Chairman Jang vs Chairman Choi (4)
It seemed there was no flipping the pecking order that the elixir had so decisively settled — not right away, anyway.
When the atmosphere had cooled somewhat, Ki-jin turned to Chairman Jang with a question.
"Then let me ask you first, Chairman Jang. What brings a man of your standing to such a humble place?"
Chairman Jang opened his mouth to answer, but the moment he caught sight of the executives — including the branch manager — seated in the reception room, he exploded.
"What is this, a spectator show? Everyone out except Executive Director Lee! Go do your jobs!"
They all scrambled out the door in a panic, leaving only the two chairmen and Ki-jin in the reception room.
At that, Chairman Choi dropped all pretense immediately.
"Hey, Jang-ga. That tonic wine was absolutely incredible. Like I said earlier, zero strain on the body — I actually feel livelier than before. Maybe I should get a full checkup tomorrow myself."
"You fool, you only had two glasses. The effect won't be much at that rate. You need at least a few more, like I did, before it kicks in."
Ki-jin cut into their exchange.
"Chairman Jang, you've had your checkup done?"
"Hehehehe. Executive Director Lee, well, you see, I had my full checkup today, hehehehe..."
Watching him drag the sentence out yet again, Chairman Choi barked.
"Stop laughing and just say it, you old coot!"
"Don't be shocked now. My biological age came out as fifty-two. Back in September, it was sixty-nine."
"What? Fifty-two? Is that for real?"
"You know Chunghyo General Hospital, don't you? The head of their VIP screening center told me personally."
"Then it's real... And that means it was that wine you drank?"
"That's right. So I dropped by for a moment to thank Executive Director Lee here in person."
"Then that wine is a genuine elixir. Executive Director Lee, get me some, and quick."
"You fool, I paid three hundred billion won for that elixir!"
"I checked everything, you fool! You didn't hand Executive Director Lee three hundred billion — you entrusted him with asset management!"
Faced with Chairman Choi's righteous outrage at having the truth exposed, Chairman Jang shot Ki-jin a mildly irritated look.
"Executive Director Lee, why on earth did you tell him that! I still had a good long while left to milk this!"
"You would have found out eventually anyway. And Chairman Choi was tormenting me so relentlessly that I had no choice but to spill."
"Well, I suppose you had no other option. Executive Director Lee — did the money come through?"
"Yes, sir. It was deposited in full Friday afternoon. Thank you once again for your trust."
Ki-jin knew perfectly well that Chairman Jang was not the sort of man to drop by merely to gloat about having entrusted three hundred billion won. Clearly, he had something else to say to him.
Chairman Jang turned to Ki-jin again, his voice suddenly silky smooth.
"The real reason I came by today is this... You live out in Ilsan, don't you? Isn't the commute a pain?"
"That's why I'm planning to move to Gangnam once the performance bonus comes in. My wife's been house-hunting as we speak."
"Forget the house-hunting. I've already been looking. Consider it a gift from me — you've more than earned it, Executive Director Lee."
"I'm sorry? Chairman, the elixir was something I merely delivered — it isn't mine. Giving me a gift on top of that is far too generous. And I'll be receiving an enormous performance bonus as it is."
Listening to their exchange, Chairman Choi's eyes flashed as he zeroed in on the crux of the matter.
"Oh-ho. So the true owner of the elixir is someone else? Who is it?"
Executive Director Lee Ki-jin's stomach dropped. The secret wasn't supposed to come out yet, and here he'd let slip, entirely on reflex, that the elixir's owner was someone else entirely. Trying to sweep it back up now was like trying to gather spilled water off the floor.
"Ah, this cursed mouth of mine. Chairman Jang, I sincerely apologize."
To Ki-jin's abject apology, Chairman Jang responded with perfect cool.
"No harm done. It would've come out in ten days anyway — leaking a little early changes nothing."
Now that Chairman Choi knew there was a separate owner of the elixir, he began to throw a full-blown tantrum.
"Aw, dammit! How am I supposed to wait ten days? Tell me now!"
"If you call me hyung for the rest of your life, I might consider it."
At Chairman Jang's words, Chairman Choi mulled it over for a moment, then made his difficult decision.
"Two days' difference or not, older is older... Fine. I'll call you hyung forever. There — happy now, hyung?"
"Say it again. With sincerity and proper respect this time."
Chairman Choi's face twisted violently, but for the sake of the elixir, he carved the character for endurance into his heart three times over and opened his mouth.
"As you command, hyung."
"Drop the formalities. Executive Director Lee here is our witness. You heard him say he'd be my little brother for life, didn't you?"
"Honestly, you two chairmen. What on earth are you playing at..."
"Now then — name your terms for buying the elixir. If Executive Director Lee doesn't approve of you, there's no introduction."
