The HR Management App

Mid-February.

Hiring seasons differ from company to company, but at ours — KP Corporation — this is when the second-half new-hire orientation takes place.

I was nothing more than a lowly Assistant Manager in the Planning Department.

I was standing off at the tail end of the stage with a microphone in my hand, reciting lines that meant absolutely nothing.

The exalted personage now climbing those steps seemed to find it genuinely delightful to play the pompous old blowhard in front of a bunch of peons. He took the microphone with a smug little grin plastered across his face.

The new hires sitting in the audience, on the other hand, were still watching the stage with bright, eager eyes, even after hours in those seats. The terror that if they got caught doing anything else they might get posted somewhere awful was written all over them — like watching fresh recruits a few days into basic training, who didn't know a damn thing yet.

I looked back toward the stage, following their gaze. The same middle-aged man had the microphone and was going on and on.

You have to work while you're young. You can do it too. Hard work will be rewarded.

He spent nearly thirty minutes on talk so useless that even a three-line summary of it was worthless. And then:

The exit was no different. The rather balding man swept that same smug smile over the new hires and returned to his seat.

A few more ceremonies followed after that.

Only after I'd gone and made even that grandiose opening declaration could I finally breathe.

And then, to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠me:

"Haa..."

"You worked hard, Woojin."

"Ah — yes. Yes."

The woman who had come up to me was tall, with smiling eyes and long, wavy hair — the kind of face that somehow called a fox to mind.

Lim Jiwoo tapped my shoulder and leaned in just slightly, offering up the scent of her perfume. It was a perfectly nice fragrance, and paired with that signature air of expensive elegance she carried, it even managed to feel genuinely impressive. But...

"I'll leave the wrap-up to you, Woojin. I'm going to go escort the new hires."

"Yes. Understood."

The moment those words hit — just another work dump, plain ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and simple — I couldn't help wondering if there was a smell in the world more nauseating than that perfume.

That bitch.

The way she used that fox routine of hers to take over a room was genuinely impressive, which meant that if I ever actually called her on it, I'd be the one who looked crazy. You can handle that much, can't you? You can't even do that for me? Is it really that hard? If only Lim Jiwoo were bad at her job, I could have pushed back somehow — but of course she was good at that too.

"Haa..."

So I just took it. The dump. Fucking hell.

Shoved down the pecking order and eating the shit work — I gave up on the whole miserable situation and slowly unplugged the cable from the laptop connected to the big screen. I tidied the laptop and set it aside. The chairs would be handled later by the support team. The screen wasn't anything I needed to touch.

"Alright then..."

I figured I should check whether anyone had left something behind. Given Lim Jiwoo's particular talent for dumping work and walking away, she ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was bound to have left something lying around somewhere.

"...Figures."

Behind the stage — in the waiting area where people stood before going up — I glanced around and spotted a phone someone had dropped.

"But this..."

Whose was it? Even for a space that collected dust easily, this much of it meant the thing had been sitting there for days.

"Someone from a previous event, maybe?"

If it really had been abandoned that long, there was a decent chance it didn't even belong to anyone from our company. I pressed and held the power button to see whose phone it was. After days of sitting there, I assumed the battery would be dead.

"Huh?"

A chime sounded and the screen lit up — but the home screen had no apps on it at all. Still, if anyone had actually used this phone, I figured the default apps would be there at least. I swiped over to the app drawer. There was only one application installed.

"HR, what?"

The HR Management App.

What even was an HR evaluation? For people who worked in companies, it was... the goal itself, you could say. And an app that managed that...

"Did some executive drop this?"

There was no way to tell whose it was. The only thing on here that even qualified as an app was this HR Management App. No messenger. No internet browser. Nothing.

Still. That word — Management — made me wonder if someone might already be registered as an administrator. I opened the app.

But the app asked for an affiliation the moment it opened, as if it didn't belong to anyone at all. It didn't look like I could even get to the next step without entering one, so I started to put in my own information...

"No."

I had no idea what this thing actually was. The thought that it might be a hacking tool, or some kind of smishing scam connected to it, was enough. I turned the screen off and slipped the phone into my pocket.

If I held onto it, the person who lost it would come looking. That was the idea.

"Whatever. Time to go..."

Two nights and three days.

The new hires of KP Corporation arrived at a place somewhere in Gapyeong that was more or less a youth hostel, and they bowed themselves in half trying to make a good impression on their seniors.

"Good afternoon, sir!"

"Good afternoon!"

"Good afternoon!"

They kept dipping their waists at me — the man with the name tag that read Choi Woojin, Assistant Manager, Planning Department Team 1.

"Right, right. Hang in there—"

I returned the greetings with a reasonably friendly face, and as I watched the new hires file past, I thought...

"...Must be nice."

I found myself hating the version of me who'd already made Assistant Manager and learned just how rotten this company tasted. Still, I had a colleague who was tasting that same rot right along with me.

"Hey."

