Corruption's Sweet Scent
I'd brought up investing for a reason: I wanted him to see me as easy prey.
A little bait, to make it obvious I was strapped for cash — so he'd be that much more eager to pull me into his corruption scheme.
It worked exactly as planned. Team Leader Lee Jungwan launched into a recitation of his own failures, laboring to impress upon me just how dangerous it was to play the markets.
"Investing? You think just anyone can do that? I tried stocks a few times myself — lost every last won of my principal. Completely wiped out."
"No way. Seriously?"
"Oh, I'm serious. Real estate's no better these days. The market's dead. Not exactly a golden window for putting money anywhere."
"Hah — real estate isn't even a dream for me. After putting down the deposit on our newlywed apartment, I only had a hundred million won left."
Team Leader Lee Jungwan's eyes glittered at the sight of my bitter expression.
He was sitting on some ugly little plan. That much was obvious. I'd give him a moment — let the calculations finish running in his head.
Now it was time to find out why he'd pulled the plug on the plastics project.
"Oh — I almost forgot. Thank you, Team Leader."
"Hm? For what?"
Lee Jungwan's eyes went wide, as if he genuinely had no idea what I was talking about.
"For helping the plastics project get approved."
"I did?"
"Wait — weren't you the one who put in a word with Vice President Oh? I figured that was why it sailed through so easily."
I asked it with a deliberately innocent face. Only then did Lee Jungwan look faintly embarrassed — before lying with perfect composure.
"Ha, haha. Caught me, did you? Well, I do have a bit of a connection with Vice President Oh. Figured if Deputy Kang was going to get a glowing evaluation anyway, I might as well have you land on our team."
"I knew it! I was right. But, well…"
I let out a long, heavy sigh and started complaining.
"Team Leader Kim seems to think the project only moved forward because of that new hire, Han Ha-jin. I can't tell you how disappointed I was."
Lee Jungwan's expression turned abruptly serious.
"Did you happen to hear why Han Ha-jin suddenly ended up on Team 1?"
"No, sir."
"Truth is… there's something I never got around to telling you, Deputy Kang."
He began explaining why the plastics project had collapsed the year before, when he'd been running it. Of course, I couldn't take his account at face value, so I listened for the keywords.
In my experience, liars never tell a hundred percent lie. They swap the subject of a real event to turn the perpetrator into the victim, or they tweak a single verb to twist the whole situation in their favor. Fire Fox had always wriggled off the hook that way whenever she was in a tight spot.
According to Lee Jungwan, something ugly had happened right in the middle of negotiations with the operations division.
"The staffer in charge of project support had us get a quote from a vendor he'd introduced. Later we found out he'd taken money in exchange for selecting them. We're talking hundreds of millions of won."
"What? Is that actually true?"
"Once it came out, the employee vanished and the partner company was permanently blacklisted."
"So they still haven't caught the culprit?"
"Went into hiding."
Apparently my response had struck him as hopelessly naive, because Lee Jungwan snorted — just quietly enough that it barely showed.
"Anyway, after that mess they swapped out the point person, the project fizzled, and they finally killed it on the grounds that it wasn't commercially viable. The real reason, of course, is that CEO Han Seung-woo quietly buried the whole thing so it wouldn't cause problems for the succession."
Iljin Food, along with Iljin Confectionery and Iljin Beer, was CEO Han Seung-woo's core portfolio. The claim that he'd handled it quietly for fear a corruption scandal would tank the company's image was probably true.
"But then Team 1 dredged the project back up — and that's how CEO Han Seung-jun found out about the incident."
That didn't add up. Almost nobody even knew our team was working on the plastics project. He hadn't "found out." Someone had told him. And I had a pretty good idea who.
Han Se-ah latched onto him the second she walked in the door. I knew that didn't look right. So she's got connections on Han Seung-jun's side too. The woman really does have tentacles everywhere.
Lee Jungwan, convinced I was swallowing every word, laid out his speculation as if it were established fact.
"Once it was going to come out anyway and make a lot of noise, the plan was to put this new face, Han Ha-jin, out in front and ram the project through. An eco-friendly venture is perfect for polishing the company's image. And it wouldn't look great for an uncle to throw up roadblocks on the first project his youngest nephew ever touches."
