From There On, There's Little Difference
The next morning.
The underground parking garage of the building that housed Nine Entertainment.
A soft click.
He shut the car door with a light flex of his wrist.
Then — beep. Beep.
The headlights flashed once, announcing that the car was going to sleep.
He liked this kind of thing. A tap of a finger on the sensor would lock it just the same, but everything in life needed a little fun.
"Hmm-hmm..."
Team Leader Baek Sungwook hummed under his breath, twirling the keyring on his car key around one finger.
He hit the indoor golf range every other day, but that was pretty much the whole of his job. In front of other people he complained about his aching joints and all the rest of it, but the truth was fifty-fifty. Hitting the ball was fun, and the soreness afterward was what made it exercise — what made it golf, right? Charging about half of it to company expenses kept the burden light. He could have billed the whole thing if he'd wanted, but the company wasn't exactly in a position to swallow that. So he pushed it right up to the edge of what the company would allow.
That was how you used a corporate card.
"Hup..."
He slipped the car key into his pocket and pulled out his phone.
"Raise it? Like that's even possible. What's she going to do, go to a loan shark? Celebrities really don't know how the world works."
The mutter was casual. His fingers typed something else entirely.
That should be enough. After Yoon Jun's real scandal broke, KSH had briefly asked whether Baek Sungwook himself had been the one to leak it. He'd told them absolutely not. This time, he was going to take her with him for sure.
She was a weapon I was going to bring over when I started my own company... but hoard something too long and it just turns to shit.
Baek Sungwook stepped off the elevator.
"Anyway, what's this summons about? Hyun-joon's promo schedule?"
When he reached the conference room, he could see them through the glass wall: Director Choi Yoona, General Manager Kim Misook, the thoroughly unpleasant Team Leader Park Munsu, and—
"What's that bastard doing in there?"
He opened the door with a light heart.
I despise people who betray. Sometimes I wonder if maybe I was born already betrayed.
Orphan.
It's a lousy word, but nothing else is quite so direct.
Orphan. A lonely child.
No one in this world is born an orphan. Every orphan becomes one after the fact. Whether someone intended it or not.
"What's with a meeting first thing in the morning? Seeing Team Leader Park here is making me nervous for no reason."
Team Leader Baek Sungwook wagged his tongue lightly. Not that I was going to rip it out. There are people like that. Just as there are people like me, who became orphans after the fact, there are people like Team Leader Baek, whose mouths were built without a latch.
After the fact?
That one might have been congenital.
Team Leader Park Munsu glanced my way, fishing for a cue. What did you call us here to talk about? I had never called Team Leader Park Munsu. The only person I had called was Director Choi Yoona. For reasons of her own, a visibly tense Director Choi Yoona had summoned General Manager Kim Misook and Team Leader Park Munsu as well.
She had given me something resembling a reason a moment ago.
"Nine-vengers."
"..."
"I just called them. Is that not allowed? We're all in the same boat here anyway, aren't we?"
There seemed to have been one more person in that lineup, but I didn't know and I didn't care. They wouldn't have been much help, and they weren't needed. I didn't appear to be the only one who thought so.
Team Leader Baek's eyes flicked from Director Choi Yoona to General Manager Kim Misook to Team Leader Park Munsu, the look of a man wondering whose mouth would open first.
"Team Leader Baek Sungwook."
I was the one who spoke. His face filled with the question of why, of all people, it was me.
"?"
"You defrauded Actress Ha Eun-yul, didn't you?"
The self-styled Nine-vengers assembled in the conference room all froze in shock. I hadn't told any of them why we were here today, either.
"Assistant Manager Lee?"
"What are you talking about?"
"I knew that guy would pull something like this."
With a blade already at his throat, Team Leader Baek Sungwook was, if anything, holding on to the last of his composure.
"...What the hell does that mean? And who the fuck are you to speak up in here? Who even are you?"
"People always obsess over the useless parts. Who I am. What I used to do. That kind of thing."
"What are you even... you crazy bastard... Why would I scam Eun-yul?"
When people are driven into a corner, they resist in all kinds of ways. Animals do it, so people do it more. A great many of them have one thing in common: they start acting like two-bit thugs.
