Chapter 29
Chapter 29
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 29
Chapter Title: Hunter (3)
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-Ding-dong! Ding-dong!
The doorbell rang insistently, one chime after another, sounding terribly urgent.
Well, I wouldn’t feel at ease either in his shoes. Especially not Seong Won-sik, the president who bore the most responsibility for the Iraq seawater desalination plant project.
“Shall we let him stew a bit longer?”
“If you push him too hard into a corner, he might start thinking up excuses. Open the door already.”
I deliberately kept him waiting for over a minute. Just enough to make him sweat.
There stood President Seong Won-sik in front of the door.
He must have gotten caught in the rain on the way. Both shoulders of his suit were soaked.
“Come on in.”
“…Thank you.”
Right on cue, the delivery of pork hocks arrived.
Uncle Kim Won-cheol pulled four bottles of soju from the fridge—God knows when he’d stashed them there—and set them on the table.
“Oh dear, come on in. We’re not about to make a surrendering soldier go hungry and demand the impossible.”
Uncle Kim Won-cheol’s deft wrist snap created a whirlpool in the soju bottle.
The glass in front of him filled up, reflecting President Seong Won-sik’s face.
A face buried in anguish, overflowing with torment.
“I ordered the deluxe set, so let’s eat first and talk. Looks like you haven’t had dinner yet.”
“…I’ll dig in.”
Uncle Kim Won-cheol was playing the good cop on purpose.
As the liquor poured steadily into his burning gut, color rose to President Seong Won-sik’s cheeks.
Once the buzz had settled in just right, the trembling in his hands finally eased. Now we could talk calmly.
I turned the empty soju bottle upside down on the table and addressed President Seong Won-sik.
“Just coming here means you won’t end up with your neck in a noose at the prison window.”
His expression flickered between shock and relief.
At the same time, doubt shadowed his face.
He was probably wondering if I, sitting across from him, truly knew the full picture.
That’s why, as I accepted the glass he poured, I continued.
“Iraq seawater desalination plant. Just this year’s cooked books alone exceed 50 billion won, right? Not to mention the shoddy construction.”
In an instant, it was as if the alcohol had evaporated from his system—his face drained white.
My hand gripping the glass grew ice-cold from the spilled liquor.
President Seong Won-sik snapped back to his senses. He righted the bottle and bowed his head to me in a fluster.
“I’m sorry. I slipped up. I got lost in thought for a moment…”
“No problem. I can just wipe it off.”
I pulled out a few tissues, wiped the liquor from my hand, and looked at President Seong Won-sik.
He seemed to be abandoning the equation he’d worked out in his head.
With a hollow sigh, he raised the white flag to me for real.
“Whew… You already know everything.”
“I even know that my uncle is considering injecting more funds into Iraq.”
My uncle, trying to rack up achievements on his way to becoming chairman.
He had no idea that what looked like a plausible path on the surface was actually a thorny road to hell.
President Seong Won-sik started downing the soju straight from the bottle. He probably couldn’t bring himself to speak without the courage from the booze, feeling stripped bare as he was.
Only after emptying three glasses in a row did he finally open his mouth again.
“It’s shameful. The truth is, the Iraq project had way too much risk in that region. We shouldn’t have gotten involved from the start.”
“You knew that much. So why did you let the mess grow?”
“…Responsibility always clouds judgment for us executives.”
A year ago, President Seong Won-sik had moved to Ammunition Group. As an outsider, he had no seniors or peers to guide him or stand by his side.
The suffocating pressure of performance targets hit him hard. Even though the unavoidable losses were glaring, he couldn’t just walk away.
Just like a gambler who’d blown his entire fortune.
“I thought we just had to get past this one. Recover on the next… I figured it would sort itself out. I’m ashamed even to say it.”
“Enough. The Iraq ventures are all getting cut loose anyway. That’s for me to handle now. The real issue is…”
Soon enough, ISIL would rampage anyway, so every operation in Iraq needed an exit strategy across the board.
But there was one thing. Something regrettable.
President Seong Won-sik was sharper than expected. Now that he’d aligned with me, real conversation was finally flowing.
His abilities were already proven objectively from outside.
My talent pool was thin. It’d be a waste to cut him down with the purge blade just like that. But his loyalty wasn’t solid enough yet to make him one of my pieces.
I gazed steadily into President Seong Won-sik’s eyes and spoke.
“The rat hole. Isn’t that the part about the one you’ll be crawling into from now on?”
“……”
President Seong Won-sik looked resigned, as if to say it had come at last.
The rat hole. Excluding the absolute worst scenarios, it meant handing his fate entirely over to me.
Like a condemned prisoner strapped to the guillotine frame, neck outstretched, all he could do was wait silently for the executioner’s verdict.
“I don’t think the rat hole has to mean something as lowly as fleeing overseas or a suspended sentence.”
