The Japanese Lady Nishio Ayaka (2)
Kim Chirok had heard that the Unification Church arranged a great many international marriages. He'd even heard of thousands of members holding mass weddings at a Unification Church building somewhere in Gapyeong.
So is she one of the women who married back then?
Judging by her age, though, she didn't seem like a recent bride. She looked more like someone who'd married twenty years ago. Time had etched wrinkles into her face, but it was the kind of face that must have turned heads in her youth.
He found himself wondering whether her husband was happy with the marriage. Then again, if they'd already been together more than twenty years, they were probably doing just fine.
Wearing a smile, Kim Chirok turned to the Accounting Manager.
"Where do you live, Manager? Hyangnam-eup?"
"My original home is in Suwon. But the commute was too much, so I rented an apartment in Haengjeong-ri, Hyangnam-eup, myself."
"So your kids are in Hyangnam-eup with you?"
"I never got married."
"Oh? Is that so?"
Kim Chirok found it odd that a woman in her mid-forties had never married. He figured she, too, had set her sights too high and let her window slip by.
The Accounting Manager laughed.
"If you know any decent men, Kim, introduce me."
"Heh heh. I don't really know anyone."
"You've got a good face, Kim. I bet you'll marry well. By the way, how much is that studio of yours running you?"
"I got one for a two-million-won deposit and three hundred thousand a month."
"If the company were doing well, they would've put you up in a dorm..."
"Is the company in that much trouble?"
"Pretty much. Things were good until a few years ago... Back then they even covered the general affairs staffer's studio rent and gas money. These days it's a struggle."
"Ah, so there used to be someone in general affairs."
"At one point we had over a hundred people here. A couple of clients dropped off, and this is what we became."
"Payroll comes through all right, though?"
"Yes. We make an effort to pay salaries on time. The President should be arriving soon, so shall we get to work?"
They make an effort to pay salaries on time? Does that mean the company's hanging by a thread?
Kim Chirok couldn't afford to miss a paycheck right now. Even if he couldn't keep up the savings account he'd opened while at H Group, he still needed money for living expenses.
The President walked in. The Managing Director came in with him, so they must have had a meal together. The President's face was flushed, as if he'd been drinking at lunch. He tossed a bundle of receipts at the Accounting Manager, who frantically began punching the vouchers into the computer.
From the neighboring desk, Kim Chirok asked a question.
"Are you entering those vouchers into the accounting software?"
"Yes, that's right."
"What accounting program do you use here?"
"We use Douzone."
"Once you enter them, does it auto-journalize the account titles?"
"You still have to distinguish debit and credit when you input. Oh, by the way — you said during the interview that you knew how to do journal entries, didn't you? That's what the Managing Director told me."
"I learned a bit and then stopped. Heh heh."
"Well, that's convenient. When I'm swamped at closing, you can give me a hand."
While he was at this company, Kim Chirok wanted to learn everything — finance, quality control, production management, the lot. That way, even if he started his own business someday, he wouldn't be floundering.
Three days had passed since Kim Chirok started working at Hyangnam Tech. The work was beginning to make sense. Managing the four major social insurances was a matter of logging into a government-run website and handling it there.
Production workers came and went from time to time. If another factory offered better pay, they'd leave, and then Kim Chirok would have to file the acquisition and loss reports for their insurance eligibility.
He found the work interesting. He went down to the factory floor often and mixed with the production staff.
One day the Production Manager came by.
"You've got a decent reputation, Kim."
"Sorry? What kind of reputation?"
"The kids who handle general affairs are usually little punks with no manners. The bastard who was here last year and left was a cocky one, too. But you're not like that."
"Haha. Is that so?"
Whenever he went down to the floor and ran into the Japanese lady, she always smiled at him. Sometimes she even raised a hand and waved.
"Annyeong! Kim Chirok!"
Kim Chirok considered striking up a conversation with her in Japanese, then thought better of it. If word got around that he was fluent in both English and Japanese, it wouldn't do him any good here. Far from being impressed, the company would almost certainly start looking at him as some kind of suspicious character.
Kim Chirok looked at the calendar in the office and checked the court date against Jeong Chan-young's wedding date.
The trial is next Wednesday, and Jeong Chan-young's wedding is still two weeks away.
He decided he'd have to take the morning off next Wednesday. His reputation at the company so far wasn't bad, so they'd probably let him leave early for the morning. And Jeong Chan-young's wedding fell on a weekend, so that was no issue. Only people on special overtime came in on weekends.
The company was fine in every other respect — except for the shouting that occasionally erupted from the President's office. If it weren't for that, it would have been perfect.
The shouting came from the presidents of the raw-material suppliers, who'd show up to yell about not getting paid on time. Then the President would start yelling right back.
Once the supplier's president left, the President would turn on his own employees. He'd summon the Plant Manager and the Production Department Head to chew them out over defective products, then call in the Accounting Manager and pick her apart over some other nitpick. Being a woman, the Accounting Manager would sometimes come out of the President's office in tears.
Kim Chirok wasn't scolded. Probably because he was still the new guy.
Without the President around, the company was quiet and congenial. Then again, the President had his reasons. More money was going out than coming in.
Kim Chirok considered asking the Accounting Manager about monthly revenue and expenses, but he held back. He was still a brand-new hire, and he wasn't about to overstep.
The Accounting Manager sent him on an errand. She told him to go to the bank and withdraw two million won in cash. The President needed it.
"There's a Hana Bank at the Balan intersection. Go there and get it in fifty-thousand-won notes."
"Understood. I'll take the bus and pick it up."
