Recruitment (2)
His subordinate Cha Chunghyun put on a rather excessive welcome, spewing out the coffee he had been drinking. Given that the man had worn a mood of perpetual boredom from start to finish, such a violent reaction was only natural.
Because the commander of the mercenary unit, Kang Jaeha, had suddenly appeared right in front of him.
“······”
Cha Chunghyun stared blankly at Jaeha, who was standing in the doorway, then squeezed his eyes shut for a few seconds before opening them again. Kang Jaeha was still there. Which meant this was no hallucination. Yet still unwilling to believe it, Cha Chunghyun slapped his own cheek.
-Smack!
Kang Jaeha let out a snort of laughter.
“Well, look at that.”
Meanwhile, Cha Chunghyun felt the sting in his cheek and finally accepted that he was not dreaming. Once he had calmed down somewhat, he wiped at the corners of his mouth.
There was no denying it. The commander, Kang Jaeha, was here. And with that, Cha Chunghyun’s mind promptly short-circuited.
“···Huh? Um?”
Out came a stream of strange sounds.
“Ah? Huh??”
His voice wasn’t very loud, but the blankness in it only made the shock more obvious. Amused by his reaction, Kang Jaeha smiled faintly as he stepped into the office.
“Yeah. Good to see you too.”
Jaeha casually pulled over a chair from the corner of the office and sat down. Cha Chunghyun could only stare at him, mouth hanging open. But that still wasn’t the end of what shocked him. Jaeha, sitting across from him, pointed past Cha Chunghyun with one finger.
Still gaping, Cha Chunghyun slowly turned his head toward the office entrance.
A hulking brute was coming in with easy, rolling steps. It was Go Chunseok.
Cha Chunghyun shot up from his chair, his mouth opening even wider.
“······Eeee???”
Behind the hulking brute came Lee Chanhoo with his eyes nearly closed. And then Ha Yeonji, waving at Cha Chunghyun with a bright, eye-smiling grin. This time Cha Chunghyun actually took a step back.
“Eeeeeee???!“
Watching him from his seat, Kang Jaeha crossed one leg over the other and laughed.
That guy’s reactions are delicious.
Go Chunseok sat behind Kang Jaeha, while Lee Chanhoo and Ha Yeonji took seats around them in the most convenient spots they could find. In the blink of an eye, the commander and his comrades had appeared before him. The situation was so far beyond anything he had expected that Cha Chunghyun froze with his mouth still open.
“······”
Only after several tens of seconds did he start functioning again.
“Uh, wha—?”
Then, all at once, Cha Chunghyun slipped past the seated Kang Jaeha and sprinted to the window to check the outside.
“Ah, no, that’s not it.”
Jaeha understood why he was looking outside and said, “Yeah. This isn’t another world.”
In other words, this was the same world he had come from. Cha Chunghyun, still pressed against the window, whipped around and shouted,
“Then why is the commander here?! And what are you guys doing here too!”
Kang Jaeha shrugged.
“So you can make reactions that over the top, huh? Thought all you did was sleep around looking lazy all day. Sit down, first.”
That was when it happened.
Comrade Encounter Confirmed.
When a subordinate encounters the commander, Absolute Obedience is applied toward Kang Jaeha.
If Absolute Obedience is violated, the subordinate will die.
The female voice that explained Absolute Obedience ended, and Cha Chunghyun finally closed the mouth he had left hanging open.
“······”
The shock was still there, but Cha Chunghyun’s entire atmosphere had shifted. It was as though his usual lethargy had come crawling back. On the surface that was what it looked like, but to Cha Chunghyun it was a serious expression. He gave Kang Jaeha a curt bow all of a sudden, then—
-Shff.
He started to trudge toward the office door, clearly intending to leave. Nobody, not even Lee Chanhoo, moved to stop him, but seated as he was, Kang Jaeha called him back.
“Cha Chunghyun. Don’t run off. Let’s talk.”
Cha Chunghyun stopped dead and turned his head just a little.
“···I, I still want to live. Please spare me.”
“You’re not gonna die, idiot. Stop shaking and sit down.”
As Cha Chunghyun kept glancing around warily, he thought,
Damn it, should I just bolt? No, wait, if the commander told me to sit, does that count as an order? That woman’s voice... feels risky to ignore. Better just listen for now.
With his brain working furiously, Cha Chunghyun made the choice best suited to survival. He shuffled back to his seat and sat down. Kang Jaeha then crossed his legs again.
“It’s been a while. Your face looks even more worn out, though.”
A few minutes later, Kang Jaeha was explaining things to Cha Chunghyun. His tone was calm and matter-of-fact. Why he had awakened again in this world, what the female voice had meant, the matter of Absolute Obedience, and more.
