A Director, Delivered
"That felt so satisfying~"
Yoo Jinchae thrust her thumb up, her face practically glowing. I tugged the laptop out of her hand as I answered.
"You were quite the actress back there."
"Actress? That was a hundred percent genuine, thank you very much~"
Uh-huh. Sure it was.
Where had all those welling tears gone, I wondered. Even striding down the hallway at speed, her mouth never once stopped.
"I honestly thought I was going to die getting all this ready in a single day, so it'd better have been worth it~ Well, judging by the absolute wreck we left behind, I'd say we're at least half successful?"
In each of our hands: armfuls of crumpled documents and a laptop.
On our backs: clean, professional attire appropriate for a regular corporate meeting.
Every last bit of it had been thrown together in a frantic scramble by this very morning.
That was close.
So, here's how it all went down.
When I was mulling over Baek Cheonhyeong's proposal, I'd fully intended to act—if I acted at all—calmly and alone.
But then. The moment I read the text he'd sent:
Let the record show that I lost all reason.
If that isn't a provocation, what is?
How was that any different from 'What, scared? Do it if you can.'
The funny part is that I fell for such a cheap jab.
By the time I came back to my senses, I had apparently bragged to Baek Cheonhyeong that I'd do it, and had already blasted a group message out to the teachers that same night.
A nuisance of nuisances….
"Honestly, when I got that text, I couldn't think of a single person who'd show up at the kindergarten at that hour of the night—and then what do you know, everyone was already there. I nearly fell over. I mean, I only came to watch in case you decided to set the place on fire this time."
I'm sorry, what?
"Anyway, the teamwork of Bada Kindergarten's teachers is just chef's kiss, isn't it? Love it. Absolutely love it~"
…Fine, that part genuinely did shock me too.
Getting a message like that, I hadn't known whether anyone would actually come.
"Why on earth did you end it with 'thank you for everything'?"
No idea. At the time, getting fired felt like the obvious outcome, so it just came out that way.
"Anyone reading that would think you were getting your affairs in order before they shipped you off somewhere~"
That much, I'll admit, I hadn't considered.
"Not that I was going to let that happen, of course…?"
"Which is why I got bombarded with phone calls and just sat tight at the kindergarten, obediently waiting."
Yoo Jinchae should have been there to hear Kang Sagwa, woken straight out of sleep, mumble, Stay put. Please. I'm begging you.
"Yep~ got it, got it. And there we all were, being ever so patient—after making a useless hunk of junk out of the safe none of us could even open, and thoroughly emptying out the Director's computer for good measure."
……
Anyway, the long and short of it: the teachers, who'd come running in the dead of night despite the bolt from the blue, ended up lecturing me about recklessness and arriving at the conclusion that we should prepare together instead.
And so, thanks to the collective wisdom of the group, I was able to regain a slightly clearer head and get everything in order, methodically this time.
We strengthened the evidence I'd gathered, and built all the visual materials together.
Beyond that, there was the outfit I was wearing now, and the effort we'd put into disguising the ransacked Director's office as a water-damaged one, so nobody would catch on ahead of time.
The help was so invaluable that I shudder to think what would've happened if I'd done it all alone.
Though when it came to the final decision… there was, admittedly, a bit of a disagreement.
Who would walk into that meeting room with me.
Wonderfully, everyone volunteered themselves without hesitation….
But I judged that Kang Sagwa and Kwon Haeseong weren't the right fit for a presentation.
And Park Edeun, that man… for some reason, I just didn't trust him with it.
More than anything, Yoo Jinchae was simply the best candidate.
She could deliver a presentation or put on an act shamelessly and without a hitch. No hesitation whatsoever… and of anyone, she had the deepest grudge against the Director.
I trusted her from the moment I learned she'd once, in a fit of rage, slapped the man across the face while drunk.
Only one thing gave me pause—her past as a former field team leader at BOND….
The moment I heard that, I became certain that Yoo Jinchae becoming unemployed was not an outcome the universe would permit.
"I wanted to savor that disaster a little longer, you know! Ideally, I'd have loved for every last one of them to get strung together like a thread of dried fish and vanish right before my eyes~"
No need to say it—that job would fall to Baek Cheonhyeong.
This was, by any measure, the best condition I'd seen Yoo Jinchae in for weeks.
Nodding in agreement, I pressed the elevator button. And as she stepped into the car that had just arrived, she let out a small "oh" and turned to me with a helplessly troubled face.
"Oh, right… um, what are we doing about a replacement Director? I don't know anyone suitable for the job."
Ah. That.
Baek Cheonhyeong had told me to find a credible replacement too.
So all of us had put our heads together last night trying to hunt one down—and failed, spectacularly.
Where exactly were we supposed to conjure a brand-new kindergarten director overnight?
But then.
Recalling a face I'd seen in the meeting room just moments ago, I allowed the corner of my mouth to curl up.
"I think I might be able to find us a Director."
The very next day after I took my half-day, threw the bomb into the regular meeting, and walked out.
A new Director was delivered to the front gates of the kindergarten.
A middle-aged man stood at the entrance, dressed not in the suit I remembered but in the sort of clothes you'd expect from a friendly neighborhood uncle. I opened the door for him with my most pleasant expression.
"Hello. I never expected to meet you like this—I'm Na Hwiyeon, the teacher of the seven-year-old Dolphin Class. It's a pleasure to have you with us."
Total lie. I knew perfectly well he was coming.
"Oh my…. We did meet before, didn't we? Ah, right, yesterday too. I'm afraid I was too worked up yesterday to take anything in properly. I apologize for that."
