Dragon and Company Work
"Whoa. Jackpot. Glad I came in on the weekend. I was just gonna grab a meal, skim the U.S. markets real quick, and head home."
"C-CEO? Why is the CEO here on a weekend?"
"You only work remote, so you wouldn't know. The CEO only comes in on weekends. That's why some of the female employees actually volunteer their Saturdays just to get a look at his face."
"That bad, huh?... Wow. Ah. Yeah, that tracks."
Call it an investment firm thing. Between that and our company's free-wheeling approach to attendance, a lot of people still showed up on weekends. Honestly, I wished they wouldn't. Aside from the few humans I already knew, the ones I didn't always left me vaguely uncomfortable. Even the knowledge that we were sharing the same line of sight felt a little off-putting.
Money was the one thing we never ran short of, so the building was set up so that anyone could eat three meals a day, three hundred sixty-five days a year, from the lunch shop inside the office, with every convenience facility you could ask for.
Rhea had told me there were even people who came in for a single meal when they had nothing better to do and then went straight back home.
"Still, I didn't expect this many people coming and going. I almost never leave the office myself."
"You're the CEO, so who cares? Who's going to say anything?"
Ha-yan and I were parked in the farthest corner of the coffee shop that took up one whole side of our company's first floor, nursing a coffee and a slice of cake while we caught up for the first time in a while.
I'd thought Rhea had dumped every last scrap of HR work on me and vanished, but it turned out she still had a shred of conscience left.
She'd grumbled plenty about personnel and company business, but between the single task she actually shoved at me and what Ha-yan said, it seemed she'd simply decided she needed the day off and had tossed me one job as a compromise.
And that job—the so-called personnel matter—wasn't anything huge. It was just this round of new-hire interviews.
"These specs are... insane. Straight A-pluses, internships at financial firms, every finance and investment award under the sun, plus study abroad. Wait—everyone else has this level of résumé as a baseline? Holy crap..."
Ha-yan was flipping through the personnel files for the interviewees—the last bit of work Rhea had handed us before disappearing.
These were people who had already cleared first, second, and third rounds, so the paper credentials were absurd.
Study abroad was the minimum. On top of that, most of them had packed internships at the very financial and investment firms currently competing with us.
After scanning roughly ten dossiers, Ha-yan tilted her head and looked at me.
"With résumés like these, couldn't they just go to the States or some bigger-name investment bank? Why force their way into our company?"
"Why? Because while staying in Korea they get higher base pay than the foreign firms in the same space, fat incentives, absurd benefits, and a dream office location. Why would they bother going overseas?"
"Is that really it? Honestly, the only company I even know is yours, so I have no idea. I just keep thinking it'd be nice if I actually got to work here someday."
"Your friends are all high schoolers. Of course they wouldn't know this stuff."
Inside the company we were the CEO and vice-CEO of this giant firm, but most of our actual lives were still ordinary high school. At least I did enough company work to have a rough sense of how CS Investment was seen worldwide—and among job seekers.
I'd planned to do the bare minimum and wash my hands of it, but Rhea had half-forced the knowledge into me. How, she argued, could the CEO not know where his own company stood, or at least show the staff what the boss looked like—this dragon... no, this person?
So after that scolding I had started making the occasional weekend appearance.
"Doesn't it feel like every camera is pointed at us? Should I throw up a peace sign?"
"No. I don't think we need to go that far."
I was still hyper-aware of the whispers around us, but Ha-yan just seemed to find the whole situation fascinating and fun.
Objectively speaking, the two of us did land in the handsome-guy-and-beautiful-girl couple category. I'd already announced through an official notice that Ha-yan was my girlfriend, so her face was known.
Maybe it was because we hadn't been seen together in so long, but the employees'... condition was a little weird.
Why was everyone hovering around us, flustered, just taking pictures?
I drained the last of my coffee with a long pull and stood to order another at the counter.
Behind it was the one human I could at least claim to know by sight—the shop's owner, a middle-aged man with a quiet, distinguished air.
I'd honestly tried to scout him as an executive rather than leave him running a coffee shop, but he'd insisted he preferred being a barista now.
"Oh my. Looking for a refill?"
The moment I approached, the owner offered me a warm, good-natured smile.
"Haha. It's been a while since I had the coffee here. Tastes great."
"Heh. Don't they use much better beans upstairs?"
"Honestly, I wouldn't know. My secretary handles all of that."
"Heh heh. Understood. Looks like Vice-CEO Ha-yan finished hers as well. Shall I prepare the same drinks?"
