The Company Is Fun
After the call with my mother, I went up to the office and found the place a little busier than usual.
"Ah, Assistant Manager Chae. Come over here and move these."
"Yes, sir!"
The chief's orders caught me the moment I stepped inside. I shouldered the mountain of documents and architectural drawings heaped on one of the facilities team's five desks and headed for the storeroom on the first floor.
Can't see a thing in front of me...
The call with Mom had left me in a good mood, so I'd stepped up with some bravado. In truth, my arms were already shaking. Five stacks of drawings, more than four hundred sheets apiece on thick oversized B4, turned out far heavier than I'd imagined when I decided to take them all at once.
Should've kept up with the workouts...
I used to train steadily enough, and back in college I'd even shot a physique photoshoot. Nearly two years of company life had undone all of that. After overtime I was too busy collapsing into sleep to think about the gym, and the muscle had quietly melted away. Company dinners came around about three times a week, the drinks poured without mercy, and the only thing still growing was my gut.
So what? There's four hundred million won in the account now. Maybe I should sign up for a gym again. Or I heard there's some new weight-loss drug out — should I just buy that?
Any other day, hauling a load like this would have had me grumbling to myself about company life. Now my head was full of nothing but how to spend the fortune I'd made in a flash.
Maybe I'd let my mind wander too far. Halfway down the stairs I nearly missed a step.
A chill shot up my spine. Instinct snapped my stance back into place, and I didn't fall — but the stack of documents lost its balance.
Oh no. At this rate I'm going to drop the whole—
That was when it happened.
"Hup—! Assistant Manager Chae, I'll take some of that."
I looked to see who it was. Assistant Manager Kim.
"Thank you, Assistant Manager Kim."
I felt the chill leave my spine and offered him my thanks. He ran an eye over the stack and spoke.
"Huh? These are architectural drawings? Moving them all of a sudden means..."
"Yes. I think Assistant Manager Ryu may be coming back."
"Ah. Reinforcements, at last."
Reinforcements. Sure.
Assistant Manager Ryu was the senior who had been grinding me down since my first days at the company. He did the work well, and he was perfectly pleasant everywhere else — only with me did he turn strangely cruel.
His parental leave had been a relief while it lasted. Once he's back, the noise starts all over again...
Ryu's childcare leave had been the talk of the whole site for quite a while, not just the facilities team. At a large company, maternity leave for women is common enough these days, and the risk of a career break has fallen a great deal compared to the past.
But a husband's childbirth leave?
In a construction firm that still carried the culture of the military, it was a shocking event — all the more so in our facilities team, five people on paper and four now, counting the chief.
"I was honestly stunned when he actually went on leave. Like, wait, this is really allowed...? Right?"
"Haha... I suppose. All I remember is getting buried under the workload..."
We traded the idle talk as we carried the load, and I turned it over in my head.
Still, a year ago his wife was pregnant and his nerves were raw. Maybe he'll be a different man once he's back.
Looking back, Assistant Manager Ryu really had been an excessively devoted husband. A man like that — if his wife was unwell, his temper might sour...
No. He was already tormenting me back when I was still a staffer. His wife would've only been in the early weeks then.
I was straightening his desk, lost in useless thoughts, when the chill crept over me again.
Clap, clap!
The chief rose from his seat and raised his voice.
"All right! You all know tonight is a joint dinner — architecture, facilities, and electrical, everyone together? Let's get moving!"
Right. Today was the day we raised the gateposts on Block 1, which meant a joint company dinner.
I glanced at the clock.
5:30.
Quitting time — four o'clock — had slipped past as if it had never existed, and we were heading to dinner more than an hour late.
Beside me, Assistant Manager Kim was texting someone with mournful eyes. On a normal day I would have been right there with him, head down, wearing the face of a man who did not want to go...
"Chief! Tonight I'll look after you properly!!!"
"Oh? What's gotten into you, Assistant Manager Chae?"
Tonight, as it happened, was a night I wanted to raise a toast.
"Cheers!"
Not a single bottle of beer at a construction company's dinner. Tonight's menu was nothing less than beef.
"Come on! Architecture, electrical — all of you, fine work on Block 1!"
Applause cracked through the room.
Block 1, a long stretch of nothing but trouble and mishap, had finally raised its gateposts.
"Tonight we drink for every bit of suffering these past two years!!!"
"Yes, sir!!!"
Meat went onto the grill, already roaring hot, and the bottles began to multiply.
"Hoo..."
"Chief, here's some water."
His face was starting to redden. I held the water out, and he looked at me through eyes gone a little loose.
"Assistant Manager Chae. Something good happen?"
"...Sir?"
How does he know?
I was thrown for a second, but he went on.
