Private Equity Fund
Bang!
Hales Food headquarters.
The racket exploding out of the CEO’s office was nothing unusual.
“Again?”
“He’s gonna throw another full-blown tantrum.”
Lately it had been happening more and more often—the CEO flying into one of his fits.
“Didn’t I tell you exactly what to do?”
“I—I passed the order along, sir.”
“You didn’t pass it along properly, did you?!”
“Ugh.”
This is exactly why I never want to go in there.
Section Chief Kim Hyun-woo didn’t dare make a sound. With his low seniority in the company, he had no choice. The CEO was a stubborn mule. The only way to stay off his radar was to become a pure Yes-man.
“We ran the exact same event.”
“And the portion sizes?”
“Pardon?”
“For crying out loud! If you’re going to give unlimited refills, you at least lower the quality! Do I have to teach you even this? You dense bastard.”
“Haha…”
If you’re so frustrated, why don’t you go run it yourself?
He never said a word of instruction in advance, yet somehow expected the entire staff to have mastered mind-reading. This was daily life. At times like these, the only way to get through unscathed was to stroke his ego just enough.
Bang!
It repeated.
One week later, CEO Gwak Woo-seok received another report that failed to please him.
“Sales are down!”
“Ah, well, about that…”
“About what? What screw-up did you pull this time?!”
“You told us to lower the quality of the unlimited refills, didn’t you? But that… caused some side effects.”
Sales had dropped yet again. Of course they had. Consumers weren’t idiots.
I’d notice it myself.
They cut the whiskey content. Switched to far cheaper sake. Expecting no one to notice was the real stretch. Regulars walked away, and the damage showed up cleanly in the sales and performance numbers.
“I said lower the quality! I didn’t say sell garbage menus!!”
“Isn’t that basically the same thing?”
“You talking back to me, you little shit?!”
“……No, sir.”
Of course they hadn’t followed the order to the letter. Headquarters had drawn up its own manual and pushed it down the chain.
As if that would ever be followed properly.
These people weren’t his hands and feet. They didn’t move the way he wanted. The field had its own realities—realities he knew nothing about, because all headquarters ever did was grind the staff while almost never setting foot on the actual floor.
“To finish the report, sir: several branches are now requesting to shut down due to the deteriorating business. They’re saying if we don’t resolve this quickly, they’ll go ahead and close.”
“What? These bastards?!”
“I’m only delivering the message.”
“It’s barely been any time and they’re already whining and throwing fits!”
The situation on the ground was already critical. Business was dead, yet labor costs kept marching out the door. Inflation had only made raw-material costs heavier. The franchise owners had every reason to jump ship.
As if this bastard would understand that.
Telling him was pointless. He didn’t know and had no interest in knowing. Hyun-woo had fully adapted to this company.
These salary-thief bastards.
All the CEO ever did was assign blame and hand out discipline. Until now they had survived by cannibalizing the company’s internal strength. The moment a real crisis arrived, the leader’s true competence was laid bare. Woo-seok simply could not accept that reality.
“That bastard.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No—what was that bastard’s name? The one who screwed over that Kyoiku teacher.”
“You mean Sonik-jwa, sir?”
The fact that some young punk had interfered with his business only made it worse. He had already disliked the guy.
Sonik-jwa, my ass. Who does he think he is?
In a job market this brutal, Woo-seok had offered him a position—even promised assistant-manager treatment. And the kid had gone to a competitor instead. Now he had the gall to point a blade at him. An ungrateful little shit of the highest order.
“We can’t just sit still either.”
“What… should we do this time, sir?”
“Are you a straw mat? Can’t you think for yourself? You useless piece of—”
“…….”
They had to make an example of him.
Hankuk University, Department of Microeconomics.
“I’ve finished everything you asked for, Professor.”
“Ah, have you? Good work!”
Professor Yang Min-seok was notorious for being exacting. His personality was pure dictator. Graduate students ranked him number one on their list of people to avoid. Even he, however, had someone he could not treat carelessly.
“That’s everything?”
“What else would there be?”
“I figured you’d pick at least one or two things to nitpick.”
“You think I’m the kind of person who picks fights for no reason?”
To the teaching assistant, Kim Tak-su, it was baffling. When he did the work, even if he killed himself over it, the professor always found something to tear apart.
You and her aren’t the same.
The professor had his reasons. If she had merely been an outstanding student, he would have worked her like a drill sergeant just to keep her in line. That was how you made people obedient. But he couldn’t risk bruising her pride.
“Could you treat me a little more carefully too?”
“Then perform like her.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
Rachel Bigger.
A graduate student who had entered this year. Hankuk University had a fair number of international students, but—
How does someone come out of Harvard’s economics department…
She had graduated from an ultra-elite school. Reverse applications like hers were rare. And that wasn’t all. As a professor, Min-seok had access to personal information most people never saw.
“Think she came because she likes the Korean Wave?”
“You didn’t ask?”
“I did ask. But, well… there was never a real chance to talk in detail.”
