Please Watch Over Me +23
"Hey! You bastard! I told you to lower the feed, didn’t I? Do you want to wreck the tools or what?"
Team Leader Park’s shout tore through the din of the machines.
The worker flinched and hurriedly jabbed at the control panel.
We kept walking toward Team Leader Park as if none of that had anything to do with us.
But he gave us no reaction at all.
There was no way he hadn’t seen us.
Team Leader Park had deliberately turned his back and was staring fixedly at the machine monitor instead.
It was obvious territorial posturing.
Deputy General Manager Song cleared his throat and opened his mouth with visible hesitation.
"Ahem. Team Leader Park."
No answer.
The old man had closed his ears off completely.
Deputy General Manager Song looked at me with a troubled expression.
I stepped forward, drew in my breath, and shouted more clearly and louder than the machines around us.
"Team Leader Park Kwangchul!"
Only then did Team Leader Park slowly turn his head.
His workwear was stained with oil, his hair was tousled, and his eyes were sharp enough to cut.
He looked us up and down, then spoke with obvious indifference.
"What is it? I’m busy enough as it is, so what brings a bunch of office pencil-pushers here?"
"We came because we have an urgent favor to ask."
In sync with my words, Deputy General Manager Song forced a smile and held out the drawings he had been carrying in his arms.
"We need to rush out a prototype for our team this time, and... I thought it had to be you, Team Leader Park, so I brought it here."
At Deputy General Manager Song’s explanation, Team Leader Park snorted and took the drawing package.
But he didn’t spend even three seconds looking at it.
His brow furrowed hard, and he slapped the drawings down on the workbench with a sharp crack.
"Can’t machine this."
"No, at least take a look first..."
"Look, my foot. Are you kidding me? This shape, and in high-tensile steel?"
Team Leader Park raised his voice, jabbing a finger as he spoke.
"If you’re going to carve out something like this gear tooth pattern, you’d have to scrape it with a 0.5-pi end mill. You think that’ll hold? It’ll snap the moment you spin it up. What, are you telling me to grind up my crew and make it that way?"
"Team Leader Park, you know our situation. If we can’t make this, our whole team project is dead."
"That’s your problem. The place is already on edge because of the restructuring. I’m not about to get slapped with a defect just because you people pushed me into a corner, so take it back."
Just as expected.
The constraints of the shop floor and the logic of protecting equipment.
Team Leader Park was immovable.
But Deputy General Manager Song wasn’t about to back down either.
He brought out his first prepared weapon.
"I’m not just asking you to machine one prototype. If this succeeds, we’ll register the process as the standard manufacturing method for ADD’s next composite armor mass-production project."
"...What?"
The moment he heard ADD, Team Leader Park’s eyebrows twitched.
"And I’ve already finished talking with the people above. We’re putting your name on the project as a manufacturing technology advisory committee member."
"...!"
Team Leader Park’s eyes wavered.
An advisory committee member.
For an engineer who had spent his whole life eating oil-stained meals with his hands, the title of adviser to a national research institute was a medal money could never buy.
And in this vicious restructuring season, there was no stronger shield than that.
I could see him swallow.
But his pride as a craftsman, and the practical wall in front of him, still had his feet caught.
"Well... sounds nice enough. You’re saying you’ll pin some fancy title on me and tell me to die for it, aren’t you?"
Crossing his arms, Team Leader Park shook his head.
"Advisory committee member or whatever, if it’s physically impossible, it’s impossible. If I force it and the spindle on a hundred-million-won machine goes out, are you going to take responsibility, sir?"
As expected, this wasn’t easy.
Then again, if he had been the type to fold after a few words, he wouldn’t have earned the nickname Mad Dog in the first place.
Deputy General Manager Song looked at me with an appeal for help in his eyes.
I nodded.
Now it was my turn.
"It’s not that it can’t be done physically. It just can’t be done with the usual method."
I stepped forward and placed the process optimization report and USB that Assistant Manager Jung had stayed up all night organizing onto the workbench in front of Team Leader Park.
"What’s this?"
"Machining data. Machining time: four hours and fifteen minutes. Tool load rate: under twenty-five percent. If you run it like this, you won’t even break the tip on a single end mill."
Park Kwangchul let out a laugh of disbelief.
He snatched up the report, flipped through it in a blur, then glared at me as if I were ridiculous.
"Four hours...? You crazy bastard... You really came here with a novel."
"It’s not a novel."
"Hey, Baek Gunwoo. You ever eaten a meal on the shop floor? You think the world is some kind of simulation? You think the floor’s a game?"
