Shareholders' Meeting
Her senior's batshit nonsense.
Even when she asked what he meant, he refused to answer.
Still, he's not the type to tell me to buy for no reason.
She'd agonized over it plenty.
A troll. Pure bullshit. That asshole. Any of the three was possible.
She decided to buy anyway.
She'd already been mulling it over, after all.
Averaging down. If this was a short-term bottom, she might still escape on the rebound.
Gulp.
And if it wasn't the bottom? The bagheld shares would simply double.
If this is a joke, I'm going to kill him.
She would just strangle him. At least then she'd feel a little better.
"Hey! You bought Osung Electronics, right?"
At the place they'd agreed to meet, her senior showed up ten minutes late as usual.
Normally she would have exploded at him first. Right now something more urgent was on her mind.
So the buy call was real.
She let out a breath. If he'd only been teasing her, she really would have had to murder him.
"Well… I did buy, yes."
"Good. Let's go."
"Huh? Where?"
"Where else. There's only one place an Osung Electronics shareholder belongs."
She had no idea what he was talking about. He suddenly seized her hand in a tight grip and shoved her into the car on his own authority.
Please don't let it be the Han River.
She hated herself for even thinking it. But the market lately had been pure hell. She had every reason to be raw. A bear market chewed through a person's nerves.
Vrrrooom—!
She climbed into the Audi he'd brought. At first Sora had only felt restless and out of sorts, but—
A drive isn't so bad.
Other thoughts began to surface. After days of holing up in her room lamenting her bagheld shares, this was her first real outing in a while. The change of scenery helped a little. Especially in an expensive foreign car.
The ride quality really is different.
She was perfectly content with the Avante she'd bought herself. The Audi was simply on another level. On a road that should have been full of jolts and dips, the chassis swallowed every shock with quiet comfort. The seats were luxurious. Comparing them side by side, she finally understood why a foreign car was a foreign car.
"Senior."
"What."
"Never mind."
"Still a total airhead today, I see."
Even her senior looked different somehow. Driving in silence, he almost seemed cool.
It feels like a date. Embarrassing.
Was she the only one conscious of it? She snuck a glance; he just kept both hands on the wheel. No groping, none of the usual sexual harassment. Sora's heart started hammering.
Screech—!
They arrived while she was still lost in thought. The place wasn't even that far.
"Where… is this?"
"Can't you tell by looking?"
"No."
It wasn't a place she'd ever been. A forest of buildings hemmed them in on every side, every one of them a skyscraper. The all-glass façades were almost blinding. Even in a country as large as Korea, locations this dripping with money were rare. What on earth was this place?
Noticing it was impossible to miss. The name hung huge across the building's exterior.
"Is this Osung Town?"
"Look at you, knowing things."
"I knew it as a fact, yes."
There had been a whole chain of events leading here. Her senior had told her to buy Osung Electronics, and that was why they'd come.
This is where the Osung Group headquarters buildings are clustered, right? Osung Electronics, Osung Life, Osung Trading, and the rest. There used to be even more affiliates, but they moved. People still call it Osung Town.
The reason they'd come became clear soon enough.
of Osung Electronics
A sign announcing that the shareholders' meeting was in session. Sora's heart began to pound for an entirely different reason.
No way—!
She knew what her senior had been doing lately. He'd gone on air and leveled fierce criticism at Osung Electronics. Public opinion had flared hot in response. The next step he would take formed naturally in her head.
Gulp.
Urging the normalization of company management. Protecting the rights of minority shareholders. He might even be planning to demand it directly from the CEO. No matter how much money her senior had, it was nowhere near enough. This was a company worth hundreds of trillions, not mere tens of billions.
But if he isn't alone…
Represent the Osung Electronics shareholders and hold management accountable for the stock's collapse. If he could collect proxy voting rights, it wouldn't be impossible. The Korean stock market was riddled with problems. If a flagship company like Osung Electronics improved, the others would follow.
"Senior!"
"Ah, what."
"I don't know what you're planning to do today, but I'll help however I can!"
She was ready to pitch in without hesitation. Whether it turned out well or badly, it was something that mattered.
I knew he wasn't ordinary, but…
She hadn't imagined he was planning something on this scale. Just as Sora's chest was about to swell with purpose—
"What the hell have you been babbling about since earlier."
"Huh?"
"Quit the nonsense and come stand in line."
"?"
Her senior slapped her on the ass. Before she knew it she had joined the queue. At the end of it—
"Please confirm here. Lee Chanuk, shareholder—is that you?"
"Yeah, so hurry up and hand it over."
Shareholder verification, apparently. He proved he was an Osung Electronics shareholder and received a shareholder confirmation slip. And one more thing.
Her senior took a heavy box and lit up like a three-year-old kid.
"What's that?"
"Can't you tell by looking? Hurry up and get yours too."
