It's My Grandfather's Heirloom
Friday, lunch hour, I went to a gold shop instead of getting a meal.
Slip out the alley behind the company and you come to Jongno Jewelry Alley. I walked against the tide of office workers pouring toward the restaurants, turning the gold bar in my pocket over and over. It was heavy. I hadn't known a hundred grams could weigh so much. No — it wasn't the weight that was heavy. It was the price.
At the mouth of the alley sat one small, shabby gold shop, faded gold rings lined up behind the glass. A wind chime over the door gave a thin clink as I stepped in. A man in his fifties, a jeweler's loupe hooked on the tip of his nose, looked up from his newspaper.
"Come in. What are you looking for?"
I glanced around once and set the gold bar on the velvet pad. A soft tap. Under the light the stamp flared — FINE GOLD 999.9, 100g. Behind the loupe, his eyes went twice as wide.
"Th-this is... a gold bar? Young man, where did you get this?"
"It's my grandfather's heirloom."
A line I'd rehearsed about a dozen times before falling asleep last night. It came out without a second's hesitation. He set the bar on the scale with a trembling hand, even swabbed it with testing solution, and then his face suddenly hardened. A dry little cough.
"Hmm. Condition's good, but... as you know, gold's dropped a lot these days. Take out the fee, and eleven million is me being truly generous."
Eleven million? When I'd looked it up last night, a hundred grams was trading in the high fourteens. He meant to fleece a kid barely into the workforce. And the decisive part was floating over his head. He was a man, so there was no number — but the thought itself came through perfectly clear.
Chagall. He even caught the year mark.
Cold sweat broke down my back. I hadn't thought of that. On the outside, though, I stayed as shamelessly smooth as I could manage and picked the bar back up.
"Oh, is that right? The shop at the mouth of the alley offered fourteen and a half. I should head over there. Thanks for your time."
"H-hey?! Hold on, young man! Why are you in such a rush!"
He caught my sleeve. Over his head, another line flashed.
There was no such lunatic. I'd invented him a second ago.
"Oh, come on — you think I've been in this business a day or two? Sharp kid. Fine. You're my first customer today, so I'll give up the margin and make it an even fourteen million. Give me the account."
"No fee, right?"
"Aigoo, fine! Fourteen million, no fee!"
A minute later my phone went off.
The instant the first digits of the balance changed, a jolt of electricity ran down my spine. The greater shock was that the old balance had been three hundred fifty-two thousand won. All of it had happened in thirty minutes of a lunch break.
Walking out of the shop, my feet felt like they weren't touching the ground. I also came away with a lesson. From now on, sell them one at a time — and rotate the shops. Passing off a bar stamped this year as Grandfather's heirloom would work once, maybe twice. Let a rumor start, and it would be a genuine headache. How many grandfathers would it take to explain all of this?
On the way back to the office I stopped at a convenience store and bought a triangle kimbap and a bottle of banana milk. For a man with fourteen million won in his account, it was an absurdly plain lunch — and somehow it was the only thing I wanted. Back when I'd first joined, this was what my senior bought me every time we stayed late. I smiled to myself as I held out my card at the register. It was the first time in two years I'd paid without checking the balance.
The moment I sat down, the messenger caught fire.
I looked up. My senior was glaring at me over the top of her monitor, only her eyes showing. Above her head, it read like this.
She'd skipped breakfast. To eat lunch with me. All while clicking her tongue on the outside. This woman. Honestly.
The chat window shut, chilly as you please, but the corner of her mouth had gone up. The bank errand wasn't exactly a lie. A gold shop is a kind of bank.
At two in the afternoon, a team strategy meeting opened in the small conference room. We were there to lock the concept for next week's presentation. Team Leader Ye-won stood at the whiteboard with a heavy face. The team's survival was riding on this one.
"This is the direction for next week's presentation. The target is working women in their twenties and thirties. Not simple moisturizing — a functional concept: restoring a barrier broken down by overtime and stress. Give me your opinions."
Silence. No one spoke. The one who broke it was Manager Park. He'd been sulking all day after his humiliation at yesterday's division meeting, and now he cut in at a slant, knockoff watch jangling.
