A Rotten Rope or a Lifeline
Even in the very heart of Yeouido, the Shinhwa Securities building stood out. It carried a different breed of oppressive grandeur than the Daeseong Securities building, so to speak.
"Team Leader Kang Suho?"
The moment I stepped into the lobby, Shinhwa Securities staff came toward me.
"We'll escort you to where the CEO is waiting."
"Ah, yes."
"And for your meeting with the CEO, Team Leader Kang Suho must enter alone. We'll show the rest of your staff to the waiting room."
A one-on-one sit-down, then. I gave my team members a look that said it was fine, and followed the employee.
Like Daeseong Securities, they apparently kept a VIP elevator of their own, for I was led to a quiet end of the lobby where foot traffic thinned to nothing.
Namgoong Hyun, CEO of Shinhwa Securities. A candidate for the next chairman's seat, though said to be trailing, if only somewhat, in the power struggle against his brothers.
A man like that should have had no reason to spare a thought for a mere team leader from a rival firm—yet he had gone out of his way to request a private audience. In all likelihood, because of the document we'd sent. Namgoong Hyun hadn't been able to resist the bait our team had cast, and had snapped it right up.
"Well, well~. Look who it is. If it isn't the hottest man in Yeouido right now?"
"...A pleasure to meet you. I'm Kang Suho, Team Leader of the Special Strategy Operations Team."
"Haha. Yes, good to meet you. Have a seat, first of all."
Contrary to my expectations, Namgoong Hyun's first impression was refreshingly blunt and easygoing.
"You all can step out. I'll call if I need anything."
"Yes, sir."
Once the staff filed out and the door clicked shut, Namgoong Hyun and I were left alone in the vast executive office. A moment of silence settled over the room—he and I both sweeping quick, assessing glances across each other, a silent skirmish of measurement.
"Today..."
But before the taut stillness could turn tedious, I broke the ice first.
"Thank you for making the time. I hadn't expected you to come out in person."
"Haha. Slick, aren't you. You send over something that insolent and claim you didn't expect it?"
Namgoong Hyun tossed a single document onto the table. It was the very bait we had sent to Shinhwa Securities.
"We need to talk about this... but before we get to the heart of the matter, let's get one thing straight."
The pleasant smile still on his face, Namgoong Hyun's voice had gone ice-cold in an instant.
"If this little stunt was nothing but a ploy for my attention, you'd best brace yourself. Overturning the negotiation will be the least of your worries."
Even under that vicious warning, I nodded slowly, unmoved.
"It's true we sent a rather provocative document in order to bring Shinhwa Securities to the negotiating table. But the contents are no fabrication."
"Quite the confidence. Then shall you show me the full version of this report? What you sent yesterday was nothing but the shell."
What we'd sent him was only the rough draft. The document with the details spelled out was sitting in my hand right now.
"Here you are."
The moment I laid the papers down, Namgoong Hyun snatched them up. For all his outward composure, he had apparently been waiting for that report day and night.
I waited quietly while the CEO read through the report. Some time passed. The rustle of turning pages grew rougher and rougher, until at last he closed the file, his face gone hard.
"My manners. A guest in my office, and I haven't offered you so much as a drink."
Namgoong Hyun rose from his seat and lifted a crystal bottle from a display cabinet set against one wall.
Even at a glance, it was clearly expensive whiskey. Hard liquor in broad daylight—at a business meeting, no less!
Without asking whether I wanted any, he filled two glasses to the brim with the amber liquid and slid one across to me.
"Let's wet our whistles first, shall we?"
I hesitated a moment, but refusing a glass offered to my face would have been its own awkwardness. Intending to do no more than dampen my lips, I raised the glass carefully.
Hold on. Why does this taste so familiar, so rich and mellow?
"That's barley tea. Don't tell me you thought I'd be pouring booze in the middle of the day? Haha."
"...You keep barley tea in a premium whiskey bottle?"
"Well, I like to put on a bit of a show when people come calling. Truth is, I can't really hold my liquor."
They said he had a reputation in the industry as an oddball—apparently no idle rumor.
"So, to sum up what's in this document of yours... like the fake whiskey I've been pouring you, Nexcom Energy is a fake through and through?"
I drained the barley tea in one gulp and answered.
"Yes. That is our assessment. No—our conviction."
"You'd best think carefully before you answer. You're telling me our Shinhwa Securities spent a full three months digging through this company and still missed it? Really?"
"I know what this company means to you, sir. A whale of an IPO that would blow past a market cap of 1.5 trillion KRW the moment it landed successfully on the KOSPI. It would become a weapon to cement your standing within the group."
"Well informed. Which is exactly why I've tended to it so obsessively. Not a single scratch, not one."
"Precisely. Which is why I haven't come here to force a conclusion today. You'll need time to verify this document yourself."
I rose from my seat, calm and matter-of-fact.
"So until then, I'll return to my office and wait for your call."
"Hold on."
Namgoong Hyun stopped me.
"Suppose this document really is fact, and I play dumb to the very end and never call you back. What then?"
"That would be a great shame... but I've heard that unlike your brothers, you are a man of your word. And that you rose to your current seat on the strength of your management ability, no less."
"..."
"Then I'll take my leave first, sir."
Leaving the CEO staring after me with a dazed look, I slipped out of the office without a shred of regret. This was as far as I could carry it.
"Team Leader!"
When I opened the door to the waiting room, my team members sprang up in unison. Every face wore the look of people who'd spent the whole time fretting over me alone.