"Kya—!"
He slapped her ass again. People all around them were watching. Before the shame in her chest had even settled—
"Yoon Sora, shareholder—is that you?"
"Y-yes, that's me."
"Thank you for coming. Gifts are over this way."
She received her confirmation slip. She, too, was an Osung Electronics shareholder. And she finally understood what the box was.
Cake?
Castella and pound cake. There was also a bottle of Del○te cold orange juice inside.
"Delicious. Bread really is Artisje after all. Nom nom!"
He had already torn it open and was stuffing it into his mouth like a starving animal. The sight left her speechless. Half in a daze, she drifted off alone. Only after she sat down in her seat did her mind start working again.
"Senior."
"What now."
"Why did we come here?"
"Can't you tell by looking? I skipped a meal just to eat this. Hell yeah, there's juice too."
Inside the hall where the shareholders' meeting was being held, the atmosphere was solemn by necessity. Only her senior looked like he'd come for a picnic.
?????
Her frozen brain couldn't even process the secondhand embarrassment. She had no idea, by any normal standard, what he was thinking.
"You came to a shareholders' meeting… to eat this?"
"Then why did you come?"
"As a shareholder, of course…"
"This is a place you come to eat Artisje cake. What exactly do you think a shareholders' meeting is?"
"…"
It felt like common sense itself was collapsing. She'd forgotten for a while, but this was something she experienced often whenever she was with her senior.
Ah. Right. He was always this kind of bastard.
He wasn't an ordinary person. That just didn't always mean it in a good way. Insufferable bastard. Crazy bastard. Absolute psycho. She didn't even have the energy left to curse him properly.
"You came all this way just for this?"
"What do you mean 'just'? Do you know how good and how expensive this is?"
"I bought more because you told me to!"
"You think I'd hand you a buy opportunity?"
Because she was already bagheld to hell. Her senior said he'd bought exactly one share for the shareholders' meeting. Even if the stock kept falling, eating Artisje cake still counted as a massive win.
You crazy bastard!
She'd been a fool for taking him even a little seriously. Regret flooded in like a tidal wave. Twelve hundred shares. If this really went to thirty-thousand Electronics, she wanted to strangle him to death.
"What an honor, meeting a precious fifty-thousand Electronics shareholder in the flesh."
"No I'm not. I averaged down. It's forty-thousand Electronics now."
"Aww, look how embarrassed she is. Carrying those shameful big tits around so proudly."
"You wanna fucking die?!"
He kept needling her with nothing but things that deserved a beating. But in this place she wasn't even in a position to get angry.
"Isn't Vice Chairman Kim Jae-yong currently on trial for state-affairs meddling? Isn't that why the stock is falling?"
"Just a few weeks ago it was sixty-thousand Electronics, and now it's down nearly thirty percent!"
"Do you have any intention of apologizing for the stock decline? Please answer us!"
She could see her fellow shareholders. Young people, balding middle-aged men, ajummas—every type imaginable.
They're bagheld too.
Osung Electronics shareholders. In the end, what every shareholder wanted to say boiled down to one thing: Isn't the stagnant stock price management's responsibility?
"Don't you have anything to say, Senior?"
"Me?"
"I mean, you said plenty on the broadcast. I know it was you."
It was the time set aside for minority shareholders to speak. The very person who had stirred everything up on YouTube on their behalf.
He may be winning, but this bastard looks way more human when you just watch him on YouTube.
He had zero interest. He was picking his nose and watching the whole thing like it was someone else's problem, looking thoroughly annoying.
"It really is someone else's problem."
"Ugh!"
"You think I bought Osung Electronics like some airhead the way you did?"
"You could at least say one word! After getting my hopes up like that."
It had become a chance to rethink Osung Electronics entirely. Plenty of individual investors who'd seen the video were furious.
I want to crack his skull open and see what's inside.
She truly had no idea what he was thinking. He seemed like a respectable investor one moment and a complete fucking bastard the next.
"What are you expecting from a shareholders' meeting? This is just a place you come to eat cake."
"Can you be serious for once?!"
"What, no side dishes with the serious?"
But she knew. Her senior wasn't the type to do something like this for no reason.
With Artisje cake on the line, he might actually mean it.
She liked the cake herself. Still, she wanted to hear something sincere from him.
"I'll give you both of my cakes, so just say something properly."
"Well, you're already walking around with two lumps of your own."
"You fucking bastard."
A shareholders' meeting was supposed to be a sacred place. Shareholders could exercise their rights as the true owners of the company. The atmosphere on the ground was completely different. She hadn't expected her senior to be this indifferent either.
"First time at a shareholders' meeting?"
"Yes."
"How are you not missing something in every single department."
"#!@$%^&*!"
It was nothing like the shareholders' meeting she had imagined. Sora just wanted to let out the frustration sitting heavy in her chest.