The Chairman Awaits

Among South Korea's leading IT conglomerates stood Geunwoon Group. And of all its subsidiaries, the crown jewel was Geunwoon Industry—the flagship company that Chairman Chu Gwang-geun ran himself as CEO.

The glittering ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠high-rise before my eyes was the headquarters of that very empire. A soaring cylinder sheathed entirely in glass, stretching cleanly toward the sky.

I knew the building well. Before I had a company of my own, I had worked here as an ordinary employee.

I never thought I'd have reason to come back.

The ending had been far too ugly for that. I had sued the company and handed in my resignation; I had been certain that, in this lifetime at least, our paths would never cross again.

Until that phone call.

"This way, please. The Chairman is waiting."

Even after receiving the message I had only half believed it—and yet someone had genuinely been standing at the main entrance to escort me in.

I followed her, and as I walked I found myself turning over the call I had taken a few days earlier.

I had been searching every possible avenue for a way out when the offer arrived from the last place I would have expected.

"You're saying you want to... purchase our data chips?"

The call had come from none other than Geunwoon Industry. And it was not some mid-level manager extending the offer. The intent to buy had been delivered in the name of the Chairman himself—Chu Gwang-geun.

That man...

When you needed to move inventory as fast as humanly possible, a willing buyer was something you were supposed to welcome with both arms open. And yet something from the past still clung to one corner of my heart, thick and unwilling to let go.

Chu Gwang-geun. Back when I worked in Geunwoon Industry's memory development division, I had been nothing. A rank-and-file employee. He, on the other hand, had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠been the head not merely of Geunwoon Industry but of the entire Group. In those days our worlds had never touched.

I had heard, in passing, that his temperament was utterly rotten—but I had filed him away as someone who lived above the clouds. From an employee's vantage, the chairman of a conglomerate was not a position you could easily feel the weight of.

That changed when the legal fight over our bonuses began. We met in the flesh. Chu Gwang-geun also served as CEO of Geunwoon Industry, and he had appeared as the company's representative.

He's a bad man.

Put that baldly, the words are too short for him. You could hang violent on him, or vicious, and both would fit—but nothing captures him more cleanly, more immediately, than that.

He had thrown open the department door and come in already furious. His bulk filled the frame; the pressure that rolled off him was the pressure of an enraged bull forcing its way into a pen.

Chu Gwang-geun had twisted his face and browbeaten us where we stood. The man I remembered from those days had been nothing but authority and rudeness packed into a single body. Every word he spoke carried a pressure meant to crush whoever was listening.

That was the moment the people who had sworn to fight beside us peeled away in droves. Only then did they understand who, exactly, this fight was against—and they pulled their feet out of it.

His words had been threats in all but name. And what would follow if we refused to withdraw the suit...

It was truly horrific.

I knew that better than anyone. I had been the one living it. In the end we won the courtroom battle—but looked at as a whole, it was nothing you could call a victory.

The reason a rank-and-file developer like me had ended up running a business at all was that I had fallen out of Chu Gwang-geun's favor. After I left the company, not a single place in the industry would take me. No one needed to spell out why. He had clearly applied pressure from the outside.

It was the same for the others who had stood with me. In the end, after talking it through, we decided to start a company of our own. We could not simply let our skills rot.

And then there was Ju-hee.

The retaliation had reached my wife as well. She had been forced out of the firm she belonged to, and with nowhere else that would have her, she had ended up running a small office of her own.

So why would this man...

As I said—Chu Gwang-geun was a man bound to us by a viciously bitter history. Even if he had heard about the hole I was in, he was the sort who would have been glad of it. He was not, under any circumstances, the sort who would reach out a hand.

A latch clicked. The reverie broke. After following my guide for what felt like a long time, I finally arrived at the top floor of headquarters.

The executive elevator opened onto a lobby washed in dazzling gold.

The splendor of the space was one thing; the number of people in it was another. Every person stationed along the walls was a woman—refined beauties with their hair swept neatly back, each of them striking in a perfectly tailored suit. They had been standing with their hands folded at their waists, and as we arrived they inclined their heads just slightly.

