No Vacancy
A lawmaker's office is, as a rule, a quiet place.
When the assembly member is in, it is quiet because they are there. When they are not, it is quiet because they are not. That is simply the nature of a National Assembly office.
That is how these places are. If some major incident broke out, or if emotions truly collided... of course there would be shouting. But that sort of thing happens surprisingly rarely.
When a confidential conversation was needed, the higher-ups usually slipped outside altogether, away from the staff's eyes. And for shouting or incidents to erupt, the balance of power had to be genuinely uncertain — yet the hierarchy among assembly members was, contrary to what one might expect, remarkably strict. It was fair to say that raised voices were almost never heard inside the Members' Office Building.
The ranks ran tight and deep: proportional representatives, freshmen, two-term members, multi-term veterans. Standing committee chairs belonged among the powerful as well. Then came the Floor Leader, and the Speaker of the National Assembly. And even within that densely packed hierarchy, there were occasional freshman members who, by virtue of how close they stood to the presidency, wielded more power than the Floor Leader himself.
Of course, if they belonged to a rival party, a freshman would happily tear into the other side's heavyweights — that happened all the time. But they did not do it here, in the Members' Office Building, where the public could not see.
A show exists because there is an audience.
Choi Giseok had reached the very peak of that hierarchy, so his office should have been quieter still. And yet, these days, Representative Choi Giseok's office was rather crowded.
"No matter how many times I come here, I always think the same thing. This location is really something."
Kim Sangheum stood with a coffee cup in hand, gazing idly out the window of Choi Giseok's office. He was the chief aide to Representative Yoon Jaehyun, a two-term member of the same party.
Which way the scales of power tipped between the members they served was something even a neighborhood stray would know — and yet Kim Sangheum wandered Choi Giseok's office as if it were his own living room. Beside him, one arm propped on the windowsill, Chief Aide Kim Taenyeog gazed out at the same view. He was no different. This one was the chief aide to a freshman lawmaker, no less.
Kim Taenyeog let out a theatrical groan as he looked through the glass.
"Ugh... I wonder when our old man will finally win a second or third term and land a prime spot like this."
"Faster to just find yourself a new old man. You know that."
At Kim Sangheum's words, Kim Taenyeog gave a little shrug, as if the suggestion itself were an imposition.
"Aigoo, what a thing to say. I'm sticking with our old man all the way to the end."
"Talk is cheap. Talk. And then the second he loses, you'll hop right over to someone else. Am I wrong?"
Kim Taenyeog smiled as he brought the coffee cup to his lips.
"Well, people come looking for me, that's all. I've got a pension to build up, you know."
"There. Honesty's nicer, isn't it? It's just us here."
At Kim Sangheum's words, Na Yoonjeong, seated some distance from the window, snuck a glance at Chief Aide Lee Moon-joo.
"......"
At the desk nearest the two uninvited guests, Policy Aide Lee Moon-joo's face had gone rigid. She seemed to be swallowing it down, but she was clearly furious. And she had every reason to be.
What do they think they're doing in someone else's office? So irritating.
Na Yoonjeong turned her head, pretending not to see.
Every time the old man is away, they come swarming in here like it's their own office.
The hierarchy among assembly members was tightly packed, and that was why the offices stayed quiet — but that only applied when the assembly member was actually in the office.
When you became a heavyweight like Choi Giseok, people were calling you from every direction. His district was Jongno, so he was often out tending to his constituency as well. In practice, he was away from the office far more often than he was in it. Especially around this time, with the new term just beginning.
When that happened, the office's visitor quality depended on the power of the chief aide or the senior aides beneath them. And Lee Moon-joo... she held Grade 4, the same rank as a chief aide, but she had only just been promoted, so her influence was still weak. She was not the type who enjoyed power struggles to begin with.
If Aide Yoon were here, at least, it would be better.
Just as Na Yoonjeong was privately lamenting, Yoon Myeongtae was not there either. Yoon Myeongtae was a chief aide, but his duties remained the same as before. He commuted from the district office.
Back when Chief Aide Lee Jaewook had been here, not even assembly members themselves had dared to waltz in uninvited — let alone the likes of these two. Whether Choi Giseok was in the office or not.
