A Year of Time

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Before I stepped out of Andongjip, I told my mother one more time.

"Anyway, you need to come up soon. I've got to head overseas before long."

"How am I supposed to drop everything all of a sudden? What about the work I've got here?"

"Come up and look after the house for me. I'll send you a salary every month. How's three million won?"

"Three million won? Where would you even get money like that?"

"Once I'm overseas the trip allowance comes in, so it's fine. That much will come through easily. Don't you worry."

"Even so..."

"A house goes to ruin if it sits empty."

What I really wanted was for her to live at ease in the new apartment, and she knew it as well as I did. Saying the thing ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠outright would have embarrassed me, so I dressed it up and let the excuse stand.

"I'll think on it."

"What's there to think about? Just get that house sorted. Anyway, I'm heading up."

I got behind the wheel and drove back up to Suwon.

The gold was handled. Before I went over to Egypt, the rest of the loose ends still had to be tied off.

First I stopped by the law office I'd hired for the divorce and handed over the papers I'd drawn up.

"Looks like I'll have to be out at an overseas site, so please handle things on your end. I may be hard to reach, so leave me a text if you need anything."

"Overseas? How long will you be gone?"

"About a year, I think."

"That won't do the case any good. If the other side comes on hard while you're away, it could turn against you."

A party to a lawsuit vanishing overseas was unheard of, but the other side had no one left to answer to anyway. It would be fine.

"Can't be helped. The evidence is on our side regardless."

"Well, we do have the photos proving the affair, and the payment records."

"I still have a life of my own to live."

"That's true enough. All right. I'll be in touch if anything comes up."

With the suit left in their hands, I went to the bank next and looked into a loan for the remaining balance.

The moment I slid the presale contract across to the loan officer, the rest of it ran in one smooth rush. The complex itself was famous enough, and the unit had already blown well past its original sale price, so borrowing against it was never going to be difficult. If anything, the envy in the teller's eyes was plain as day.

"You must have some serious luck, getting picked for that place. What'd you dream?"

The official odds alone had been a hundred thousand to one. The unit I'd won off the recommendation allotment — about thirteen hundred and fifty square feet — sat in a sixteen-hundred-household complex in the prime station belt of Gyeonggi's largest new city. A garden-first design held thirty percent more green space than an ordinary complex, and with a department store and a shopping mall flush against the grounds, it was the place the women of the new city called their dream.

Presale price, 530 million won. The market had already cleared 1.75 billion and was climbing toward 1.8. Southeast-facing, and a royal floor besides, so the premium was still stacking on.

Take out what I'd already paid toward the balance and I only needed to borrow about 230 million. I took 750.

Once upon a time, a few tens of thousands of won in interest would have set me shaking. I could feel, in my bones, how thoroughly I had changed.

It was my first home, so I qualified for a low-rate product across five years and locked a fixed 3.1 percent, set to pay interest only. I named a separate account for the interest to drain from and deposited three years of it in advance. Even if something went wrong, the moment the mandatory occupancy period lifted two years on I could sell at once and still come out ahead of my principal.

The borrowed money had a place to go. If I meant to get to work, I needed plenty of ammunition first.

I finished at the bank, dug around online, and found a psychiatric clinic. Between the move-in and the trips in to see the doctor, a week slipped past before I noticed. The annual leave I'd put through for approval had all run out. I went back to the company feeling clear and easy.

From the moment I came into the building, stepped off the elevator, and crossed the wide office to my desk, I could feel eyes on me that hadn't been there before.

The murmuring rose from every corner of the office and found my ears. Each of them probably thought they were keeping it quiet enough. With an eavesdropping-magic item on me, I only had to lend the air a little attention to hear every word of it.

Inside the company, Park Dongseon's image wasn't a bad one. From staff to assistant manager, and again to manager — two early promotions. He'd been an ace of the company.

I was the exact opposite. Passed over twice on the climb from assistant manager to manager, one of the so-called nobodies scraping the bottom of the place. None of that mattered anymore.

I set my mind at ease, turned the computer on, and went into the board. I dug through the in-house forms and checked the leave application and the rules for filing it. I was in the middle of that when the phone rang.

Briiing— briiiing—

"Yes. This is Assistant Manager Kang Chung-sik."

HR. So it had come. I needed to watch my mouth.

"Yes. Hello."

HR held the power to evaluate, fire, and hire, so even at the same rank their clout sat two grades higher, at least. They were never passed over for promotion, and inside the company they occupied the key posts and took the important training and every perk that came with them. It was only natural that so many of the high seats were filled by people who had come up through HR. The older the company, the truer that was.

When a manager from that HR called, there was no such thing as not going.

"Yes. Shall I come up now? I actually had something to pass along myself."

"Yes. I'm looking to file for a leave of absence. If you could tell me what's involved, I'll bring the papers with me when I come."

He asked it back as if he couldn't believe what he'd heard.

The meeting with Manager Kim Chang-man of HR went exactly as I'd expected.

"What happened?"

"I want to hear the story of the kidnapping, in detail."

"You haven't heard any news of Manager Park Dongseon?"

"We've taken Manager Park Dongseon's family over to Egypt. Most likely, once they return, they'll file a missing-person report."

"Why are you trying to take leave?"

To the questions I'd expected, I gave the answers I'd prepared.

"After I was kidnapped and they started hauling me out into the desert, I said I had to use the bathroom and I ran. It was night. I took a rough bearing off the moon and walked, and luckily I was headed toward Cairo."