"First, as I promised before, I'll entrust you with five hundred billion won to manage. And the price of the elixir — how much should I pay? I'll just pay double whatever that fool did. That ought to cover it, right?"
"And how exactly do you know what I paid for mine, you're offering double?"
Chairman Choi racked his brain, thinking hard about Chairman Jang's usual spending habits. Chairman Jang was wealthy, certainly, but he was never, ever a man who threw money around carelessly. Turn the problem this way and that, and the odds were a ten-thousand-percent certainty that he hadn't paid more than fifty billion won.
"No way you dropped a hundred billion on it, right? Fifty billion at the very most. Then I'll pay a hundred billion. Done."
"Oh? And what will you do if you break your promise?"
Chairman Jang pounced on the words as if he'd been waiting for exactly that opening.
Huh? Wait — that's not how this was supposed to go?
Doubt flickered through Chairman Choi's mind, but he had already fired the shot. The arrow had left the bowstring; the bullet had left the barrel. There was nothing to do but press forward.
Meanwhile, Chairman Jang knew Chairman Choi's habits all too well. To extract anything from the man, the first priority was always to bait the hook and let him work himself up into a frenzy. And sure enough, the moment he'd dangled the bait, Choi had lunged for it. The thought of repaying Young-hoon — the boy who had given him a second life — put Chairman Jang in a wonderful mood.
"Deal. If I go back on my word, call me a son of a bitch. Good enough?"
"Then, Executive Director Lee, set up the meeting with Young-hoon for tomorrow or the day after. I'm free then."
"Oh-ho, so the elixir's owner is a fellow called Young-hoon, is he? But hold on, Jang-ga — why are you planning to come?"
"To see whether you keep your promise. And to snag some elixir while I'm at it. You know the rule, right? You said it yourself, out of your own mouth — a hundred billion won per bottle. So bring around three hundred billion. And Executive Director Lee — pass along a message to Young-hoon: have about three bottles ready for me."
Ki-jin decided he'd better check Young-hoon's schedule first thing. So he asked Chairman Jang for a brief moment's leave.
"Chairman, I'll need to ask Young-hoon first whether tomorrow works for him. If he's free, I'll arrange the time and place myself and let you know."
Watching the whole exchange unfold, Chairman Choi's mood soured sharply at the news that Chairman Jang intended to tag along to the meeting and freeload elixir off this Young-hoon fellow.
"But hey, Jang-ga, you old coot. I don't mind you coming, but why should I be footing the bill for your drinks?"
Chairman Jang answered with steely conviction.
"Don't you know what an introduction fee is, you fool?"
The two of them kept up their bickering for a while after that, finally reaching a firm agreement to reconvene the next day or the day after.
Once the two chairmen — who had swept through like a storm — departed, Ki-jin was left utterly bewildered. His brother-in-law had sworn up and down that he'd merely mixed some herbal powder he'd picked up in the countryside into his wine. As far as Ki-jin had known, it was just a drink that tasted good and boosted a man's vigor, and he'd gifted a single bottle to Chairman Jang out of sympathy for the old man's troubles in the bedroom. But then Chairman Choi had piled on, and at some point it had all ballooned into an elixir of legendary proportions.
The look in Chairman Choi's eyes earlier — genuinely preparing to pay a hundred billion won a bottle — had been no joke. Young-hoon seemed to be thinking of the wine as something worth fifty to a hundred thousand won a bottle. A hundred billion won meant it had been inflated... how many times over? He was almost afraid to do the math. Calming his pounding heart, he ran the numbers: a hundred-thousand-fold markup.
Knowing Young-hoon's character, he would never simply pocket a sum that large, but Chairman Jang's mischief had set off a runaway situation that no one could rein in now.
Young-hoon, entirely unaware of the tempest raging around his Magic Additive Wine, sat at his office desk wracking his brain. He'd spent the entire afternoon weathering a hurricane of complaints from the dealership owners. And it wasn't just Marketing Team 3 — Teams 1 and 2 were in exactly the same boat.
Yet the two men who had created this whole mess — Deputy General Manager Cho and Deputy Hong — hadn't made a single phone call. Wherever they were and whatever they were doing, they surely had eyes and ears too; they had to be hearing the rumors circulating through the company. What was truly staggering was the sheer gall of planning to dump TVs on top of everything else.
His neighbor Park Dae-ri was dying right alongside him. If anything, the fact that every single member of Marketing Team 3 knew exactly who the culprits were only made the waiting worse.
Just as Young-hoon was agonizing over how to break through this impossible situation, his phone rang — his cousin brother-in-law, Ki-jin. There was something oddly sheepish, almost pained, in his voice.
"Hey, brother-in-law. You busy?"
"No, not really... what's up?"
"What's up, he says. Listen — could you free up tomorrow evening?"
