The Shutter in the Break Room
Friday.
Monday through Thursday had been nothing but a parade of haggard faces, and yet the moment Friday arrived, people changed. It was almost uncanny. Was everyone heading out to a club tonight?
I came into the office, set my things down, and headed for the break room. I'd been losing sleep over my investments lately, and I needed a coffee transfusion.
The break room. The instant I stepped through the doorway, one miserable face swam into view.
Team Leader Park Seonghun. Nearly forty, and still one of those men laboring under the delusion that he was young. He'd always been handsy with the female employees.
Of all people, Lee Somin's affair partner had to be a bastard like that...
The reason she'd committed adultery with trash like him was simple.
Money.
There had been faint rumors that Team Leader Park's family was rich in land, and he had lured Lee Somin with luxury handbags. She was the sort who lost all reason where money was concerned, so of course she had taken the bait.
But where was that bastard looking now?
His eyes were fixed on Lee Jayeong, a junior on our team.
"Now where did the beans go..."
Jayeong was up on her toes, craning at the upper shelf as she tried to refill the coffee machine. Of all days, she was in a short skirt. To Team Leader Park, who liked stealing glances even on an ordinary afternoon, she was as good as prey.
Filthy bastard. If he'd ever drawn a Random Box, he might have walked away with a skill for peeping in secret.
He had no idea I was standing there. Grinning, he stared openly at Jayeong from behind. I'd always thought the look in his eyes when they found her was especially foul.
I was just about to make a sound and give myself away when Park pulled out his phone and thrust it toward her.
......
A hidden shot?
That son of a bitch. One person suffering something that vile was already enough — me. I'd been dragged through the company rumor mill and had sworn I would stop meddling in other people's business, but what Park was doing scraped my nerves raw.
I started toward him.
Click—!
Park, whose phone I'd assumed was on silent, let out a shutter sound and, flustered, hid the device behind his back. At the noise, Jayeong turned and looked at him.
"D-did you just take a picture?"
"Ha, haha... What would I even be taking a picture of?"
"I heard the shutter just now."
"What shutter? I didn't hear a thing."
Her heels clicked as she crossed the floor, and Employee Lee Jayeong walked, unflinching, right up to Team Leader Park.
"Then let me see it."
"S-see what?"
"Your phone. I'll only check the album to see whether you took a photo, and then I'll give it right back."
In an instant, Park's face went red.
"Jayeong, are you saying I secretly photographed you? Is that what this is?"
"That's why I'm telling you to hand it over. I'll only check and give it back. You do know hidden-camera shots are an actual crime, right?"
A murmur rose. Before I knew it, people had crowded the entrance of the break room.
"What? A crime?"
Park's brow drew tight.
She was impressive, I'll give her that. Could someone really take on her own team leader that far?
Our roles rarely overlapped, so I hadn't exchanged many words with Jayeong. I'd always taken her for quiet, someone of few words... The scene in front of me was not the woman I thought I knew.
"If you've got nothing to hide, just give me the phone."
"Have you lost your mind? Pinning your own team leader as some hidden-camera creep?"
"Why? Did I touch a nerve?"
"I've lived a long time, and I've never met a crazy bitch like you. You trying to get fired?"
Park's voice climbed. A fair crowd had gathered, and not one of them stepped forward. Get tangled up in something like this and you might be dragged around for interviews. It would be nothing but a headache, and everyone knew it.
"Crazy... bitch? You've just added verbal abuse. I'm reporting this to Internal Audit right n—"
"Shut that mouth. Since when does a woman talk back!"
In that instant Park's hand went up, and Jayeong squeezed her eyes shut.
I caught his wrist mid-swing.
"That's enough, Team Leader Park."
"Ju Jinyeong?"
Park's pupils trembled.
"If you're so upright, showing the phone once ends the matter. And I was standing by the entrance when you took that picture. Your phone was clearly aimed at Jayeong—"
"Hah. I keep letting you off, and now you've decided to get uppity for good? Let go, you little bastard."
Park strained to tear his trapped wrist free. Once caught, it did not so much as twitch. I only tightened my grip.
"Agh— that hurts!"
"Then show it. We look, and then we decide whether you're a creep with a camera or not."
I'd never imagined the Random Box ability I'd opened last night would prove this useful.
Money, he had plenty of. Desperate to look good for women, Team Leader Park had always liked working out, and his body, at least, was solid. Hadn't he bragged that his big three totaled four hundred kilos? And now that same man was pinned in the hand of someone who had never exercised a day in his life, unable to move an inch.
