Chapter 66
Chapter 66
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 66
Chapter Title: How to Scout Talent (1)
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Yeouido K Hotel Suite Room.
The terrace overlooked the glittering night view of the Han River. The penthouse-style suite, which occupied an entire floor, was filled with hazy smoke like painted clouds.
“How about it? Top-notch, right? My buddy Ho-sik got this shipped straight from the Netherlands. This is why having a connection in the airline business pays off.”
Kim Beom-ho, with a mischievous, boyish face, puffed up with pride.
He mixed some unidentified white powder into the hookah, lit it up, and immediately passed the pipe to Seo Yun-ji.
Seo Yun-ji inhaled and exhaled the smoke several times. Before long, her rigidly tense expression melted away dramatically.
“Haah… Now I can breathe. This brand really hits different.”
“Heh heh heh. What’d I tell you? Mun Ik-jeong knows his stuff. Dodging customs is what makes the guy a real pro. Right?”
Among chaebol heirs, there were infamous groups who banded together to cause trouble.
Kim Beom-ho bragged openly about smuggling via his family’s airline.
“Mm…”
Seo Yun-ji’s eyes were half-lidded.
She couldn’t tear the pipe from her lips, but Kim Beom-ho’s boasting seemed to irk her.
“Hey, Kim Beom-ho. Shut your trap for a sec. Your voice is killing my vibe.”
“Don’t be so picky. You’re loving it.”
“Whatever. I’m good now. Do your thing.”
Seo Yun-ji tossed the pipe aside and rose, heading to the bed.
She flopped onto the mattress, burying her bathrobe-clad body.
“What’s up with you today? Something going on?”
Kim Beom-ho followed, lying beside her. He stroked her hair as he asked.
“…I saw him.”
“Saw who?”
“Han Seo-jun, you idiot. At the Federation of Korean Industries gathering. The guy was brimming with confidence from head to toe. So damn annoying.”
Seo Yun-ji recounted the incident on the terrace at the Federation hall a few days back.
She seemed even sharper than usual.
Was something making her anxious?
One of her thumbnails bore irregular bite marks like a cogwheel.
“We have to win that Defense Acquisition Program Administration new weapon development bid. No matter what. I need to crush that cocky bastard Han Seo-jun fast.”
Kim Beom-ho tilted his head at Seo Yun-ji’s extreme words.
He couldn’t wrap his head around how she’d grown so edgy lately.
‘Man, even the girl I’m banging is a real piece of work. Temper from hell…’
Of course, it wasn’t like Kim Beom-ho couldn’t understand at all.
Seo Yun-ji and Han Seo-jun.
Both illegitimate children, both endured the same hardships, yet now their positions were worlds apart.
It made sense that her inferiority complex and envy targeted Han Seo-jun.
The problem was the sheer intensity of it.
“Got it. Got it, so come here. Our pretty, feisty Seo Yun-ji. Let’s smoke one more and talk.”
The swirling smoke carried someone’s desires and motives. Complex emotions, impossible to neatly divide, piled up on white paper and burned until they vanished in red flames.
Dizziness mingled with hollow emptiness. Only then did Kim Beom-ho carefully wrap his arm around Seo Yun-ji’s waist and speak.
“Hey. Be honest.”
“With what?”
“Yun-ji, why are you so obsessed with devouring Han Seo-jun? Can’t you just write him off as one lucky son of a bitch?”
Kim Beom-ho gently tightened his grip on her waist.
Was that why?
Seo Yun-ji’s complicated expression softened, and her true feelings began to leak out.
“…I’m running out of time.”
“Well, your skin does look a bit aged lately… Wait, no, no! I get it! Don’t hit me!”
Classic Kim Beom-ho, courting trouble.
After a few red handprints bloomed on his back, a peaceful atmosphere returned.
A quiet peace painted over with tragedy.
“That old fart. Turns out he had another bastard kid besides me. A son, no less.”
“Whoa… That’s a total gut-punch for you. Spill the details. What happened?”
Seo Guk-cheol, chairman of Cheolhwa Group, was famous for saying this whenever religious groups came begging for donations.
‘God’s no help in making money! Get lost, you Jesus-peddling scammers!’
But about fifteen years ago, he suddenly started believing in a religion he’d once dismissed.
No matter how busy, every Sunday he headed to a prayer house near Bukhansan.
In secret from family, relatives, and aides. With only his trusted secretary in tow.
“That money-grubbing geezer. Should’ve tailed him when he started going to ‘worship’ every week.”
“Yeah, who’d imagine turning a mistress into a nun and raising a boy at a prayer house? Even my old man wouldn’t stoop that low.”
A car repair guy had secretly copied the black box footage. Seo Yun-ji couldn’t erase the images from her mind.
The same illegitimate child… but drenched in a father’s affection reserved only for the heir to the Cheolhwa Group’s Seo line.
“That psycho old man was ready to rip out his own liver for that middle-school brat. Real blood, huh.”
