Leave Me a Review
A single mutual separation agreement lay on the table of a handsomely appointed office.
"I'm sorry about this, Assistant Manager Lee. I tried to talk them around, but they wouldn't hear a word of it."
"It's all right, Team Leader. I was barely holding on to the seat as it was."
At the weary middle-aged man's words, Dohyeon set his coffee cup down as if he had expected nothing else. It met the table with a soft clink.
"A C-Rank enchanter doesn't look right sitting in an assistant manager's chair. A major corporation's assistant manager chair, least of all."
Skill had nothing to do with it. He was simply growing tired of the sharp looks he drew for the bare fact of being C-Rank.
"Even so, you've done real work for this company... tsk. Anyway, you're on your way out, so talk to me the way you used to. Drop the formality."
"Aigoo, does it come off that easily? Once the company washes out of me, I'll give it a try."
The forced cheer seemed to sit wrong with the team leader. Watching Dohyeon brush the whole thing off with empty bluster, he let out a long sigh.
"Haa. No matter how well you work, those old men won't hear anything except that you're C-Rank, so it won't do."
He sounded regretful, almost gloomy. Dohyeon put a question to him as if he genuinely couldn't follow the logic.
"From the company's point of view, though, wouldn't it be surer to sideline me, or hang some mistake around my neck, than to press money into my hand and tell me to go?"
"That's your own life you're talking about. How do you say something that grim like it's nothing?"
"It's the sort of thing only the person in question can say."
"It's a secret, but since it's you, I'll tell you."
At that, the team leader glanced around for no particular reason, then went on.
"Word is, an outsider's coming in as your replacement."
"An outsider? Why go to the trouble?"
Cheongeun Workshop, where Dohyeon worked, ranked among the top ten large workshops in South Korea. It was known as a heavyweight of the mid-to-low price brands, turning out everything in-house from equipment to enchantments, and it had talent to match. Finding someone to hang an assistant manager's title on should not have been hard.
"Associate Park is B-Rank, so I assumed he'd be the one to make assistant manager."
"So did I, right up until last week. Then HR let it slip. An outsider's being assigned to our team."
"Poor Associate Park... He seemed to be counting on it."
"Heh. He never said it out loud, but having a C-Rank enchanter for a boss must have worn him raw."
"If a B-Rank only comes out about even with a C-Rank, the one taking the loss is the B-Rank."
Dohyeon scratched his head, looking faintly sheepish.
"Last quarter your defect rate was 0.8 percent, wasn't it? Associate Park's was 2."
"My rank's lower, but I've been at it longer."
"You and Associate Park aren't even a few months apart, and you play at being humble... Anyway. Letting hands like yours walk out like this sits very badly with me."
The team leader kept on in that vein, as if losing Dohyeon were a waste he couldn't swallow. Dohyeon only laughed.
"Haha."
In his time as assistant manager of Enchant Team 3 at Cheongeun Workshop, he had met any number of high-rank enchanters, and not once had he felt his skill fell particularly short of theirs. The higher-ups, too, had thought enough of his hands to trust him with the title. Had they changed their minds?
"Did HR tell you anything more?"
"There's talk that the one coming in is an A-Rank enchanter."
"An enchanter, and A-Rank?"
The two words made a wildly ill-fitting pair. Dohyeon's eyes went round, and the team leader nodded as if he understood completely.
"Enchanters are the thinnest headcount in all the production trades. An A-Rank on top of that, the very top of the grade — and then the fellow wants to belong to a company. I'll grant you, that part's strange."
Awakened in the production trades differed by degree, but most of them had an artisan's streak, or set a philosophy of their own above everything else. High-rank awakened, especially, seldom belonged to anyone. More often they opened a workshop alone and made their name on equipment with a character all its own.
"An A-Rank coming in as an assistant manager... The chain of command is the problem. There's going to be a bloodbath, isn't there?"
"HR said as much. Word is they mean to rebuild Enchant Team 3 as a premium-line exclusive."
It was his own team, but Enchant Team 3's work was nowhere near flawless enough to satisfy an A-Rank's eye. Once the new assistant manager found his feet, a sweeping reorganization would almost certainly follow, built around that A-Rank.
"Then I can see why they'd rather part with me on friendly terms. They went to the trouble of bringing in an A-Rank awakened. It wouldn't do for a C-Rank senior to be loitering around the place and then up and bolt."
At the sarcasm, the team leader clutched at what little hair he had left.
"My head hurts too. I haven't even been team leader that long, and now I'm supposed to worry about getting cut..."
