Tumor (1)
Monday morning.
The employees of Haesol Textile wore grim, tense expressions, unlike any usual day, because they all knew perfectly well why Taesung Apparel was coming.
“They say they’ll be here soon.”
Even though it was morning, the factory manager, Park Han-soo, came hurrying in with beads of sweat gathered on his forehead from sheer nerves.
“Yes.”
Perhaps because Seung-hyun looked too calm, Park Han-soo watched him with concern.
“If, later on, you happen to get angry about something... please try not to go too hard at them. You’ll need to judge things coolly.”
“Coolly?”
“Yes. Coolly... You should only think about what benefits the factory. After all, they’re just ordinary employees of Taesung Apparel. Getting angry might feel good in the moment, but afterward you’ll be dealing with all kinds of paperwork in the real world. Think about that reality, and judge things as calmly as possible.”
It was obvious he was worried sick that Seung-hyun might get into trouble with Taesung Apparel’s staff.
“Don’t worry. But you should know this.”
“Yes? Know what...?”
“I’m not the kind of person who gets all worked up, loses his head, and goes off the rails. If something like that happens, it means I’ve got a reason.”
“...Understood.”
Of course, Park Han-soo did not fully believe the young president’s words.
When people are young, they tend to believe things like that.
Everyone thought they were calm, that they could judge any crisis with a cool head, but he knew that if you stepped back and looked at it, that wasn’t always true.
Still, he didn’t bring it up.
Unlike other young men with nothing but swagger, this young president had actually shown what he could do.
But even so, what could he possibly do against a conglomerate?
About ten minutes passed.
From outside the factory, the sound of vehicles approached.
Section chief Lee Seok-gi and assistant manager Park Seong-cheol, both in gray jumpers, marched in with a gust of cold air. They scanned the factory floor with sharp eyes as they entered, carrying themselves like inspectors on a raid.
“Welcome. I’m Jung Seung-hyun, president of Haesol Textile.”
Unlike the employees, who were all tightly wound, Seung-hyun’s face remained composed.
“Yes. I’m Lee Seok-gi from Taesung Apparel’s quality control team. If we inspect everything all at once after it’s received, it takes a very long time. So we usually do QC checks in the middle. Today, then, we’ll see whether the gloss values came out properly. Since you asked us to evaluate the quality inspection on our end, we’ll do it thoroughly.”
“Understood. This way, please.”
Factory manager Park Han-soo was still checking the final setup with another employee, so he led the QC team to the line first.
“The gloss process is running right now, and the sample should come out in about ten minutes. Would you like to see that first?”
“All right.”
Lee Seok-gi smiled faintly and looked at Seung-hyun.
“I hope it comes out properly today.”
He wore the expression of a man who already knew the result without even looking.
Seung-hyun felt anger surge up at the remark, but he held it in.
He wasn’t some fearless university student anymore. He was the president of a subcontracting company with nearly fifty employees, and he knew it.
At last, when a full roll of sample fabric emerged from the machine, section chief Kim Young-sook quickly grabbed the cloth and brought it over to the QC team.
“Assistant manager Park, hand me the spectro meter.”
Park Seong-cheol took a portable spectrometer from his worn bag and held it against the fabric surface.
He pressed the button as casually as if humming a tune, and with a beep, numbers appeared on the screen.
“Well, manager... 84.2? It’s gone up a little from before, but it still doesn’t reach 88.”
The section chief shook his head as though disappointed, but Seung-hyun immediately caught the faint smile tugging at his mouth.
“A pity. The gloss standard has to be 88 or higher for A grade, so this is defective. President Jung, it looks like we’ll need to renegotiate the unit price. At this rate...”
Around them, the faces of the factory manager, Park Han-soo, and section chief Kim Young-sook went pale.
Lee Seok-gi continued in a cold voice, as if reading from a verdict.
“Under our internal guidelines, products that fail the gloss value are classified as lower grade. That means either a price cut, or delaying delivery and sending it back for reprocessing. One or the other. If you don’t have a proper countermeasure here today, it’s a defect ruling.”
So this was their plan all along: squeeze the price down after agreeing to the process by raising it by as much as 20,000 won per yard.
Kim Young-sook looked as if she might protest on the spot, but after catching the factory manager’s look, she seemed to bite it back.
Then Seung-hyun stepped forward.
“Hold on. This fabric could give slightly different readings depending on where you measure it. Rather than using the spectrometer once, shouldn’t you test it several times?”
Lee Seok-gi snorted.
“It’s not a tool you use for the first or second time. Even if you measure the same spectrum, the difference won’t be that big. No matter where you test it, it’ll be off by a few tenths at most, not enough to jump from 84 to above 88, right? To be honest, this is a clear defect.”
The assistant manager measured another section, but the results barely changed: 84.8, 85.1... nothing major.
The section chief added a remark with undisguised contempt.
“As you can see. That’s reality. Is there any need to check further?”
Seung-hyun trusted Kim Young-sook, who had worked with Haesol Textile’s technology for many years.
They had checked it several times already, and it had never come out below 88.
What the hell is going on?
When Seung-hyun touched the fabric, information began flooding in.
Starting from the yarn, then the weaving state, durability, uniformity, marketability, and countless other details, all of it poured into his mind in a chaotic rush.
Then, all at once:
【Gloss Value (Potential)=88.6 / Current Humidity=12% / Estimated Drying Time=9 minutes 40 seconds】
So it’s because it hasn’t dried yet...
If the current reading around 84 was because the fabric was still wet, that made perfect sense.