"How would I not? A man who's been moping every single day, grinning from ear to ear from morning till night."
"Ah... Was I? Haha..."
He set one knee up on his chair, poured until my glass ran over, and spoke.
"Assistant Manager Chae, you really suffered on Block 1."
"Not at all. It's all thanks to you, Chief."
"No. You really did."
He clinked his glass against mine alone and threw it back in one go, then held the empty glass out again. I filled both our glasses quickly and brought mine up, and the rims met once more with a clean, bright ring.
"Honestly, when the underground garage flooded, even I thought that was the end of us."
"Ah... That one was definitely serious."
"I'm saying, if you hadn't pinned down that burst pipe and those dead pumps as fast as you did... the machine room would've gone under."
The glasses traveled back and forth and filled again.
Ah. That day.
Rain had been coming down in sheets, and of all things the drainage pump had failed, flooding the area around the machine room. Another pump should have kicked in and kept it from happening, but for some reason it never started. I'd waded through a garage flooded to my ankles, desperately searching out every spot that felt wrong, until I found the pump whose power had been cut and switched it back on.
"Assistant Manager Chae."
"Yes, Chief."
Clink — the glasses met again, and the chief, his face a deeper red, spoke.
"Chief..."
He left it at that, emptied his glass without another word, and held it out again. I poured for him in silence.
The alcohol that night was unusually sweet, and the beef unusually good.
Long after the drinking was underway, the chief paid for the meat on the company card.
By coincidence, it came to about what I made in a month.
There was a time when money spent like this on beef felt like nothing but waste.
I'd even caught myself hoping, the way people do lately, that they'd just deposit the dinner budget into our accounts instead.
Now that I actually have money, I think I understand what people mean when they say spending it matters too.
Drinking late had left my body tired, but with the weight of money gone, even a company dinner was fun.
Honestly. To think a day would come when I decided I liked these dinners...
Up until two days ago, this very dinner had been one of the biggest reasons I wanted to quit. Now that I had some room, I could enjoy the table for what it was.
I was turning that over when the chief came outside and called me.
"Assistant Manager Chae, come here."
"Yes, Chief."
Slipping into a softer, easier way of speaking once he was drunk was one of the chief's habits. I answered at once, hurried to his side, and caught him as he swayed.
Then, without warning, he shoved a hand straight into my pocket!
What??
I startled, but the hand was gone as quickly as it had come, and I felt bills settle into the pocket.
"You worked hard today. Cab fare. Get home soon. And don't be late from here on."
"Chief..."
"I live just up the way, so I'll walk. When Assistant Manager Ryu clocks in tomorrow morning, hand things over properly. I'm coming in late tomorrow!!!"
He tucked two 50,000-won bills into my pocket, turned, and set off for home with a heavy tread. I watched him a moment, then hurried after him.
"Chief! I'll see you home!"
"Eh? Don't bother, just get going. Poke me all you like — nothing else is coming out~"
"Haha, didn't I tell you I'd look after you to the very end tonight?"
Even the walk back, after I'd delivered the thoroughly drunk chief to his door, felt light.
Ah! Work is fun!
The truth was, today the chief — a man who until now had only ever handed me the next task — had acknowledged me for the first time.
At this rate, maybe the company was worth staying at after all?
I got off work, toyed with the idea of trading for a bit, and fell asleep on the alcohol instead. At five the next morning, I started the same day I always did.
Or rather — if there was one thing different from the usual run of days...
"Hehehe..."
On the way to work I grinned at my phone for no good reason. They say price changes the view. It was the same hungover, dizzy commute as always, and yet my steps were light.
Wait. Do I even have a reason to keep coming to the office?
Couldn't I just make money scalping every night? The thought flickered past...
Honestly, if it stayed like yesterday, keeping the job wouldn't be so bad.
Earning on the side in the market, and the lift of being recognized by the chief for the work itself — that feeling honestly wasn't bad.
And four hundred million is a little thin to go full-time on.
I had the ability, so I didn't really think I'd lose money. Still, you never quite know. To my mind, four hundred million won wasn't enough to quit and trade for a living.
Right. The seed's still small. Full-time can wait until I'm more certain.
I arrived at the company and stepped into the office, and found the place a little noisy.
What's this? Kind of loud.
Coming in, I saw people from architecture and electrical crowded around the facilities team's desks. The first face I caught was Manager Kim from architecture — the one who was always dumping his work on me.
"I made a bit of money thanks to you, Assistant Manager Ryu!"
"Oh, come on. It's only natural, Manager Kim. It's been a while."
Assistant Manager Ryu, the senior I hadn't seen in ages, was laughing awkwardly through the chatter when he spotted me and called over.
"Ah, Manager Chae. You're here?"