The Result Is Already Determined
Lee Gyeong-eun stood before the mirror, tension written plain across her face.
For several days she had been rehearsing the words she had prepared, standing before that same glass.
"I will make Ilhyeon Hotel the finest hotel in Korea, the finest in Asia—and, beyond that, the finest in the world."
She finished and studied her reflection, checking what expression she wore once the line was done, where her eyes had settled.
"Very good."
Kim Seong-ho, who had been watching her from behind, offered the praise without ceremony.
Still holding the paper with her talking points, Gyeong-eun turned toward him.
"I'm so nervous I could die."
"You don't have to be that tense."
Seong-ho patted her shoulder, then turned her back toward the mirror. He gave a light tap at the small of her back so she would straighten, then spoke to the woman in the glass.
"Do it with confidence. Every employee at Ilhyeon Hotel has been waiting only for you, Gyeong-eun."
His words steadied her. She opened her chest and drew a deep breath. With set lips she gathered herself and nodded.
"You're right. This is going to be my workplace—and my life. I can't start out this nervous."
"Exactly. Ilhyeon Hotel is our new home."
His reply eased the strain from her face. She turned her head and looked at him.
"But you're really not coming?"
Regret filled her gaze as she watched him. Seong-ho smiled lightly at that look, then drew her into his arms.
"If the man who, until recently, held Ilhyeon Hotel in the palm of his hand walks in, the attention will scatter. Today's protagonist is you, Gyeong-eun. Every eye should be on you. I can't go."
He took her hand and led her from the room. Still smiling at the lingering disappointment on her face, he offered one more push of courage.
"You'll do well, Gyeong-eun. So don't worry—just be yourself, the way you always are. Everything else will fall into place on its own."
His words shook the last of her worry free.
"You're right. You already laid the groundwork so carefully. Worrying would be a luxury."
The stiffness left her features. A bright smile took its place as she came down the stairs. Chu Suk-ja had come out to see her off on her first day at Ilhyeon Hotel, and Gyeong-eun greeted her mother with open cheer.
"Mom. I'm heading out."
"All right."
Whether from genuine worry for her youngest, Chu Suk-ja brushed at Gyeong-eun's clothes with her hands as she spoke.
"If anything gets hard, don't sit there fretting alone. Tell your mother. I'll speak to your father for you."
"Mom. What kind of company president goes tattling to her mother that work is hard?"
"What kind? The kind standing right here."
Chu Suk-ja pulled her daughter into a light, pitying embrace.
"If it's hard, don't bottle it up and chew on it by yourself. Understood?"
"I understand. Don't worry."
Gyeong-eun gently eased her mother back and looked into a face still full of concern.
"How is it that you're more worried than I am?"
"Of course I'm worried. You're a child who doesn't have to suffer—and still you insist on going out there to suffer…"
Chu Suk-ja shot a sidelong glance at Kim Seong-ho standing beside Gyeong-eun. Everything, she felt, traced back to meeting him. If Seong-ho had possessed real ability and a proper background, her precious youngest would never have had to go to work at all. She would have lived the easy life of the other daughters-in-law—shopping, going out, enjoying herself.
"If anything is hard, you tell your mother. Understood?"
"Aigoo, I said I understood."
Seong-ho and Chu Suk-ja saw her across the yard and into the car. Only after Gyeong-eun's vehicle had vanished from sight did the two of them hurry back into the house with quick little steps.
"Aigoo. It's cold."
Once inside, Seong-ho brushed at his shoulders as if to knock the chill from his body, then slipped off his shoes.
Chu Suk-ja stood where she was and glared at him. Seong-ho, shoes off and already inside, gave a single shiver and turned to her.
"Aren't you coming in?"
Ordinarily she would not have cared whether he went in or not. Now she was staring straight at him, so he asked with a smile.
"Is there something you wanted to say?"
"What are you going to do now?"
"Pardon? What do you mean by that?"
He looked genuinely puzzled. Chu Suk-ja frowned.
"I mean I've sent my daughter out to work—so what are you going to do?"
She took a step toward him.
"You're not planning to loaf around as some parasite husband living off his wife's back, are you?"
Her eyes said she would never tolerate such a thing as she looked up at him.
"I will not stand for that. I will not allow anyone to cling to my daughter while she works herself raw."
"Mother-in-law."
Seong-ho kept the smile on his face.
"Surely you don't think I intend to sit around doing nothing? Don't worry. I won't."
"Then what are you going to do now?"
"Nothing's decided yet."
Chu Suk-ja did not drop her suspicion. She kept staring him down. He said he would not live idle, but she still wondered whether he meant to leech off Gyeong-eun and the Ilhyeon family all the same.
Seong-ho held his easy smile under that gaze.
"First I'll speak with someone I have an appointment with today, then think it through gradually."
"You have an appointment?"
"Yes. So you really don't need to worry so much."
He stepped toward her as he spoke. Chu Suk-ja flinched and tried to retreat, but his hands were faster. Seong-ho took her by both shoulders and smiled.
"So just give me a little time. Before long, plenty of people will come looking for me, and I'll be so busy I won't have a moment to breathe."
He smiled at the speechless woman, then released her.
"As it happens, I have an appointment right away and was about to head out. I'll eat dinner outside, so you don't need to set a place for me."
Chu Suk-ja brushed at the shoulders he had held, as if the touch still bothered her, and snapped back at him.
