How to Handle This Person
Today had gone by with almost insulting smoothness.
The interview questions had been perfectly ordinary, and there had not been a single irritating moment all day.
Utterly uneventful. Ordinary. Stable in every possible way.
So when it came time to eat and then go see the professor, I had assumed that would be one more thing that would unfold without a hitch.
But it didn’t.
“Um, do you have something on your mind?”
I asked carefully the moment Choi Yeonghun and I sat down in the cafeteria and placed our order.
Nothing from the small talk we’d had before ordering came to mind.
I hadn’t even really heard it.
Choi Yeonghun was suddenly sitting across from me, looking serious and asking for a private conversation, so of course I couldn’t pay attention to pointless chatter about the weather.
“Yeah. I do.”
“Is it about the company?”
“Yeah.”
At his firm, almost resolved expression, I felt a flicker of worry.
Had I reached some future where, as TA Medical’s future changed, Choi Yeonghun ended up quitting?
Seeing how uneasy I looked, Choi Yeonghun gave an awkward laugh.
“Why are you taking it so seriously? Even if I said I was quitting, it’s not like the company would change that much.”
“What kind of bullshit is that?!”
I nearly shot upright at the nonsense.
“Hey! If you quit, it’d be a disaster! You’re the most meticulous one among us, you’re good at research, and you understand the industry trends better than anyone else! How are we supposed to function without you? No way!!”
My reaction made Choi Yeonghun blink at me in silence.
“What? You don’t think so? Sure, googling is an important skill, but you’re the one who checks academic journals and other professional materials and uses them to build something real, and—hey, no, don’t leave us!!”
I was so flustered I could barely string the words together.
I had never once imagined a scenario where Choi Yeonghun quit, so the mere possibility of him saying he would was enough to make my heart pound wildly.
They always said this wasn’t how you talked a quitter down, but I couldn’t remember for the life of me what you were supposed to say instead.
Strangely enough, Choi Yeonghun’s face only started to brighten a little after that.
“Hey, you’re being loud. I never said I was quitting.”
Seeing him grin, I finally started to calm down.
Right. He hadn’t actually said he was quitting.
“Then why the hell bring up the word quitting? I thought my heart was going to drop out.”
“I just... started wondering whether I really matter all that much to the company.”
“Huh?”
Unlike my thoroughly furrowed expression, Choi Yeonghun’s face smoothed over into something calm and plain.
Now that the words were out, I decided to tell him something I had wanted to say for a while, and I said it seriously.
“Choi Yeonghun. Don’t go around having ridiculous doubts. If you weren’t here, our company would be in serious trouble.”
At that, Choi Yeonghun looked away, embarrassed.
“What company collapses because one person leaves?”
“Our company is small, so every single person matters. But if you leave, it would be a real problem. Remember that.”
Almost everything TA Medical later patented in my previous life had been created by him.
But I couldn’t exactly say that.
Fortunately, even though I had left out the specific details, Choi Yeonghun seemed to understand what I meant.
“Ah, well. It’s not like I’m doing anything that amazing. I just tweaked what you did a little.”
“Have you ever seen a version update where the original developers get all the credit? Stop saying ridiculous things.”
I snapped at him as much as I wanted, but absurdly enough, the more I did, the better Choi Yeonghun looked.
At this point, he just wanted to see me get irritated once.
“Anyway. So what was bothering you?”
“I was worried that I was such a worthless presence at TA Medical.”
“Huh?”
“But I’m over it now. That’s all there was.”
“What?”
The conversation ended so anticlimactically that I stared at Choi Yeonghun in disbelief.
At that awkward timing, the food arrived, which was a relief.
When I checked the time on my phone, Badugi was also making a nasty little smirk beneath the clock.
You caught a rat by backing into it.
I didn’t really know what that meant, but apparently something had worked itself out.
“Oh. By the way, did you see this?”
Choi Yeonghun must have felt awkward too, because he immediately changed the subject.
“See what?”
I was awkward too, so I dutifully reacted to his sudden shift in topic.
“There was that person who wrote about being hurt by JH Medical before, remember?”
“Yeah.”
“They opened up about their identity and did an interview.”
“Really?”
Choi Yeonghun showed me an interview article on his phone.
It had been posted just today, still fresh.
An interview that traced the person’s life from their past as a startup founder to their present work as a doctor, with their identity fully revealed.
“That’s a really interesting person.”
After reading the article, my eyes lit up.
So the words that came out of my mouth next were almost automatic.
“I should go meet this person.”
At that, Choi Yeonghun narrowed his eyes and looked at me.
“Why. What are you plotting now?”
“Hey, I’m not plotting anything.”
To reassure him, I put on my most relaxed, calm expression and gestures.
Then I quickly relayed the thought that had sprung into my head.
“What do you think about bringing this person into our company?”
Choi Yeonghun closed his mouth at my words.
He was trying to pretend he hadn’t heard me.
“I’m serious. Imagine how much better it would be if we had even one doctor in the company.”
“Dream on.”