Like water draining from a reservoir, the skeletal bottom of a person can be laid bare in an instant.
A slam.
Baek Sungwook brought his fist down hard on the conference table.
"Director! You're going to sit there and listen to some road-manager punk run his mouth? Huh?! And you too, General Manager, this is too much, honestly... After everything I've done for this company. You're just going to sit there and take this?"
His raised voice drowned out the vibration of my phone, but that didn't matter. I already knew. I had already checked what it said.
The Nine-vengers... whatever. Listing the names one by one was tedious, so that would do. In any case, I had invited the Nine-vengers here, and I sent them the captured screenshots. The conversation between Ha Eun-yul and Baek Sungwook.
"I knew that thug would pull something like this. A disgrace to managers everywhere. It's because of guys like him that people still say half this industry is full of con artists."
Led by Team Leader Park Munsu, contempt settled over every Nine-venger face in the room. Team Leader Baek Sungwook snatched the nearest phone — General Manager Kim Misook's — in a panic.
"...Th-this... I mean, no. A manager. A team leader? You just sit on your hands when an employee's parent is in trouble? That's not right, is it? How is this my fraud?"
One by one. Erase the rebuttals. Tedious work, but rewarding in its own way.
"Actress Ha Eun-yul's father's company is perfectly fine. Not that you'd care."
"...Still."
"You never even contacted Ha Eun-yul's father, did you? I already confirmed that."
"D-do you have p-proof? Call records, something like that?!"
Proof?
I didn't need it. The police would find it. If I obtained it, it would be illegal. If the police found it, it would be evidence. Why go out of my way?
Time to finish the hunt. I don't have the vice of staring at the bottom of a person for long.
"It started like this."
At my lowered voice, everyone in the room focused the way Shahryar once watched Scheherazade's lips. The Nine-vengers. Team Leader Baek Sungwook. All of them.
"You received a job offer, Team Leader Baek Sungwook."
I stated it as fact. It was inference. I was certain all the same.
"But unless you're exceptionally talented, no one offers a manager a job based on the manager alone. A manager's value is first and foremost the bond with the celebrity they handle."
"..."
Baek Sungwook had gone silent.
"The condition was this: come with Ha Eun-yul, and you can jump ship. But Actress Ha Eun-yul wouldn't budge. So what do you do? You shake her. So you manufactured a scandal, figuring the company wouldn't be able to handle it."
"That case was closed. Moon Cheol-sik was the culprit."
"I'm the one who closed it that way. Moon Cheol-sik confessed a long time ago. That you put him up to it. Didn't that seem strange to you? Moon Cheol-sik isn't an idiot. Why would he turn himself in for something he actually did?"
"YOU did that? Who the hell are you? Some guy who joined the day the scandal broke, and you cleaned it up?"
People are generally like this. Even when you tell them, they keep obsessing over the trivial parts. So I didn't answer Team Leader Baek Sungwook's question about who I was.
"Anyway, the scandal ended as a non-event. You failed to shake Actress Ha Eun-yul. And recently, the pressure came, didn't it? Something along the lines of, if you delay any further, the offer is off the table."
The heavy bob of Baek Sungwook's Adam's apple answered for him.
"So you made a reckless move. Using the fact that she had cut contact with her father."
"What a fucking bastard."
True to form, the Red Hare who ran first and thought later — Park Munsu — struck the earth with his mouth. At least a fist didn't follow, so that was something. Fast to move, but not the type to let his hands fly ahead of him.
"Ah, fuck it. I should've just quit. This company's circling the drain, and I've been the one keeping it going. Like I don't have anywhere else to go. And what? That's fraud? Fine, let's say you're right. I wanted to take Ha Eun-yul with me when I jumped ship. Yeah, sure. Let's say I got a sweet offer. So her dad wanted money, I stretched the truth a little — and that's fraud? Give me a fucking break."
He wasn't quite admitting it and he wasn't quite denying it. In the end, an admission is an admission. Normally, this would have been the end of it. But if that had been enough, I would have cut him loose a long time ago. I wouldn't have dragged it this far.