"Fine, just let go! You piece of shit!"
In that moment his other hand flew at my face.
It connected.
Blood streamed from my nose. His fist had landed square.
"Should've let go when I told you to, you arrogant little shit."
The punch didn't hurt. More than that, I had seen the fist coming with perfect clarity. I could easily have dodged. I didn't. Only then could I hit him and still have the law on my side.
"Jayeong."
"Yes?"
"You saw Team Leader Park hit me in the face, didn't you?"
"Never mind that — Assistant Manager, your face is bleeding..."
"From here on, you're my witness."
"What do you mean?"
First, one punch, straight at the philtrum.
Whoosh—
Thud!
"Guhk!"
One blow, and Team Leader Park folded straight to the floor.
I was the one who flinched, and only after the punch had already landed. I'd never been taught to fight, and yet I'd turned all the way through the hips and buried my fist dead in his face with exact force.
So this is the power of Punch King Rolf.
I climbed onto him and started pounding.
Thud!
This one's for screwing her in my house.
Thud!
This one's for the psychological damage of having to work while looking at that miserable face.
Thud!
...And this one's for the kids who teased Yeju at kindergarten.
The last one I simply wanted to land, so I invented the reason.
"Hoo—"
I dusted off my hands and stood. Someone must have reported us; staff from Internal Audit were already coming our way. They'd seen Team Leader Park beaten senseless, and they fidgeted in front of me. For all I knew, they had me filed under lunatic.
I'd thrashed a superior out in the open. Discipline was a given, and if things went badly, I could be fired outright.
An affair and an assault, both inside the company... The rumors are going to tear through the building all over again.
I didn't know. Let come what may. Still, one thing was certain: I felt a cleaner satisfaction than I had in any moment before this.
"Let's go. Time for questioning."
By all rights I should have been writing a statement, with a fine-grained investigation still bearing down.
"Please don't do that again."
"...Pardon?"
"The mood in the office is going to be unsettled today, so head home now."
"...The investigation's over?"
"Yes. There will be no separate disciplinary action against you, Mr. Ju. Internal Audit will conclude that your conduct was reasonable."
"...Thank you."
I walked out of Internal Audit with a dazed look on my face.
......
Was this right? I'd beaten a man into a bloody pulp, and the audit had ended with absurd simplicity.
When the ending is good, you leave it good.
I couldn't begin to guess how it had happened. I scratched my head and left the company.
Bzzzt—
A text came in from my sister's number.
Yeju sent texts from my sister's phone now and then.
A short laugh slipped out of me at her messages. It seemed, at least, that I wasn't losing my job. Knowing I could keep buying her the foods she loved for a while yet, I felt my chest loosen.
Lee Jayeong went back over what had just happened.
Assistant Manager Ju Jinyeong. Had the rumor about his divorce been wrong after all?
Word was he had cast Lee Somin aside, been caught in an affair, and been divorced for it. He was a senior on the same team, but that was precisely why she herself had never drawn close. She didn't put much stock in company gossip — and yet smoke did not rise from a cold chimney.
A man like that stepped in, in a moment like this, and protected me?
And when his fist had come down on Team Leader Park, he had looked like a man with old grudges settled deep inside him.
Is there something between those two that I don't know?
Leaving that aside, Jayeong felt a flutter she couldn't name at what Assistant Manager Ju had done. The moment he caught the fist flying at her. The face he wore when Park's punch landed on him first, as if it merely tickled, as if he couldn't have cared less. And the way he went straight into the counterattack. Three beats, locked in perfect time.
......He's ridiculously cool.
She had nursed, for a long time, a fantasy of a man who would protect her, and what had just unfolded had looked to Lee Jayeong exactly like a prince stepping in to stand before her.
Bzzzt—
Just then, a call came in on her phone.
Jinseong Group, fourth in the rankings of the business world. Its chairman's youngest granddaughter was none other than Lee Jayeong.
Being the youngest granddaughter, she had not the slightest interest in the fight for management control, and the chairman of Jinseong Group, knowing as much, had been planning to entrust her with Jinseong Planning, one of the group's lesser affiliates. To learn the real work from the ground up, she had joined in secret as an ordinary employee — and then this had happened.
I can't allow an insect like that to exist inside our company. Not now, perhaps. But I'll find a cause later and have him fired.
And with that, Lee Jayeong looked through Ju Jinyeong's résumé and smiled.
If he really is divorced... then he's single now, isn't he...