The Monster's Hunting Ground
“So it's over, is it—.”
The moment Kang Suho said those words, a shiver ran through the room.
The boy knew exactly where he was standing.
Like a massive target planted in the middle of Yeouido, say.
Chairman Ju Seongcheol of Ilseong Group, for one, already had his hands and feet in motion, sharpening a blade of vengeance.
And that wasn't all.
Within Daeseong Group itself, the place was crawling with vipers who wanted nothing more than to bury Suho alongside me.
It was a burden far too heavy for a young man barely into his twenties to carry.
And yet the boy had said it, plain and clear.
That he would see it through to the end.
So much meaning was packed into that single sentence.
No—truthfully, I wanted to ask him just what that "end" looked like. But I couldn't bring myself to say the words.
Because I had the feeling something would come out of it that even I couldn't handle.
“If that boy is willing to go that far, then I can hardly sit on my hands, can I?”
It seemed the time had come to break my long silence and rise again.
When a greenhorn barely out of school declares he'll march forward without fear of the enemy's spears, what kind of old fool would I be to stand in the back and simply watch, citing my age as an excuse?
And though it was still a delicate matter, if his relationship with that boy's mother deepened any further…….
Then we would no longer simply be the older brother and younger brother who happened to meet at a hobby club.
“You were sent by the CEO?”
A woman in a crisp, tailored suit greeted me with a bright smile.
“Yes. I'm Lee Eunji, and I'll be serving as Secretary to Team Leader Kang Suho going forward. With the establishment of the Special Strategy Operations Team, the CEO decided Team Leader Kang would need a dedicated secretary, and he personally assigned me to the position.”
“The team hasn't even been formally assembled yet. Are you sure that's all right?”
“Perfectly fine. I'll be staying in the executive secretary's office for the time being, so you can reach me anytime if you need anything.”
Center directors, and executives who presided over an entire division, each received one dedicated secretary apiece.
My title might be Team Leader, but in practice I was effectively leading an entire headquarters on my own—which was why the CEO had apparently thought ahead and made the arrangement.
“Also, this is the list of employees who applied to join the new Special Strategy Operations Team. Tap a name on the tablet and you can view their full application as well.”
The new team had been left open not only to outside recruits but also to internal employees, who were free to apply at will.
Still, a brand-new team this risky—I had assumed there wouldn't be all that many applicants right away, but…….
“Hm?”
My finger stopped mid-swipe across the tablet screen.
No matter how far I scrolled, the list showed no sign of ending.
“Th-this many people applied?”
“Of course. This is the team led by none other than Team Leader Kang Suho, after all. From what I hear, the results you've posted have spread not just through our own company but across the whole of Yeouido. And besides…….”
Secretary Lee Eunji added with a note of pride in her smile,
“I only made the cut after beating out a whole field of competitors for the honor of being your secretary.”
I hadn't realized people would go to such lengths just to get into our little new team.
But if the CEO had chosen her in the end, that had to mean she was every bit as capable as she sounded.
“……”
I looked over the list slowly.
What I'd expected were new hires, or people of relatively low rank.
But there they were—associates, managers, senior managers—and not only that, even people currently working at rival brokerages had made it onto the list.
Yet my gaze came to a halt somewhere else entirely.
[Applicant: Cheon Doa (Team Leader, Research Operations Team, Daeseong Securities Research Center)]
“……?”
No. What on earth was Team Leader Cheon doing on this list!
But what came below her was even better.
[Applicant: Song Jiwoon (Team Leader, Delta One)]
Team Leader Song, too?
“As it happens, those two applied as well, and it apparently caused quite an uproar in HR.”
“I'd imagine so. Both of them are the aces of their respective departments.”
Team Leader Cheon Doa and Team Leader Song Jiwoon both had thoroughly proven track records.
Having those two join my team would be an enormous asset—but the problem was that they'd have to abandon their current posts to do it.
In other words, they'd have to become my subordinates. Were they truly okay with that?
“Oh?”
And then, further down, one more welcome name caught my eye.
[Applicant: Kim Sujin (Associate, Research Operations Team)]
So my old senior had applied too.