Lee Chanhoo or Ha Yeonji filled in here and there, while Go Chunseok simply stood behind Kang Jaeha like a great tree.
Even as he explained, Jaeha repeated himself.
“I’m saying this again: you’re not dying.”
The sight of Cha Chunghyun dying in the other world flashed through his mind. During the war, their base had been overrun, and although Jaeha had returned as quickly as he could, Cha Chunghyun was already torn to pieces by the time he arrived. It had been Jaeha who gathered up Cha Chunghyun’s arms and legs scattered around him.
“Do you remember your last moments over there?”
“No? Not really? There was just a monster in front of me, and then, well, I was screwed.”
Right. It was better not to remember a scene of carnage like that. Soon Cha Chunghyun looked over the mercenary unit members, starting with Go Chunseok.
“So that means everyone’s in the same situation as me, right? You all came back and woke up the same way, and there might even be more of the unit around... wow, that’s pretty wild.”
“It’s also wild that you talk this much.”
“Can’t blame me, can you? Look at the situation.”
At that point, Kang Jaeha flicked his eyes toward Ha Yeonji. She understood immediately and suddenly held out a hand toward Cha Chunghyun.
“Anyway, nice to meet you.”
“Huh? Yes? Ah— yes.”
“What’s with the formal speech?”
“We. I mean, we weren’t that close, were we?”
“Fair enough.”
Right after Ha Yeonji finished the handshake, Kang Jaeha looked around the empty tax accountant’s office.
“You shutting down?”
“···How did you know?”
“It doesn’t look like a place that does business, that’s how.”
“Oh.”
Of course, Jaeha left out the fact that he had already finished investigating Cha Chunghyun. Instead, he changed the subject.
“Good. I need someone to handle the household. Someone good with numbers.”
“You mean a money handler.”
“Exactly. I’ve been growing my money quite a bit. I want you to handle that for me. It’s similar to what you did in the mercenary unit, just with a different setting.”
Soon Lee Chanhoo and Ha Yeonji added further explanation. The commander’s situation, his position, the existence of MEG, what it was doing, what it intended to do, and so on. As he listened, Cha Chunghyun’s eyes slowly widened.
“Huh? The commander is... a manager? And he came here for the Busan International Film Festival.”
“Right.”
“So MEG is like the mercenary unit in this world, and the owner of the mercenary unit is, of course, the commander, but his position is sort of... a mastermind? Something like that.”
“How about coming over and managing the finances for me?”
Cha Chunghyun glanced at the comrades gathered around the commander and answered, “Ah... so that makes four of us, including me for now.”
Jaeha said nothing about Kim Ho-yeon.
“Yeah.”
“There’ll probably be more and more of us.”
“Is that a hassle? Either way, it’s your choice. Join or don’t.”
“Honestly, this is a pretty big deal. But if I say no... can I survive?”
“Of course.”
“And if I join?”
“Then you’ll need to do the job properly. You’d have to wrap up your life in Busan and move to Seoul.”
“······”
After a moment of silence, Cha Chunghyun scratched at the area around his drooping eyes. Still mulling something over, he let out a short sigh and spoke.
“Commander, I’m an orphan.”
“So?”
“Huh? You’re not reacting much.”
“Because I don’t really care about that.”
“···To be precise, I do have a mother. She just abandoned me. When I was young, I used to think she’d come looking for me someday, but she never did.”
Meeting Kang Jaeha’s eyes, Cha Chunghyun continued.
“At first I missed her, then eventually it turned into revenge. I worked that off by studying, and somehow or another I became a tax accountant. I’m pretty smart, you know.”
“Don’t start bragging in the middle of it. Your mother?”
“She never came back. Um... I heard rumors, though. Something about starting a new family? So I tried to forget about her. And then I got dragged into another world.”
“······”
“As you know, the mercenary unit wasn’t bad. But then I came back here so suddenly, and after coming back I kept feeling this strange sense of loss? I couldn’t focus on work either.”
Probably the same feeling the others had. Kang Jaeha listened in silence without replying, and Cha Chunghyun scratched his head again.
“So, like, a month after I got back? I decided to find the mother I’d forgotten about. I guess I wanted to get rid of the crap I’d been keeping buried inside.”
“Did you find her?”
“Not yet. I made inquiries through private detectives and a few other channels, but I haven’t heard anything for a month or two.”
“You were planning to find her yourself?”
“For now. I mean, I probably won’t be able to. Still, I wanted to try as far as I could. After that, I figured I could decide whether to work with the commander.”
After looking at Cha Chunghyun’s face for a few seconds, Jaeha glanced at Ha Yeonji. It was a question in his eyes.
Is he telling the truth?