Do you remember.
The man who had roared like a lion at the Director in that meeting room.
He was also the one who'd emceed at the challenge cook-off we held in the kindergarten's outdoor playground—held together with the man who was now, at long last, the former Director.
The board member who had donated the princely sum of fifty million won, that is.
"I was planning to retire from the company soon, at my age…. And then suddenly they tell me to run a kindergarten. Heh heh."
Yes, well. I was the one who recommended you for the position.
Snatching a man on the verge of retirement and seating him back at a desk—that was me.
I'm sorry, but we'll need you to stay with us a while longer.
Realistically, finding a director with actual kindergarten management experience on such short notice was impossible.
Which meant the only option was to pick someone whose character had already been proven.
If he turned out not to be great at the job, fine—we'd just make him a figurehead.
Besides, the teachers were already splitting up and handling most of the old Director's work anyway. It changes nothing.
"I'm not sure I'll be any good at this. But I'll do my very best! Oh, and—my name is Kang Beomseok. Please take care of me."
Watching a director get swapped out overnight, I smiled with deep satisfaction.
I'd only heard rumors he was about to retire, which is why I took the chance.
I'd proposed it half in doubt, and when Baek Cheonhyeong gave his answer without a moment's hesitation, I couldn't tell you how relieved I was.
It felt like a ten-year-old knot in my chest finally coming loose.
The old Director simply ceasing to exist was, by itself, more than enough to celebrate.
Look—even the others were cheering behind me.
"…Huh. It actually worked."
"Woo~ one more comrade!"
"Please be good to us. If you run away, we're doomed."
"Thank goodness, honestly…. Apples! We HAVE to take good care of him."
After that, explaining the operations to the new Director was left to Yoo Jinchae, while the rest of the teachers dispersed to their own duties.
As for me, I headed straight up the stairs toward the Dolphin Class.
The former Director, I heard, was fired on the spot—and then sued on top of it.
Furthermore, several board members and staff above him had been implicated in the bribery and were reportedly under investigation as a group.
Criminal charges and fines would be unavoidable, I'd wager.
Could it possibly get any more perfect than this?
And all the more so given how Baek Cheonhyeong had handled the aftermath—neither my name nor Yoo Jinchae's had come up at all as the whistleblowers.
Looking at how things have turned out, I don't think I'm getting cut loose anytime soon.
Feeling thoroughly refreshed, I opened the door to the Dolphin Class.
The children looked more lovable than ever today.
Kang Beomseok, former managing director of BOND Corporation—former now, technically—was simply flustered by his workplace's overnight transformation.
I was supposed to retire at the end of next month….
Being summoned to the CEO's office the day after grabbing the Bada Kindergarten Director by the hair during a regular meeting—there was nothing about his situation that wasn't absurd.
Seventeen years of service without a single incident on record.
And I go and cause a scandal one month before retirement.
But separate from how serious the situation was, his heart felt light. Almost giddy.
After all, it was the first time in his entire life he'd grabbed someone by the hair with such fiery abandon.
And that bastard deserved every bit of it! A rotten piece of trash if there ever was one!
Even now, the thought of that young teacher and the little ones who'd played in the sand with him, all while living under such filth, made a thousand bonfires roar to life in his chest.
But… he hadn't expected the conversation that awaited him in the CEO's office to go the way it did.
— So you really are retiring? And what exactly will you do after you retire?
— Excuse me…? Well, I bought a country house, so I thought I'd tend a vegetable garden, raise a dog, live quietly….
— You could do that at seventy just as easily.
— I suppose I could. I suppose I could….
— How does the position of kindergarten director sound? Think of it as earning your retirement fund at a leisurely pace.
— I've never done anything like that….
— Perfect timing, then. Try it.
Never once had the CEO pushed anything on him that hard.
He'd said he'd think it over—but somehow, when he showed up at work this morning, his own position had already vanished, and he'd been given instructions to report to the kindergarten instead.
It's a company I was leaving anyway, so I've no lingering attachments—but this isn't quite how it should be done, is it?
His mind had been a tangled mess the entire way to the kindergarten.
It was true that he loved children.
Twenty years ago—if only his wife hadn't passed from illness….
Maybe by now I'd have grown children, and grandchildren young enough to be attending a place like this.
Never remarrying all these years because he couldn't forget the wife he'd lost—that had been his own choice, so he had no regrets there.
But…. that means I've never actually raised a child.
Loving children was one thing. Knowing how to actually handle a child—a real, living one—was another matter entirely.
Kang Beomseok sighed in front of the kindergarten gates, which he'd reached before he knew it.
Should I just turn back now and say I can't do it?
Right there, in the moment he was agonizing over whether to march back to the CEO and cling to his trouser leg while refusing the job outright—
The door swung open, and a young man with a pale, youthful face appeared.
That's the teacher from the meeting room yesterday, isn't it?
"Hello. I never expected to meet you like this—I'm Na Hwiyeon, the teacher of the seven-year-old Dolphin Class. It's a pleasure to have you with us."
Behind him, more young faces—bright and full of life.
He couldn't make out their words over the distance, but every one of them was smiling at him, warmly, as if welcoming him home.
Up close they looked even younger than they had from across the meeting room, and something swelled up from the very depths of his chest all over again.
You absolute rotten bastard!! On people this young and this sweet-natured!
And in that surge of anger-laced heartache, Kang Beomseok made a declaration in his heart before he could stop himself.
At the very least, I'm going to protect these people and these children!
Completely unaware, of course, that the young men's smiles and their warm welcome meant something else entirely.