A smile rose to my face all on its own.
No wonder she'd been wearing such a strangely determined look in her eyes every time I ran into her these past few days.
“With this many applicants, even the CEO says you could pick just a handful from the list and be perfectly covered. HR can run their internal screening on the rest and hire additional staff who'd be useful to you, Team Leader.”
“Ah, right.”
There was no way I could personally review applications from this many people anyway.
It seemed best to check off a few names and leave the rest to HR.
The moment I started tapping names at random, though—
“……!”
A vile stench suddenly surged up, and I flinched hard, jabbing the back button.
“What's wrong?”
“Ah—. It's nothing.”
Was my nose reacting even here?
So it wasn't just a stock's chart, a proposal, or a financial statement—applications had a smell to them too, did they?
This was a brand-new experience.
“……”
Keeping one careful eye on Secretary Lee, I cautiously tapped the name of the applicant who had just unleashed that horrifying stench.
[Applicant: Choi Gangjin]
An experienced hire who had applied to join our company.
Ugh.
I was sorry, but this one was a hard no.
The sickening, nostril-searing reek was already flooding back in.
Then what about someone else?
I tapped another name at random.
This time, a fragrance as clear and refreshing as spring water began to spread through the air.
Just as I thought.
My nose, it seemed, was telling me exactly who I needed to pick.
“Secretary Lee.”
“Yes, Team Leader.”
“Would it be all right if I didn't hand the list over to HR, and instead selected everyone myself, right here?”
“I— beg pardon? Are you, are you sure? Reviewing them all on your own will take quite a while……”
“Yes, I think I'll manage. It shouldn't take all that long, either. I'll let you know when I'm finished.”
“Ah…… yes. Then, I'll, I'll be waiting, Team Leader.”
Secretary Lee Eunji left the room with a doubtful look on her face.
I drew a deep breath, pulled the tablet firmly toward myself, and began tapping through the names one by one.
“Gyaaagh—!”
And it was horrific right from the start.
A reek of garbage, as if something had been left rotting at the bottom of a sewer, wrenched a scream right out of me.
“Not this one.”
I hadn't even properly read the application.
Where the person worked, what experience they had—none of it registered.
Only the fatal stench lingered at the tip of my nose.
“Come on, this one better be……”
I tapped the next name.
“Hkk—!”
Disaster again.
A different flavor of horror this time—a dreadful stench slammed into me like a fist.
Suppressing the urge to gag, I hurriedly closed the file.
“Whew—.”
So this wasn't going to be easy.
So this was the life of a team leader who spoke for an entire department, was it?
“Next up is……”
After stepping on two landmines in a row, my head was throbbing.
Honestly, if I'd judged them purely by the credentials on paper, a whole truckload of these people were the kind I'd have hired without a second question.
But a team isn't necessarily a good team just because every member is brilliant.
“Just look at the soccer team I root for……”
The memory of that foul-smelling performance I'd briefly forgotten made me shake my head at once.
“Hang in there. There are bound to be plenty of good ones in this pile too.”
I shook a nutritional supplement into my mouth—the kind they say is good for the nose.
My nose was already screaming at me to save it, I could tell.
But hey, you started all this, didn't you?
So you'd better see it through to the end!
On the other hand…… I would need to pick up the pace.
Before I keeled over from the stench, that is.
“Team Leader Kang did it himself?”
“Yes. Without borrowing anyone's hands at all, Team Leader Kang Suho reviewed the list and made every selection personally.”
CEO Kwon Junyong tilted his head at his secretary's report.
So the young man had combed through that mountain of applications one by one and assembled the team with his own two hands.
Half in doubt, half in wonder, he pulled up the list of successful candidates that Kang Suho had submitted.
It was a varied mix—seasoned hands already renowned as aces within Daeseong Securities, experienced hires poached from rival firms, and fresh recruits barely through the door.
“Sifting gems from gravel across a list this size would have taken anyone at least several days. And you're telling me he did this in one day?”
“Not one day, sir……. By my count, it took him less than two hours.”
“What?”
Kwon's eyes went wide.
Which meant he had reviewed hundreds of applications, in full, in a mere two hours.
