It's Punishment, So Why Are You Wet? (1)
I finished lunch with Min Seoeun talking about the kind of person she'd been before she joined the company.
Whether it was because the imprint toward me had already taken a slight hold, she laid out her entire past without the faintest hint of hesitation. How she'd ended up in taekwondo. How she'd gotten hurt. How she'd thrown herself into studying. Putting all of it together...
"Man. Fate really is something..."
Min Seoeun had never been with anyone.
Not because she lacked the goods. When she was an athlete, she'd been too consumed by training to think about anything else. After she retired, she'd been too consumed by studying. Once she got into university, she'd been too consumed by studying all over again. And when graduation season rolled around, she'd been too consumed by the job hunt.
Which meant...
"...Three of them, huh."
Just like Lim Jiwoo and Chae Dayeon, for whom I'd already been the first — Seoeun would make three. Three women whose first time would belong to me.
Sleeping with a virgin even once in your life is a pretty rare experience. Getting to take three of them in your late twenties was genuinely entertaining.
Anyway.
After we came back to the office together, the small talk vanished. From that point on it was nothing but work.
A Doberman. True to being a smart dog, Seoeun absorbed everything I walked her through at remarkable speed. I didn't expect her to pull her own weight from day one, but this was more than enough to get my hopes up.
People are funny that way. When the person you're teaching picks things up this fast, the teacher gets fired up too and just keeps wanting to show them more.
I was in the middle of explaining something when Han Minah came over.
"Sorry to interrupt, Woojin, but could I borrow Seoeun for a moment?"
"Of course. What's this about?"
"Nothing major. I just wanted to have a brief talk with her."
"Sure. Seoeun, go have a word with the Team Leader."
"Yes."
Seoeun gave me a light bow and followed Han Minah out.
Once I was alone, I checked the clock. Four in the afternoon.
"...She should be loosened up by now."
About what happened earlier.
Come to Small Conference Room 2 on the 7th floor.
I sent the messages and headed for the meeting spot without waiting to see whether she replied.
Standing in front of Small Conference Room 2, I glanced up at the panel. A zero — nobody inside — and a dash where a reservation would have been.
I went in and pressed one of the buttons on the panel beside the door. The one that meant a strictly confidential discussion was in progress. That absolutely no one except authorized personnel was to enter. That ignoring the warning and walking in was grounds for disciplinary action. Press it, and a red light came on outside the door.
With the room turned into a half-sealed chamber, I pulled up Ju Harin's page while I waited.
Current HR Evaluation Score — 0 pts(±)
Promotion Desire — High(±)
Current Location — 11 Sangil-ro 6-gil, Gangdong-gu, Seoul · KP Corporation
1. In any situation related to HR evaluations, Choi Woojin's opinion is absolute, and she will never disclose anything related to this to anyone.
2. She believes that a deduction in promotion points can be substituted with corporal punishment.
3. Getting her ass spanked makes her drip with arousal.
Her Promotion Desire had dropped from Very High down to a merely High. I was turning over how to steer the conversation once she arrived when, a moment later...
Knock knock.
"Yes!"
The door rumbled open.
"Come in."
"......"
Ju Harin stepped inside with her face already drawn tight and stopped by the door, glaring at me.
"What did you call me here for?"
I didn't answer. I just looked her over, openly, from top to bottom.
A chest that filled out just enough. A waist that nipped in the way a slender figure should. Hips that flared wide again. And as for the most important part right now — her ass — I had no way of checking it while she was standing face-to-face with me.
Which meant we needed to talk, and then I needed to check.
"Sit down."
"......"
"Aren't you going to talk?"
I jerked my chin at the seat across from me. Harin sat, watching me with undisguised wariness.
"What did you want to..."
"What was that earlier? What exactly happened?"
"W-what?"
"You know better than I do. Why the delay when the new employee kits were being handed out. That's what I'm asking."
"......"
Instead of answering, Harin turned her head to the side.
Which gave me her profile. And — holy hell. She was insanely, ridiculously beautiful.
Chae Dayeon was cute. Han Minah was radiant. Min Seoeun was striking. All three of them were gorgeous, but if you were ranking on face alone, Lim Jiwoo edged slightly ahead of the other three.
The only woman who could actually go toe-to-toe with Jiwoo was Ju Harin.
A deer. With her head turned like that, those enormous deer-like eyes made her look like the tragic heroine of some film. Yes — an actress. She had that quality, the kind where the face itself is the whole instrument. Then she looked back at me.
"...I'm sorry. I have nothing to say."
She admitted her fault cleanly, without dressing it up.
Unlike Lim Jiwoo, who knew exactly how pretty she was and wielded that fact to perfection, Harin gave off no sense of using her face at all. If anything, she seemed to feel the opposite of Jiwoo — that her looks got in the way. She wanted to be judged on her ability alone, and because of that, the apology she was offering now had a fair amount of genuine weight behind it.
