Chapter 5
Luxury Life (1)
“What was it again... that thing you connect to a computer to save files? The little one about the size of a finger?”
“Ah, you mean a USB drive?”
“Whatever. I don’t know the name. Show me one.”
The part-timer at Alpha Stationery thought he was a strange guy. A young office worker who didn’t know what a USB was?
“They’re in the left corner.”
What’s this? Are stationery stores self-service these days?
Chairman Kang found the USB section among countless products hanging on the shelves.
There were so many different kinds that he had no idea which one to choose.
He asked the part-timer again.
“Which one is good if I need to store a lot of documents?”
The part-timer gave him a look before answering.
“If it’s just documents, 128 gigabytes should be more than enough.”
“What, 128?”
Apparently frustrated, the part-timer picked one out himself and handed it over.
“15,000 won.”
Chairman Kang pulled out a 20,000-won bill and tossed it onto the counter.
“Would you like a cash receipt?”
“Huh? Ah, forget the change.”
Leaving behind the now-smiling part-timer, he exited the store.
Despite being the owner of the building, this was his first time coming down to the basement of the group headquarters.
Good heavens.
The first basement level was practically another world.
A stationery store, a convenience store, a flower shop, even a snack bar.
Young employees were devouring ramen and gimbap at the snack bar.
Chairman Kang went in and ordered a bowl of ramen.
Because of his health, he had avoided salty food for twenty years.
After finishing not only the noodles but even the salty, seasoning-filled broth, he was reminded that being young really was wonderful.
He returned to the office and waited for everyone to leave.
The problem was, these guys simply refused to go home.
After nine o’clock, the team leader finally stood up and said,
“Alright, everyone. Let’s call it a day.”
As though they had been waiting for those exact words, everyone quickly cleaned up their desks and got to their feet.
The team leader walked over, draped a hand over Chairman Kang’s shoulder, and said,
“How about a drink of soju?”
What an oblivious bastard. Of all times.
“No, thank you. I have something to do.”
The employees behind him snickered.
The team leader voiced what they were all thinking.
“What could you possibly have to do? I heard you’ve forgotten Excel completely.”
It was meant as a mocking remark, but it gave Chairman Kang the perfect response.
“I’m planning to study Excel. Is that not allowed?”
His confident attitude made the team leader flinch.
“Ah, if it’s for something like that... I suppose there’s no reason not to.”
The team leader and the others left together, talking about grabbing dinner.
A few employees could still be seen working here and there, but they belonged to other departments far away.
At least the Materials Department was empty.
Good lads.
Working hard even after their boss had gone home. I wonder if they’re actually getting paid their overtime.
But Chairman Kang had something far more urgent to worry about.
He needed to take care of it immediately.
Quietly suppressing the sound of his footsteps, he entered the conference room.
He knew that logging into the chairman’s account from Hwang Junhyun’s computer would raise flags.
Fortunately, the conference room had a shared laptop.
“Let’s see... where exactly do I plug this in?”
Back when he was chairman, the secretarial staff had shown him several times while backing up files.
Plug it into the computer and a storage device called D or E would appear.
After inserting the USB drive, he logged in using the chairman’s account.
A familiar screen appeared.
Top-secret documents that only the chairman was authorized to view.
Chairman Kang downloaded five years’ worth of data before accessing the Materials Department files.
“Now then... who was the executive in charge of the Materials Department again?”
Tracing the approval line upward, he found a familiar name.
Kim Jaehyun, Head of Support Division.
“So he was the department’s direct superior.”
The Materials Department and HR Department were side businesses, really.
The Support Division’s true core responsibility was managing Choi sung Trading’s finances.
Chairman Kang downloaded several more confidential documents.
These were trading-company files.
Documents bearing President Choi’s signature.
He didn’t yet know how he would use them, but if he examined them carefully, something was bound to reveal itself.
“Now then... all that’s left is the money.”
Getting the money would actually be the easy part.
Spending it afterward would be much harder.
Chairman Kang picked up the backpack lying beside the desk.
It belonged to Hwang Junhyun.
Dumping out the contents revealed nothing but useless things like work manuals and English conversation textbooks.
After slinging the empty backpack over his shoulder, Chairman Kang boarded the elevator, trying hard not to appear unnatural.
Not creating executive-only or chairman-only elevators had been a brilliant decision.
If such elevators existed, how could a mere intern ever reach the thirty-sixth floor?
There was another stroke of genius.
The thirty-sixth floor had no CCTV cameras.
None in the chairman’s office, none in the meeting rooms, none even in the hallways.
Because Chairman Kang had never tolerated the sacrilege of security personnel monitoring his every move.
Instead, three doors leading to the chairman’s office were locked.
Childish and simple, but the password was Chairman Kang’s birthday.
A code he had personally set after occasionally arriving before dawn and wanting to avoid ever forgetting it.
After reaching the thirty-sixth floor and passing through all three doors, he finally opened the chairman’s office.
The familiar sight was overwhelmingly welcome.
Yet when he sat in the chair he had occupied for years, it felt uncomfortable rather than comforting.
The chair was too low.
“Was I really this short?”
The desk remained spotless, without a speck of dust.
The only thing that had changed was the disappearance of the laptop he used to use.
Executive Director Lee Sangjae had probably taken it.
There was no time for nostalgia.
Chairman Kang stood before the safe tucked away in a corner of the massive bookshelf covering one wall.
He turned the dial.
2, 0, 2.
February 2nd.
The day he had assumed the position of chairman.
Then he pressed the electronic keypad beside it.
0, 5, 1, 4, 8, 2.
