I'm Min Seoeun, Please Take Care of Me (3)
Promotion Desire is directly tied to how efficiently a person works.
That's only natural. Someone with low Promotion Desire isn't going to bust their ass. High Promotion Desire, on the other hand, means they want that promotion badly enough to throw themselves into the job.
Which is why I had to wonder.
Ju Harin, whose Promotion Desire had been sitting at rock bottom all morning — had she actually gotten her work done?
As if to prove she hadn't—
"Jeez. What a circus."
The sixth floor. The moment we stepped onto the floor that housed the HR department, the place was packed.
Normally, when new hires arrive, you give them the handful of things you can explain on the spot and send them straight down to pick up their new-hire kits. That was the usual flow. But Harin's Promotion Desire had been at rock bottom all morning, so of course nothing had moved the way it was supposed to. The snowball that started there had apparently kept rolling right up to now.
Over there. Beyond the crowd, I could see Ju Harin's face — startled, flustered, hurrying from one thing to the next.
Come to think of it... this was the first time I was meeting her since registering her as an Intensive Management Target. On top of that, her Promotion Desire was sitting at Very High right now. I was curious how she'd react to running into me — her Examiner — in a situation like this. But first things first.
"Let's get in line."
"Ah, yes."
"Yes."
I took Park Chihyeon and Min Seoeun and joined the line for the new-hire kits.
A glance at the clock said 11:50. Ordinarily, no matter how behind things got, the kits were all handed out before noon. By that measure, we'd come down to HR pretty late. If everything had gone the way it was supposed to, we would have dropped by during a quiet stretch, grabbed the kits, and headed straight back up to the office.
And the second the clock hit twelve, we'd go eat.
Except.
"Hmm... it's past twelve."
The line ahead of us was that long. It was already 12:05, and there were still about three new hires from other departments in front of us.
What's your department and name? So-and-so from such-and-such. One moment, let me check. After that little ritual, Harin would hand over a small box, and that was the kit delivered. She ran through the same process three more times, and then it was our turn.
"Next, please... ah."
Ju Harin saw me and froze.
I made a show of pulling out my phone and looking at the lit screen.
"You're running pretty late, huh?"
"Th-ah..."
"Just give them to us already. We need to go eat."
"Y-yes. First, which department..."
"You don't know who I am?"
"There's still a procedure..."
"You already know."
"Th..."
HR. A department that managed people's positions naturally wielded serious power. Not that Harin had used that power to terrorize anyone — but it probably hadn't been entirely absent from the reasons she'd always talked down to me.
And that same Ju Harin was now biting her lip and bowing her head.
"...I'm sorry. There's a procedure I have to follow. Could you tell me your department and name?"
Not that it mattered. The satisfaction I was feeling had less to do with her being an HR employee and a lot more to do with the fact that she was the fucking bitch who always snarled at me the second we crossed paths.
And just like Lim Jiwoo used to do to me—
"Chihyeon, Seoeun. Just give her your names, department, and employee numbers."
"Ah, yes."
"Yes, understood."
Harin said nothing. Doing this in front of other people was grinding her pride and her dignity into the floor.
"What are you doing? Hurry up."
"Ah, yes. Underst— understood."
Even then, she shot me a brief glare before disappearing somewhere and coming back with two small boxes.
"Park Chihyeon."
"Yes!"
"And Min Seoeun."
"Yes."
By the time it was over, the clock read 12:10. In other words, ten minutes of our precious lunch hour had vanished.
"Ten minutes. Hmm..."
Harin said nothing. Because of her.
"Harin. What happened that made you this late?"
"...I'm sorry."
"Well. I mean, it happens."
She kept her head slightly bowed and didn't open her mouth, like even exchanging words with me was something she wanted no part of.
Fine by me.
"We'll talk about this again later."
"Talk about what, exactly...?"
"You being late."
"That's not..."
Harin started to argue, then caught sight of the new hires standing next to me and shut her mouth again.
Looked like we were done here.
"Let's go. Us too."
If our company had a tradition, this was it. When a new hire showed up, their mentor bought lunch on day one. No exceptions. Sit down over a meal the second they walk in the door, talk a little, get a little closer — that was the idea.
They'd be stuck to your side for a month if you were lucky, close to half a year if you weren't, learning the job. And even after they'd become a proper employee, they'd still be stuck to you. So right now—
"Seoeun, is there anything you particularly like?"
"I don't have any real preferences. Whatever you would like is fine, Assistant Manager."
"Come on, it's your first day. You should get what you want. That's how this works."
"Then... would stew be all right?"
After handing the unnecessary Park Chihyeon off to Yu Minseong, I headed out of the building with Min Seoeun.
"Stew's great. There's a place right out front that does every kind of stew well. We can go there."
"Yes."
Min Seoeun answered with that same bluntness and fell into step beside me.
She really was tall. Lim Jiwoo had been pretty tall standing next to me, but Seoeun had a good few centimeters on her.
"Seoeun, if it's not too rude — can I ask your height?"
"A hundred and seventy-one centimeters."
"Oh."
She really had cleared a hundred and seventy. Damn.