I stopped Team Leader Baek Sungwook as he turned to leave. With my mouth, of course.
"Have you checked your phone yet?"
"My phone, what..."
He checked it on reflex, and his pupils began to shake. This was why the work was tedious but rewarding. There was a certain pleasure in watching someone who could no longer move an inch.
"If you don't aim for pecuniary gain, it's simple deception. So originally, it was just deception, Team Leader Baek. I know. You never actually intended to take the five hundred million won. That's why the amount was five hundred million — a sum Actress Ha Eun-yul doesn't have. If you'd actually meant to take it, you would have asked for more, or less, wouldn't you? But this case can be construed as having been for the purpose of pecuniary gain. There's ample room to find intent to defraud. You deceived her, you induced a mistake of fact, and Actress Ha Eun-yul tried to raise the money."
"What... what even is this?"
Team Leader Baek Sungwook's head turned slowly toward me. Explain what I just saw on my phone, the look said.
"But I didn't want it to stop at an attempt. The deposit should have gone through right before you walked into this conference room. Looks like you missed it."
"...Why would you transfer money? To me? I told her to just hold onto it... and fuck... what's ten million? I said five hundred million...?"
"Ten million is enough."
"For what? Enough for what...?"
With that deposit, the elements of fraud were complete.
A deceptive act.
An express intent to take a stated amount.
Regardless of what Team Leader Baek Sungwook had actually intended.
And actual pecuniary damage to Actress Ha Eun-yul, caused by the mistake of fact that the deception had induced.
I answered very calmly. I didn't want Team Leader Baek Sungwook to be confused.
"Why would I...? Hey — you said it yourself. You said I never actually planned to take the money."
"What does that have to do with me?"
People are strange in that way. They want to be punished only as much as the wrong they committed. And yet when they set out to achieve something, they hope for results beyond the effort they put in.
As it happened, plainclothes detectives were looking around outside the conference room. Perfect timing. Detective Park Daesu's former colleagues. I raised a hand and gave a small wave. They confirmed, and they came in.
"Jongno Police Station, Criminal Division. We're here on a report."
"The man in front of you."
I pointed at Team Leader Baek Sungwook. The detectives recited something, then took hold of his arm.
"Wait... officers? Just a second... hey?"
Bewilderment — or something closer to despair — spread across Team Leader Baek Sungwook's face. That didn't matter either.
After he was led away, a silence settled over the conference room. Director Choi Yoona was the first to break it.
"Um... I roughly followed what just happened. I did! But did it have to go this far?"
"Even with a prison sentence for ten million won, he won't serve much time. And he'll repay the ten million. So in practice, he'll get a suspended sentence."
"That's not what I... haah... did we have to let the other employees see him being hauled off by the police inside the company? And... from what I heard, it sounds like he genuinely had no intention of taking the money."
Our eyes met. She was wavering. The same way Baek Sungwook had been a moment ago.
"Be the good one. I mean that sincerely, in case you take it the wrong way. I like good people."
"..."
"Haah..."
"And if I'm going to do it, I do it properly."
If you're going to step on someone, do it thoroughly. If you're going to humiliate them, make it unambiguous. Fail to finish it properly, and the blade comes back sharper than before.
Just telling someone, in so many words, never to show their face in this industry again means nothing. The rumor would start from the mouths of the employees who had been in the office today, and it would ride the wind. It would keep catching Team Leader Baek Sungwook by the ankle. It would become a scarlet letter that kept him out of this industry for good.
That was the kind of work I did.
And if the punishment for betraying someone's trust was just some fine, that was a pretty sad thing, wasn't it? At least from Ha Eun-yul's point of view.
General Manager Kim Misook put her finger on a point of her own.
"And the money? Did Actress Ha Eun-yul deposit the ten million herself? And she took the screenshots too? How are we supposed to face her after this..."
Ah.
That hadn't been Ha Eun-yul. This had been... a collaboration with Lee Yujeong. She was the only person with free access to Ha Eun-yul's phone.
I was about to answer when—
A light buzz.
A message arrived from Lee Yujeong's number.
That was why there was no reason to draw a hard line around who your enemies were.