The implication was unmistakable.
Either he'd given the applications only a careless skim—or he had already painted a complete picture in his head of exactly whom he intended to pick.
Given everything Kang Suho had done, shattering common sense again and again, it was surely the latter.
This was a man equally gifted at meticulous analysis and at designing the plan that followed it, after all.
Who would apply to this new team of his, what abilities they possessed, and so on.
There was every likelihood he had already mapped out Yeouido's entire talent pool to perfection.
As if he'd conceived of every piece he wanted in advance, and the moment the board was laid out, picked up his chessmen without a flicker of hesitation.
“What became of the discreet orders I gave HR the other day?”
“Ah. Yes. I was just about to report on that as well.”
As Kwon took the thin folder his secretary handed him, the light in his eyes sank into something sharp and cold.
Whether the hire was a rookie or a veteran, there was one unofficial step that Daeseong Securities' HR team invariably took when bringing in talent from outside.
A thorough background investigation.
This industry was the front line of a merciless war of information, where blood and tears meant nothing.
Planting cunningly placed spies to extract a rival's core secrets—an underground battle that spread like poisonous mushrooms not just through the brokerage world but across every industry.
Naturally, since it occupied an illegal realm that could never see the light of day, only a tiny handful of executives shared access to this blacklist.
“HR ran the investigation on every single applicant to the new team, exactly as you ordered, sir. They've narrowed down the individuals showing suspicious signs.”
Flipping through the folder, Kwon carefully cross-checked the list of little moles against the list of accepted candidates Kang Suho had just submitted.
And—
“……None.”
“Sir?”
“Not a single one of them is on it. And bear in mind, that blacklist includes some dazzling bait—people you'd want to snap up on the spot if you judged them by credentials alone.”
Kwon's voice trembled, ever so slightly.
It was chilling: the list Kang Suho had filtered in two hours and the blacklist HR had spent weeks digging up did not overlap by so much as one name.
Anyone might call it luck…….
But really.
Everything he'd seen of Kang Suho so far said the man had never once entrusted his board to chance or fortune.
Which would mean…….
He had seen straight through every mole—whose payroll they were on, which company had sent them.
This was no mere matter of knowing Yeouido's talent pool.
It meant he was looking down, with lofty detachment, on the hidden frictions and espionage wars being fought between every brokerage in the district.
“……”
Kwon set the folder he'd been clutching down on the desk.
A chill ran down his spine—and at the very same time, a strange, heady exhilaration.
How to put it.
It felt as though a monster far too enormous for the vessel called Daeseong had just walked through the door.
He couldn't begin to guess what the creature was looking at, or how far it meant to go—but CEO Kwon understood with perfect clarity what his own job was now.
To provide the monster with a flawless hunting ground, so that it could rampage to its heart's content.
No telling whether that would prove poison or medicine for our Daeseong.
But it was a gamble well worth the walk.
If they meant to enthrone Director Geum as the new emperor of the Daeseong Group, there was simply no hope of getting there by respectable means.
History's victors were always born from the audacity of the move that flips the board entirely.
“Pass the list to HR.”
“Won't they insist on running a double check, sir? The other brokerages are all watching this new team and Team Leader Kang very closely indeed. And the Ilseong Group's movements are anything but ordinary……”
No doubt they would.
Everyone on Yeouido knew perfectly well that Ilseong Group was sharpening its knives.
“There's no need to waste more time on a pointless double check. HR has already completed their first verification, and not one name on the two lists overlaps. So tell them: on all personnel matters, they are to follow Team Leader Kang's will to the letter.”
“Yes, sir. I'll pass that along, CEO Kwon.”
After his secretary bowed and left the room—
Kwon gazed out at Yeouido's nightscape spread beneath the window and let out a trembling sigh.
Was I getting old, too?
In the days when my blood ran hot, I never hesitated to throw out a dangerous gambit.
But ever since Director Geum left so abruptly and I was saddled with the heavy shell of an executive's title, it seemed all I had ever chased was safety.
“……”
And yet, watching his blood boil like this now, it seemed some part of him had been missing the days when they called him Geum Gaho's mad dog.