“What about bringing them in as an external advisory member?”
“Why would a doctor go into a startup? And this is a Korea University medical school doctor, at that.”
“Because it’s interesting.”
“Making money is more interesting. They’re doing fine as an internal medicine doctor, aren’t they?”
Fair point.
The person I wanted to recruit was a former founder who had had their startup crushed by Kang Sangyoon.
If I described them like that, they sounded like someone who had suffered some catastrophic disaster, but in reality they had been a Korea University medical student.
They were also doing very well for themselves with their medical license.
“No. I’ve got a feeling about this.”
But I had a strange sense about it.
I felt like this person would take an interest in our company and might even become one of the founding members.
“Siwon, you are a genius, that part is true, but this one feels like a stretch.”
Even after Choi Yeonghun’s cold reaction, my anticipation only grew.
“We won’t know whether it’s nonsense until we check.”
So, to cut off that chain of thoughts, I decided to move on it myself.
＊＊＊
Son Boyoon Internal Medicine.
A place that was packed with patients purely on word of mouth, even though it barely advertised online.
The person I was looking for was here.
“There are a lot of people.”
He seemed smart, so he probably wasn’t the type to run his own clinic into the ground.
Still, I hadn’t expected it to be this busy.
When I’d searched online, there had barely been any results, but even at the odd hour of 2:30 p.m., the waiting room was full.
“This might be harder than I thought.”
If this doctor had that many patients, the odds that he had absolutely no interest in our company were probably high as well.
But he was someone who had founded a startup during his residency and developed it far enough for cooperation with JH Medical to be discussed.
If our product and business looked good to him, I figured we might at least be able to open a conversation.
Still, with so many people here, it seemed hard to even find the right timing to talk.
I’d clearly have to make an appointment and come back.
“Hello.”
“Yes, hello.”
At the front desk, I asked cautiously, mainly just hoping to get an email address.
“Could I possibly get Dr. Son Boyoon’s business card?”
The friendly employee’s face and voice went flat all at once.
“Which company are you from?”
Right. If it was this crowded, they probably had their share of salespeople coming by all the time.
“I’m from TA Medical, a medical AI startup. Could I at least get an email address?”
“What?”
“It looks like the doctor is busy right now, so I’ll leave and come back after we set up a meeting properly.”
I tried to deliver, as calmly as possible, the message that said, I will not bother you any further.
But the employee, who had been startled for a moment, suddenly opened her eyes wide and asked me, “Wait, TA Medical? Then you’re CEO Kim Siwon?”
My name, out of nowhere.
I nodded.
Could it be that I’d been appearing in the media a lot lately, so she recognized me?
Though that didn’t really seem likely.
“Just a moment. Please take a seat here. I’ll call your name in a bit.”
The employee immediately typed something somewhere.
Then about ten minutes later, she called my name.
“Mr. Kim Siwon, this way, please.”
I was still a little dazed, but I followed where she led me.
It was definitely a good sign.
Knock, knock.
“CEO Kim Siwon is here.”
The employee opened the door to one of the exam rooms and introduced me.
And through the gap in the open door, I saw Dr. Son Boyoon smiling at me.
“Come in, CEO.”
I smiled awkwardly and handed over the business card I’d had made.
“Hello, Doctor. I’m Kim Siwon from TA Medical.”
“I know. Come have a seat.”
At the expression on Dr. Son Boyoon’s face, full of amusement, I smiled back as warmly as I could.
Then Dr. Son Boyoon burst into a bright, ringing laugh.
“You came sooner than I expected.”
“Were you waiting for me?”
I asked boldly, looking at the doctor, whose eyes were shining.
The answer came back in two vigorous nods.
“I did expect that one day the CEO would come here. Didn’t you think I’d be waiting for you?”
“I’d vaguely thought that might be the case, but I didn’t expect even the front desk to recognize my name.”
Honestly, I had wondered a little whether Dr. Son Boyoon might want to see me.
After all, I had the look of someone who had avenged a wrong done to them.
But I hadn’t expected to be treated with this much warmth.
“Oh, I told all the staff already. If TA Medical comes in, let them through no matter what.”
“Haha. Thank you.”
“You seem to have a crafty side, so I wanted to meet you myself.”
The wording was interesting.
Not that the doctor wanted to meet me because he was grateful, but that he wanted to meet me because I was “crafty.”
It didn’t sound hostile. More like he was calling me clever, and that didn’t bother me in the least.
“You deliberately played the role of an innocent college student who knew nothing and staged a big reveal, didn’t you? All on purpose? Hahaha.”
I had to think about how to answer that.
Should I keep up the image of a pure genius, or should I admit that I had been laying foxlike schemes from the start?
What would be the best way to win over someone this sharp?
“That’s right.”
But if I was never going to fool him perfectly anyway, honesty was better.
At the very least, it would show that I had no intention of stabbing him in the back.
So I admitted it cleanly, and Dr. Son Boyoon looked satisfied, as if the answer had cleared everything up.
“I thought so.”
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