. Yet operating profit is the same as last year? Does that make any sense?"
The finance expert's gaze wavered slightly at my observation.
It was simple arithmetic. If costs had doubled while revenue stayed the same, a loss should have been inevitable.
Yet the books brazenly showed a profit.
"Then…… they must have cut costs enormously."
"Exactly. Through thoroughly 'abnormal' cost reductions."
I stared coldly at President Gu Jong-su's name on the monitor.
The knowledge of the future in my mind (Index) exposed the dreadful truth behind his cost reductions.
'If anything, this bastard is worse than Hwang Gi-cheol. He is certainly no better.'
To offset import costs, he bought cheap, substandard flour that was nearing expiration or already moldy.
He cleverly blended it with cheap additives fit only for industrial use and waste cooking oil.
Then he packaged the resulting filth in glossy Taeseong wrapping and distributed it on the market.
All of it sprang from Gu Jong-su's greed: keep the books in the black, win the chairman's trust, and preserve his position.
And this was no mere case of corruption.
"What if the Korea Food and Drug Administration or the prosecutors conduct a surprise inspection soon? No, what would happen even if this merely aired on a consumer watchdog program?"
"……!"
"The whole world will learn that we sold garbage under Taeseong's name. The entire group's brand image will suffer a fatal blow from which it cannot recover. It is a massive time bomb that could shake the whole body of the group."
'That is exactly how it blew up in the future. There was even a boycott of Taeseong for a time.'
Song and Lee turned as white as sheets at my cold warning.
"Senior Department Head Song, Manager Lee, please provide backup from headquarters. I will go to the site myself tomorrow."
"We will never catch this filth through paperwork alone. I will go to Taeseong Foods' main factory in Hwaseong and expose the real 'second set of books' and 'underground warehouse' those bastards have hidden away."
Now I had the perfect justification to act as a grim reaper for the Restructuring Division.
And that justification would soon signal the start of a hunt, conducted with absolute legal authority and brutal force, in which Rubicon Partners would swallow Taeseong Foods' vast nationwide distribution network whole.
A few hours later, on my way home from work, I left Taeseong Group headquarters, hailed a taxi, and headed straight to Sinmun-ro in Gwanghwamun.
Rubicon Group headquarters was the vast command post we had formally established beyond the Yongsan penthouse.
It was late, and all the headquarters staff had gone home. Joo and Kim would be waiting in Gwanghwamun rather than Yongsan.
When I opened the office door,
CEO Joo Yun-ha and Director Kim Jeong-gon, still wrestling with mountains of paperwork and seemingly forgetting to go home, rose together.
"Ah, you came straight here without calling, Chairman."
"Yes. I expected to find you here rather than in Yongsan."
I tossed aside my coat and immediately approached the large whiteboard on one side of the office.
"Please sit down, both of you. We have our next prey."
Taking up a red marker, I wrote four Korean characters without hesitation.
[Taeseong Foods]
Director Kim adjusted his glasses, looking puzzled.
"Taeseong Foods……? It is one of the few profitable affiliates left in Taeseong, is it not? Do you intend to go after a sound company?"
"Only on paper. In reality, it is a massive time bomb surviving by selling food adulterated with garbage ingredients. Tomorrow, I intend to raid the site in the RD's name and set off the detonator myself."
Joo swallowed.
"You mean to make Taeseong headquarters cut off its own tail. But, Chairman, is there any reason we must swallow a food company as well?"
"Would it not be better to acquire another valuable affiliate, or concentrate more on the pharmaceutical business that is already bringing in enormous amounts of cash……?"
"Our cash is overflowing. That is why we need a vessel to hold it."