"Ah. So that's how it happened."
"The project will go forward, sure. But every last bit of credit for the plastics business is going to land in Han Ha-jin's lap."
Lee Jungwan muttered it while staring off into the middle distance, avoiding my eyes.
"Which means even if you transfer to our team, making Section Chief is going to be a long shot."
"Sorry? What do you mean?"
"They used you, you innocent thing. You cooked the whole meal and fed it to a dog. This is exactly why getting mixed up with the owner's family is such a headache."
Lee Jungwan shook his head as if he genuinely felt sorry for me.
"Ah…"
I clutched my head in anguish, and he spoke in a voice thick with sympathy.
"Honestly, I understand how that employee who got fired for corruption must have felt. You spend your whole life being loyal to the company — and for what? You're a consumable. Our salaries aren't even that high compared to other conglomerates. And we've got more than our share of deadwood, don't we? You spend all your time cleaning up after people, watching them walk off with your results. It's practically a job requirement. Retirement isn't even guaranteed, so of course you start wanting money. It's a real shame. If he'd just prepared a little more carefully, he might have gotten away with it. Quietly. No one the wiser."
I put on a look of keen interest and asked him.
"That's actually possible?"
"Now why would I lie to you, Deputy Kang? Truth is, I'm putting a little operation together myself right now…"
After that long, long buildup, Lee Jungwan finally laid his corruption scheme out in front of me.
"The problem is, to actually pull this off, I need an accomplice."
"An accomplice?"
"Well, you see…"
He was just about to get to the point when, with impeccable timing, our order arrived.
"Here's the bread and drinks you ordered."
"Ah, thank you."
Team Leader Lee's eyes went round at the mountain of bread piled on the tray.
"I figured you'd be hungry too, Team Leader, so I ordered plenty. Please, eat before it gets cold."
"Ah? Oh. R-right. Good thinking."
I'd recently learned that Team Leader Lee had gotten implants in his front teeth, so I deliberately tore open a bag of dense, dry bagels and handed them over with an Americano.
"These are bagels. A bit on the hard side, but the more you chew, the nuttier they get. They go great with an Americano. The younger crowd is especially crazy about them these days. Oh, that's right! You studied in New York, didn't you, Team Leader? Then you must have had plenty of these."
"Uh. Well. Yeah."
He couldn't quite bring himself to refuse, and started chewing with the slow, grinding persistence of a cow working through a mouthful of fodder. I beamed at him, then demolished two sandwiches in the time it took him to manage a few bites.
I was reaching for a chocolate pastry when Team Leader Lee spoke up.
"So, what I was about to propose earlier—"
"Yes, sir. Please go ahead."
He was just opening his mouth when the second dessert tray arrived.
"Here are the desserts you ordered."
"Oh, thank you. These look amazing. Team Leader, you should have some too."
"Ah. I'm fine. You go ahead, Deputy Kang. Eat up."
Lee Jungwan's face had the hollow look of a con man who'd lost his mark right before the contract was signed. Even so, the frantic spinning of his eyes made it obvious he was still scrambling for a way to reel me back in.
I finished off every last scrap of remaining bread and started in on the coffee and cake that had come out for dessert. Lee Jungwan muttered as if he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing.
"You ate all that bread and you're still putting away dessert?"
"Haha. Maybe it's because I've been working out so hard lately — no matter how much I eat, I get hungry again in no time."
The dessert plate was empty in seconds. I rinsed my mouth with coffee, then turned back to him.
"What was it you were going to say earlier, sir?"
The fish he'd thought he'd lost lunged back onto the hook. Lee Jungwan's eyes crinkled into a delighted, mask-like grin, and he dropped his voice as low as it would go.
Having laid that out, Lee Jungwan pressed me to acquire a particular advertising firm.
"If I buy it in my own name, won't the company find out?"
"That's why you put it in a family member's name. Keep it off the radar."
"And that's completely legal? No issues at all?"
"You're just borrowing a name for a little while. What issues could there possibly be?"
"Still, it feels a little… off."