“Well, old folks think alike.”
“He’ll probably shove the kid onto the group succession stage the second he turns eighteen. Bypass my sisters in one go.”
Before an heir to the Cheolhwa Seo family, legitimacy meant nothing.
The next generation’s surname wouldn’t be Seo—it’d be Choi or Park.
“The old man’s gonna do it. One hundred percent.”
“That’s why I need to solidify my position at SA-Cheolhwa Techwin first. Then…”
Something she could never have.
She had to claw desperately just to not lose it to a mere fifteen-year-old boy.
And… one person who oddly overlapped with her half-baked illegitimate self yet qualified for the crown: her brother.
Their voices were eerily similar, fueling a surge of rage.
Seo Yun-ji gripped the bedsheet with her jagged nails. Biting her lower lip, she spat out her fury.
“Han Seo-jun. I have to beat him in this Defense Ministry new weapon bid. And for that… I need irreplaceable talent first.”
* * * *
Looks like my warning didn’t quite stick.
Lee Taek-gyu, president of Ammunition Electronics.
In today’s interview with a friendly business paper, he boldly voiced some half-baked nonsense they call “gonjo.”
-[Hansung Economy] Weak-willed young employees! Can’t hack the workplace? Hear Ammunition Electronics President Lee Taek-gyu’s unfiltered thoughts.
-Lee Taek-gyu: They claim to be talent in interviews, but slack off in team efforts, becoming a disaster to the group…
“What a load of crap. What the hell is this idiocy?”
The guy spouting this misguided drivel in broad daylight and the media lapping it up—they were both insane.
But this was over a decade before my regression.
An era where old-school, stubborn corporate culture was still somewhat the norm.
“First… let’s check if the order went through properly. Yoo Se-na, my aide? When was that interview?”
“Judging by the date, it was two days before you issued the directive, sir.”
“Sigh. Too late to pull it, then. Understood.”
Anyone who’d risen from the bottom to affiliate president in Ammunition Group had maxed out their ass-kissing skills.
Mount Seoraksan hikes followed by apple-munching, 6 a.m. runs, bathhouse “creativity meetings,” roundtable knights…
That lunacy vanished right after my orders via Uncle Kim Won-cheol. He must’ve sensed the invisible reprimand.
“…I need talent. Talent.”
I tapped my fingers on the armrest below the car window.
I couldn’t fire President Lee Taek-gyu yet. No replacement for his generalist role across electronics.
The agonizing didn’t last long. We’d arrived at the Pyeongchang-dong family estate.
I’d been practically living in the chairman’s office lately—rare visit home.
* * * *
“Oh my! Son! My baby’s home!”
Mom greeted me in her high-pitched voice. Barefoot, she crushed me in a suffocating hug.
“You’re all grown up, but still my little boy to me. Come home more often. Got it?”
“Got… it. Let go first.”
Cheongju-ssi shook her head beside us.
Mom’s doting always baffled her whenever I visited.
“Ma’am. You’ll smother the chairman.”
“Auntie, stop! Can’t a mom show her only son some love?”
“You can. Just not in front of the Director.”
A strange vibe emanated from the stairs.
There stood Ammunition Group’s Seo Taehu, the grandmother, clicking her tongue in icy disdain.
“Whoops, forgot about dinner.”
“Cheongju-ssi?”
She vanished in a flash.
Her crisis radar was impeccable. Soon, the house echoed with rare shouting.
“Seo-jun’s mom! Are you still such a child? I told you to act like a proper Han wife of Ammunition Group!”
“Mother! How can you say that to my only son! You’ll freeze the house atmosphere!”
“You fool! I even put your name on the family register, yet you still act so flighty!”
The day I became chairman and seized Ammunition Group.
Mom was officially recognized as a Han family wife.
Grandma had spearheaded it.
“Seo-jun, you too! Why loiter instead of heading straight to the study? Quit dawdling and come up!”
* * * *
The study looked unchanged after ages.
Spartan space for work only—no decorations.
“Your uncle’s matter is off-limits from now on. I’ll handle the arrangements.”
Just one thing.
Behind desk supplies on the mahogany desk: three hidden family photo frames.
Now four. A recent one included Grandma and uncle together.
“…Aren’t you hurting, Grandmother?”
“Kim Won-cheol said it the other day. That it’s my fate as the witch grandma to carry it to the grave. Madman. I sprinkled salt in his face and chased him out.”
Uncle Kim Won-cheol’s face had looked off skin-wise recently.
He courted the rod too. Possible only because he was closer than mother and son.
“But mulling it over, annoying as it was, he was right.”
“Grandmother…”
“So… I’ll manage your imprisoned uncle. Bearing the remaining karma is enough for me alone.”
Grandma’s eyes were sad as an old deer’s.
Even the icy statue Seo Taehu seemed touched by spring sun.
I nodded slowly.
“As you wish. I won’t interfere.”
“Good. Now, get to the point. What did you want to ask?”
“Yes. Well…”
* * *