The Client He Should Have Left Alone
"Why hasn't he called?"
No matter how she turned it over, Lee Jayeong could not make sense of Ju Jinyeong. A woman as young and cute and pretty as she was had made the first move, and he hadn't so much as flinched.
Surely not.
The thought had even crossed her mind that he might be impotent. She shook her head hard, trying to fling the absurd idea out of it.
She had decided this was a game of push and pull. If she didn't tell herself that, she simply could not believe the situation she was in.
I laid it on that thick. Shouldn't he have reached out at least once by now?
Ever since she had left the company there had been nothing but silence, and it was burning her up from the inside. Her phone buzzed. Chief Lee was calling.
"Young miss, this is Chief Lee."
"Yes, Chief."
"I've looked into Ju Jinyeong. It appears he still hasn't found another job."
Poor man. After the ordeal he'd suffered before resigning, he must have walked out of Jinseong Planning with no plan at all. The world was full of people who couldn't keep a household going if the paycheck stopped for even a month or two.
Maybe, she thought, he was so consumed with job hunting that he simply hadn't been able to call her.
"Just as I expected. Look into a position for him at one of the other Jinseong Group affiliates."
"You mean you intend to bring Jinyeong back into the company?"
"Do you have any idea how much Assistant Manager Ju Jinyeong did for us? He only left because the circumstances wouldn't allow him to stay. For all we know, he's missing Jinseong Group right now. Where else is he supposed to go? Call them conglomerates if you like — including us, there are only a handful."
"I'll have someone approach him posing as a headhunter."
"Ahem. If at all possible, arrange it so he can work on the Seoul side."
"I'll see to it."
"And you do understand his annual salary has to be the best in the industry, yes? No questions, no haggling — the very top. Just give him two hundred million."
"Young miss, two hundred million won is a little difficult... If rumors were to start..."
"I'm joking. But the part about the best treatment in the industry is not a joke. Pay special attention to that, and bring him in."
"I'll do so."
She ended the call and hummed to herself. If Ju Jinyeong came back under the same group, they would at least be able to trade messages on the company messenger.
Dahun's phone buzzed.
Dahun had finished his exit interview with the branch manager and formally resigned.
Kang Dahun was a talent too good to lose. The branch manager had kept trying to talk him into staying, but Dahun's mind was already set, and it did not move.
"Kang Dahun, think it over again. It's not as if there's no opportunity left for you. Is this because I rode you a little recently over your numbers?"
"Come on. No matter how I look at it, you're not the type to up and quit out of nowhere. Has something been going on? Trouble with somebody? Tell me straight. I'll help."
"Fine. If this is truly what you want, why not start with a leave of absence? The job market isn't exactly booming. Walk out now and you'll suffer for it. I'm not saying this as your branch manager. I'm saying it as a senior who's lived a little longer than you."
Even when the manager offered to move him to another branch, Dahun shook his head.
As he resigned, a thought stayed with him. Maybe it wasn't Section Chief Yoon's bullying at all. Maybe, just once, he had wanted to step off a life that did nothing but turn in circles.
He never said a word about Section Chief Yoon Seongjun. He only told them the work didn't suit him, and that he wanted to do something else.
The branch manager was no fool. From the day after Dahun left, the air around Section Chief Yoon turned cold. Even in meetings, the manager tore him down in front of everyone.
The stress Yoon had been stockpiling began to spit, once again, at Dahun — who had already left the company.
Afraid of exactly this, Dahun had finished the handover more thoroughly than anyone. He hadn't wanted to leave a mess for the teammates who stayed behind.
He just wants something to nitpick. He's got nobody left to take his stress out on.
Dahun didn't bother replying. He had no desire to dirty his own hands by writing the curses out himself. He pressed down on the block button and held it.
This, he thought, was the end of his tie with Section Chief Yoon Seongjun.
Jinhan Bank Gangnam Branch.
Ignored on KakaoTalk, Section Chief Yoon Seongjun was still seething. Muttered words kept leaking out of him.
"Haa— thanks to that bottom-tier bastard, all I've got is more work. One resignation and he flips the whole place upside down. Who the hell quits a company like that?"
Still grumbling, he dropped back into his chair and picked up the stack of client-handover documents tossed on his desk. It was the client list Kang Dahun had left behind.
Forget these people with no money. Isn't there a single rich client in here?
Client personal information. Yoon flipped through it without a second's hesitation, as if it were nothing at all. Then, skimming the list he had only half been minding, his eyes stopped.
They narrowed.
