The Mold Seizure Plan (3)
The next day, the President convened a meeting.
He gathered every officer of manager rank and above. The question on the table was whether the company should relocate to a rented factory and keep the business going, or whether it would be better to sell.
A meeting, however, was not going to conjure up some clever way out. The only real solution was to find a mountain of cash somewhere — the company was drowning in debt. On top of that, they had fallen hopelessly behind on unpaid invoices to their raw material suppliers.
The meeting ran for more than two hours and produced no conclusion.
The President said he would decide the company's course after seeing how the foreclosure auction turned out.
Kim Chirok was organizing the litigation files when the phone rang. To his surprise, it was the Japanese language academy instructor from Yeoksam-dong in Seoul.
He had already forgotten about her. She, apparently, had not forgotten about him.
"Hello? Is this Kim Chirok?"
"Yes, it is."
"This is the instructor from the Japanese language academy in Yeoksam-dong."
"Ah — hello."
"How have you been lately? Why don't you come visit sometime? You're doing well at H Group, I assume?"
"I, ah — I left H Group."
"What? You quit? Then are you working somewhere else?"
"I'm getting some experience at a small company. Thinking I might try starting my own business."
"Oh my, is that so? I hear starting a business is awfully hard... So you're out of Seoul, then?"
"Yes, that's right. Hwaseong."
He did not mention Hyangnam-eup.
"Your home is in Seoul, though, isn't it?"
"Yes, it is."
"Then when you come up to Seoul, please come visit. Jang Min-soo, who works at a real estate company, is still attending the academy faithfully."
"I heard Jang Min-soo was dating a Japanese woman — I wonder how that's going."
"He received permission from her parents in Japan. It looks like they might even get married."
"That's wonderful news."
"Well, I'm sure you're busy, so I'll let you go. Do come visit sometime."
"Thank you. I appreciate you calling — that you still remembered me."
After hanging up, Kim Chirok found himself thinking about the Japanese instructor.
She was a woman who had graduated from Tsuru Bunka University in Japan and lived in Jamsil. She had assumed that Kim Chirok had come from a good school, earned a high salary, and came from a decent family.
If she ever learned the truth, she would be sorely disappointed.
Kim Chirok lived on monthly rent in a hillside neighborhood in Bongcheon-dong. He was a man earning 2.5 million won a month at a small company. If she knew that, she would run without a second glance.
She was well-mannered enough, but she wanted a man who had everything. The Japanese instructor was the type who would rather live alone than marry someone beneath her station. She could not entrust her fate to a man who was less than she was.
Then Oh Ha-young drifted into his mind.
If she had been standing next to him, he would have wanted to kill her. He considered sending her a KakaoTalk message saying as much — then a chill ran through him.
If I tell that bitch Oh Ha-young I want to kill her, she'll turn around and file a complaint saying she's being threatened with murder.
Wanting to kill someone was not the same as actually doing it. It was only a way of putting a feeling into words. But a woman like Oh Ha-young would treat it as a genuine death threat — as if he had come at her with a knife — and file charges without hesitation.
The thought was enough to frighten him.
Oh Ha-young really is something else. The daughter of a hotel owner in Incheon — she must have grown up doing whatever she pleased. She couldn't have gotten into a Seoul university, so she stayed in Incheon and spent her school years beating people up.
He checked the trial date. There was still a little time left.
If he left things as they were, the fine would be confirmed and go on his record. He considered writing a petition to the judge.
He knew there was a system for submitting written briefs timed to the hearing date. He had learned that recently, while handling Hyangnam Tech's lawsuit.
That's right. There was a system for writing up your own arguments — or your rebuttals to the other side — in a structured brief and submitting it to the court before the hearing.
That, he figured, would have some influence on the judge.
He went through the KakaoTalk messages he had exchanged with Oh Ha-young, looking for anything that might work in his favor. There was nothing of use.
I should have sent a message after we parted in Sindorim-dong, asking if she got home safely.
He did remember calling her the next day, though.
He had asked her why she was plastering pointless photos all over the internet. She had uploaded pictures of the two of them drinking together to Instagram and Facebook.
Manager Lee at H Chemical had seen those photos and called Kim Chirok a sly operator.
When Oh Ha-young picked up his protest call, she had said that posting photos was her hobby. And that the pictures were proof she wasn't seeing anyone but him.
That wasn't all. She had asked whether there was something in those photos he didn't want other people to see, and whether he was making a fuss because of that monster in the Chairman's secretariat.
When Kim Chirok kept demanding she delete them, Oh Ha-young had said she would — but she would keep a few of the important ones.
She claimed it was to protect him from other women. And she had added that her father wanted to see Kim Chirok's face at least once.
That conniving bitch!
Just looking at Oh Ha-young's overbearing face was enough to make his emotions explode. He wanted to put his fist through that face. Thinking about it made the heat surge up in him, sharp and sudden.
The phone rang. It was the Production Department Head at Hyangnam Tech. Kim Chirok wondered what it could be about.
"Kim Chirok? It's the Production Department Head."
"Ah — what can I do for you?"
"Want to meet quietly, just the two of us? How about a cup of coffee after work?"
"Coffee? Where should I go?"
"I know you stay in the office working even after hours. How about I come up to the second-floor office around seven, after everyone's gone home?"
"Well, that's fine."
Kim Chirok wondered why the Department Head wanted to see him. If the man had a request or an instruction, he could simply tell Chirok to come down to the production office. Asking to meet after hours, when nobody else would be around, was suspicious.