Seen from the side, Min Seoeun was a woman whose height suited her perfectly. Legs as long as that height promised. Hips as wide as that height promised. An ass as full as that height promised. But what really made her height work was the atmosphere she carried.
"You said you used to be a taekwondo athlete. Were you any good?"
"I believe I was reasonably skilled. I made the national youth team in middle school."
"Wow. So you were the real deal."
The face that barely changed expression. The voice, low for a woman. The way she walked, long arms and legs swinging with each stride. And on top of it all, that stiff military register most women would never touch — it all reeked of someone built for organizational life.
A brand-new hire who somehow gave off the air of a boss. That was Min Seoeun.
"This is the place. It's a hidden gem. As you can see from the menu, they've got soft tofu stew, kimchi stew, soybean paste stew — all of it good. Pick whatever you want."
"Then I'll have the soft tofu stew."
"Excuse me—"
I raised a hand after we'd chosen, and a server came over. I ordered one soft tofu stew and one kimchi stew, then looked at Min Seoeun and found her already performing the most basic courtesy you show a superior.
Setting the utensils.
She arranged a spoon and chopsticks neatly in front of me, poured a glass of water and slid it over, then looked at me with that same blunt expression.
Time to get to know her, then. Might as well figure out what kind of person Min Seoeun actually was.
"You mentioned you quit sports. Did you throw yourself into studying right after?"
"That's correct."
"Was studying hard? I'm not looking down on athletes or anything — it's just a completely different goal. Was it tough to adjust?"
"Honestly, it wasn't easy. But I treated it as something I had to do, so I worked hard."
And this was a major corporation, no less. Even with the number of college students shrinking year after year, the resume you needed to walk through a conglomerate's front door was still stacked to the ceiling. People started prepping for that before they even hit elementary school. The fact that she'd spent her whole life through high school on sports, then picked up studying and gotten into a good university, was proof that Min Seoeun was the kind of person who, once she started something, saw it through to the end.
"How did it feel when you got the acceptance text?"
"It felt good. Honestly, I didn't think I'd land a job on the first try... so that made it even better."
"Ah..."
And yet, in the middle of all that composure, she was still unmistakably a new hire on day one. The faintest shift crossed the face of the woman who'd just said landing the job had felt good.
A smile. Too faint to really call a laugh — the ghost of one. Watching it settle on Min Seoeun's face, I was struck by how much she resembled a Doberman.
Scary. Intimidating. Proud. But an utter fool for her master. That kind of dog.
"...So, Seoeun."
"Yes, Assistant Manager."
"You worked that hard to get in. Makes sense you'd want to start racking up results and get promoted sooner rather than later... right?"
She was silent for a moment. I was going to raise Min Seoeun as my Doberman, after all.
"...That's correct."
Ju Harin's morning duties finally wrapped up a little past the unofficially accepted lunch hour.
"Haa..."
What the hell was wrong with me today? Why did I do that?
It was about time Harin started thinking about a promotion. Sure, the paycheck mattered more than the title — but the paycheck followed the rank, so you couldn't not think about it. She'd been working hard. She really had. So why today, of all days?
The moment she'd clocked in, her motivation had just... evaporated. For the first time since joining the company, Ju Harin had gone and hidden somewhere. By the time she snapped back to her senses and threw herself into handing out the new-hire kits, she was already late, and after cleaning up the aftermath she'd ended up here.
"Harin, you still need to eat."
"Yes... but the time..."
"Just grab a sandwich or something and eat while you work. I know you're busy, but you still have to eat. Go on, it's fine."
"Thank you..."
She answered her manager's concern with a suitably polite smile, then stopped by the convenience store near the office. She paid for a sandwich and a drink, stepped back outside, and—
"Ah—"
There. The moment she spotted that son of a bitch, Ju Harin's body jerked on its own.
Fortunately, Woojin didn't seem to have noticed her yet. He was walking along, talking with the new mentee beside him.
The truth was, Woojin was speaking to Min Seoeun with the same ordinary expression he always wore. But maybe it was because Harin's feelings toward him were so rotten.
"...That fucking idiot."
The look on his face as he talked to Min Seoeun struck her as the look of a guy who'd just been handed a pretty girl and was already wondering how far he could get with her. A simp, basically.
When had things with that man gone this wrong? And over what? The rift was deep enough that she couldn't even remember. At this rate, unless something major happened, they'd probably live the rest of their lives like this.
Ju Harin had never felt any particular need to repair her relationship with Woojin. That was just how people worked. You'd snag on something tiny, barely a scratch, and that scratch would become a crack, and before you knew it the whole thing was past saving. It happened all the time.
"...Hah."
Only after Woojin and Min Seoeun had disappeared from view did Harin slowly walk back into the building.
"Better eat fast and get back to it..."
She couldn't exactly sit there unwrapping a sandwich in an office full of people still working, so she read the room, ducked into an empty conference room, and finished lunch as fast as she could before heading back to her desk.
Afternoon work, starting late. There had been the morning's chaos, but Ju Harin had a good reputation, and nobody gave her any grief about it. She settled in and worked for a good long while.
Then four o'clock arrived.
Ding.
A message from her Examiner.