Even That Is Visible...?
The air in the large conference room was heavy.
It was so quiet that the hum of the air-conditioning sounded unnaturally loud.
In the middle of that silence, Director Song was tapping the edge of the table with a finger, tap, tap.
He sat with one leg crossed over the other, pretending to be perfectly composed, but the strain in him was impossible to hide.
Then, with a sharp bang, the conference room door flew open.
Manager O Jinhyuk and the structural analysis team came streaming in.
Every face looked grim.
Especially O, who led the group.
He had joined the company three years after me, but he was an ace from the analysis division, one of the elite who had risen through the ranks at high speed.
The usual confidence that never left his face was now buried beneath fatigue and irritation.
I looked at him with a bitter smile.
The rumor that the ground-equipment division was about to lose fifty percent of its staff had reached everyone by now.
In the face of a rumor that dark, what could even an elite engineer do?
That sharp edge on his face was probably just a desperate struggle to survive on a ship already sinking.
Honestly... that sight didn’t feel like someone else’s problem at all.
“Director Song. I’ll be blunt.”
Before he even sat down, Manager O spoke up.
His voice was bristling with open hostility.
“Head office is screaming at us to cut manpower, and honestly, clinging to a project that’s already been marked for disposal is a waste of time for us. If we’re spending time on anything, it should be building defenses for the other projects. That’s the urgent work for our team.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Everyone was scrambling to grab one more life jacket.
But Director Song didn’t back down.
“I know. I know, but give me just ten minutes.”
“Director.”
“The data’s just too interesting. If you still think it’s junk after you’ve seen it, you can walk out right away. I won’t stop you.”
At Director Song’s firm tone, Manager O let out a long sigh and pulled out a chair to sit.
He glanced at me, then said, still sharp around the edges, “Senior, I’m sorry. The situation is what it is, so I’m not exactly in a mood for polite speech. Please just show us quickly. We’re already confirmed for overtime today, so we’re a little on edge.”
“Fine. I won’t drag it out.”
I nodded toward Assistant Manager Jung.
With tense hands, Jung hit the Enter key on the laptop.
The projector screen lit up with the internal modeling of the TP-C we had modified.
“First, we’re dropping the existing vertical stacking structure and going with a 15.5-degree angled layout. What I’m aiming for is...”
The moment Manager O saw the tiles lying at an angle on the screen, he gave a stunned, humorless laugh.
Before I could even finish explaining, he slapped the pen he’d been holding down onto the table.
“Ha... Senior, are you serious right now? You called us in to show us this?”
“Does this look like a joke to you?”
“No, what else would it be? Sloped armor? Sure, everyone knows the theoretical protection is good. But you know we can’t use it because of space constraints.”
Manager O jabbed at the screen and raised his voice.
“If you lay the tiles like that, you create a step where they overlap. That becomes a structural weak point. If a shell gets through that gap by bad luck, it’s a free pass. The crew dies. You want us to run analysis on a model that hasn’t even solved that basic risk? Our team is already short on time, so why should we waste any more on something this pointless?”
The analysis team muttered among themselves in disbelief.
It was obvious they were angry that they’d been called in to validate a design that looked like it had made such a basic mistake at a time when survival itself was on the line.
But I didn’t panic.
I had expected exactly this reaction.
“Manager O.”
“Yes.”
“Zoom in first, then complain. Assistant Manager Jung, zoom in.”
The screen enlarged.
The contact point between the tile and the backing structure.
That detailed geometry filled the projector image.
At that instant, Manager O, who had been about to spring to his feet in anger, stopped dead.
“...!”
His gaze fixed on one point on the screen.
The shape of the backing material supporting the tile.
It wasn’t something that could be called a flat plate.
It rose in sharp teeth, like the jaw of a crocodile clamped down on prey, wrapping the underside of the tile in a perfect interlock.
Manager O’s Adam’s apple bobbed hard.
It looked like he could be heard swallowing.
Any engineer would have understood what that structure meant.
“As you can see from your side, it wasn’t just laid on top of the backing. I cut the backing into a serrated form and interlocked the tile with it.”
I continued calmly.
“With this, even if the armor gets hit, the tile won’t shift backward. And the gap you’re worried about, Manager O? It won’t open either. Structurally, it’s locked together completely.”
Silence spread through the conference room.
Manager O stared at the screen as if under a spell.
Then one of the younger analysis staff, who lacked a sense for timing, asked cautiously, “Team Leader? Did he just machine it so it meshes properly? Is that really such a big deal?”
Without taking his eyes off the screen, Manager O answered in a low, stunned voice.