Veins stood out in Team Leader Park’s neck.
The type of people shop-floor engineers hated most.
His disgust toward office workers who never stood in front of a machine and only gave orders from behind a monitor was on full display.
I didn’t back down and met his eyes straight on.
"If you don’t believe me, clamp down a piece of scrap material and try it. Ten minutes. If you run it for ten minutes, you’ll have your answer."
"What?"
"If even one tip pops out, or if the machine starts grinding, I’ll leave my resignation letter and go."
A silence fell all at once.
No, it was so tense it felt as if all the noise around us had vanished for a second.
Deputy General Manager Song stared at me in shock, but I didn’t even blink.
The corner of Team Leader Park’s mouth twisted.
"That’s interesting. You’re willing to gamble your resignation too?"
He must have seen that I had no intention of retreating.
Team Leader Park grabbed the USB with a rough motion.
"Fine. Let’s see what you’ve got. The moment that machine starts making a fuss, I’m hitting the emergency stop and kicking you out, so be ready for that. Section Chief Yoon! Put up a leftover chunk of S45C here! Set it up!"
At Team Leader Park’s shout, the workers moved in perfect unison.
The heavy five-axis machine’s door opened, and the carbon steel test stock was clamped tight in the vise.
Click.
The USB was inserted and the data began to load.
With his hand resting on the emergency stop button, Team Leader Park glared sharply into the machine.
The moment it made the slightest strange sound, he looked ready to smash the button.
"Starting."
The worker pressed Cycle Start.
Whiiiirrrr—!
The spindle began spinning at high speed.
Normally, a complex shape like this, especially when cutting into tight corners, would inevitably produce noise.
That ugly grinding sound. A harsh kigi-gik or gagagak, the machine clawing at the material against its will.
Team Leader Park had probably been waiting for that sound.
But instead.
Shooooo—
"...?"
What reached our ears was not a sharp tearing noise, but a smooth, even cutting sound, as if something were slicing cleanly through the air.
At the same time, I could see it.
"Uh, uh..."
Team Leader Park’s eyes widened little by little.
The hand that had been poised over the emergency stop button lost its target and hovered uselessly in the air.
"What the hell... There’s... no load at all?"
The load gauge on the monitor didn’t budge from the green safe zone.
The cutting speed was absurdly fast, yet the machine remained quiet, without the slightest vibration.
And then, after what felt like ten minutes but was really only one, the machine stopped briefly.
The coolant washed away the chips.
There, a portion of the gear-like shape gleamed with a mirror-smooth finish.
Possessed, Team Leader Park opened the machine door and ran his hand over the machined surface.
A flawless surface, so smooth his fingertips slid over it without catching once.
"..."
Team Leader Park couldn’t speak for a long time. Then he slowly turned and looked at me.
The ferocity in his eyes was gone.
What remained was pure shock, and the recognition only an engineer could give.
"Who came up with this data... Was it you, Manager Baek?"
"Yes."
"Heh... Damn."
He let out a dry laugh and ran a hand through his hair.
He looked at the machined surface once more, still unable to believe it, and muttered in a low voice.
"The machine... it’s singing. It’s really singing."
At this point, the match was more or less over.
I bowed my head politely but with finality and said, "Please, Team Leader. You’re the only person in our company who can machine this, so we brought it to you."
At that, Team Leader Park flinched.
Those were words acknowledging his skill.
He cleared his throat several times, then turned away awkwardly and shouted, "Ahem! What are you all standing around for? Section Chief Yoon! Didn’t I tell you to set the material properly?! "
"Yes?"
"We’re going into night work today! We’ve got a deadline to make, don’t we?"
Team Leader Park’s bellow echoed through the factory once more.
At that shout, Deputy General Manager Song nudged my side and gave me a thumbs-up.
I finally let out the breath I’d been holding and smiled faintly.
It was a success.
*
The atmosphere in the executive office was heavy.
The view outside the window was peaceful, but the mood inside the room was as precarious as walking on a sheet of clear ice.
Amid that stillness, Executive Director Choi looked down at the stack of documents on his desk and let out a deep sigh.
PLAN:Workforce Efficiency Plan
Nice wording or not, it was a restructuring list in reality.
It was the so-called death roster.
With the company’s sales cut in half, someone had to take responsibility, and that blade had been placed in Executive Director Choi’s hand.
"Haah... So this time the target is design."
He smacked his lips bitterly and looked at the first name on the list.