"Hmm?"

"Want some coffee?"

"Coffee. Ah, thanks."

I took the canned coffee from Kim Jinyong, my joining-year peer and an Assistant Manager over in the HR team. He crouched down beside me as I cracked the tab — pssht — and tucked a cigarette between his lips with a grin.

"Yo, Woojin. You see the kids?"

"See what?"

"Lot of cute ones this time."

"Take it easy. Your bones are gonna crumble."

"Nah, my family's all thick-boned. We're good."

"Bullshit."

It wasn't exactly a conversation with any nutritional value, so I just sipped the coffee he'd handed me.

"No, but seriously. There was this one girl who was actually gorgeous."

"Where?"

"Dunno, she's probably eating right now. But I'm telling you, she was no joke. You didn't see her?"

"When would I have time to look? Lim Jiwoo's been dumping so much shit on me I'm about to drop dead."

"Ah. Condolences."

Among people who had their heads on straight, Lim Jiwoo's reputation was pretty infamous. The problem was that the number of people with their heads on straight was not very large. Kim Jinyong was one of that small number...

"What can you do. At least she's nice to look at."

"Nice to look at, my ass..."

"Come on, she is. Where else are you gonna find a woman like Lim Jiwoo? She's the kind you couldn't even talk to if you ran into her somewhere else."

"I mean..."

...or so I had thought.

I considered smacking him hard across the back of the head as he crouched there, but I held back with the patience of a Buddha.

And then:

"That face is fucking gorgeous. Body is insane. Voice has that nice little nasal lilt. And those eyes, man — those eyes are no joke. When she does that smiling-eyes thing, holy shit..."

"......"

Kim Jinyong praised Lim Jiwoo with enough enthusiasm that I started to doubt whether he actually had his head on straight at all. Afraid this particular topic was going to run a while, I started sidling away and left him there.

"Where you going?"

"To rest."

"Good luck—"

He didn't seem particularly interested in stopping me. He just waved me off.

After that, Kim Jinyong's "good luck" turned out to be something of a prophecy. The work Lim Jiwoo dumped on me over the next two days was, without question, brutal.

"Woojin, could you get this ready for me?"

"Woojin, take the kids over there for me, would you?"

"Woojin, did you grab that?"

That bitch.

Lim Jiwoo was cunning about it. She made her "requests" — favors too politely phrased to call actual abuse — in front of a crowd of new hires. And that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was what made it cunning. Me going along with those requests planted the image of a nice guy in the new hires' heads. If I got angry or refused, that same nice-guy image made the fall even steeper. And on top of all that, she got to advertise, in front of all those people, that she was someone with the authority to give orders.

"...I'm going to lose my mind."

I'd spent two days on this bullshit, with no personal time whatsoever — just running around like a dog. Naturally, I hadn't been able to get any actual company work done either...

"Ah... right."

...or so I'd thought.

The orientation would be over in about an hour. In the sliver of free time that opened up, I headed for the front desk near the youth hostel entrance.

"Sorry, could I ask you something?"

"Yes?"

"Has anyone inquired about a lost item?"

"What are you looking for?"

"Ah, no — I'm not looking for anything. I was just wondering if anyone asked about a lost phone."

"A phone... no, nobody's said anything."

"Is that so?"

I smiled, said I understood, thanked her, and stepped into the bathroom. I took out the phone I'd picked up the day before last.

Now that I looked at it... there wasn't even a battery icon in the top right.

"Definitely..."

This wasn't a normal phone. Something was off. I didn't know if that meant it had some kind of perpetual power source, but I opened the HR Management App again.

"......"

Affiliation. I stared at the blinking cursor for a moment...

I just entered my own record. It was barely even personal information at this level — embarrassing to call it that, really — and even if someone tried to use it, Assistant Manager wasn't exactly a position worth exploiting. Besides, if this turned out to be some executive's phone, and they asked why I'd entered my information without permission, I could just say I'd been trying to figure out who it belonged to.

...or so I'd thought.

Before I could even process what had been approved, the screen moved on. A list of departments appeared — Planning, HR, Finance, and so on. I tapped Planning, the one I belonged to, and the teams underneath it came up.

Team 1, Team 2, Team 3.

I tapped Team 1, the one I was on...

"...Where am I?"

Everyone on our team was there — except me. Because I was the "administrator," maybe? I decided that was probably it and scrolled down. The information on everyone in Team 1 unspooled in a long list.

Education. Affiliation. Rank. Even an ID photo.

And the one that stood out most was, of course...

"...Lim Jiwoo."

Lim Jiwoo's face. I tapped it.

A handful of details on Lim Jiwoo came up. And below them — Intensive Management.

What was that supposed to be? I tapped it to find out, but all I got was this:

That was all it said, so I still had no idea what any of this was, or what Intensive Management even meant. I had a strong feeling that the moment I tapped Yes, I would never be able to show this phone to another living soul...

...Tap.