The Report No One Wanted
"Are you really okay with going through with this?"
"Why wouldn't I be?"
Somehow, the Team Leader who had picked the report looked even less worried than I was, the one who'd written it.
This went beyond cool-headed. It was chilling.
True, the stench had risen late in the game this time too, and that's why I'd picked the report — but that thing wasn't even a finished version. It was a rough draft, nothing more than a scrap of paper, and even now I wasn't sure choosing it had been the right call.
The real problem was that the Team Leader had waved it through without a flicker of doubt.
"Doesn't that worry you?"
"Of course it does."
"Then why......"
"Because of what Intern Kang has shown us so far. That's what I'm trusting."
But surely any human being would be curious.
As in — why, on what possible basis, did you pick a report like that?
"Then let me ask you. If I asked why you picked it, would you actually answer me?"
"I'm sorry?"
"What information you had, what analysis you ran to arrive at that conclusion. If I asked, could you tell me? Everything from the hotel all the way to this semiconductor call."
I hesitated.
It wasn't as if I could say, I picked it by smell, after all.
"......"
When I kept my silence, the Team Leader let out a soft snort of laughter.
"See? You can't answer."
"......No, I can't."
"That's exactly why I don't ask — because I know you won't answer. Everyone has their own methods. There are things like intuition, too, that can't be put into words. Isn't that right?"
I nodded with an awkward smile.
In front of that earnest face, I could die and come back to life and still never admit I'd chosen the report because of a smell.
"Here in Yeouido, nobody cares about process or method. Results are all that matter — and the same goes for me. I'm very curious where Intern Kang gets information faster than the rest of us, and how you analyze it. But if the results are good, anything goes."
Then the Team Leader lowered his voice and asked me quietly.
"By the way, about the semiconductors. It really is going to fall, not rise?"
"That's......"
"Oh — sorry. I'm asking unnecessary questions again. I trust your judgment, Intern Kang."
"And if you turn out to be wrong?"
"Hmm~ I'd rather not answer that one."
Was he leaving it to my imagination?
The smile on the Team Leader's face suddenly began to look like the smile in a horror film.
For a trader, simply executing good trades with the company's money and turning a profit translates directly into incentives. But the Research Center has to bring in contracts.
By whatever means necessary.
They court the places known as institutions — pension funds, banks, insurance companies, asset managers — and with strong reports and investment strategies, they win those institutions' money and pocket the management fees.
"......"
Which was why this deal was a very, very big one.
Word of the booming semiconductor cycle was already spreading, and every securities firm in the neighborhood was buzzing.
"But how the hell are we supposed to land contracts with this?"
All the attention that had landed on Daeseong Securities was thanks to a single report — one that had originally been written as filler. Had some ancestor god visited him in a dream? The Operations Team had uploaded it as-is, and out of nowhere it had drawn national attention.
So naturally, the institutions would want investment strategies aligned with a semiconductor upswing.
But what Team Leader Cheon and that intern had left behind was a report running in precisely the opposite direction.
"What do we do, Team Leader? Do we really have to shore this thing up and put it out there?"
"That's what Team Leader Cheon told us to do."
"B-but prices are already creeping up as we speak. Any day now they'll surge. Handing this to the institutions in a climate like this is......"
It'd be insane.
Like kicking away the pumpkin that had rolled right into their lap on its own vine.
"Why not just ignore what the Operations Team says and go with your own judgment, Team Leader?"
Go with my own judgment?
A hollow laugh escaped Team Leader Lim.
"Hey. If we did that, that intern——"
"Yes?"
Oh, right. Of course the rank-and-file don't know.
That the intern is someone sent down from the heavens themselves.
"Phew. Never mind. Regardless — no more griping. We do what Team Leader Cheon ordered. Focus the rewrite on a broad decline across semiconductor stocks, and have it done before lunch. We're presenting it to the institutions this afternoon."
His team members wore expressions of pure incomprehension, but what could he do?