“Sigh. What a spineless kid.”
Of course Min-seok knew the truth. Getting into Harvard wasn’t actually that difficult.
She wouldn’t have knocked on that door lightly.
A racial minority. An unpopular major. Attach those two conditions and it could be easier than getting into Hankuk University. In that case a reverse application made sense—especially if she planned to work in Korea someday.
“Do you know, Professor?”
“Hmm…”
“I can be clueless, but you really shouldn’t be. Even the Osung Electronics stock price—”
“If I knew, would I still be stuck holding it?!”
But this was the economics department. And if she were white, she wouldn’t even have had that advantage.
She even graduated early.
A special talent. An elite certified as belonging to the top 0.1 percent inside the United States. For some reason she had taken several years off, then come to Korea.
Tap, tap!
At first he had all sorts of thoughts about how to handle this student.
Damn, look at how perfect this report is.
Now he was simply enjoying it. To have such an excellent slave! She was in a completely different league from the others. A real rise in status was possible.
Creak—!
He only assigned her the important work and otherwise left her completely alone. That was how valuable her presence had become. What if he treated her roughly and she left for somewhere else? He handled her with constant anxiety.
“Professor.”
“Y-yes?”
“If you don’t have anything else for me, would it be all right if I’m unreachable for about two days?”
Even the paper he was currently researching had received enormous help from her. He had reached the point where he couldn’t do without her.
Well, a few days should be fine.
The other slaves would just have to work harder. Min-seok was generous—with Rachel.
Thud!
The reverse was true for everyone else. Unlike the graduate students who treated the professor’s office like the underworld, she showed not the slightest concern for anyone’s feelings. The sound of the door closing behind her reached them. It was something no other graduate student would even dare imagine.
“Think something bad happened?”
“How would I know?”
“Her expression looked like she was in a bad mood…”
“I don’t care how she is—just do your own job well!”
“Yessir~.”
Even her face was like that—cold as ice. Her tone was pure monotony.
Lately it feels even more so.
She had always given off that impression, building a wall that made approaching her difficult. Not that it was any of his business, as long as she could still contribute to his research results.
She seems to get sexier by the day.
Tak-su didn’t particularly mind either. If anything, he wished she would trample him. A beauty who looked like she had stepped out of a Hollywood film. Blonde hair, blue eyes—she was simply too beautiful. Just breathing the same air felt like an honor. In the department she was a special existence. Her cold attitude and unadorned plainness were the only things keeping the balance—or rather, keeping the male students’ reason intact.
Haa…
Those were the thoughts of the professor and the students. Rachel herself paid them no attention whatsoever. She had far deeper worries of her own.
Back in her studio apartment, she collapsed onto the bed.
Squelch. Squelch.
And without realizing it, her fingers began to move. The tips of her fingers had already slipped inside her jeans.
I shouldn’t be doing this.
Masturbation. She knew about it from sex education. She had simply never felt the need—until now. Ever since that day, her body had been strange. There were times it would heat up to an abnormal degree.
Squelch. Squelch.
Whenever she spoke with a man, things she had never once been conscious of before rose unbidden in her mind.
If those big hands were to touch me…
The images overlapped. The fantasy made her body burn hotter. An act she had never needed before—now it was the only thing that could calm her body.
“Ah! Ah!”
At last the reaction came. Her diligently working fingers fused with the images in her head and delivered pure pleasure. Her hips trembled. Her waist arched like a drawn bow. Even so, she could not accept it as pure pleasure.
Because of that man…
It wasn’t as if she was doing this because she wanted to. There was a culprit responsible for what she had become.
Chan-wook.
There was no room for doubt that meeting him had twisted her.
Squelch. Squelch.
Just thinking of him made her body hotter still. A body she had already soothed once was demanding pleasure again.
This is all your fault. Because of you I’m doing something like this.
She made excuses while her fingers moved busily. The more she did, the larger Chan-wook’s presence grew inside her heart. She still could not forget. The body that had been handled so roughly still carried every trace of it, carved deep.
Squelch. Squelch. Squelch.
No matter how fiercely she touched herself, it was nothing like that time. A body that had tasted sexual desire for the first time in its life was starving for more.
Batshit Crazy!
Her mind rejected him. The fact that her body wanted Chan-wook only drove Rachel further out of her mind. Lately she had even started becoming conscious of other men—of just how violent male desire could be.
I’m going back to America. I’ll never see the likes of you again.
The reason she had come to Korea: local research, and to meet him. He certainly had ability—more than she had imagined. Beyond that, he was a complete psychopath.
Rachel lay on the bed, swallowing miserable tears, when—
KakaoTalk!
Once again, a message arrived from that man. She could hardly believe it.
After pulling a stunt like that, how does he even have the face…
There was shameless, and then there was this. Did he not even remember what he had done to her?
Tap. Tap.
She could simply ignore it. Even when they crossed paths at school she had never acknowledged him. And yet she decided she would meet him— to overcome her own trauma.