"I've never once bothered with your meals. Eat outside or don't—do as you please."
Seong-ho laughed lightly and started for the second floor. Chu Suk-ja watched him climb the stairs, hesitated, then called up.
"So where are you going, then?"
Seong-ho, already on the upper landing, looked down and answered.
"I arranged to meet in Myeongdong—to talk over what we've done so far, and what we ought to do from here."
"Talk over what you've done so far and what you ought to do from here?"
She looked up at the second floor with the expression of someone convinced he was inventing an excuse just because she had scolded him a little. Seong-ho answered that look with a smile instead of words, then headed for the dressing room so he would not be late for the appointment.
"Director! Over here!"
The moment Seong-ho stepped into the coffee shop, Jo Chung-sep—who had been drinking juice—shot up from his seat and waved. At Jo's voice every customer in the café turned to look, and Seong-ho returned the wave with an awkward smile.
Still standing, Jo Chung-sep bowed at a perfect ninety degrees.
"You've arrived, Director."
"Aigoo. People are staring. That's enough—stand up."
Seong-ho pulled the still-bent Jo upright and sat him down, then ordered at once from the waitress who had approached with a faintly odd look on her face.
"One hot coffee, please. Assistant Manager Jo—will you have anything else? My treat."
"No, no. How could the Director pay? I'm the one who should be treating."
Jo made a great show of fishing for his wallet in his inner pocket. Seong-ho watched him with a smile and spoke again to the waitress.
"Just bring the hot coffee first, please."
The coffee-shop waitress glanced back and forth between Seong-ho and Jo with that same strange look, then took the menu and left. Jo, wallet already out, saw her retreating back, scratched his head, and tucked the wallet away again.
Seong-ho watched him put it away, then spoke.
"How did it go?"
At the question, Jo—still in the middle of stowing the wallet—startled and leaned sharply toward Seong-ho. In a voice too low for anyone else to catch, he reported the current state of things.
"You know Hudo Electric. Word is circulating that they've actually developed an automotive emissions-reduction device."
"So where does the price stand?"
Seong-ho asked without so much as a flicker of surprise. Jo checked their surroundings, then answered even more quietly.
"Right now… it's past forty thousand won."
"Forty thousand…"
Seong-ho folded his arms and sank into thought. Just then the waitress returned with the hot coffee he had ordered.
"Your hot coffee, sir."
"Ah—thank you."
He unfolded his arms, thanked the waitress, and turned back to Jo.
"Still not even halfway to our target price."
"Director!"
Jo stared at him, startled, then checked the waitress's face and spoke in a tone of pure disbelief.
"You can't just say things like that so freely… What if something happens?"
He watched the waitress set the coffee down with a blank expression and walk off, then added under his breath,
"If the waitress overheard us, wouldn't that be a disaster?"
"Assistant Manager Jo."
Seong-ho smiled quietly at the man's fluster.
"You don't need to be that careful. They won't understand what we're talking about—and even if they did, it wouldn't matter."
"It wouldn't matter? Why not?"
"That the result is already determined—that's the single greatest lesson I've taken from being here."
"Pardon?"
Jo looked as if he could not follow. Seong-ho lifted the cup in front of him and took a careful sip of coffee.
"Hudo Electric rising to a hundred and twenty thousand won is an outcome already fixed."
"Rising to a hundred and twenty thousand is a fixed outcome?"
"Yes. And depending on how we move, the side branches of our lives shift around that fixed trunk."
Jo sat with that for a moment, then clapped his hands softly as understanding dawned.
"So even if that waitress over there overheard us and tried to copy the trade, Hudo Electric would still climb to a hundred and twenty thousand—and the money you make wouldn't change either!"
Seong-ho nodded firmly.
"So don't fret over small things. What matters is how we move."
At the insistence that how they moved was what counted, Jo wore the face of a man who had just received a revelation. He nodded several times, turning Seong-ho's words over again.
Through Soyeong Packaging, Seong-ho had turned a hundred million won into more than two billion. Then he had put two billion into Hudo Electric and already roughly quadrupled it; his account now held some eight billion. From one hundred million to eight billion had taken less than a single year.
Those astonishing results had earned Jo Chung-sep Ilhyeon Securities' Outstanding Employee Award the previous year, and around the office people had begun to say the god of stocks had descended. No one else knew that all of it had been designed by Kim Seong-ho. Following Seong-ho's instructions, Jo had kept absolute silence; the story that circulated was only that Jo had managed the positions brilliantly and produced remarkable returns.
But the true god of stocks was sitting right in front of him.
"Director. Then is Sogyeong Machinery rising twelvefold also already decided?"
"That's right."
Seong-ho nodded.
"All we have to do is decide how much of it we take."
He organized his thoughts for a moment, then spoke again.
"If we rode Soyeong Packaging's twenty-fivefold rise, Hudo Electric's eighteenfold, and then Sogyeong Machinery's twelvefold all the way through, the hundred million I handed over would become more than four hundred billion. But that's physically impossible… so we'll have to set the amount we take at something reasonable."
He considered for a beat what "reasonable" might be, then looked at Jo.
"It's a pity, but for now let's wrap it up at fifty billion."
At those words, Jo Chung-sep's mouth fell open.
Talk of making fifty billion had sounded as casual as pulling a five-hundred-won coin from a pocket.