Given Cha Chunghyun’s character, there was always the possibility he was lying just to get through the situation for now. That was why they had used Ha Yeonji’s ability in the first place, and Ha Yeonji, having already met the condition for using Smell, had been tasting whether it was truth or falsehood. From her, the scent that rose was sweet, not rotten.
In other words, everything Cha Chunghyun had said was true.
She gave a small nod, and Kang Jaeha turned his gaze back to Cha Chunghyun.
“What are you going to do once you find your mother?”
“Hm? No idea. I haven’t thought that far ahead. Maybe I’ll know once I actually meet her?”
“You remember her face?”
“Weird, isn’t it? It’s been forever, but I remember her face.”
Blood was thicker than water for a reason. Kang Jaeha thought briefly of his own past, then shifted the direction of the leg he had crossed.
“Her name or any other information?”
“Huh? Why?”
“Cut the chatter.”
With a tilted head, Cha Chunghyun moved over to the desk. What he brought back were sheets of paper. They contained all the information he had gathered so far about his mother. Kang Jaeha passed them to Lee Chanhoo, which left Cha Chunghyun puzzled.
“Huh?”
Lee Chanhoo, with his eyes nearly shut, opened them and then spoke after a beat.
“She’s in Jeju.”
“···Whaaaat???!“
Kang Jaeha rose from his seat and spoke first to Lee Chanhoo.
“Go with Cha Chunghyun.”
Then, in a low voice to Cha Chunghyun, whose eyes were wide and packed full of question marks, he said,
“Go meet her first and come back.”
At the same time, inside a five-star hotel in Busan.
In the lounge of the upscale hotel, Han Taeseong, neatly dressed in a suit that still did nothing to hide the solidity of his build, sat by the window with a view of the sea. He too had come to Busan because of the film festival, and was taking care of a few meetings and remaining matters on this side for several days.
Then—
-Shff.
A woman approached the seat where Han Taeseong was sitting. She wore a thin hoodie, her long hair tied back, and a mask covered her face. It was Yoon Dayeon.
“What is it?”
She spoke a little sharply, and Han Taeseong, smiling faintly, gestured to the seat across from him.
“Sit down. Don’t stand there. People are watching.”
“If this is going to take long, do it later. I have to get ready.”
She was talking about the follow-up schedule spawned by the film festival matters. Han Taeseong answered with a smile.
“It won’t take long.”
After a moment of looking at him, Yoon Dayeon let out a small sigh and sat down. Meeting her eyes, Han Taeseong began with the film Gyeollo he had seen at the festival.
“Gyeollo was good. Especially you, Dayeon. Aside from the role itself, you absolutely stole the scenes and really drew the audience in.”
“What is this, a compliment right off the bat? What’s your angle?”
“It’s not flattery. I mean it.”
Han Taeseong let out a soft laugh and crossed his legs before getting to the point.
“Dayeon, your contract ends this November, doesn’t it?”
At once, Yoon Dayeon’s expression turned serious.
“···That’s right.”
Han Taeseong made his offer.
“How about a three-year renewal? If you have any terms you want, tell me.”
“!!!”
For some reason, Yoon Dayeon suddenly thought of Kang Jaeha’s indifferent face. Because he had said exactly this would happen.
A few dozen minutes later, back at tax accountant Cha Chunghyun’s office.
Cha Chunghyun, Lee Chanhoo, and Go Chunseok were no longer there; Jaeha had sent the three of them out together. Naturally, the purpose was to meet Cha Chunghyun’s mother.
Left in the office were Kang Jaeha and Ha Yeonji.
As Jaeha stood up from his seat and looked through the utility bills and other receipts on Cha Chunghyun’s desk, Ha Yeonji glanced around the empty office before speaking.
“By the way, Commander, is Cha Chunghyun really a brain? In the mercenary unit, I feel like he just slept around everywhere all the time.”
“There were never any problems with supplies or logistics, were there?”
“Ah—was there? Right, now that you mention it, there weren’t any work problems, so I did think that was weird.”
“He may look a little stupid, but the guts are solid.”
“Mm-hm. The commander probably sees people better than I do. And the more talent we have right now, the better.”
Lowering the utility bills he had been looking over, Kang Jaeha gave Ha Yeonji, with her big eyes, an order.
“You go look into entertainment companies. Small and mid-sized ones. Ones on the verge of going under, or already in the middle of going under. The best target would be a place that has skill but no money. There should be plenty of those around, so you’ll find something quickly.”
“Huh? Entertainment companies? Why entertainment companies??”
Jaeha sat back down and, thinking of Yoon Dayeon and An Jihee, answered,
“Washed-up. Or maybe it’s not right to call them washed-up yet? Anyway, we should start buying up the entertainment side for MEG so it can take them in.”
The first subsidiary of MEG was going to be an entertainment company.
“I’m not planning to let all the good work go to the dogs.”
---