Cornered
Cornered
The next morning.
Just like yesterday, I left my work phone with Saori and came to work, only to find myself speechless when I saw unfamiliar men in suits dismantling the desktop that had been under my desk and carrying it away entirely.
Just then, a middle-aged man who seemed to be the boss of the suited men approached and spoke to me.
"Hello. Are you by any chance Kim Tae-min-ssi from the Night Zero Dawn development department?"
"Yes."
"We're from the Audit Team. Mr. Kim Tae-min is suspected of leaking confidential company information."
Saying that, the man showed me his employee ID card, glanced at my pants pocket, and held out his right hand.
"We need to conduct a digital forensics examination, so please hand over the phone you're currently using."
...I had resigned myself to this to some extent, but I never expected the Audit Team to move this fast.
I knew very well that refusing to hand over my phone here would make me look suspicious, so I obediently held out the phone I had.
"Then we need to question you, so please follow us."
Having said that, the company audit team members walked toward the elevator.
"......"
Honestly, I wasn't thrilled about it, but I decided to quietly follow their instructions for now.
The typical image that comes to mind when thinking of interrogation is that of detectives questioning a criminal at the police station.
A ritualistic act that mixes carrots and sticks appropriately, trying to extract clues from the suspect by any means.
But the interrogation I received at the Audit Team office was much more formal than I expected.
Whether I knew about the exposé post that went up on the company messenger,
Whether I had actually leaked company secrets,
Whether I had any idea who might have posted the exposé, and so on.
I answered their questions as honestly as possible.
Of course, I deliberately didn't answer questions that could be used against me legally, but since I figured these people were just doing their jobs for a paycheck, I tried to be as cooperative as I could.
Neither of us wanted to waste time unnecessarily.
"...Understood. We'll contact you separately once the results of the digital forensics are out."
"Yes, thank you for your hard work."
With the Audit Team leader seeing me off like that, I stepped outside. Realizing that quite a bit of time had passed while I was being interrogated, I hurried back up to the office.
Clatter-
The office I returned to was, as always, noisy with all kinds of sounds.
The rapid clicking of keyboards, the voices of people on work calls, the footsteps of employees walking back and forth to copy documents.
Since I had basically been slacking off while the department was busy, I carefully closed the door and slipped inside.
The silver lining was that everyone seemed too busy with their own work to pay much attention to me, unlike yesterday.
'They'll probably return my confiscated phone in the evening.'
Thinking that, I sat down at my seat, and my subordinate, who was hard at work, spoke to me first.
"Daeri-nim, what did you do at the audit office?"
"Nothing much. Just answered a few predictable questions and got a free cup of coffee."
As I answered, I instinctively tried to kick the main unit under my desk out of habit, only to swing my foot through empty air and realize it was gone.
"Ah."
Right, the Audit Team had taken it earlier.
Figuring I might as well get paid to loaf around legally, I leaned my chair back and asked my subordinate, who was still typing away furiously.
"Seokjin-ah, what's my reputation in the office right now?"
"Do you even need to ask? It's the worst, obviously."
"True. If the feedback were good, that'd be weird instead."
In a way, in a situation where no one knew who to blame, I'd become the perfect target to throw stones at.
'Should I seriously consider changing jobs?'
To be honest, the only reason I'd held on without quitting until now was my own stubbornness.
I'd grit my teeth and stuck it out because I felt that if I left the company too, the game's prototype would be completely lost without a trace. But after this incident, I felt like all my affection for the place had drained away.
'Honestly, I've done my fair share too.'
No one would blame me if I quit now.
Just as I was getting lost in deep thoughts about my future.
"Kim daeri-nim."
"Yes?"
I looked up at the sudden voice and asked the fidgety junior female employee what was going on.
"Um, the CEO-nim said to move your desk out of the office..."
"......"
Honestly, at this point, I was almost impressed.
First thing in the morning, I get dragged to the Audit Team, and now they're moving my desk out of the office.
I could feel the determination to get me fired, which was almost laughable.
These days, even office dramas don't show such blatant bullying, do they?
Anyway, I didn't want to make a fuss over something like this, so I just said okay and sent the junior employee back to her seat.
"Daeri-nim, are you really going to move your desk?"
"When the person who pays your salary says jump, you ask how high."
Heave-ho!
As I said that and lifted my desk, the surrounding employees looked at me with puzzled expressions.
But I ignored their stares and carried the desk out into the hallway.