"Why? Is Hee-joo noona demanding overtime again? The effects shouldn't wear off for a good while yet..."
"No, no, it's not that... I have someone I want to introduce you to tomorrow..."
"Would that happen to be a certain Chairman Choi?"
"Ha! Brother-in-law, you're a mind reader! I was planning to introduce you in about ten days, but thanks to certain unforeseen circumstances, it got moved up suddenly."
"I see. Well, if you're due for a beating anyway, taking it a little early isn't the worst thing."
At that, Ki-jin's voice brightened all at once.
"Then it's a date for tomorrow? Say around seven in the evening — how about Uncheonggak, that place we went before?"
"Sounds good. If anything comes up, I'll call ahead."
"Brother-in-law, I hate to push, but tomorrow you show up even if the sky splits in two. And the wine — could you manage three bottles?"
"I'm sorry, what? Why three bottles all of a sudden? Aren't two enough?"
Ki-jin's voice dropped into a noticeably humbler register.
"Chairman Jang had his full checkup at the hospital today, and his biological age came out as fifty-two. In September it was sixty-nine. So apparently the man is in a spectacular mood. He said he'd buy me an entire apartment, and now he's asking me to bring three bottles this time."
"Isn't Chairman Jang going a bit overboard? Once the effects wear off, his body could snap right back to where it was."
"I don't think so. We met on Thursday, right? He had five or six glasses that day. Today's day four — by your logic the effects should be fading, but he looked fit as a fiddle. So whatever's happening in the body seems to work differently. Let's dig into the details when we meet tomorrow."
"Alright, understood. Thanks, hyung. Talk tomorrow."
"Yeah. Good work today, brother-in-law."
Hanging up, Young-hoon pulled out his work notebook and flipped to tomorrow's schedule. Fortunately, nothing special was booked. Which meant it was time to meet this Chairman Choi fellow that even his brother-in-law seemed to find daunting. If it helped Ki-jin out, he could put in that much effort.
The moment he snapped back to reality, the phone on his office desk began to light up again. Who was it this time, he wondered wearily, coming to make his life miserable?
While Young-hoon was busy fielding protest calls from dealership owners, his cousin Hee-joo was deep in an animated gossip session with five of the neighborhood moms.
"So-yeon's mom, aren't you aging backwards or something?"
"I'm sorry, what does that even mean?"
"Don't tell me you haven't looked in a mirror lately. Your skin's gone all pearly, it's so much firmer. Your whole face looks younger. That's aging backwards, isn't it? What cosmetics are you using to get this pretty?"
"Hohoho, do I really look that young? I suppose it's all the love my husband gives me. You see, I'm keeping a seal these days."
"A seal? Where did that come from all of a sudden?"
"Young-ju's mom, you don't get the joke? That damn seal torments me so much I can barely sleep — I'm dead tired. Hohoho."
"I thought So-yeon's dad worked at a securities firm? Weren't you saying he's out drinking with clients practically every night and comes home late?"
"Exactly! He drags that exhausted body home and comes at me, and even then I'm about to die of exhaustion — imagine if he attacked in peak condition? And get this, the day before yesterday he went at me for a good six hours straight..."
The neighborhood moms' eyes bulged to the size of saucers — with envy, with jealousy, with wonder.
"So you're saying So-yeon's mom got younger because her husband loves her that much?"
"Hohoho, I can't wait to see how much he torments me tonight... I'm already looking forward to it. Hohoho~"
Suddenly, sparks began flying from the eyes of every housewife present.
"That no-good husband of mine — just let him walk through that door tonight!"
Somewhere in Hee-joo's neighborhood, the husbands would be wailing to the heavens before the night was out.
And Hee-joo, smiling with evident delight, carried on chattering with the neighborhood moms.
Young-hoon hadn't done anything out of the ordinary today, yet by quitting time the fatigue came crashing over him in waves. He himself was holding up thanks to the wine, but Park Dae-ri beside him and Manager Kim had been drained to the point of being practically indistinguishable from zombies. Dealing with people for a living was exhausting beyond belief.
Without a word of a lie, he figured he'd taken somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred calls today. Young-hoon hadn't done anything wrong, but a company's sins inevitably rolled downhill onto its own people.
The company needed to put institutional policies in place to keep product prices stable so the dealerships could secure a healthy margin. But this phone-dumping scandal had forced the dealerships to eat their own losses just to match the dumping — and how many dealership owners were willing or able to do that?
Worse, the aggrieved dealers had convinced themselves that the company was quietly slipping fat, secret margins to the favored dealership that had done the dumping — a suspicion that only fanned their fury further. Which was exactly why the company now found itself having to go on the defensive at every turn.
And that, in the end, was why one rotten fish in the barrel had left Young-hoon being tortured by dealership owners all day long.