The person who'd chosen this report was one of the Royal Family.
So that's why Cheon Doa showed up trailing the intern.
The woman never read the room for anyone above her. If even she was doing that, the intern's position had to be anything but ordinary.
Then you could have given me a heads-up from the start!
If he'd known in advance, he'd never have hurled all that garbage at the kid!
Not that he could march over now and smash his forehead into the floor apologizing.
"Puuuuh—"
It was shaping up to be one of those days where the cigarette he'd quit came creeping back into his thoughts.
To Geum Gaho, Kang Suho was like a son.
He had met countless young people over the years, but this was the only one who made him feel the presence of his dead boy.
If his son were alive, he would have smiled just as brightly as that.
He would have come up close, warm and easy, and talked the afternoon away.
Comforted by such thoughts, Geum Gaho had kept up his mountain club activities far longer and harder than he'd expected — and perhaps that was why he'd found himself wanting to keep the boy close by, however he could.
The company he'd sworn never to look back at — lately he was drifting in more and more often, all because of that kid.
"......Who did what, now?"
"The Operations Team Leader was the first to recommend hiring Intern Kang Suho as a full-time employee, and the Research Center Director accepted the recommendation and passed it on to HR."
He'd barely walked into the office that morning when this absurd news landed on his desk.
"He's been an intern for less than a month, and they're doing this already? Why, exactly?"
"Presumably because of you, Director. The Center Director knows full well that the intern was placed there by you personally — it seems he's taking special care."
"Good grief. Swooping in on someone whose string they never even paid out on."
Then again, maybe it was just as well.
He'd planned to move Suho up to full-time status at the right moment anyway.
"The problem is that they've attached a separate incentive ratio to Intern Kang Suho as well."
"What? Now what are they saying?"
"Nothing's finalized yet, but with the semiconductor super cycle contracts currently being lined up with multiple institutions, the plan is for incentives to flow to Intern Kang Suho based on the results generated there."
Geum Gaho smacked his forehead.
The picture was coming into focus.
Geum Gaho had plunked an intern into their midst without warning, so that side had decided the boy must be Royal Family — and resolved to push him up the ladder accordingly.
"And on what grounds? They can't have just pulled an incentive ratio out of thin air."
"From what I hear, the report Intern Kang Suho selected happened to hit the mark this time, so they're crediting him with the highest share of the merit."
"Does that even make sense?"
"Obviously it's a pretext they've cooked up over there."
Suho was a good, diligent kid — but still, he was a fresh graduate.
How could a boy with intern status possibly analyze a report on his own and boldly declare what was right?
Clearly someone at the team leader level had coordinated with the Center Director to formally recognize the achievement on his behalf.
That would be how they meant to pad Suho's record.
"Everyone seems to be laboring under some colossal misunderstanding. How am I supposed to unwind this?"
Though chasing after them and shouting, Our Suho is not Royal Family!He's just an intern! would be its own kind of farce.
"If you do that, wouldn't it only deepen the misunderstanding? They'd assume it was a warning — 'never reveal that you're Royal Family.'"
"This is maddening. So we just stand by and watch?"
"Yes. Though perhaps drop a subtle hint to tell him to pace himself."
The mess had already spilled too far to sweep back up.
So instead — tell him to know when to push and when to pull back.
"Then who do I need to see? The Research Center Director?"
"The Center Director is on the verge of retirement. The team leader would be the better contact."
"Which team leader is that?"
"Ugh."
He'd lost count of how many times he'd sighed today.
He'd considered going up to the rooftop to get some air, but one glimpse of the smokers up there and the cigarette he'd quit would be back between his teeth — so instead he sat in the lounge, stewing in his own misery.
"Hey, Lim. What are you doing here?"
Just then, another team leader walked into the lounge with a few of his staff.
"Mm? Just taking a break."
"Catching some slack already, huh? Well, I guess you can. The semiconductor sector's been on fire this week. You looked buried for days — a little rest is well earned."