A meaningless sequence of numbers.
Six digits randomly selected from a sheet listing the numbers zero through nine.
When the safe opened, it revealed various certificates, bankbooks, and bundles of cash.
Leaving the cash untouched, Chairman Kang placed only what he needed into an envelope.
After closing the safe, he moved to a steel door in the corner.
Entering another six-digit password, he opened it.
A fairly spacious room.
Or perhaps it would be more accurate to call it a storage vault.
Checks and stacks of cash piled so high that even a one-ton truck couldn’t carry them all.
Korean won, dollars, yen, euros.
Even gleaming gold bars.
Chairman Kang stuffed bundles of won, checks, and several gold bars into the backpack.
This should be enough to get by for a while.
If he ran out, he could always come back for more.
***
“What exactly is that guy doing?”
While drinking coffee in the break room to shake off the afternoon drowsiness, Team Leader Park Jaewoo quietly asked Assistant Manager Jo Hyeyoung.
She responded with a sigh.
“I have no idea. He just sits there blankly all day. It’s driving me crazy.”
“That idiot. Ever since the accident, he’s added shamelessness to stupidity. I’ve never seen anyone stare into space so cheerfully.”
“I’m holding back because I was told not to interfere, but are you really planning to leave him like this?”
“What else can I do? It’s the president’s orders. If there’s any simple paperwork, give him that.”
“Word, Hangul, Excel, PowerPoint. He can’t use a single one. He really seems to have forgotten everything. How am I supposed to assign work to an office employee who can’t even use basic software? He’s completely useless.”
While the team leader and assistant manager were gossiping about their troublesome intern, a regular employee came running in.
“T-Team Leader!”
“What? Did something happen?”
“A-A huge incident.”
“What is it? Spit it out.”
“Security took Hwang Junhyun away.”
“What?”
“They said it’s just a simple investigation, but they want you there too.”
“Me?”
Team Leader Park felt the world go dark.
What kind of trouble had that headache-inducing idiot caused this time?
His first worry was whether Hwang’s actions might somehow drag him down too.
“Damn it. I should’ve fired him back then.”
Throwing away the coffee he was drinking, Park sprinted toward the Security Team.
***
CCTV footage was playing on a laptop.
“As you can see here, Mr. Hwang Junhyun took the elevator to the thirty-sixth floor at approximately 9:30 last night.”
The security officer stared directly at Hwang Junhyun.
“You know what kind of place the thirty-sixth floor is, right?”
Chairman Kang stared back.
Of course he knew.
It was his space.
“Then twenty minutes later, you came back down. Sure, people can press the wrong button, but accidentally selecting the thirty-sixth floor from the thirteenth? That’s hard to believe.”
Team Leader Park was speechless.
Running into the chairman with an elevator was one thing.
Now he was sneaking up to the chairman’s floor?
At this point, he’d believe the guy was actually trying to assassinate the chairman.
Had he failed the first attempt and gone for a second?
“Hey! Why did you go up there?”
Park barked.
Chairman Kang answered casually.
“I don’t remember.”
“What?”
“I remember getting on the elevator... then the next thing I knew, I was standing in the hallway on the thirty-sixth floor. It startled me, so I rushed back down. Is that some terrible crime?”
The security officer’s eyes narrowed at the intern’s bold attitude.
Before he could respond, Team Leader Park hurriedly intervened.
“This employee was involved in an accident a few days ago. It happened in an elevator... so he seems to have some trauma from it. It’s severe enough to interfere with his work, and our team has been monitoring him closely.”
“An elevator accident? Then could it be...?”
The security officer’s eyes widened.
Park silently nodded.
“Wait. If he caused an accident like that... and he can’t even do his job anymore... shouldn’t he be let go? He’s only an intern anyway.”
The security officer sounded genuinely bewildered.
“Well... the circumstances are a little...”
Park struggled to explain.
Then the young intern opened his mouth.
And dropped a bombshell nobody expected.
“Hey, security guard!”
The security officer thought he had misheard.
Security guard?
“Your job is to stare at CCTV screens and catch suspicious people. You think discovering that I accidentally went up to the thirty-sixth floor is some great achievement?”
“What?”
“Hey! You should’ve caught me last night when I went up there. What’s so impressive about noticing it a day late?”
The security officer fell silent.
He wasn’t wrong.
“If the chairman had been working that late last night, every single person on the Security Team would’ve lost their job. Got it?”
The security officer clenched his mouth shut.
The logic was hard to argue with.
“Last night you people were slacking off, and now you’re acting like heroes. And you!”
Chairman Kang examined the employee ID hanging around the security officer’s neck.
“No rank? You’re just a regular employee, aren’t you? Then how dare you glare at our team leader like that? Have you no respect for hierarchy? Arrogant little punk.”
The more Team Leader Park listened, the more he realized the intern actually had a point.
He suddenly felt embarrassed for having been intimidated.
His attitude changed immediately.
“You there. What’s your rank?”
The security officer, who had been standing casually with one leg crossed, instantly straightened up.
“I apologize. I became emotional because of the urgency of the matter.”
Park thought that was enough.
The intern did not.
“Shouldn’t you bow instead of just flapping your lips?”
“Ah...!”
The security officer quickly bowed.
“My sincere apologies once again.”
But Chairman Kang still wasn’t done.
“And who are you, a mere security guard, to talk about firing people? Since when do security guards get to discuss personnel decisions at Choi sung Trading? Mind your own business and do your job properly!”
Chairman Kang slammed the laptop shut and stood up.
“Let’s go, Team Leader.”