“…Strategy Director?”
President Seong Won-sik couldn’t hide his surprise.
Overseas flight, suspended sentence. Those might have been the best options he could imagine.
He’d probably even braced for short-term prison in the worst case.
Then, my voice reached his ear.
The iron chains binding the prisoner’s limbs fell away, and a breeze called opportunity blew in, settling on his swollen wrists.
“Not passive surrender, but active, proactive cooperation. Produce results. Then that rat hole? I’ll deck it out quite splendidly for you.”
“…May I ask for specifics?”
President Seong Won-sik, inquiring exactly what I was promising him.
Instead of answering directly, I held up three fingers and said.
“Heavy Industries, Construction, Shipbuilding & Marine. The affiliates I specifically mentioned to the Director first. Why those three, I wonder?”
A light test question tossed out.
Proving my judgment right, President Seong Won-sik answered without hesitation.
“Group restructuring. Preparing for the storm ahead. The financial crisis from America you mentioned before. And… the industrial reshuffling that follows.”
I nodded silently.
There was no faulting President Seong Won-sik’s judgment.
All I needed was control—something to hold him in my grip and shake.
Time to put the reins on him.
“Heavy Industries, Construction, Shipbuilding & Marine. From inter-affiliate mergers to selling off unneeded divisions. We need a control tower to handle it all at once.”
“Strategy Director?”
I opened the last soju bottle and filled the empty glass.
Not just the clear, odorless liquor, but all the colors of his desires as well.
“Prove your loyalty to me. You could very well be the head of that control tower.”
* * *
Hotel Florence.
The elevator doors opened on the top floor, and Director Seo Myung-hee hurried her steps.
Her expression seemed a bit complicated. Seo Taehu recalled the group executives’ meeting from before and furrowed her brow.
‘What is that Han Seo-jun thinking? Is he just unable to rein in his youthful hot-bloodedness?’
Her grandson had suddenly started dancing with knives. The strangest part was his attempt at an internal audit, including the KS Industries matter.
They’d decided to bury it after weighing the gains, so dragging it back up out of nowhere was bizarre.
No matter how cornered her nephew was, it was too clumsy, too out-of-left-field an attack.
‘A headache. In the end, I had no choice but to give my youngest son a shot too.’
Han Hwa-gi had seized the moment to shift the momentum amid his grandson’s rash charge.
As Finance Headquarters Director, he held the high ground in the battlefield surrounding the internal audit.
Seo Taehu sighed softly as she walked across the carpet.
‘Seo-jun got carried away by impatience and played a bad hand. But that’s his skill too. This old woman will just… stick to principles.’
A decision laced with lingering unease.
With the clan meeting coming up, Director Seo Myung-hee didn’t have time for deep reflection and settled on a snap judgment.
Feeling only a vague hunch that there was a bigger picture she’d missed.
“Has the Director arrived? It’s been a while. Please, come in.”
Seo Taehu headed toward the inner room. Then a voice she didn’t particularly want to hear rang in her ear.
A man in his forties, sporting the clan chairman badge on his chest.
This mere puppet, newly elected by the clan council, wore his characteristic foolish smile.
“Why is someone who’s now clan chairman waiting out here ahead of time?”
“My father always emphasized it. The Director is the pillar of the group itself.”
Then came the sound of shoes from behind Seo Taehu.
An old man appeared, manipulating his puppet son like a ball of knotted thread.
“Oh dear, Director. It’s been too long. With the group buzzing inside and out, the clan council’s had its hands full too.”
“So it seems. I didn’t expect you to put your son in the clan chairman seat by proxy.”
Honorary Advisor Han Deok-sul of the clan council.
He’d clearly seemed to have lost power compared to before.
Yet this seasoned politician was pressuring Seo Taehu on the next chairman selection while quietly taking over the clan council from behind.
“Heh heh… The clan elders took a liking to my eldest boy. Cheol-sik, now it’s time for you to take on big responsibilities in the Han family.”
“I’ll keep it in mind, Father. I’ll do my best.”
The clan council held about a quarter of the group’s controlling shares.
Though ownership lay with individual members, key voting rights were exercised by the council representative, giving it immense influence.
Seo Taehu’s head was already spinning from group affairs inside and out.
On top of the successor turmoil, now even the clan council’s decision-maker had changed.
The equation had turned into a high-order polynomial. As she sat pondering countermeasures, another variable caught her eye.
“What good is ‘doing his best’? Better to do nothing than stir up pointless trouble!”
An old man with a flowing white beard, clad in a black durumagi hanbok.
With his utterly cantankerous face, he jabbed his cane at the novice clan chairman and unleashed a torrent of abuse.
“Fine, go on strike—just don’t get in the way! You, Han Hyeong-min, suit a lowly union grunt spot better than clan chairman, you fool!”