"I was thinking of opening a fried chicken shop. Care to go in with me?"
If the team was rebuilt around that new assistant manager, there would be no mystery about who ended up in the team leader's chair. The thought that the man was in the same boat stirred an odd sense of kinship in Dohyeon.
"If I do get cut, I was going to try setting up a workshop anyway."
"You, Team Leader? A workshop?"
A workshop of one's own was the dream of every production-type awakened, but enchanters below A-Rank rarely opened one.
"The country's running something like this, I hear."
With awkward fingers, the team leader worked his smartphone and held it out.
"You're going to do this?"
The screen showed a promotional poster, its lettering huge and its colors almost aggressively bright.
"Wouldn't you be better off going into a big workshop as an apprentice?"
"I'm pushing forty. Apprentice? Don't make me laugh."
The team leader snorted and leaned in, the way a man does when he is about to say something that matters.
"You remember the uproar lately? China claiming they'd produced S-Rank equipment for the first time. Turns out the man was a blacksmith some politician raised."
"Didn't everyone say that was a hoax?"
Dohyeon sounded thoroughly unimpressed. The team leader shrugged, as if to say who could know.
"A few days before that article broke, a call supposedly came in from the Chinese side, asking for consulting on equipment. Might be real. Might not."
"And what does that have to do with this training?"
"The thinking up in government is obvious, isn't it? They figured it'd be the perfect chance to show off on the nation's money."
"Haa..."
A master craftsman on the continent had produced S-Rank equipment on a politician's backing. A politician's business begins on paper and ends on paper, so who had discovered the man and supported him was laid out plain as day.
"The politician who found that craftsman and backed him caught the Chairman's eye. Lives high in Beijing now, they say. Who's to say a flashy blacksmith of that sort can't come out of Korea the same way? That's the whole point of opening this Government-Funded Crafter Training Program, Cohort 1."
"How do you know all that in such detail, Team Leader?"
"How do you think I scrape a living at this company? On being sharp with exactly this kind of information."
"...You don't look like a man who's getting cut."
Someone that well-informed, Dohyeon thought, was the sort a company would keep using for years. The team leader shook his head.
"To pry out a single fact, you have to sit through every kind of nonsense and stroke people's egos. I can't do it anymore. I just can't."
"...Then shall we open that chicken shop together?"
"Chicken isn't the point, kid. I'm saying that if the people up top want to live high the way that fellow does, they'll have to put at least a little support behind this training. Otherwise they won't have a pretext to puff themselves up and make a fuss."
"So you are joining this government-funded program?"
"Listen. What's an enchanter's weakness? Unlike a blacksmith, we aren't essential to hunters. Isn't that it?"
To work as a hunter, you needed equipment without fail — armor, weapons, and the rest of it. An enchantment was a shame to go without. It was not a necessity.
"That's why I was surprised when you talked about opening a workshop. Unless you're a high-rank enchanter, the demand just isn't that large."
"But if I take this training, I can turn out the bare minimum of equipment myself, enchant it, and sell it cheap. That's the idea!"
"Even so, without a skill you won't be able to make proper equipment."
Having an equipment-crafting skill and lacking one were worlds apart. Only a skill let you produce gear that carried a rank. Make ordinary unranked equipment and enchant it, and your customers would be low-rank hunters. A high-rank hunter would not spare it a glance.
"Look at the way things are going. Awakened numbers are climbing so fast you'd think the world had turned toward ruin, and low-rank hunters are multiplying right along with them."
"So the plan is a workshop built entirely for low-rank hunters."
Only now did Dohyeon see what the team leader was aiming at. He studied the poster on the phone with genuine interest.
"The deadline's almost here. Are you quitting early for it?"
"That... I didn't save it because I meant to take it myself."
"If not you, then your wife? Wouldn't the work be rough on a woman?"
Fifty years had passed since the awakened appeared and hunter became a profession. Physical differences had faded a great deal, but women still rarely took up smithing. Even so, if a couple split the work between them, the labor costs and the fatigue would certainly ease. Family business really is the finest kind of management, Dohyeon thought, and he looked at the team leader with fresh regard.
"As expected of the head of a household. You think deep. A bachelor like me was only wondering whether to fry some chicken."
"Dohyeon. Just... don't take this the wrong way, and hear me out?"
"Yes?"
The team leader had slipped into the easy speech of the days before Dohyeon ever joined the company. Something about it felt off.
"You take the course first and leave me a review, won't you?"
"Are you insane..."
The head of a household, it turned out, was shameless beyond all expectation.