Blackmailing Team Leader Han Yujin
Six o'clock on the dot.
A cheerful end-of-day jingle spilled from the office PA system, but inside Meeting Room 2, the only thing filling the air was a silence thick enough to choke on.
Han Yujin stood in a darkened corner of the unlit conference room, her breathing ragged. Her eyes trembled as they bored into the tightly shut door. The fingertips wrapped around her phone had gone bloodless and white. A cold thread of sweat ran down her cheek, gathered at the point of her chin, and fell.
Why isn't he here? He told me to come at six sharp… so why?
One minute. Two. The clock at the top of her phone ticked over to 6:02. With every passing second, the terror closing around her throat made her blood feel like it was drying up in her veins. In that sealed room, the irregular hammering of her own heart roared in her ears until it felt like it would split her skull.
Did he trick me? Has he already sent the photos to my husband? Or did he set this whole thing up in advance, in case I called the police?
A swarm of ugly thoughts tore through her mind. The pride of being the Planning Team's youngest female Team Leader — that elite, untouchable poise — had long since vanished without a trace. The shameful secret she'd indulged in, hidden from every watching eye, had curdled into a single, consuming terror: that her entire life might be socially buried before the night was over.
6:03.
Creak—
The heavy conference room door finally opened, shattering the silence.
"Hah…!"
Yujin let out a breath tangled with relief and dread, whipping her gaze toward the door. But the instant she saw the face of the person walking in, her eyes went wide with shock.
A man with his shirtsleeves rolled up just so, one hand in his pocket, strolling in as if he had all the time in the world. The one who restocked the ice in the pantry every morning. The one who came panting whenever the copier ran out of paper. The Planning Team's youngest Intern.
Lee Junhyuk.
That… that piece-of-trash intern…?
The crushing terror that had been draining the blood from her veins in the dark for the last three minutes flipped, in an instant, into a searing shame and a violent rage that shot straight to the top of her skull. The fact that some intern who'd worked under her like a fly — a life she could have crushed at any moment — had dared to mock her, to blackmail her this thoroughly, was enough to make Yujin's reason feel like it was about to snap.
The moment I opened the door and stepped inside, Han Yujin's ashen face twisted — shock, fury, and shame all crashing together the instant she recognized me. It was the look of a woman who'd lived her whole life above everyone else's heads, realizing she'd been caught by the intern who filled the ice trays.
God, I loved that look.
"Lee Junhyuk…?"
"What the hell do you think you're doing? Are you out of your mind? Delete those photos right now!"
The way she forced herself to talk down to me, scraping together whatever scraps of a superior's dignity she could still reach — it was almost pitiful.
"Hacking the company system, blackmail… have you even thought about what happens to your life if I call the police?"
Her chest heaved. She was still trying to put steel in her eyes, still trying to crush me with presence alone.
"What do you want? Money? A full-time conversion? Just say it. How much?"
A quiet scoff escaped me.
Three minutes alone in the dark, blood running dry from sheer terror — and the second she confirmed I was an intern, the Team Leader act snapped right back into place. I almost laughed at how solid that holier-than-thou shell of hers still thought it was.
I didn't answer. I closed the door, slowly, and turned the lock behind my back.
Click.
The dull sound of the lock catching rang through the dark conference room, cold as a blade. Yujin's shoulders flinched.
I took my time. I walked, unhurried, along the long glass table at the center of the room. The sound of my dress shoes against the floor settled over her ears like a chill.
"Team Leader."
At the sound of my low voice, Yujin stumbled backward, her face gone white.
"Lee Junhyuk. The intern who empties the ice in the pantry every morning and restocks the printer paper. You do remember me, don't you?"
"You… have you lost your mind? Why did you lock the door?!"
"You still haven't grasped the situation, I see."
I took my phone from my pocket and woke the screen. A pale blue glow mottled both our faces in the dark.
"Money? A full-time conversion? Team Leader. Do you really think I built this entire setup just to beg for scraps like that?"
On the screen sat her husband's KakaoTalk profile, and beneath it a send-ready window packed with explicit nude photographs. My right thumb hovered, just barely, over that yellow send button.
"I walked in a mere three minutes past the time I told you to be here… and that look on your face, blood running dry all by yourself in the dark, was a genuine pleasure to watch."
"You… get your finger off that button!"
Yujin cried out in horror, but her voice was already shaking.
"Going to call the police? By all means. Go ahead and report me."
I gave a short laugh and pressed my thumb even closer against the yellow button.
"But before the cops even make it up the elevator to the twelfth floor, it takes my finger less than a tenth of a second to hit send."
"You… have you lost your mind? You actually want to get fired?!"
"That wouldn't be me. That would be you, Team Leader."
Not a single tremor in my voice. I said it the way someone might pick a lunch menu — idle, untroubled, almost bored.
"I've already pulled your husband's company email at that major corporation. His relatives' KakaoTalk contacts, too. All of them."
Yujin's eyes reeled, unable to find anywhere to land.