“...It’s not just a big deal. It’s a crazy balance.”
“Excuse me?”
“Normally, with angled armor, when it takes a hit, shear force builds up and the tile tries to slide backward, which is what causes it to fail. But that serration... it’s converting that force into compression by taking it straight on.”
Manager O pointed at the display with a trembling hand.
“The material hasn’t changed, but just by changing the geometry, the limit it can withstand has gone up several times over. And filling the gap is just a bonus.”
He clicked his tongue in admiration.
Of course it was perfect in theory.
No, for a guy like him, I suspected he might even think it was beautiful beyond perfect.
But his reaction didn’t last long.
His expression hardened.
Reality had struck him in the face.
“But, Senior. What about machining cost? That’s high-tensile steel. You know how much it would cost to cut something that hard that precisely. The tail would be bigger than the body. Head office will never approve it.”
“That’s why I cut thirty percent of the ceramic tiles.”
I shot back as if I’d been waiting for the objection, and kept going.
“I took thirty percent out of the most expensive ceramic tiles. That more than covers the machining cost. Material cost drops by twenty percent, weight by twelve percent, and performance still goes up.”
“...”
“So. Don’t you want to run analysis on this structure yourself?”
Manager O fell silent.
He wouldn’t have any argument left.
Cost, performance, weight.
Three for three.
And more than that, an engineer’s instincts were stirring in him.
I could see his hands itching to find out, with his own eyes, what kind of graph that perfect structure would produce in simulation.
He looked back and forth between the screen and me for a long moment, then finally let out a deep breath.
“Ha... this is insane.”
Manager O shook his head and gave a crooked smile.
“Senior, did you bang your head or get possessed or something? Why are you suddenly this smart? It’s unnerving.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. So, are you doing it or not?”
“Of course I am. It’d be dereliction of duty not to.”
Manager O shot up from his seat.
The irritation that had filled his face a moment ago was gone without a trace.
What remained was the curiosity of an engineer who had just been handed a hard problem.
“Hey, send me the data. We’re rebuilding the mesh tonight.”
“Yes, sir!”
The rest of the analysis team’s eyes lit up too as they grabbed their laptops.
Manager O was about to leave with his team when I stopped him first.
“Manager O.”
“Yes?”
“Your team’s going to suffer because of me today. Dinner’s on me.”
I took a card from inside my jacket and held it out.
When Manager O took it, his eyes went wide.
“We’ve got a pretty big group.”
“Doesn’t matter. Order them all the five-man special sushi set. Charge the receipt to me.”
“...What is this? This doesn’t sound like our Senior Baek. Why are you being so generous all of a sudden?”
“Generous, my ass.”
I gave his shoulder a light smack.
“You’ve been under a lot of stress lately too, haven’t you? You can’t drink because of work, but at least eat something good.”
“...You’re looking out for me, Senior?”
“Looking out for you? It’s just shared suffering. Go on. Bring me the results by morning.”
I tapped his shoulder twice more and sent him off.
Even as he left the conference room, he kept looking back at me with the face of someone who had something he wanted to say.
But in the end, he couldn’t say it and just followed his team out.
“...He really was a cute one.”
Back when he used to trail after me, calling me Senior over and over and begging me to teach him everything.
I could still see that fresh-faced version of him so clearly in my mind, but before I knew it, he had grown older, become a manager, and was now dealing with worries much like mine.
But he probably couldn’t tell anyone what was on his mind, and knowing his personality, he’d have just suffered in silence.
“I didn’t know Manager Baek was the type to take care of his juniors like that.”
While I was thinking that, Director Song’s voice came from behind me.
He was looking at me with a face full of approval.
“I’m not taking care of juniors. I just gave him a little grease so he’ll work harder.”
“Same thing, you fool.”
Director Song smiled, clearly pleased.
I smiled back at him.
Meanwhile, in my head, plans were already lining up one after another for the future, for the moment when I’d finally prove my ability within the company.
Upper management seemed to think the ground-equipment division was just a money pit that couldn’t turn a profit, but the truth was that this division created the greatest value in the company.
Wasn’t it the ground-equipment division that had developed and delivered the equipment, then generated years of maintenance demand and long-term revenue for the company?
My top priority had to be saving the ground-equipment division.
If the board vanished beneath my feet, there’d be nowhere for me to show what I could really do.
And the next step was obvious.
To make it so that nothing in this division could function without me.
I had to become an unshakable, irreplaceable resource.
Only then would I be able to steer the board where I wanted it to go.