"Oh, right — you don't have a car, do you? Aigoo. Imagine not having a car these days. Do you at least have a license?"
"I have a license."
"Well, that won't help. I'll just have to go get it myself."
With that, the Accounting Manager grabbed the car keys and stormed out with an irritated look on her face.
Should I just buy a car?
The car itself wasn't the problem so much as the upkeep — he didn't think he could swing those costs.
In Seoul, public transit was so well developed you didn't really need a car. Out in the provinces, though, you did.
Kim Chirok suffered plenty waiting for the bus at commute time. Even the middle-aged women on the production line drove their own cars. The strip along the factory wall was packed with employees' vehicles.
The foreign workers rode motorcycles. Rattling, sputtering motorcycles, but motorcycles all the same. There were times Kim Chirok stood alone at the bus stop.
The company did have its upsides, though. No security guards, and nobody in particular keeping tabs on anyone. So Kim Chirok could stay behind in the office after hours and read. His studio felt cramped, but sitting alone with a book in the spacious office was pleasant. And everything was here — computers, printers, the works.
Sometimes, while reading, he'd go down to the floor and find a work team still running. He'd wander down and watch. There was something fascinating about watching rubber products stamped out of the injection molding machines.
The foreign workers liked the night shifts. Overtime pay padded their wages. One guy from Vietnam was taking home more than twice what Kim Chirok made.
This Vietnamese guy's pulling in something close to a conglomerate salary?
The Korean workers, on the other hand, shied away from overtime. If you had a family, night shifts were brutal.
That evening, as usual, Kim Chirok was reading in the office when he stood up and stretched. He took a turn around the room, then peered at the bookshelf behind the Managing Director's desk. There were a few books, mostly on automotive rubber products.
Then he spotted a thick blue file labeled Personnel Records. Since nobody else was in the office, he snuck a look.
Resumes were filed for everyone from the President down to the production workers — the ones they'd submitted when they joined. He looked at the President's and the Managing Director's. Both had worked at major conglomerates in their younger days. The President seemed to have retired as a Director and founded this company. The Managing Director had been a Department Head at the same company the President had come from.
Hmm. If he left as a Director and started this company, he must have founded it after fifty. Isn't that a bit late to start a business? And it looks like he brought the Managing Director along when he started it.
The President and Managing Director were college graduates, but not many of the rest were. He looked at the resume of the young man on the quality control team. He was about Kim Chirok's age, but here they called him Assistant Manager. He'd graduated from a polytechnic university in Cheonan and had two years of experience at another company — enough to warrant the Assistant Manager title. Checking his age, Kim Chirok saw they were the same age.
Someone had written "unmarried" in pencil at the top of the resume. Probably the Managing Director.
The Accounting Manager had gone to a commercial high school. She held a 1st Class Computerized Accounting certification, though.
The Accounting Manager really is getting on. Forty-five. She's not even older-sister age — she's aunt-aged.
The foreign workers didn't have separate resumes — just photocopies of their alien registration cards. Kim Chirok kept flipping through the file until he found the Japanese lady Ayaka's card and studied it closely. She was married, but it seemed she'd kept her Japanese nationality.
An alien registration card displayed the registration number, name, country of origin, and visa type. The name was written in both English and Korean. Even for Chinese nationals, there were no Chinese characters.
So this lady's name is Nishio Ayaka?
Kim Chirok didn't know how Nishio Ayaka was written in Chinese characters. He decided he'd ask her the next time they met. He'd ask about her hometown, too.
Surely her hometown isn't Kyoto — the one place I've actually been.
Saturday arrived. Kim Chirok stopped by the company briefly in the morning, then went back to his studio. He considered going to Seoul, then decided it was too much trouble. Even if he went, he didn't have anywhere to visit. He figured he should at least call his mother and tell her he was doing fine. So he called her and told her he wouldn't be able to make it to Seoul this week.
He shuffled out in his slippers to go to the store, thinking of picking up some ramyeon and instant rice. Then, by chance, he ran into the young man from the quality team.
"Oh? Kim Chirok?"
"Ah, Assistant Manager Choi! Do you live around here?"
"I live in a studio just up the way. Looks like you live around here too?"
"Yes. I live nearby as well."
"I came out to grab dinner. Come on, let's eat together. There's a pork-belly place over there that does a mean soybean-paste stew."
So they went to the nearby samgyeopsal restaurant together.
Assistant Manager Choi spoke up.
"Funny, I don't think I've ever seen you on the way to work."
"Ah, I commute by bus, so I leave early in the morning and come back late in the evening. That's probably why we haven't crossed paths."
"You don't have a car?"
"Not yet, no."
"Out here in the provinces, not having a car's a real pain..."
"I'll buy one later if I need to."
"Don't wait. Why not buy Department Head Park's car — the sales guy? It's a company car, and I hear he's getting a new one."
"I suppose they provide a car since he's in sales."
"You need a car to do sales. Sales is what keeps a company afloat, isn't it? If an employee buys the car Department Head Park's been using, they'll probably let it go cheap. It's got a hundred and sixty thousand kilometers on it, so they wouldn't get much for it on the used market anyway."
So even with the company struggling, they were replacing the sales car because sales still had to get done. And a hundred and sixty thousand kilometers was a lot of wear. Even if he took the car, though, the operating costs would still be a problem.
"Understood. I'll think about it."
"Shall we order two servings of pork belly and a round of soju?"
Kim Chirok wanted to use this opportunity to ask the guy all sorts of things — about the company's situation, and about the Japanese lady Ayaka, too. So he smiled and said,
"Sure. Just one bottle?"