"Ah. Thank you."
As expected of someone with that much experience—he'd even thought of Ha-yan's order.
I waited at the counter a moment, and two cups appeared.
"Here you are."
"Thank you, sir."
"Heh. I'm the one who should be thanking you. You let me start a business in a place this good for next to nothing."
"I don't know about that. If you hadn't told us what you did, the company could have taken a serious hit."
"I only passed along something I overheard here to your secretary. And, speaking of which..."
The owner gestured me a little closer and dropped his voice.
"You're running interviews today, aren't you?"
"...You know about that too?"
"When you run a shop like this, all sorts of stories drift your way. I just have to decide who I should tell and who I shouldn't."
"Which am I?"
"Obviously the person I tell everything. If it weren't for you, CEO, I'd still be unemployed, listening to my wife scold me at home. And I know you've done a lot of good for society in various ways."
"Ahaha... well, that..."
Honestly, Rhea and Ha-yan had just hounded me to do something decent with all that money, so I'd gone along with it—but hearing praise from the owner still made my face heat up.
Watching me, he gave a deep, easy laugh and then passed along a piece of information that was both unexpected and critically important.
After hearing it, I took the drinks and returned to our table with my expression slightly frozen.
Ha-yan caught the change instantly.
"What's wrong all of a sudden? What did the owner say?"
"...Today's interviews. I think I'm going to have to use magic."
"Huh? Out of nowhere? Don't you usually refuse to use magic for company stuff unless it's directly magic-related?"
Ha-yan looked thoroughly startled.
I relayed exactly what the coffee shop owner had just told me.
"Wouldn't they have no right to complain if we just killed him the ordinary way?"
"Evidence is better when it's airtight."
Ha-yan agreed with me one hundred percent, and the two of us started planning.
Ah. So that's why Rhea dumped this job on me.
"Ahem. The company's great and all, but if we go about it a certain way..."
The interview waiting room at Cha Siu's company.
After multiple rounds of filtering, not many people remained. He carefully checked his surroundings, then unlocked his phone and began exchanging messages with someone.
After a long stretch of texting, he muttered under his breath, too soft for anyone else to hear.
"What is there even to gain in a little country like this... Sure, building a firm this big from that little starting capital is impressive. Still, something's off. There's definitely something here the outside world doesn't know about."
Anyone listening would have gotten a rough idea of why this interviewee had come to Cha Siu's company.
But even he didn't really know how much information a brand-new hire—not even a career recruit—could actually extract.
Why?
Because he was only following orders from someone higher up.
And honestly, even if a new employee could reach company secrets, how far would that access really go?
On top of that, every confidential asset in this firm was already under magical protection.
"Next interviewee, please prepare!"
"Ah. Yes. Understood."
Completely unaware of any of that, the man left the waiting room with a tense face and took the seat just vacated by the previous candidate, determined to learn everything about Cha Siu's company.
Two female homunculi at the information desk watched him and began speaking in voices only they could hear.
"He has no idea he's walking straight into a tiger's den, does he?"
"Tiger's den? More like a dragon's den. Still—the young lady is with the CEO. He probably won't go too hard."
"No way. Absolutely not. If anything, he'll go harder. He even set up proper magic inside the room. That means he got the young lady's permission. And with that setup, you think he'll just send the guy home? Do you not remember the two things the CEO never, ever backs down on?"
"I know perfectly well. Anything involving the young lady, and anyone trying to screw with our company."
"And you're saying he'll just let it go? Fine. Bet with me. There's a cheap chicken place that just opened in front of the building. Loser buys the chicken and beer."
"Hmm. Even so, killing him is a bit..."
"Hey, hey, hey. Didn't you hear the old stories? The ones Secretary Rhea told when she was still new? You heard those and you still think that?"
"Mmm. I still don't think he'd go that far. Fine! You're on!"
"Okay. I'm all-in on that guy disappearing from this world. You're betting he at least leaves with his life, right?"
"That's the bet. Ah—time's up. Call the CEO."
"Got it. Ah, yes, CEO. Shall we send him in? Ah, yes, yes. Understood."
"How did he sound?"
"Same as always? Probably because the young lady is right next to him. Anyway, let's send him."
"Alright. Interviewee! You may go in now!"
"Ah—yes!"
At their call, the man straightened his clothes one last time, took a deep breath, knocked, and stepped into the room.
And after that—Rhea herself would later say she never knew what sounds came out of that room.