"I heard contract inquiries have been pouring in for you guys? Wow. Must be nice, being in semiconductors. Meanwhile we're over here sucking our thumbs."
"......"
Did these guys come here specifically to flip my stomach inside out?
No — of course not. These people had no way of knowing how things were actually playing out right now.
"That's right. I'm going to eat all of it by myself, so the rest of you just keep sucking those thumbs. Haha."
"So Team Leader Lim's buying the drinks, then?"
"You lot never gave us a thought when it was your bonus parties. Fine — I'm in a good mood. When next month's incentive lands, I'll grease the wheels with some hanwoo beef."
"Hooh! You all heard that, right? THIS is Team Leader Lim for you."
"We'll be counting on you, sir!"
The crowd that had been chanting Team Leader Lim's name like a prayer filed out of the lounge.
And with them, a deep emptiness came flooding back in.
"Rotten bastards. No consideration for a man's heart at all."
It was true that contract inquiries had poured in.
But not a single one had been landed.
The reason was simple.
"Who the hell signs a contract looking at this!"
Even someone who couldn't spell the word 'stock' could see that the boom driven by the semiconductor super cycle was the natural order of things.
Hadn't Daeseong Securities been the one to call it first, after all?
Yet the report they'd just put out predicted not a semiconductor rise — but a fall.
Who was going to sign on the dotted line after reading that?
He was lucky no one had called him a lunatic to his face.
"And it's not as if I'm free to pick and choose which report goes out."
If he'd simply released a safe, conventional report, the institutions would have signed on their own.
Then next month's incentive would have been fat and generous — but when the reckoning came, it would land squarely on Team Leader Lim's shoulders alone.
The sin of disregarding the opinion of a Royal Family member personally planted by the Group itself.
The sin of raising his voice and berating the boy without knowing who he was.
He'd be happy for a month, riding on the incentive — but would he still be happy the month after that?
By the time the knife was already at your throat, regret came far too late.
"It's complete bullshit, but I'll just have to swallow it."
They said that in this company, corporate life from team leader on up was one tightrope walk after another.
Couldn't have put it better himself.
"Let's get back in there. Can't let them shake money out of me in yet another place."
Setting his tangled feelings aside, Team Leader Lim rose from his seat, intending to go buoy up the team members who were surely just as glum back at the office.
Maybe he should grab them something to drink on the way in.
With their first shot at an incentive in ages gone up in smoke, the poor bastards had to be gutted.
"Team Leader! Team Leader!!"
But the moment he stepped back into the office, the faces that greeted him were nothing like what he'd expected.
Every single one wore a look of sheer disbelief mixed with shock.
"What is it? What's wrong with all of you?"
"Team Leader. There's been a major fire at a plant in the Netherlands."
"So? What's that got to do with us?"
"It's a huge factory that makes core semiconductor components. You know the one — they produce the EUV lithography equipment."
"Hold on. A fire broke out at that place?!"
"Yes. The news broke barely a week after the semiconductor boom story took off, and right now semiconductor stocks are falling across the board after a brief uptick."
A fire at a Dutch plant manufacturing core semiconductor components meant one thing: a massive disruption to semiconductor production itself.
No one could yet measure the extent of the damage — but if word came out that the losses were catastrophic and production would be stalled for the foreseeable future——!
"Team Leader. The institutions we turned down are calling us back. They're saying they'll skip the drawn-out negotiations entirely and go straight to signing the contracts."
"Wh-what? Seriously?"
"Yes. And it's not just one or two. Semiconductor stocks are falling exactly the way we predicted — again — and after seeing us hit the mark twice in a row, they're signing without asking a single question."
Team Leader Lim stood frozen, dumbstruck.
Which meant the intern's choice had been the right one all along?
"Wh-where in the world did he learn this stuff?"
Had headquarters actually planted a fortune-teller in their midst?