"Well done in there, Team Leader. You came out sooner than expected. From out here the atmosphere looked anything but ordinary—how did the negotiation go...?"
"For now, the document we prepared was delivered without a hitch. CEO Namgoong Hyun seemed to be examining it in earnest, too."
"What a relief. I was worried he'd throw us out for spouting nonsense."
Outwardly composed, I loosened my tie a notch. No matter how certain I was of my own ability, occasions like this still didn't sit easy with me.
Perhaps that was why. The back of my shirt was already soaked through with cold sweat.
"Now we wait and hope our report does its work. But what if they just clamp their mouths shut and say nothing?"
"Don't worry about that."
"Did you extract some firm promise from CEO Namgoong Hyun, then?"
"No. But if he tries to bury the whole thing like it never happened, then I'll come charging back in here and take the man by the collar myself. One way or another, this deal has to close—doesn't it?"
"!?"
"Th-that's a joke, right, Team Leader? Haha."
Neither confirming nor denying, I simply smiled in silence.
Namgoong Hyun sat sunk deep in his chair, lost in thought. His gaze was pinned to the document on the table—the report Kang Suho had left behind.
"Secretary Kim."
"Yes, sir."
"What do you make of this?"
"I consider it material not worth a second thought."
"Is that so?"
"Yes, sir. The staff of our Shinhwa Securities IB division are aces among aces, even by Yeouido standards. If Nexcom Energy were truly an empty scam, there is no way they could have missed it after three months of digging."
That much was true. This was a company vetted by Shinhwa's elite, after all. There was no way they could have missed a fatal flaw that Daeseong Securities—a firm that had only ever stolen sideways glances from the outside—had managed to dig up.
"Besides, a good deal of this report is mere conjecture. Trying to seize on flaws in so short a time, Daeseong was evidently forced into leaps of logic. Unless we open our internal records, access to the core data is impossible."
"True. On the surface, Nexcom is flawless—nowhere to find fault."
And yet Daeseong was throwing a question mark at that company. A doubt that no one in Yeouido—not even Shinhwa Securities itself, the lead underwriter—had ever harbored.
"Come to think of it, the timing was almost eerily perfect. Just as my footing within the group began to wobble and I was growing anxious, Nexcom came to us begging for our listing like a savior. Thanks to that, the due diligence went off without a hitch, and we pushed all the way to the listing application."
"That much is true, but..."
The Namgoong Hyun of any ordinary day would have snorted at a rival's crude attempt to rattle him and buried this report in the trash. And yet, why? Like the bitter taste of barley tea still clinging to the tip of his tongue, an uneasy feeling refused to fade.
"That Kang Suho, especially... there's something about that man's eyes that keeps nagging at me."
The look in Kang Suho's eyes as he'd dared to meet his gaze, round and unblinking, throughout their private meeting. Those had not been the eyes of a man trying to deceive him.
They had been the calm eyes of someone one hundred percent certain that Nexcom Energy was a glittering fake, all shell and no substance. A mere team leader, seated before the CEO of Shinhwa Securities itself, hadn't shown so much as a flicker of nerves.
It was that overflowing confidence, those eyes brimming with conviction, that left Namgoong Hyun so unsettled.
"Secretary Kim."
"Yes, sir."
"Put together a task force. Quietly. We're going to strip Nexcom down to the bedrock and go through it all over again."
"S-sir. The listing is right on top of us..."
"And everyone from the IB division who took part in the original Nexcom due diligence is to be excluded from this investigation entirely. Not a single one of them gets in."
"Y-you don't mean you suspect the data was manipulated from within?"
Secretary Kim's face went white. Staff of the lead underwriter tolerating—or taking part in—the fabrication of a company's due diligence report? This was not a matter that would end in a simple reprimand.
"Isn't the head of the IB division an old classmate of my third brother's?"
"That is true, but surely the division head wouldn't betray you and side with them?"
"We're the only ones who have ever looked inside Nexcom down to the marrow. So if Kang Suho is right—if it really is a scam company with fabricated revenue and doctored data? Then unless someone inside our walls was playing games, it's impossible."
Of course, Daeseong and Kang Suho might simply be wrong. Perhaps this was nothing more than a flimsy negotiating card thrown down to win the ten-times-leveraged deal.
"But there's no harm in being careful. If, by some chance, this really was fabricated and we forced the listing through anyway, we could lose not only Shinhwa Securities' credibility but my own seat along with it."
"If this really is fabricated... then there is a traitor inside our walls."
"That's right. I choose to believe there's no such person—but human affairs are never certain."
Eyes glinting sharp, Namgoong Hyun tapped the report Kang Suho had left behind with the tip of his finger.
"Kang Suho—whether this man has thrown me a rotten rope or the lifeline that saves my neck... I'll have to see it with these two eyes of my own."
Namgoong Hyun had always managed his internal affairs rigorously. It had never once occurred to him that the people he trusted might stab him in the back.
But the more turbulent the world became, the more one had to guard against and doubt the people closest at hand. Even a stone bridge, the saying went, should be tested before you cross it.
"And if Kang Suho has been toying with me on false information..."
He was welcome to look forward to finding out exactly what that would cost him. But if, on the contrary, this report was true?
Then he intended to see proper compensation paid.
"Just as Kang Suho said—I'm a man of my word, unlike my brothers."
That, he thought, had been the most pleasant thing he'd heard all day.