I let the words trail away with a look of suspicion, and Lee Jungwan made his offer.
"Acquiring the company takes exactly a hundred million won. Once the balance comes in, I'll throw in another hundred million on top. Two hundred million, total."
I seized Team Leader Lee Jungwan's hand in both of mine and snapped a salute with the other.
"Sir! Loyalty, sir! I'll follow you to the end!"
The company Team Leader Lee Jungwan wanted me to acquire was a small advertising firm on the brink of shutting its doors. Needless to say, it was already registered as a vendor with Iljin Group.
"But is it really possible to buy a whole company for just a hundred million won?"
"More than enough. The only stock they ever issued is two hundred thousand shares at five hundred won apiece. They're drowning in debt and trying to close up shop — honestly, a hundred million is a gift from heaven as far as they're concerned."
I'd been a little puzzled at first. How could a man as cautious as Lee Jungwan trust me enough to spill his entire corruption scheme so freely? But the moment he mentioned the debt, I saw the real play. He was going to use whichever family member I appointed as CEO as a hostage — leverage to keep a money-blind fool like me silent.
How much debt they were actually carrying was something a glance at the financial statements would tell me soon enough. Right now, my job was to help Healthy catch the wind and ride it to fame. The louder that product got, the bigger the explosion when the patent theft came to light.
Expose Iljin Group's moral vacuum to the world in every ugly detail, and use the controversy to boost PharmCare's still-thin name recognition. Two birds, one stone. And if a corruption scandal quietly festering inside the company blew up on top of all that? The blame would come pouring down on Han Se-ah, the one who'd set this whole thing in motion.
All of it, of course, rested on one condition: that Han Se-ah and Lee Jungwan never caught on to my plan until it was far too late.
Still, getting a clear picture of Lee Jungwan's methods was a meaningful win in its own right.
Eco Plastic, Daeseong TS — so this is how they've been running the collusion all along.
The contract would go through as a private deal with the company he'd bought. Production would get farmed out to a cheap subcontractor. And along the way, Lee Jungwan would skim off more than half. For a racket like that to work, you needed to buy off the person who selected the bidding vendors — which, in this case, was Director Choi Sung-woo of Iljin Group's procurement team.
Director Choi Sung-woo is on CEO Han Seung-jun's line… Now this is getting interesting.
Whose protection Lee Jungwan was actually operating under was a question I could put to Chairwoman Heo Ji-hye. Ideally, he'd turn out to be one of Han Seung-jun's people. That would go a long way toward earning Chairwoman Heo Ji-hye's trust.
"Wrap this up cleanly, and I'll get you promoted to Section Chief early next year and brought onto our team. Just keep this quiet."
"Of course, sir. I'm putting my faith in you, Team Leader."
"I'll send the details through your sibling — the one who'll be listed as CEO. Text me a contact number."
"Yes, sir. Understood."
Pleased by my newfound obedience, Team Leader Lee Jungwan issued his instructions with an arrogant look and rose from his seat.
"Please get home safely, sir."
I bowed at a full ninety degrees and didn't lift my head until he had completely vanished from sight. Then I sent him a contact number registered under Zeroes Group instead of my sibling's, and stood up.
I needed to head back to the office. I had two pieces of information from today that needed verifying.
I came down to the first floor of the café, and someone hurriedly ducked out of sight.
Ha. Song Jiho. The man is a leech.
Lately he'd been nowhere to be found during the day, then materialized like a ghost the moment quitting time hit and started tailing me. Did he actually think I hadn't noticed? The crashing around every time he hid was even more absurd.
I hadn't shaken him off. I'd let him follow me here on purpose — so he could watch me grovel in front of Lee Jungwan.
Han Se-ah had no faction of her own inside the company, and she was throwing her full weight behind Lee Jungwan to pull him onto her side. Which meant she trusted him. If she found out I was bowing and scraping to the man she used like an extra pair of hands, she'd ease up on watching me. She'd believe she could control me through him.
And when Healthy's success had her riding the highest high of her life — what would it feel like to learn that Lee Jungwan had been using her to line his own pockets?
You should find out what it feels like to be betrayed by someone you trusted. Don't you think?