Employees from other departments passing by gave me strange looks, but since I'd already come this far, I had nothing more to lose.
After moving my desk and chair entirely out of the office, I headed straight to the CEO's office to settle things.
"Excuse me."
Without asking for permission like usual, I stepped into the CEO's office. CEO Lee Hyun-cheol, sitting in his chair, frowned and asked.
"What's this about, Kim daeri?"
I got straight to the point with CEO Lee Hyun-cheol.
"Are you going to keep acting childish like this?"
"Childish? What do you mean?"
"When the post on the company messenger hasn't even been confirmed as real or fake, moving my desk out is basically telling me to leave the company, isn't it?"
CEO Lee Hyun-cheol let out a scoff, as if he found my words ridiculous, and turned his chair toward me.
"If you're innocent, why not just stay put until the results come out? And do you think I would have done something like this without any evidence?"
"Evidence? What evidence could you possibly have?"
"Do you think I didn't know that Kim daeri has been keeping in touch with people who left the company?"
"What are you...!"
"There was an anonymous tip. They said Kim daeri seemed suspicious."
I couldn't help but raise my voice at CEO Lee Hyun-cheol's absurd claim.
"Even if they quit, they were people I was close with from the start! Just because I exchanged a few calls to check in on them, does that count as leaking company secrets?!"
CEO Lee Hyun-cheol shrugged his shoulders and said.
"Well, you might be saying that, but you could also be lying. As the person responsible for a project, I have to keep public and private matters strictly separate. So just wait quietly until the Audit Team finishes their investigation."
Then, as if he couldn't be bothered to deal with me any longer, he waved his right hand dismissively.
It was a clear order to leave.
"......"
His attitude, as if I didn't matter at all, made my blood boil, but there was nothing I could do at this point.
In the end, I had no choice but to leave the CEO's office powerlessly, having gained nothing.
To cool off my anger, I moved to the emergency stairwell and punched the wall hard.
Bam!!
"...Fuck."
I was furious.
Not only was I being blamed for something I didn't do, but I couldn't even mount a proper rebuttal.
And more than that, I felt helpless.
'So this is how the seniors who left before me felt.'
I knew the situation was absurd, but I couldn't do anything about it.
That's because the person holding the knife right now wasn't me, but CEO Lee Hyun-cheol.
'At this rate, I can't even trust the Audit Team.'
I had thought that since there was no real evidence, my innocence would be proven quickly.
But seeing CEO Lee Hyun-cheol come at me with such confidence, it seemed like he intended to fabricate evidence if necessary to kick me out of the company.
'What do I do?'
No solution to break through this situation came to mind.
With CEO Lee Hyun-cheol targeting me, there was no way anyone would take my side, and my reputation was already at rock bottom because of the bad rumors.
To use a chess analogy, I was practically cornered.
The only possible way would be to find the person who posted on the blind, but I'm not the police, and there's no way an individual like me could get them to cooperate just by asking.
Click!
"Oh, daeri-nim, you're here again."
Just then, the emergency stairwell door swung open, and my subordinate poked his head in.
"What's up?"
"I didn't come looking for anything in particular. I just wanted to check if you were okay, daeri-nim."
Saying that, he came down the stairs and naturally offered me a pack of cigarettes.
"You know smoking's not allowed in the emergency stairwell, don't you?"
As I said that and pushed the cigarette pack away, he said, "Fine, then," and suddenly threw a question at me.
"So, what are you going to do now?"
I let out a deep sigh at his words.
"I don't know either."
I had been thinking of quitting if things went south, but as the situation kept getting tangled, it looked like I'd end up leaving without even getting my severance pay properly.
Unless I could immediately find another job to switch to, the fact that I might not get any severance pay at all was a huge risk in a situation where I could be out of work for months.
"...Should I go suck up to the CEO-nim for you? Ask him to let you go nicely?"
"Shut up, you idiot. What good would that do?"
My subordinate let out a series of sighs and said.
"I'm just frustrated. I really am. It's just that my only senior seems to be heading down a hard road because of pointless pride."
"......"
This was the first time he'd ever said something like this to me.
That made me even more determined not to drag him into this.
"I'll handle it myself. You don't need to worry about it."
When I refused his help like that, my subordinate let out another deep sigh and said, as if he had no choice.
"Don't come crying to me later. Don't say you wish you'd asked for help then."
"That'll never happen."
Forcing a cheerful smile as I said that, I urged him to go back since we'd draw attention if we kept being away, and shoved him toward the door.