While I was thinking all that, Director Song, who had been smiling contentedly the whole time, said, “We’ve got the analysis team on board. If the simulation results come out well, the head office report will be a free pass.”
“That... doesn’t seem likely to go that smoothly.”
“Hm? Not likely? What do you mean, not likely? If the analysis team’s on board, we’ve already cleared ninety percent of the hill.”
“There’s a bigger mountain left than analysis.”
At my words, Director Song’s smile slowly stiffened.
“A bigger mountain?”
“Yes. That complicated serrated shape... we have to make a prototype, and there’s no way the production technology team will just machine it for us willingly.”
I stated the reality coldly.
“With an emergency management system like this, if even a piece of equipment breaks, they won’t approve the repair costs. And if they start machining that sort of hard-to-cut material and break a bunch of end mills, the production team will take the full blame. Do you really think Team Leader Park would be crazy enough to take that risk?”
“Ah...”
A groan slipped out of Director Song.
Production Technology Team Leader Park Kwangchul.
The mad dog from the shop floor, the kind of man who’d chase you down with a monkey wrench if a single ink dot on a drawing was off.
Director Song, picturing his face, clutched his forehead as if he already had a headache.
“Park Kwangchul... right, there was that man too... now my head’s starting to pound for real.”
*
The conference room was empty.
Director Song was still leaning back in his chair with a troubled look on his face.
Getting the analysis team on board was good, but wasn’t there always one mountain after another?
It was obvious that the wall named Team Leader Park Kwangchul was pressing down on him.
“Haah...”
Director Song let out a deep sigh and stood up.
“No use. I can wring my brain here all I want, and I still won’t get an answer. I’m going out for a bit to clear my head.”
“Where are you going?”
“I need to figure out how to sweet-talk Team Leader Park. He’s not the kind of man who’ll listen if I go in empty-handed and start whining... I need to sharpen the logic.”
Director Song left the conference room with unsteady steps.
He was already clutching his forehead, as if a headache had started coming down on him.
“Let’s go too.”
We gathered our things and moved back to the office.
As we walked down the hall, the team’s footsteps were heavy.
The moment we reached the office, Assistant Manager Jung pulled out a stack of documents.
“Manager, should we handle the remaining work then? The weekly report for head office and the material list revision are both due today...”
“No. Put that aside.”
At my firm answer, Jung hesitated.
“Sir? But the deadline...”
“What’s more urgent than this right now? If the project collapses, the weekly report and everything else become scraps of paper.”
I pointed my chin toward the hallway where Director Song had disappeared.
“While O’s team runs the validation, we need to prepare manufacturing. If we send Director Song off alone with nothing in hand, that mad dog is going to chew him up and kill him.”
“That would be true, but...”
“We need to give him a real weapon. If words won’t convince them, then we shut them up with data.”
I tapped Jung’s monitor with a finger.
“Turn on CAM. Pull the machining data right now.”
“Ah... understood.”
Jung hurried to launch the CAM program.
Assistant Manager Kim So-yeon, watching from the side, asked with concern, “But Manager, isn’t cutting a serrated shape into high-tensile steel really a stretch? Team Leader Park is going to curse at the drawing the moment he sees it...”
“Then we don’t give him time to curse. We put the answer in his face and tell him how it’s done.”
“The answer? Is one actually going to come out?”
Just then, Jung loaded the file for the serrated backing structure we’d modeled.
The monitor showed the complex 3D model.
“Hmm... I’ll run it through automatic path generation first. Optimized settings on.”
Click.
Jung hit Enter.
A message appeared in the center of the screen: generating tool paths.
A moment later.
Slash, slash, slash.
Countless lines spread across the 3D model.
The result of the program calculating, through its algorithm, the route the tool would have to take.
Normally they’d be shown in green or yellow, but the old licensed version our company used displayed the paths in blunt black lines.
And then.
“...?”
My brow furrowed as I looked at the screen.
Why... could I see that?
It was clearly just a mass of pixels on a monitor.
And yet, right now, over the black lines generated by the program, I could see a familiar light overlapping them.
The black lines bent at ninety-degree corners.
The areas where the tool would have to bite deep.
And there, standing out with a sharp, blood-red edge, were jagged red lines.
And the moment I confirmed their shape, I had no choice but to imagine the shriek of a high-speed end mill grinding itself down into steel shavings against high-tensile steel.
What the hell...
It was just a monitor screen. Just a simulation.
And yet I could see the points where load was building.
Were those red and blue lines I’d been seeing not limited only to the real objects right in front of me?
I could... see them even in something like a simulation?