And there aren't many people who can pick a fight with an apology like that.
"Does saying sorry make it go away?"
"What?"
"I said, does saying sorry end it. Wasn't this a job that should've been finished by eleven? Eleven-thirty at the latest? What is this, then? That means you didn't prepare at all last week and just slacked off."
Except for me.
"The new employee kits aren't actually that important to company life. I'll grant you that. If they didn't get them in the morning, they could get them in the afternoon."
I laid into the hole she'd punched in the morning's schedule the way an HR evaluator would.
"You saw it too, right? People lining up, the whole place in chaos. That would've left a gap in everyone's morning work. You know that, don't you?"
It was a stretch, sure — but just solid enough that she couldn't easily refute it. And the fact that she was the one who'd actually caused the mess turned that stretch into something firm.
"What if this hadn't been new employee kits? What if it had been something that actually mattered? It wouldn't have just been delayed work, you know."
"......"
"This isn't something that ends with one 'I'm sorry.' If this is the kind of thing you show me, how am I supposed to trust you when an important project comes up later? Right?"
That was how personnel work actually functioned. Results and ability mattered, but work attitude was a clear evaluation factor in its own right.
And to make sure she felt that a whole lot more sharply...
Promotion Desire — Very High(±)
The moment I did, Harin—
"...I'm sorry. I'll do better from now on."
Unlike before, when she'd kept her mouth shut no matter how much I laid into her, she dropped her head and offered another apology that actually sounded like she meant it.
Except... sincerity wasn't the only thing in it.
Shame. Humiliation. Disgrace.
I couldn't remember when or how things had gone sour between us, but it had definitely been over something small. Different departments, though, so the grudge had never gotten resolved — and back then we'd barely had any reason to clash, so neither of us had felt the need to resolve it.
Just like I called her a fucking bitch, she probably called me a fucking bastard.
And now she had to say she was sorry to someone like that. Harin bit down on her lip, swallowing the shame, the humiliation, the disgrace, and tried to put sincerity on display instead. But who, exactly, was supposed to be the judge of sincerity?
"Do you truly believe you're sorry?"
"Yes. I was truly in the wrong. From now on I'll... make sure this never happens again. I'm sorry."
"You're saying that from the heart?"
"Yes. I sincerely apologize."
"Good. Then, Harin — let's check just how sincerely sorry you are."
"What?"
That would be me.
"What do you mean..."
"If you did something wrong, you get punished. That's obvious, isn't it? That's why I asked earlier — does saying sorry end it. Originally, your promotion points... you know they should go into the negative, right?"
"Wait — then what, what am I supposed to..."
"Why are you asking me? You're the one who messed up."
"......"
She clearly hadn't seen this coming. Harin's eyes trembled at the corners, panic written all the way through them.
The funny part was this: she was probably more rattled by the solution she'd come up with herself than by the situation I'd just laid out.
But even that wasn't the biggest shock waiting for her.
"Or we put your promotion points in the negative. But Harin... what happens if your promotion points go negative?"
"W-wait, that...!"
If she'd been Assistant Manager rank at least, negative promotion points would still have left the Staff rank as a buffer. But Ju Harin was a regular Staff employee. If she didn't propose the solution she'd thought of — and then actually go through with it — she could be fired.
If her Promotion Desire had been low, she probably would have just told me to do whatever I wanted.
"...I-I'll take the hits."
With her Promotion Desire cranked all the way to Very High, Harin offered up that solution herself, in a timid little voice.
"You'll take the hits?"
"Yes. I'll take... I'll take them. Would that be enough?"
"Take the hits, meaning exactly... hang on. Take hits where, exactly? You're not actually crazy enough to be asking me to beat you up, I assume."
I put on a performance good enough to surprise even myself, pressing her to spell out exactly what kind of punishment she meant.
Harin thought about it for a long time, her lip caught lightly between her teeth.
"...I'll take them on the ass."
"Hmm... alright. Let's do that. How many do you want?"
"That shouldn't be up to me... Woojin... I mean, could you decide, Assistant Manager?"
Choosing how many she had to take was apparently a step too far. She handed the decision to me.
"A clean ten, then."
"Ten?"
"Yes. Needless to say, I'm not going to beat you like I'm trying to kill you or anything."
"...Understood."
She'd given me the decision. Objecting now would make the sincerity she'd been performing look like a joke. So Harin nodded at ten.
Well then.
"Take off your pants."
"What?!"
"Take off your pants."
Time to check the ass I hadn't been able to see earlier.
"Don't tell me you were planning to take them with your pants on. That would be... a little lacking in sincerity, don't you think?"
"......"
I was the one holding every card here. The kind of absolute authority she couldn't push back against even if she wanted to. If I stood up right now and told her she was fired, no discussion, the only thing Harin would be able to do was drop to her knees and beg me not to.
She knew that as well as I did.
"...Alright."
Harin bit her lip and slowly rose from her seat.