Establishing Discipline
Lee Gyeong-eun surveyed the empty dining room, then leaned slightly toward Kim Seong-ho, her voice thick with disbelief.
“Whenever my friends and I went out to hotels, no one ever suggested Ilhyeon Hotel. I always thought they were just being considerate of me…”
She lifted her head and looked around again.
“Turns out our hotel simply wasn’t popular. I’ve never seen a hotel restaurant this deserted.”
“That’s exactly why I came here, isn’t it?”
“True enough. If this place were doing well, you’d have no reason to visit.”
Having finally understood why her friends had always avoided Ilhyeon Hotel, Lee Gyeong-eun was still sighing when a waiter approached their table carrying a tray of food.
“Your dumpling set meals, as ordered.”
The waiter set a plate of dumplings before each of them, bowed, and left.
Kim Seong-ho picked up his utensils and spoke to her.
“Don’t take it too hard. Let’s eat first.”
“All right… thank you.”
After exchanging a brief word of courtesy, they each lifted a dumpling to their mouths.
“Ugh!”
The strange texture drew an involuntary sound from Lee Gyeong-eun. Unlike any dumpling she was used to, these felt dry and powdery—utterly unappetizing.
She spat the dumpling out and looked at Kim Seong-ho, trying to determine whether only her plate was ruined or if his was just as bad.
“Seong-ho… the dumplings…”
“They’re terrible.”
He chewed slowly, face contorted, then let out a hollow laugh and set down his spoon.
“They charge money for food like this… It’s even worse than I expected.”
“Exactly. To think this is the level of our Ilhyeon Hotel…”
Kim Seong-ho picked up his chopsticks and sampled the other dishes one by one. Nothing about them felt remotely like hotel cuisine. The kimchi and cubed radish kimchi tasted off; the namul side dishes were dried out and shriveled. When the food itself was this poor, the service should at least compensate—but fingerprints still marked the water glasses, and a small smear of kimchi broth clung to the edge of the table where no one had bothered to wipe it clean.
He laid down his chopsticks and gazed out the window.
“Aside from the view—sitting right in the middle of Seoul—there’s nothing right about this place.”
Lee Gyeong-eun followed his gaze for a moment, then spoke with genuine confusion.
“Does Father not know Ilhyeon Hotel has become this bad?”
“The Chairman almost certainly knows.”
Kim Seong-ho wiped his mouth with a napkin and turned to her.
“Gyeong-eun, shall we go?”
“It’s that bad, isn’t it? Let’s try somewhere else.”
“How about the Japanese restaurant right next door?”
“You want to go to the Japanese restaurant right next door?”
“Yes. Since we’re already here, we might as well take a look.”
Seeing him smile, Lee Gyeong-eun remembered that today’s outing was not only a date but also an inspection of the hotel. She quietly rose and followed him. Leaving their untouched food behind, they walked into the adjacent Japanese restaurant.
The Japanese restaurant was just as empty of customers. After being shown to a window table, Kim Seong-ho ordered the chef’s special course. While they chatted and looked out at the view, a porridge meant to stimulate the appetite arrived first. One taste, however, killed any appetite they had left.
“This is…”
Lee Gyeong-eun frowned after a spoonful of abalone porridge, unable to make sense of it.
“We’re the only customers here. Why is the porridge cold?”
“Looks like they just reheated something made in advance.”
“They prepared the porridge ahead of time? No way. They can’t be that careless…”
She tried another small spoonful, then fell silent. It really did taste like something that had been sitting around and was simply reheated.
“Your chef’s special sushi has arrived.”
The waiter set the sushi down in front of them. Lee Gyeong-eun looked at the plate and sighed.
“Haa… Every piece is different.”
The size and shape of the fish atop each mound of rice varied wildly. Even the amount of rice was inconsistent, so the overall arrangement looked like a mess.
“Even if the presentation’s bad, the taste might still be fine. Shall we try it first?”
Kim Seong-ho picked up a piece with his chopsticks, dipped it lightly in soy sauce, and put it in his mouth.
“Hmm…”
An involuntary groan escaped him as his face twisted.
“Far too much wasabi.”
“I can’t taste any wasabi at all in mine.”
He lifted the fish off the rice with his chopsticks and found that the amount of wasabi hidden underneath was completely random from piece to piece.
“Are these people out of their minds? Excuse me.”
Unable to hold back any longer, Lee Gyeong-eun called the waiter over.
“Where’s the chef? Tell the chef to come out here.”
“Is there a problem, ma’am?”
“Why is the wasabi completely different in every piece of sushi?”
She held the plate out for him to see.
“I could overlook pieces with no wasabi at all a hundred times over, but this much? Are you trying to kill someone? Do you want to send people to the hospital?”
Even though she raised her voice, the waiter merely looked down at the sushi with a bored expression. The commotion finally brought the chef out of the kitchen to their table.
“What’s going on?”
“The customer says there’s too much wasabi in the sushi.”
“Then just scrape some off and eat it. What’s the problem?”
The chef shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket and addressed Lee Gyeong-eun.
“If there’s too much wasabi, take some off. If there’s too little, add more. It’s nothing worth making a fuss over…”
“Listen here—”
“God, what a racket.”
Muttering, the chef turned away as if he had no interest in hearing another word. Lee Gyeong-eun shot to her feet.
“Do you know who I am?”
“And if I did, would it change anything?”