When the company shuts down, he's going to ask me to work with them. He'll want to take the Mitsutech molds and start something together. He's probably trying to confirm what the Production Manager already told me.
Then his mother called. Living so far apart, he always worried she would call to say she was sick. He worried about his father in Kimhwa-eup, Gangwon Province, too. With his father, perhaps no news was good news.
His mother's voice came through.
"It's me. Work going okay?"
"Yes. It's going well."
"You sent me 1.5 million won for living expenses — are you sure that's all right? Don't push yourself too hard."
"I'm sorry I couldn't send more. Once I'm making real money, I'll send you plenty."
"Don't worry about me. Just work hard. There's a President there, and a Vice President too, so listen to your superiors and don't give them anything to hold against you."
"Ah, don't worry about that. I'm not a new hire — I'm an experienced employee, remember?"
"Oh, and another piece of mail came from the court. I don't know what it's about, but I suppose it isn't over yet?"
Must be the notice for the postponed trial date.
"Ah, that's nothing. I'll come home this weekend, so just leave it on my desk."
"All right. I'll do that."
"See you this weekend, then."
Evening settled in. The staff left one and two at a time, until the office was empty.
Kim Chirok sat alone, paging through a tax law book the Accounting Manager had been reading.
At seven o'clock, the Production Department Head came ambling in with his hands clasped behind his back, still in his work clothes.
He was a lean man in his early fifties, his hair in a short crop, much of it gone gray.
Kim Chirok offered him a chair.
"Please, have a seat."
"What are you reading?"
"A tax law book."
"That's Kim Chirok for you — always studying. Completely different from the people we used to have here."
"I'm just killing time with it."
"If you're killing time, you pick up something light. Who sits there with a dry tax code?"
"I'll go make some coffee."
"Skip the coffee — if you've got green tea, I'll take that. If I drink coffee now I won't sleep tonight..."
Kim Chirok came back with two cups of green tea.
Sipping his tea, the Department Head spoke.
"At your last job you handled general affairs, and accounting too, didn't you?"
"Mostly general affairs, with some accounting support now and then."
At this, the Department Head smiled. He took a sip of tea and went on.
"Manager Cho talked to you, didn't he?"
Manager Cho was the Production Manager.
"You mean about starting a business?"
"That's right. If the company shuts down, a few of us have decided to go out and start our own."
"But the President hasn't actually decided to close down yet, has he?"
"The shutdown is as good as certain. If the auction sells on the first or second round, he might scrape by with a rented factory. But if it goes to a third-round sale, we should consider it hopeless."
"Is that how it works?"
"The President seems to have made up his mind, too. He said if he keeps dragging this company along any further, his health will collapse and he won't live out his natural years."
"Is that so?"
"So we have to treat the shutdown as practically certain. In that case, shouldn't we be getting ready?"
"So you're saying you're going the startup route, sir."
"The truth is, Manager Cho and I didn't go far in school. All we've ever known how to do is make rubber."
"Isn't this a world where doing one thing well beats dabbling in everything? I think that's actually better."
"Easy to say. But you know what people call us? Factory grunts. We're old-timers, so we managed to get married — but these days, no woman would marry a guy like us."
"Haha. Come on. Marriage is about two people liking each other."
"When we start the company, I want you to come and take charge of the administration."
"What? Me?"
"We don't know a thing about management. If we need to deal with city hall, the tax office, the labor office — it's better to have someone who's actually done that kind of work."
"I'll think about it."
"In return, you'll need to bring some startup capital. I don't know if Manager Cho mentioned it, but we'll need about 200 million won in capital."
"I, ah — I don't have any money."
"Nobody has money. How much cash is a guy working at a small company supposed to have? Bring whatever you can — ten million, twenty million, whatever you've got."
"Are you planning to set it up as a corporation?"
"We'll have to. All of Mitsutech's partner companies are proper corporations. No sole proprietors."
"But if we start a company and they refuse to give us the molds, couldn't Mitsutech come after us legally?"
"They probably would. If we go out and do this as a hole-in-the-wall operation, they'll demand the molds back."
"Of course they would. They'd rather place the work with a factory that has some scale than a shaky little shop — that's the only way they can feel secure about their supply."
"Hah. True enough, but what else can we do? We'll have to protest, I suppose. Either they hire us at Mitsutech, or they give us the molds."
"And if they go the legal route, then what?"
"At first they'll just rattle their sabers. They'll say if we don't return the molds, they'll file embezzlement charges. But that would drag things out."
"Which means Mitsutech might not get their parts, and their own assembly lines could shut down."
"If we don't return the molds, they'll just make a new set. They'll have the drawings."
"Then wouldn't we be wasting our effort?"
"That takes time, though. They'd have to machine new molds, produce prototypes — the whole process."
"Mitsutech would have thought of that problem too, I imagine."
"So at the new company, whoever brings the most money becomes President."
"That's how it would have to be. If you bring the most money, we'll make you President."
"Haha — I don't have any money. And you should be the President, sir. Obviously."
"Well. As I said, I didn't go far in school. All I know how to do is make product."
"Then Manager Cho, the Production Manager, could do it."
"That guy's even worse. He's a credit delinquent."
"What? Bad credit?"
"There's a story there. Pretend you don't know. He's currently in a credit recovery period. And even without that, he's just like me — didn't go far in school. He won't do."