"They hadn't taken my wallet, so I withdrew some cash, hid out on the outskirts of Cairo, bought a plane ticket, and came home."

"I didn't know Manager Park Dongseon had come to Cairo. I never met him."

"I haven't been able to sleep since the kidnapping. I saw a psychiatrist and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress. The diagnosis said rest would be best, so I want to take medical leave. I want to rest. Here are the medical certificate and the prescription."

When I produced the doctor's certificate and even the prescription for the sleep aids, the HR manager had nothing left to say.

I'd searched online until I found a suitable psychiatric clinic — a downtown practice, set in among the office blocks. The patient write-ups said the place was generous with both prescriptions and diagnoses. I went, sat down with the doctor, and explained what had happened: the kidnapping and the escape, and then the news, after I came back to the company, that a teammate had gone missing. The divorce suit I had underway, too. The circumstances were more than enough to leave a man shaken, and the doctor wrote the certificate and the prescription without much comment. Of course I paid up front, on top of that, for the expensive non-covered drug therapy and the counseling. I didn't regret a cent of it.

Once I shoved official papers at them, they could find it suspicious all they liked. Further suspicion still left them nothing they could do. However you cut it, I had been kidnapped by a local employee of this same company while I was doing the company's work. In a case like that, I could have sued the company for damages. File a criminal complaint on top of it, and the company itself might have been dragged into a police investigation — and the ones sitting across from the police would have had to be HR. Nobody wants a police investigation, no matter how blameless they are. You never know which way the sparks will jump.

Thinking of the knife with its handle in my grip, I had nothing left to flinch from.

Word that I'd met with HR spread across the company intranet in an instant. My story was already the in-house hot issue.

I got back to my desk, and the part leader called me over.

"Let's talk a minute."

"Yes."

Sure are a lot of people who want a look.

I went into the conference room again.

The part leader asked after my condition first. He would already have heard, through HR, that I meant to file medical leave on the strength of a psychiatric diagnosis. Or word might have come down through the department head even before that. A few pleasantries passed between us, and then it became clear why he had called me in.

"You know how it is if you take leave. Hard to land a good evaluation. And you've got a promotion to think about now."

Bullshit. I'd already been passed over once, and the man who set my grade that time was this part leader himself. Fuck. If he'd actually been worried about my promotion, he ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠should have given me a decent score back then.

He was the one who'd buried my evaluation to shove forward some employee he was close to, and now he had the nerve to sidle up all friendly and talk like that. The same man who'd taken my results and repackaged them as that bastard's achievements. And at the time I hadn't been able to say a word. I'd only been hauled into a conference room and told to work hard so I'd do better next time.

Hearing him fret over my promotion, I shot the question back before I knew I was going to.

"Then if I don't take the leave, will you give me an A on both the second-half performance review and the competency review?"

Two A grades and the score leaps by well over ten points. The part leader flinched at the words I'd thrown down out of nowhere. He hadn't thought I would ask for it to his face.

"Th-that's something you receive if you do well, isn't it? It isn't a thing I can hand over just because you ask for it."

I hadn't meant to take it even if he offered. Hearing it from his own mouth only made the thing certain.

"It sounded as if you'd rather I didn't take the leave, so I wondered whether you'd promise ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠something equal to that. If not, I think I'd better see to my health first."

Disbelief sat plain across the part leader's face. I wasn't some new hire who didn't know anything, and I knew perfectly well that this man, too, was only talking because of the damage my leave would bring down on him.

Manager Park Dongseon, the ace of the team, had gone missing. The work under him — dirty, tiresome, hard to spin into a result, and still work somebody had to do — had all been mine to carry. The ace who made the numbers was gone, and so was the man who defused the bombs, and the thought of running the part must have left him staring into a blank wall. Getting a new body into an empty seat was hard enough already. There was no way anyone would volunteer for a team, a part, where a disappearance had just occurred. So he wanted to coax me, just enough, into staying on.

But the moment a man lets go of any lingering want for a raise and a promotion, a superior has, in practice, almost no way left to control a subordinate.

"If not, I'll just submit the application for approval."

Saying it that way wasn't going to get the leave refused either. A doctor's certificate carries real weight; fail to honor it, and the responsibility rolls entirely back onto the people who sign.

Along with the leave, I applied for an interim payout of my severance. Six years of service — not much, but there was no point letting it sit. Citing the home purchase, I settled the severance out and took it as well.

The leave I'd filed was approved quickly. Manager Park Dongseon's disappearance had a hand in that.

HR, after contacting his family, had flown to Cairo themselves with a representative of the family. They spent a week there going from place to place, came back, and the conclusion was that the family would file the missing-person report in person. Of course, not a word about my having been kidnapped was ever passed on to them. If it had been, the family might have reported it as a kidnapping on the spot. A simple missing-person report and a report of a kidnapping overseas are worlds apart. As a company, they had handled it in whatever direction did the company the least harm.

In that climate they must have worried what I might say to Park Dongseon's family if I got the chance, because they pushed my leave through in a hurry.

And on the day the leave was decided, the team leader didn't forget to call me in himself and drive the warning home.

"We're still looking for Manager Park, so don't go around talking about this anywhere. Understood?"

Why would I. Quiet suits me better.

I told him I understood, and I walked out of the company.

With that, a year of time was mine.

It was time to cross back to Cairo.