He sneered and dismissed her. Kim Seong-ho raised a hand to calm her, then stood.
“It would change everything.”
He glanced around the restaurant, then turned to Lee Gyeong-eun.
“Gyeong-eun, let’s go.”
Still seething, she shouted at the chef.
“Just you wait.”
“‘Just you wait’? You think that scares anyone? Sprinkle salt at the entrance. We’re going to have rotten luck with all the weirdos walking in today.”
“What did you just say?”
Lee Gyeong-eun wheeled around as if ready to lunge at him; Kim Seong-ho stopped her.
“There’s no need to fight here. I’ll make sure every bit of your anger gets settled.”
He soothed her, then looked once more at the chef, who stood lopsidedly with his hands still in his pockets, smirking. Unmoved, the man simply watched them. Kim Seong-ho guided Lee Gyeong-eun out to the car. Outside, he glanced up at the hotel building and thought,
Restructuring alone won’t be enough.
After more than twenty years of grinding experience inside the Ilhyeon Group, he decided it was time to show Ilhyeon Hotel exactly what he had learned.
“Dad, do you have any idea what Ilhyeon Hotel is like right now?”
Even though Kim Seong-ho had promised to soothe her anger, Lee Gyeong-eun did not forget to report everything to Chairman Lee Tak-hyeon.
“It’s a complete mess. The doorman doesn’t even open the door, we had to park the car ourselves, and there was no one in the elevator!”
Still fuming, she poured out every detail of what had happened at the hotel. Listening from the side, Chu Suk-ja flew into a rage even greater than if she herself had been insulted.
“Those insolent brats—do they have any idea who you are? You there!”
But the arrow of her fury swung toward Kim Seong-ho.
“And you just stood there and did nothing? You should have given them a sharp word! I let you two go out for a rare date, and this is how you let my daughter be treated?”
Lee Gyeong-eun, who had been venting freely, suddenly looked awkward when she realized her husband was being scolded because of her.
“Mom, it isn’t Seong-ho’s fault. Those people are the ones who did wrong—why are you taking it out on him?”
“They were wrong, yes, but your husband didn’t properly protect his own wife when she was being slighted. He has nothing to be proud of either.”
“Mom, why are you aiming at him all of a sudden—”
“Enough.”
As the pointless argument dragged on, Chairman Lee Tak-hyeon cut it short. He turned to Kim Seong-ho and asked about the hotel.
“Now that you’ve seen it yourself, what do you think?”
“It’s worse than the numbers suggested.”
“Feeling it on your own skin is always the most accurate. So? Have you thought of a response?”
When Lee Tak-hyeon asked with genuine curiosity, Chu Suk-ja spoke first.
“What is there to think about? Fire every last one of them.”
She looked at her husband as if the matter needed no further discussion.
“From the ones loitering and chatting in front of the hotel entrance all the way to that Japanese restaurant chef who insulted our Gyeong-eun—cut them all without exception.”
“And if we fire them all, who does the work?”
Lee Tak-hyeon regarded her with open contempt.
“Are you going to go work at the hotel yourself?”
Unwilling to back down, Chu Suk-ja nodded.
“Why not? I’ll go work there myself—so fire the whole lot of them.”
Lee Tak-hyeon snorted.
“As if you’d actually go work there. Stop talking nonsense.”
“Why not? I can do it.”
“If we fire them all the way you want, there won’t be one or two empty positions—there’ll be dozens. Do you have ten bodies? If you do, tell me how. I’d love to split myself into even two.”
No one felt the limitation of a single body more keenly than Lee Tak-hyeon; her words only sounded more ridiculous to him. He looked at the fuming Chu Suk-ja with open mockery. Sensing the moment was right, Kim Seong-ho spoke carefully.
“Mother-in-law’s suggestion may have been extreme, but I don’t believe it was entirely wrong.”
“What? What part of it wasn’t wrong?”
Lee Tak-hyeon turned from his wife and stared at Kim Seong-ho in disbelief. Chu Suk-ja, however, looked even more startled that her son-in-law seemed to be taking her side.
“You said the food at Ilhyeon Hotel was strange—did you eat something that scrambled your brains? What’s gotten into you?”
When Kim Seong-ho sided with her in front of the Chairman, Chu Suk-ja regarded him with open suspicion.
“Seong-ho, you don’t have to… force yourself.”
Lee Gyeong-eun, too, assumed he was only trying to curry favor with her mother and gently told him it was unnecessary. Watching the three of them react exactly as he had expected, Kim Seong-ho smiled and clarified precisely what he meant.
“Of course, firing everyone the way Mother-in-law suggested would create problems—but leaving things exactly as they are is also a problem. Employees who can’t uphold the dignity of their positions, and people like that Japanese restaurant chef, absolutely must be removed.”
Realizing the words were not mere flattery toward his wife, Lee Tak-hyeon regarded Kim Seong-ho with fresh interest. Sensing the shift in the Chairman’s gaze, Seong-ho continued.
“Discipline has collapsed throughout the entire hotel. Education alone has its limits when it comes to restoring order. So while we can’t fire everyone as Mother-in-law suggested, I believe a certain amount of visible personnel cleanup is necessary.”
“Establishing discipline… There’s logic in that. So what exactly do you want?”
Understanding that Kim Seong-ho had a concrete request, Lee Tak-hyeon asked him directly. Seong-ho inclined his head slightly and stated what he truly desired.
“I would like full personnel authority over Ilhyeon Hotel.”