Depositor: Ju Jinyeong
Total Assets: 5.013 billion won
He swallowed. His breathing began to quicken. He straightened in his chair at once and tipped the monitor a little lower, in case anyone was looking. Then he looked again.
We had a VIP like this?
And the five billion had only recently come in from a particular account. Which meant this figure might not even be the whole of the man's assets.
Money on that scale should ride the division-head line, with a dedicated premium private banker attached... and he still doesn't have one?
Clients this wealthy were ordinarily assigned to a VIP management system at headquarters or at the regional division. The customer named Ju Jinyeong had not yet been touched by anyone.
In that instant, Section Chief Yoon's eyes lit up.
If this was a prospect even Jinhan Bank's Privilege PB Team had failed to catch — and if he could claim the man first — it could become a major account tied directly to his performance review. The money had landed in the client list Dahun used to handle, not long after Dahun resigned. A smile touched the corner of Yoon's mouth.
So God really is looking out for me. That VIP almost fell into Dahun's lap for free.
Happy little fantasies began to spin through his head. If he could win this client on his own, he could repair things with the branch manager, and headquarters would have to recognize the result.
Unable to hide his excitement, he pulled out his phone and began pressing Ju Jinyeong's number, digit by careful digit, exactly as it appeared in the client file.
"Yes, hello. Am I speaking with Mr. Ju Jinyeong? This is Section Chief Yoon Seongjun of Jinhan Bank's Gangnam Branch..."
They say a man is tonkatsu. And that tonkatsu is a man.
I happen to love that saying.
"You never get sick of tonkatsu?"
"Sick of tonkatsu?"
I flared at Dahun. Wasn't that an insult to ten million tonkatsu devotees? For a second, I nearly fired him.
We had agreed to go into business together, but the company was still being incorporated and we didn't even have a proper office, so Kang Dahun and I had been living the unemployed life — question mark included. Every day we met at my place or at a café, talking through investment products and sorting lists of promising startups worth putting money into. And when lunchtime came, we always ate out.
For once, my phone actually rang.
What was this? Spam?
I sliced the tonkatsu into neat, orderly pieces and picked up.
"Hello?"
"Yes, hello. Am I speaking with Mr. Ju Jinyeong? This is Section Chief Yoon Seongjun of Jinhan Bank's Gangnam Branch. It's nothing major, but..."
Spam after all. I hung up without mercy and gave the tonkatsu my full attention.
Fresh from the fryer, it shone with a golden crust. The cut face showed meat that was white and moist, and a savory smell brushed the tip of my nose. I dipped a steaming piece lightly into the sauce, and the thick brown glaze wrapped the crust and caught the light.
This. This was it.
I was just about to take a bite when the phone rang again.
The same number as before. Did spam calls usually come twice? I was about to ignore it and return to the tonkatsu when Dahun, sitting across from me, asked who it was.
"Spam."
"A spam call?"
"Yeah. Something about Jinhan Bank Gangnam Branch. He was going on and on."
......
Wait.
Now that I thought about it, Jinhan Bank Gangnam Branch was where Dahun used to work. I'd been so locked onto the tonkatsu that it hadn't occurred to me.
"Why would they be calling me?"
"Don't tell me..."
"What?"
"Did you move money into a Jinhan Bank account recently?"
"Yeah. We'll have to shift it into the corporate account later anyway, so I was pulling some out a little at a time. I also set aside money for living expenses."
"...How much?"
I'd been glued to day trades for over a week, and the return had blown comfortably past a hundred percent. Assets that had been five billion won swelled to ten billion in no time, so I had decided to set half aside against whatever might happen.
"I didn't take out much. About five billion."
"...And that's 'not much' to you?"
Back then, for the sake of his own numbers, Dahun had asked me to make Jinhan Bank my primary account, and he had gone on managing me as his client. Then he spoke again.
"Was the person who just called Section Chief Yoon Seongjun?"
"Yoon Seongjun... I think the name was something like that. You know him?"
"...I know him very well."
A smile formed at the corner of Dahun's mouth. And right then, the phone rang again. The same number, of course.
"So it's not spam, then."
"Nope. Once your assets get big enough, dedicated private bankers attach themselves. They take a fee in exchange for managing your money. That's the pitch he was calling to make."
"Yeah? Then I don't need it."
Dahun hesitated for a moment, then went on.
Dahun was thinking it through.
I tried to cut a bad tie, and if it keeps coming back, maybe that's a sign I ought to knot it off properly one more time... No. This fucker just walked right into it.
Watching Dahun smile so slyly, I thought to myself:
Knew it. The tonkatsu really must be good.