"Ah, Team Leader Kang. Isn't that a bit niche? Cosmetics are about feeling. Use gloomy words like stress and barrier and the higher-ups won't like it. In our day we just pushed a big picture — something like 'water droplets, pop-pop'..."
No counterproposal. Just an objection for the sake of objecting. The rest of the team only watched the room. The team leader's lips trembled, barely. It was the face of a woman carrying a team alone, in the moment she confirmed that she was, in fact, alone.
Then a chime sounded right by my ear.
This is it.
I raised my hand. It couldn't sound like flattery. Thanks to Proposal Speed-Reading, the reward from the day before yesterday, last quarter's trend-report numbers were still sitting intact in my head.
"Team Leader, your proposal matches the consumer data better than anything else."
Every eye swung to me. The manager's brow creased, but I went on.
"Look at last quarter's basic-skincare report for women in their twenties and thirties. Search volume for emotional keywords like 'dewy glow' and 'hydration' fell twenty-three percent. 'Barrier repair' and 'stress calming' rose forty-seven. What consumers want isn't a big picture. It's function that solves the problem on their own skin. If we're going to convince the division head, we go with your concept."
The team leader's eyes shook, wide open.
"...I see. Choi Woo-jin's data is sound. We'll proceed in this direction. Next item."
Manager Park opened his mouth once more — "But still, the feeling..." — and the team leader said "Next item" again. The same words twice, and even he shut his mouth. The Ice Team Leader's "Next item" landed as hard as "Do it again."
She pushed her glasses up in a hurry and cleared her throat. The voice was the same ice as always. What hovered over her head was not.
Eep. So the team leader was secretly kind of cute. And thinking about it, the sandwiches and this taking of her side were both small wishes. The small ones seemed to surface even when affection was low. A big wish probably wouldn't appear until it cleared seventy. In game terms, daily quests and the main quest.
In that instant a cool sensation washed clean across my face, as if I'd just patted on a mint toner. The improved complexion had taken effect.
When the meeting ended and I got back to my seat, Senior Da-hee drifted over beside my desk with a coffee and stared straight at my face.
"Hey, Choi Woo-jin."
"Yes, Assistant Manager?"
"You... what's going on with your skin?"
"Sorry? What's wrong with my skin?"
She ran a suspicious look along my jaw, then leaned in close. Peach hit me all at once.
"What did you put on? Why is your skin this clear? You're glowing like a peeled egg. Hey — working at a cosmetics company and secretly using the expensive stuff all by yourself is cheating!"
"I'm not, Assistant Manager. I think I've just been sleeping well lately."
"Don't lie. Have you been in any state to sleep well this week?"
She flushed and snapped it under her breath. She was thinking of Tuesday night in the pantry. I laughed it off. Hiding the secret to better skin at a cosmetics company really was cheating. But this was something you couldn't buy anywhere.
Quitting time, basement level two of the parking garage. In a corner, my senior's white sedan sat with its hazards on. I checked the surroundings and got into the passenger seat. The moment the door shut, she gave my tie a light tug. A peck — brief contact, then gone.
"No overtime. I feel like I might actually live."
Hiding her reddened cheeks as she took the wheel, she asked,
"What are you doing this weekend? ...No. I was just asking if you have plans."
The tone was prim. What was over her head was not prim at all.
She'd already built the whole date. She was only waiting on my answer. A laugh almost got out of me, and I laid my hand lightly over the back of hers.
"If it's a day you're free, Da-hee, my whole weekend is open."
"...Who said anything about the whole weekend? Look at you, smooth. Just get out. It's my mom's birthday — I have to go straight there."
She was scolding me, and the corner of her mouth was hooked clear to her ear. I got out, watched her car leave the garage, and headed up toward the first-floor lobby for the subway.
Someone was on the phone in front of the emergency-stair passage. Team Leader Ye-won. She'd taken off her rimless glasses and was holding them, one hand pressed to her forehead. The call seemed to have ended; she lowered the phone and let out a long sigh. A single line of thought rose over her head.
Moon Yu-jin. That eccentric researcher in Product Development — the one who wouldn't so much as open her door to anyone from marketing.
I stopped in front of the stairs and watched the team leader's back for a long time.