Perhaps, as Kim Sangheum and Kim Taenyeog had said, it really was all because this was a prime location. On the seventh floor, it met every criterion for what the Members' Office Building called a lucky spot — and it sat right next to the elevator.
Just as the two Kim-surnamed chief aides were currently admiring, the view was completely unobstructed, with a lawn and a fountain visible below.
Na Yoonjeong's frustration had been building to a boil... when suddenly her face lit up.
At that same moment, one of the uninvited guests — Chief Aide Kim Sangheum — reached over and gave Lee Moon-joo's chair a little poke.
"Aide Lee. What's different about the coffee here? Any idea why?"
"......"
"Oh, come on. This again. Communication is the most important thing among colleagues, you know?"
Lee Moon-joo answered, holding on to every last scrap of composure she could muster.
"...Coffee is coffee. It's all the same."
"No, it's not. It's different. The way I see it, this is the Floor Leader's office, so they take extra care with it."
"It's the same coffee. Bought from a supermarket."
"Aide Lee doesn't know a thing. This is coffee the Floor Leader himself drinks, so the coffee company maps out the traffic flow in advance and stocks a special blend. Ah, now that I say it out loud — that's lobbying, isn't it?"
"...What are you implying?!"
Lee Moon-joo's face flushed in an instant. Kim Sangheum laughed.
"It's a joke, a joke. You knew it was a joke and you still got all worked up. What lunatic company maps out traffic flow just to display coffee? Could you even handle being an aide if that's how you react?"
"Aigoo, go easy, Chief Kim. You'll scare the kid. You've got to teach her one thing at a time — you jumped way too far ahead."
Kim Sangheum nodded vigorously at Kim Taenyeog's backup.
"Is that so? Still, as a senior, I want to teach her at least one thing. Anyway, Aide Lee. You can't get worked up over every little thing like this, you hear? That's how you end up in the pot, just like that bastard."
Lee Moon-joo shot up from her seat.
"What exactly are you saying?"
"I just taught you, and you're doing it again? That bastard never taught you this kind of thing, did he?"
It was not just today. Lee Moon-joo had been holding it in this entire time, and now she exploded.
"That bastard? Take that back! You've crossed a line!"
"So he really did get cooked, huh?"
"He did not!"
"Did not, my ass. If you kick out an aide who was with you all the way through the election, there's only one explanation. You boiled him alive and ate him."
"He did cross a lot of lines, though. Young and no sense of his place. You didn't even have to see it — he would've been the same with the assemblyman."
Lee Moon-joo's head snapped toward Kim Taenyeog.
"That's not true! Our chief aide was not cooked, and he never crossed any lines!"
"If that's not it, then why was he fired? What, is there something else? It's not like they were going to give him a district. Or did something blow up? Is that why they cut him loose in advance?"
"......"
Lee Moon-joo wrestled with herself. How was she supposed to explain this? Saying he had gone off to become a celebrity manager was almost laughable.
And she had been drilled — until her ears grew calluses — never to carelessly disclose information about anyone, back when Chief Aide Lee Jaewook had still been here. In the end, she fell silent.
And then.
"Aide Lee Moon-joo. Did I ever tell you what happens when a tongue grows too long?"
From behind Lee Moon-joo, a voice she had missed more than she could say rang out. Before her body could even turn, the answer sprang from her lips by sheer habit.
"You said that a long tongue becomes a blade that stabs its owner."
Chief Aide Lee Jaewook — or so Lee Moon-joo still thought of him, though in reality he had become the manager of some celebrity no one here would even recognize — set a gift set of drinks down on Na Yoonjeong's desk as he answered.
A person who has once been a minister is still called Minister even after leaving the post. By those around them, of course. The same is true of presidents.
There were times when the thought struck him as funny. Accompanying Choi Giseok to some major national event, and everywhere you looked people were calling out "Minister, Minister," while somewhere else someone was greeting a "Mr. President." The sight of several presidents and a dozen ministers occupying a single space... it could not help but be amusing.
And yet he had never found it all that strange.
It was, in part, an expression of respect for someone whose title had vanished.
