Starting Over Again (7)
"As the Executive Director said, the lawsuit can indeed proceed, and it doesn't seem like we will lose immediately. A legal review regarding the illegal aspects of the contract you signed is currently underway..."
"..."
"..."
"..."
The expressions of the employees couldn't exactly be called bright. They were certainly darker than when they had first entered the conference room. However, the effect of his words was somewhat apparent; having heard him tell them to stop what they were doing and focus only on the original work they did at GPL, the employees quickly switched their monitor screens, and some, after bowing to him, waited for the elevator.
"...I'm sorry, Eunchan. I..."
"Hyung, forget it. What are you sorry for?"
"...?"
"Haha, if it were me... with a debt of 100 billion won, I would have sold my organs to pay it off. ...We just need to work hard on our own tasks. Really."
After that, he shook hands with Minsu, who was passing by behind Eunchan, and then he and Eunbyul boarded the elevator heading up.
And just then,
"Suhyun!"
"...?"
A woman, gasping for breath as if in a hurry, thrust her hand between the closing elevator doors. It was Yoo Jieun.
"Why... what is it?"
"You, you need to pull yourself together!"
What was she talking about? Why all of a sudden...
"You aren't the Han Suhyun from before. But who is going to make what succeed?"
"..."
"Go back to how you were before, like you were good at everything. Pretend to be incredibly knowledgeable... do it like you used to."
Eunbyul gazed at him blankly. Come to think of it, Eunbyul didn't truly know what he was like during his college days. She only remembered him as the serious student who taught her course material; because she didn't know the past him, she was looking up at him like this.
"....Yeah. I know,"
"You were the one who said it. If you fail ten times, you have to try a hundred times. That it wouldn't be... an easy task."
"..."
"Whatever this 'Salaim' thing is? I don't care about that company, we just need to achieve our goal. But... the reason we all have no energy is,"
The elevator door slowly closed.
"Because you... you, the one who told us to do this, look like you have no strength... that's why."
"You had something going on with that woman, didn't you?"
"No. Not at all."
"How do you know it's 'not at all' when you don't even know what it is?"
As soon as the door closed, the woman called Secretary Eun snapped at him like that. No, he told her there was nothing.
"You slept with her, right?"
"I swear to God, I have never slept with any woman other than Seo Jia."
"...Then why is she acting like that?"
"I couldn't tell you."
Honestly, the people at GPL couldn't really understand, and they weren't interested in such things. They only knew that someone was trying to snatch away the fruits of the efforts they had shown for this company. What was more important than that was the expression, gestures, and tone of the person who had suggested this work.
"...Like before, what does that mean? Please explain it to me."
"No, that is..."
"Another failure..."
"Then let's do it one more time!"
He had returned to the time when they were just setting up the business. Back then, the situation was like this. Lee Junghyun and Park Jihun would move beakers and test tubes around, pouring liquid, pouring it again, and then lighting it on fire...? It was truly a reckless, no-holds-barred experiment. Oh Jeongmin and Kim Myung-ho, true to their majors in Energy Resources Engineering, would have one person sitting in front of a computer digging through research papers, while the other would pester a professor on the phone to teach them what they didn't know. If the professor started talking, they would hit the record button to listen to it over and over again. After mixing this and that, pouring it into a model engine, and starting it up, *Bang—*
"It blew up again?"
"Yeah... no, I did it right? Oh, this is seriously..."
"So what?"
"Hey, this is insanely expensive... we just blew 30 million won."
"Then I authorize up to 300 million!"
When he said that, the woman who had just tried to stop the elevator, Yoo Jieun, would jump up from far away and shout,
"Are you actually crazy? Take it easy!!!"
"But there's investment money left over!!"
"If you're going to spend it, spend it properly!!! It's always failure, failure, failure!!!"
"Then you come and do it!!!!"
It was like that back then. He would walk around checking the progress of the research, and if there was something he didn't know, he would pull up a chair anywhere to look for information and have discussions with them. At that time, the office was near Hanam City, and even though he was already a Managing Director, he almost never went to the office. Yes. He was that passionate.
If someone told him they failed at a task now, he would think and think about how to prepare countermeasures, how to report it to the higher-ups, and how to turn this crisis into an opportunity, but back then,
"But Suhyun, this keeps not working, should we fold and do something else?"
"What would you do? Now of all times?"
"No, like, make medicine or something..."
"...In my opinion, medicine is harder than this."