So this is the top floor.

While I was still employed here, I had heard that the entire uppermost floor of the building belonged to the owner.

I had never had occasion to come this far, and so I had never confirmed it with my own eyes. I had not imagined I would learn the truth of it like this.

The women in the lobby were almost certainly Chu Gwang-geun's personal secretaries. Come to think of it, the woman guiding me was a beauty cut from the same cloth. Was she one of his secretaries as well?

The lobby that met us beyond the elevator was a single straight path of red carpet, but it forked at intervals like the branches of a tree, rooms lining it to the left and right. Every door was shut fast, so I could not see what lay inside—but it was obvious that the lobby contained a great many facilities.

"Please go in. The Chairman is waiting."

I followed her to the innermost reach of the lobby. A dark-brown door stood closed and heavy before us.

She drew it open without hurry, and the interior came into view.

It was a wide room. Like the door we had come through, the overall palette leaned into deep browns and black.

From the walls up through the ceiling, though, the color broke into a contrasting white. Indirect lighting washed the corners of the room, and at measured intervals fixtures set into the ceiling picked out certain areas in a brighter glow.

A low table holding a water bottle and glasses sat between two sofas arranged to face each other. Beyond them stretched an executive desk long and broad enough that two or three people could have lain across it side by side.

A middle-aged man was seated behind it.

The first thing you noticed was the flesh. He was thick with it—genuinely, unapologetically so. Fat sat taut across his face and body, stretched tight as a drum. Not a single hair remained on his scalp. His eyes were nearly buried in the surrounding flesh, and yet the set of them was strangely sharp, the folds of fat around the sockets carving his gaze into something even more menacing.

A broad face. A nose the size of a fist. A wide mouth. Fat had drawn his neck into a sloping line, and his torso was worse still: a belly that rose like a mountain, shoving the tailored suit out ahead of it.

This was Chu Gwang-geun. Chairman of Geunwoon Industry—and of Geunwoon Group itself.

The entire exterior of the Geunwoon Industry building was transparent glass. The sunlight pouring through it fell across the place where he sat and lit him brightly.

The door whispered shut behind me as I stepped into the office. At the same moment, Chu Gwang-geun's gaze turned and found me.

...!

The instant our eyes met, I took an involuntary step back. The image of him as I had known him—that bull-like, charging violence—flashed through my mind.

Those protruding brow ridges settled on me. His large, closed mouth opened like a fan, and the first words out of it were—

Chu Gwang-geun's characteristic booming voice filled the office. And yet, somehow, the old harshness was not in the timbre. Correction: the harshness was still there, to a degree. The image of the enraged bull still held. But there was no snorting rage curling through it.

"Ah, don't just stand there—sit down, why don't you!"

It was the same voice, and yet with the anger and the agitation stripped out of it, it sounded like an entirely different man. He finished speaking, his brow giving a faint twitch, and rose from his chair. The huge man—he had to stand well over six ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠feet—came around toward the sofa set in front of the desk.

I moved with him, settling awkwardly into place, and sat down on the sofa opposite his.

Our eyes met again.

And then—

"Ahahaha! Well now, it's been a while!"

Chu Gwang-geun let out a big, open laugh, lifted the bottle from the table, and filled a glass.

"Have you been well? Ah—from what I hear, I suppose you haven't. A pity, that."

I could not adjust to the atmosphere I was being received in.

What was this? He and I were not men who exchanged easy conversation like old acquaintances...

The last time I had seen Chu Gwang-geun was the day of the final verdict. I still could not forget the look on his face as he left, the way he had turned and looked at me.

The face of an enraged bull about to lower its head and gore. The way his expression had twisted, rage rising off him in streams—it was still vivid, even now.

"Incompetents biting off more than they can chew... and it's the decent folks who end up paying for it."

But the man sitting in front of me did not show so much as a fragment of that day. The way he let out a breath and collected himself felt jarringly ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠disconnected from the man I remembered.

Perhaps he had caught the thought on my face. Or perhaps he had simply noticed that I had not managed a single word since walking in. Either way, Chu Gwang-geun's eyebrow gave a single, restless twitch.