"I can’t touch Deputy General Manager Song because he came from ADD, but... the people under him have no real cover."
Deputy General Manager Song was an outside hire.
Given the nature of the defense industry, his connections from the Agency for Defense Development were one of the company’s core assets, so he was effectively untouchable from restructuring.
But his team members were different.
With a string of recent project failures, the design team had already been branded as a department that did nothing but burn money.
"Keep the brain and cut off the arms and legs, huh... Song’s going to lose his mind if this gets out."
Executive Director Choi took off his glasses and rubbed between his brows.
Then, just then, a knock broke the silence.
"Come in."
The door opened, and Deputy General Manager Song stepped inside.
Executive Director Choi put his glasses back on and studied his expression.
He had expected the man to come in looking half-dead.
Or maybe he thought Song had come to ask for a project cancellation form, or at least a plea to spare the team members.
But then.
"You called for me, Executive Director."
Song’s expression was strange.
His shoulders were straight, and there was a lively energy in his face that he hadn’t seen in a while.
For a moment, it even felt like he was looking at Song from his prime.
"You’re here. Your face looks bright. Got some good news, maybe? Or have you... emptied your heart already?"
"Empty my heart? No. We’re at the stage where we need to fill it up."
Song strode over and set a document folder on the desk.
"It’s the approval form for prototype fabrication. I’ve already coordinated with Production."
"...What?"
Executive Director Choi’s eyes widened.
He looked back and forth between the folder and Song.
"Production? Park Kwangchul agreed to do this? That picky bastard?"
It was unbelievable.
Park Kwangchul was the kind of man who wouldn’t budge even if the executive director himself came begging, as long as there was even a hint of a problem or risk.
There had to be a truckload of projects that had been scrapped because of that stubborn temper, and he had approved this?
"He kept shouting that it couldn’t be done, so I shut him up with the data. We’re starting machining tonight."
"Heh..."
Executive Director Choi let out a short laugh and flipped through the approval papers.
There, at the bottom, was Park Kwangchul’s signature, clear as day.
And not scribbled in haste, either, but written with deliberate care.
"Did you convince him? To break Team Leader Park’s stubbornness, you’d need more than ordinary skill. What did you use to work him over?"
"No. It wasn’t me."
Song shook his head.
"Hm?"
"It wasn’t me. One of our managers handled it."
"A manager? Who?"
"Manager Baek Gunwoo."
Baek Gunwoo.
Executive Director Choi let out a quiet breath.
"The fellow who had that accident on the shop floor."
"That’s right."
"He was diligent enough, but... I don’t think he was the kind who stood out much. He convinced Park Kwangchul?"
At the question, Song grinned.
"He’s become a completely different person since the accident. It’s like... he awakened or something."
"Awakened? Like those things in games?"
"Exactly. The design changes and the machining data optimization this time were all from Manager Baek’s head. Team Leader Park looked at the report and said he’d run the machine for us without another word."
There was force behind Song’s voice.
It was less praise for a subordinate than a guarantee.
And Song’s gaze briefly rested on the folder at one corner of Executive Director Choi’s desk, the one labeled Workforce Efficiency Plan.
Pretending not to notice, he tossed out a pointed remark.
"Executive Director. The restructuring list isn’t finalized yet, right?"
"..."
"Then please watch over Manager Baek. I think something’s going to happen in this project. Not just a hunch. I’m certain of it."
Executive Director Choi stared at Song’s eyes.
Unwavering eyes.
The eyes of a leader who would stake his own neck to protect a subordinate, no, who trusted that subordinate’s ability without a shred of doubt.
Executive Director Choi gave a snort and closed the folder.
"All right. If you’re saying that much, I’ll look forward to it."
"Thank you. I’ll report again once the prototype is ready."
Song bowed politely and left.
When the door closed, silence returned to the spacious executive office.
Executive Director Choi sank deep into his chair.
"Baek Gunwoo, huh..."
He pulled out the stack of personnel record cards that had been buried at the bottom of the paperwork pile.
Finding the name Baek Gunwoo in the file sorted alphabetically was not difficult.
[Name: Baek Gunwoo / Rank: Manager / Division: Design Team 1]
A plain career record.
The only notable item was the recent safety accident.
But Song’s confident expression would not leave his mind.
"Did the accident make his head better or something?"
Executive Director Choi picked up a pen and drew a small star beside Baek Gunwoo’s name.
A sudden mutation in a dying organization.
Whether this little spark could save the fading ground equipment business division, or whether it would burn out quickly, remained to be seen.
It was certainly worth watching.