He would suggest making generic drugs to start a pharmaceutical company and earn some money, but Lee Junghyun, after feeling his gaze, would wrinkle his lips and focus back on the beakers and reagents. Seeing him pick up the dropper, it seemed he had dropped the idea.
While that was happening, Eunchan and Minsu, who had returned from outside, would pop open their briefcases and show him samples.
"This is something they're researching at Volkswagen, I just brought it."
"Is it okay to do this?"
"The headquarters is in Japan, so when I emailed them, they sent it by courier? The problem is they sent it to my house..."
"Hyung, wouldn't it be better to completely boost the oxygen content in the water?"
"It costs too much. I thought about it before..."
"We should just develop it and see. If we create it, someone will eventually..."
GI-X100 uses high-purity refined water to further strengthen the explosive power. The focus was on the oxygen saturation level inside the water. If you boost the oxygen to a certain level, it becomes the current GI-X100, but if you refine it further and increase the oxygen saturation—
"I calculated it, and at 78%, it goes 42km per liter."
"The fuel efficiency is fantastic, but..."
To make it like that, however, special tools were needed. Was it just equipment? In reality, if you were to refuel at a gas station, you would have to provide a safe storage facility or find a manufacturer to sell it through. If you used the existing distillation tower method, the fuel efficiency would fluctuate every time you refueled. The engine could break down. But,
"Yeah! Let's do it, damn it, isn't it good if anything works?"
"Ah, that's right, we have to get results first, Hyung!"
It was like that. That strange and peculiar substance was created after failing 24 times and succeeding on the 25th attempt. GI-X100-25.
"There was a time like that..."
"..."
"But it won't work now. I don't want to go through that failure twice. There's no need to, either..."
Thus, he reminisced about the past, lost in regret. What on earth was he thinking back then? He was so excited that he forgot how to be calm. And that led to a major accident during the demonstration.
"But Executive Director, you said the 25th product was stable."
"Yeah. Why?"
"Then why are those people still researching?"
"..."
That was something that was revealed later, but,
"If you do it that way, the efficiency doesn't come out."
"How is it?"
"1.7km per liter."
"...?"
The 25th product wasn't a success either. As if development could happen in just 2-3 years. It wasn't going to be easy just because several college students put their heads together. It had such drawbacks.
"Then you have to refuel while driving, refuel while driving..."
"That's right. I am curious about what the 27th one is like, though..."
"Then let's finish up work today, and go see the 27th invention tomorrow."
...He was a little, maybe a lot... actually, very curious. Although he majored in Industrial Engineering, perhaps due to his family background, he found chemistry so fun and fascinating that he became curious about what kind of performance the 27th product, which had potassium hydroxide added to it, would produce.
"Yeah. I do want to find out what they made."
"You seem to be holding back quite a bit right now."
"..."
Eunbyul, who could tell just by looking at his expression, could immediately recognize his state—even though he was mentioning negative situations and feeling discouraged, he was sincerely hoping for it to succeed.
"It's still dangerous, though."
"What is?"
"Chemical substances like that need to be verified somewhere, don't they? ...Like a temporary license plate?"
"Temporary..."
She was right. As far as he knew, when refueling with alternative gasoline, one had to apply for a hazardous chemical facility inspection and receive certification from the Korea Gas Safety Corporation, and receive GLP, or chemical hazard testing certification, from the Korea Environment Corporation. However, back when he was running GPL, he hadn't worried about such things. Because—
"...But Secretary Eun, think about it. What did you say it was made of earlier?"
"Vegetable oil, water, and that strange Potinium...?"
"Potassium."
"Ah, that's right. Potassium hydroxide!"
"....Ah, wait."
No. This needs to be certified.
"Ah, that's true, we need to get this certified somewhere, don't we?"
"That's what I'm saying."
In the past, it was made of oil and water, so there were no major problems other than being careful about the temperature during handling. If he had taken this to the Ministry of Environment and asked them to test it, they probably would have scoffed at the mixture of oil and water and stamped it immediately. But now, more substances were starting to be added. In the documents he had glanced at, there were records of failures after mixing in many strange substances. However...
"Still, they say they actually drive around with it, so would there be a problem?"
"I think it needs to be tested thoroughly. Anything, carefully."
"..."
"We have to make it well so that no one dies before we release it."
And, the next morning.
Jeong Ayeong's car, which she was driving to work, exploded.