"One tap of this button… and that youngest-female-Team-Leader title, that perfect married-woman mask, all of it — finished. Tonight."
"Wait… wait, Junhyuk…!"
"Oh? A minute ago it was 'you,' like I was trash. And now the polite speech comes out?"
I closed the distance in slow, unhurried steps. For every step I took, Yujin stumbled back. At last the hem of her office skirt touched the conference room wall. There was nowhere left to go.
"Team Leader. Where did that look go? The one you wear when you walk past the Planning Team staff like they're insects."
"Junhyuk… please, this isn't— I know I made a mistake. I'll give you whatever you want, so…"
Her lips had gone bone-dry. Beneath the blouse ribbon she'd tied so elegantly, her chest heaved with ragged breaths, shaking in a way she couldn't hide.
"Whatever I want?"
I stepped in close and looked down at her. The scent of her expensive perfume mixed with the sharp smell of cold sweat, brushing the tip of my nose.
"I just wanted to watch that noble pride of yours shatter to pieces under one finger of mine."
"You… you psycho…"
"Psycho? That's a rich word, coming from the mouth of a married deviant who gets off posting nudes on internet forums behind her husband's back."
Yujin's face went the color of dirt. The moment her most carefully buried shame was laid out in the open, spoken through my mouth without a shred of mercy, she trembled from head to foot as if she'd been stripped naked on the spot.
I held the phone up, right in front of her nose. The screen's cold blue light caught in her eyes and shook.
"Shall we press it? A tenth of a second. That's all it takes to send your husband a message that reads, These are intimate photos your wife took herself."
"Don't! Please… please don't press it…!"
Yujin reached for my sleeve. But the instant her eyes found my thumb, still resting on that send button, she yanked her hand back as if she'd been burned. That one small finger was holding her entire life and every scrap of her reputation hostage.
"Why pull away? Grab it. Take it from me."
"Junhyuk… I'm begging you… just let me live through this. Once. Please…"
Tears finally welled in the eyes of a woman whose pride had been ground into the floor of hell. In a single stroke, the mask of the perfect female superior — the one she'd spent a lifetime of blood and sweat building — shattered into dust. Peel back that pretentious skin, and all that remained was the wretched survival instinct of a single, ordinary human being.
"If my husband finds out… if his family finds out… I'll actually die. The company will bury me too…"
She gasped for air, both legs trembling violently beneath her thin skirt. Her knees nearly gave out entirely; she caught herself on the conference table behind her and barely stayed upright.
"Listen to me carefully, Team Leader."
I leaned in close to her ear and spoke, low and even.
"The moment I lift this finger, you are no longer the youngest Team Leader in this company. In front of your husband, in front of his family… no. In this entire society, you become an insect that can't even lift its head."
"Ah… aah…"
A crushed sound leaked from Yujin's mouth. Her gaze was locked on one thing only: my thumb, dancing over that yellow send button on the screen, as if the finger itself were the thread her life hung from.
"Status? Reputation? Youngest female Team Leader?"
I gave a quiet scoff and lifted my finger, just slightly. Even that tiny movement made Yujin suck in a sharp breath and flinch.
"A few clicks of my mouse. One touch of this finger. And your entire life comes down in real time."
"Okay… okay, I get it… I'll do whatever you say…"
The neat blouse of her office look shook violently with her ragged breathing. Tears ran down her cheeks and dripped from her chin. From the lips of the once-proud Ice Goddess, a wretched plea spilled out.
"Please… don't send it… Junhyuk. No— Junhyuk, I was wrong. Please…"
I pulled out the head seat of the conference room — the chair she always sat in when she issued orders to her staff.
Scrape—
The harsh drag of wood tore through the silence. I sank into the chair at my leisure and crossed my legs.
"Standing there begging doesn't look like you're trying very hard, Team Leader."
I lifted the toe of my right dress shoe, just slightly. Beneath the pale blue glow of the phone screen, my eyes and Yujin's locked in the air between us.
"What… did you just say…?"
Yujin's eyes split wide with shock all over again. The bottom-rung intern was sitting, arrogant, in the head seat she issued orders from every day — and she was the one who would have to go down at his feet.
"You don't want to?"
My thumb put a little weight on the send button, as if I were about to press it.
"N-no, don't—!"
The scream tore out of her. Inside Yujin's head, the last of her pride and her will to survive collided without mercy. One second. Two. In the dark conference room, the only sound was her breathing, harsh and uneven.
And then, at last— thud. Thud.
Yujin's knees, sheathed in sheer nude stockings, gave out and hit the cold conference room floor with no strength left in them at all.
"Please… don't press it. I'll do anything you tell me to. Anything…"
The Planning Team's youngest female Team Leader — the woman who used to look at me like I was an insect — had, in a matter of minutes, become a little rat on her knees at my feet, begging for the thread of her own life. I looked down at the tear-stained crown of her head, and an overwhelming sense of control slammed through me — a pure, crashing hit of dopamine.
"See? We should have learned to communicate like this from the start, Han Yujin."