Seung-hyun looked up at Lee Seok-gi.
“Manager, this fabric was just produced and may still be too damp, which is why the reading is low. If you measure it again after it has dried fully, you may get a different result.”
“Come on, you’re saying there’s a difference between measuring it properly after drying and measuring it right this second? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Actually, it does. Gloss is affected by residual surface moisture. This fabric is still a little damp.”
Seung-hyun gave an order to Kim Young-sook.
“Section chief, bring over the fabric from our trial production. And have the factory manager bring a hot-air blower or dryer and dry this fabric properly.”
Kim Young-sook ran off at once.
Lee Seok-gi’s face twisted, but with so many people watching, he had no choice but to wait.
And Seung-hyun did not miss the change in his expression.
The drying equipment was set near the line, and factory manager Park Han-soo readjusted the temperature and airflow.
The employees spread out part of the fabric that had finished the gloss process and let the breeze strip away the moisture from its surface.
Then Kim Young-sook and another employee came running back, holding up the fabric.
The way they were sweating heavily made it plain how impatient they were.
“Please measure this sample first.”
“Honestly...”
Lee Seok-gi showed his irritation at Seung-hyun’s words.
But he couldn’t refuse the inspection.
Park Seong-cheol casually pressed the spectrometer against the fabric surface.
Beep...
“Huh?”
With a startled look, Lee Seok-gi measured the gloss again, then turned to look at him.
“This... it’s reading above 89?”
Lee Seok-gi’s face twisted.
“What are you talking about? That’s impossible.”
“I... I don’t know either...”
But even when Lee Seok-gi used the spectrometer himself, the result was the same.
“Well, the sample could have been specially prepared...”
The moment he spat that out irritably, the factory manager conferred with the employees and said, “It looks like the fabric has finished drying.”
Immediately afterward, the QC team placed the spectrometer against the fabric surface.
The employees held their breath and watched the number.
With a short beep, the screen lit up.
The reading was from the very fabric they had just measured, not from the earlier production run.
“Huh? 89.7, manager.”
When Park Seong-cheol spoke in a slightly flustered voice, the employees burst into cheers.
The heat of it all flaring up, Lee Seok-gi checked the device himself.
He measured another spot with an expressionless face.
89.6, 89.9, 90.3... almost all of them were landing in the high 89s to low 90s.
Not even ten minutes had passed, yet the numbers were clearly much better.
Lee Seok-gi’s expression turned complicated.
At 89 and above, it was certainly no longer a defect under Taesung’s standards, which rejected anything below 88.
There was no telling whether this young president had guessed correctly by chance or simply gotten lucky, but there was nothing he could do here and now.
“Hmm... fine. Then the gloss has barely crossed the threshold. Next, we’ll do a durability test. We’re testing tensile strength, so could you bring that over?”
Lee Seok-gi pointed at the fabric that had just come off the machine.
Seung-hyun’s eyes flashed, but he only watched calmly.
“Here...”
As if he had prepared for it, the assistant manager pulled a portable tensile tester from his bag and tested the fabric the factory had handed over.
But then:
“Two hundred... fifteen? 215.”
Lee Seok-gi grimaced.
Considering the passing standard was 270 N, it was nowhere close.
Of course, the factory employees’ faces turned ashen, but unlike during the gloss test, Seung-hyun, who hadn’t been tense at all, stepped forward and said, “Should we switch the fabric?”
“What?”
“Let’s measure a different fabric. Could you bring some from that other line?”
Seung-hyun requested fabric from the second line as though he had expected this all along.
When an employee brought over another roll, Seung-hyun said, “Please measure it again.”
“Then what is this fabric supposed to be...”
“It was fabric we weren’t going to deliver anyway.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I was curious too, but you’ve given me the answer. Don’t worry. If this fabric has a problem, I’ll accept the failure ruling.”
Since the president had said that, Lee Seok-gi also went ahead with the tensile test, as if to see what trick was being played.
But this time, the reading was completely different.
“283! It made it!”
Before Lee Seok-gi could even say another word, the factory people saw the number on the machine and burst into cheers.
In contrast, Seung-hyun looked at Lee Seok-gi, whose face had gone pale, and said, “As far as I can see, there’s no problem. What will you do?”
Lee Seok-gi forcefully returned to a blank expression and said while packing up his equipment, “I’ll continue observing the other sections, but for now, this roll has been retested and returned a normal score, so we’ll count it as passing.”
With a slight laugh, Seung-hyun said, “Yes, it’s fortunate that it passed.”
His openly mocking attitude toward the client’s employee startled both the factory manager and Lee Seok-gi.
Lee Seok-gi’s face reddened at once, and he said threateningly, “President, this isn’t your first or second day in business. Showing your displeasure this openly is a bit much. Do you have no intention of working with Taesung?”
“That’s right.”
“What did you say?”
“There will be no additional contracts with Taesung after this shipment.”
“You crazy...”
It was unimaginable.
Lee Seok-gi, so flabbergasted he could hardly believe it, gaped at him.
Of course, the factory manager, the section chief, and every employee there looked just as stunned.
Then Seung-hyun shifted his gaze away from him without a trace of hesitation and looked at one person.
After sweeping his eyes over the employees, all of whom stared at him with dazed expressions, Seung-hyun walked over to one of them.
His face had gone cold and hard.
He nodded toward the defective fabric and asked, “That fabric came from Section Chief Jo’s line, didn’t it?”
Section chief Jo Han-gyeol swallowed hard before he realized he had done it.