But it was also a kind of... power. Proof. It meant that person might return to that position. Or it proved that they still retained a portion of the power they had held while they were there.
The inside had been strangely noisy, so I cracked the door open — and my eyes met Na Yoonjeong's exactly. I quickly raised a finger to my lips.
Yes! — that was what her eyes answered. I had heard enough, and so I stepped in. Which brought me to now.
"Then what do you suppose I am about to do to those two?"
Behind Lee Moon-joo, who was still wrestling with her answer, Kim Taenyeog and Kim Sangheum had gone visibly tense. So I answered myself.
"This is the kind of moment when you have to teach people why a tongue is more dangerous than a blade."
A few steps, and I was already close. Prime location or not, the interior of an assembly office was not that large. More precisely, the space the aides used was not. Inside the office, there still had to be a separate room for the assembly member, and a small conference room, however modest.
"Uh... wow, Chief Aide Lee... it's been a while... man, how many months has it been...?"
Kim Sangheum was the first to stammer something out. Kim Taenyeog was... simply a defense policy specialist, what they called a migratory aide. A political appointee chasing the security of a career civil servant. People of that type generally could not do a single thing right besides policy. Power games, throwing their weight around, the kind of breaking-in and pressing-down they had been doing just now...
To an outsider's eye it might look like simple harassment, but the intent was clear. Break them in and press them down in advance, and later, when you needed inter-office cooperation, things would go smoothly.
So the ringleader was Kim Sangheum.
I spoke to Kim Sangheum in a lightly admonishing tone.
"Go and fetch the assembly member you serve."
Kim Sangheum's breath caught.
"Both of you."
The color drained from Kim Sangheum and Kim Taenyeog's faces in an instant. Once again, Kim Sangheum was the first to speak.
"...Hey, Chief Aide Lee... what do you think you're doing...?"
"I told you to go and fetch your assembly member."
"...Do you... do you even know what you're saying right now?"
"Yes. So go fetch your assembly member. Quickly."
Power does not reside in a title. It resides in the person. Authority is the same.
That is what real power is.
The reason I had been able to set down the title of aide was that the power I possessed had risen to a level that no longer came from the position itself. Even unbound by any title, I could still support Choi Giseok when the situation called for it. And even without a title of any kind, I had the information and the capability to destroy someone.
"...And if we can't do that?"
"One of the two of you will be out of a job. It will not take long. To make that happen."
Kim Sangheum and Kim Taenyeog glanced at each other, so I elaborated.
"I do not mean one of you two standing here. I mean, for each of you, either the assembly member you serve or you yourself as chief aide — one of those two will be out of a job. So in the end, two people will be out of a job."
Kim Taenyeog's Adam's apple bobbed hard.
There may be flowers without fragrance, but there is not a single person who has risen to a seat in the National Assembly who does not give off dust when you shake them. And if there is no dust, you simply manufacture some and shake it out. I am a person who is very, very good at that. These two, who were moderately clever and moderately stupid, were moderately clever enough to know that I was very, very good at it.
The sheer, blatant tyranny of it had even our own office staff on edge, and Lee Moon-joo was just about to step in to mediate—
I opened my mouth again.
"That was a joke."
I watched the color flood back into their ashen faces — past pale, all the way to burning red — and spoke without a trace of interest.
"Even I could not possibly, as a mere aide, tell an assembly member where to come and go, could I? I assumed you would know it was a joke, of course. I am disappointed. Still, I will refrain from saying something like 'could you even handle being an aide.' That sort of thing is just too low-class, don't you think?"
"......"
"......"
"You may go."
I stepped aside to clear the path, and as the two of them made for the office door as if a fire alarm had gone off, I spoke once more to their retreating backs.
The two of them left, and for a moment silence settled over the office.
"Have you come back?"
Lee Moon-joo asked, breathing hard even though she had not been running.
"No. A person who's coming back doesn't show up carrying drinks."
"Ah... right. Of course. There's no vacancy at the moment."
I gave a small smile to Lee Moon-joo, who was putting on a tough front for no particular reason, then turned my head to look at Secretary Na Yoonjeong.
"I came today to see the writer."