The Rotten High School Girl's Reckoning
Then, instead of addressing me or Seong-gyun, she turned to Bang Changho.
“Dad, I’m sorry for making you come all the way here. This is my problem, and I’m old enough to take legal responsibility if I did something wrong. You can go now. I’ll handle it myself.”
Well, well. Look at her, suddenly playing the adult. What kind of half-baked legal studies had this girl been doing? She was about to become a second-year high school student, so she was definitely past fifteen. That meant she was no longer a juvenile exempt from criminal liability. If she messed up, she could face criminal charges. But did Bang Jiseon actually have the means to shoulder that responsibility? The money she’d extorted from Shinyong would have to be repaid by Bang Changho. Did she even have a million won in her account? Judging by the notebook Shinyong had kept, she’d been taking fifty thousand won a day. The total came to nearly ten million won. Was she planning to sacrifice herself like Sim Cheong and bring back three hundred sacks of rice to protect her father? If that was the case, she shouldn’t have been throwing her father’s name around and causing trouble in the first place. What was this little act supposed to accomplish now?
“Jiseon,” Bang Changho tried to stop his daughter, but she looked at the principal, vice-principal, and homeroom teacher in turn and spoke again.
“Teachers, this incident happened at school, so why don’t you continue your discussion back at the school? Since when do outsiders get to meddle in Daeheon Foreign Language High School’s affairs? I’ll accept whatever punishment the school rules dictate for my mistakes.”
Did she think she looked cool doing that? Either way, it seemed she wanted to exclude the troublesome pair of me and Seong-gyun and settle things among themselves. Did she not realize she was pouring oil on a fire that was already blazing right beside her?
Seong-gyun, unable to watch any longer as his face flushed with growing anger, glared at Bang Jiseon and raised his voice.
“Hey, what exactly do you think you did right?”
At that moment, Bang Jiseon reached the peak of her adult act and left everyone in the executive office stunned.
“You! From what I heard earlier, it sounds like you’re planning to transfer my dad to some rural factory as retaliation. If you actually do that, I’ll run straight to the Ministry of Employment and Labor and the National Petition Portal and make sure you get fired first. You know this company has an internal corruption monitoring department, right?”
Unbelievable. She had used her father’s position to bully her classmates and commit school violence, yet now she wanted her father excluded from taking responsibility for it. Seong-gyun, dumbfounded by her baseless confidence, passed the ball to me.
“Executive Director Jung, you also oversee the Audit Team that monitors internal corruption within the QS Group, don’t you?”
“Yeah?”
“Would the Audit Team take issue with this?”
I shrugged at Bang Jiseon, who sat diagonally across the table from me.
“No. If the person affected by the personnel action files a complaint, the Audit Team could look into it, but I don’t think Deputy Director Bang Changho would do that.”
“Then, as the head of Central Management who holds final personnel authority over affiliate executives, if I submit a transfer order for Deputy Director Bang Changho, would you reject it?”
“That’s also a no. While the final decision rests with me, it’s customary to respect the opinions of each affiliate’s CEO regarding detailed executive personnel matters.”
While Bang Jiseon’s face grew increasingly pale, Seong-gyun continued his formal questions, directed at me in form but really aimed at refuting her.
“If this personnel transfer is reported to the Ministry of Employment and Labor or the National Petition Portal, can the Legal Team at Central Management handle it sufficiently?”
“Same as before. If it’s not the person themselves filing the report but a third party stepping in, the government agencies probably won’t react much. There’d be no need to mobilize our Legal Team either.”
“Then in the end, Deputy Director Bang Changho’s opinion matters most. What do you say? Will you go to the Jincheon factory? They’re producing the QLED products you developed there. I’d like you to take full responsibility for one complete production process.”
Though Seong-gyun’s question was clearly directed at Bang Changho, Bang Jiseon shrieked and cut in.
“Dad! Don’t answer. These people are holding a grudge against me and trying to torment you too. If you have something to say, say it to me, not my dad—”
Slap.
Bang Jiseon’s outburst didn’t last long. Bang Changho’s fist, which had been trembling on the table, shot up and struck his clueless daughter across the cheek.
“Jiseon!”
“Dad? Did you just hit me?”
The sudden shift left father and daughter staring at each other in shock. They had seemed so close; this must have been a first. After slapping his daughter, Bang Changho’s hand hovered in the air, trembling, unsure what to do. It wasn’t that he was angry or intending to punish her. He had simply realized it was the only way to shut her mouth. Every time something indistinguishable from words or diarrhea spewed from his daughter’s lips, the situation spiraled further out of control.
Bang Changho, who had risen to the position of executive at a major company like QS Display, knew exactly what happened when an individual earned the ire of a conglomerate like the QS Group. Getting fired from the company was only the beginning. Even without direct intervention from the group’s top brass, countless people in the industry would avoid crossing the QS Group. Among them were plenty who would trample him underfoot just to catch the eye of the core leadership through excessive loyalty. No matter where Bang Changho went in Korea, those people would crush him. He would have to live hiding the fact that he had once worked at the QS Group, more desperately than any ex-convict. His entire career would vanish, and he would have to start from the bottom in an entirely new field.
If Bang Jiseon kept running her mouth, it wouldn’t just be her—her daughter’s life would be ruined too. So he had no choice but to silence her somehow.
Thud.
While Bang Jiseon clutched her slapped cheek and stared blankly at her father, Bang Changho quickly slid off his chair and dropped to his knees. Placing both hands on his thighs and lowering his head parallel to the floor, he pleaded in a voice thick with moisture.
“I’m sorry. My daughter still lacks sense. Please forget everything you just heard. I beg you. Any personnel transfer is fine, and I won’t raise objections to any organization, inside or outside the company. However, I have one more shameless request.”
Seong-gyun asked in a flat voice, “What is it?”
“I’ll accept any punishment, but please show mercy to my daughter. No matter where we go, I’ll take her to Jincheon and educate her properly so this never happens again. This is all my fault for spoiling my only daughter because she was cute.”
At that moment, the vice-principal, who had been watching the situation, cautiously interjected.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but if you’re taking her to Jincheon, how should we handle the disciplinary action?”
Good grief, even he was quick to look out for himself. Worrying about his own administrative work in this atmosphere.
“It would be best if my daughter no longer attends school. As her parent, I’ll submit a withdrawal application today. Please show leniency by allowing withdrawal instead of expulsion.”
The vice-principal glanced at me and asked, “Shall we proceed as the father suggests? Withdrawal can be handled at my level, but expulsion involves complicated procedures. As a lawyer, you’d know better, but if anything goes wrong during those complex steps, the expulsion might not go through. Jiseon, let’s go with withdrawal. Okay?”
“Ha, fine. I didn’t want to see this school’s face anyway. This works out. I’ll leave on my own.”
As the vice-principal had said, withdrawal and expulsion differed only in procedure; both resulted in removal from the school register. It didn’t feel right, but under the current system, even expelled students faced no disadvantage in advancing to higher education, just like those who withdrew. When the expelled party didn’t strongly object, withdrawal was the easier path for everyone.
“Let’s proceed that way. Thank you for coming all this way, teachers. I’ll assume the student’s withdrawal will be processed as quickly as possible. Since she’s leaving the school, the rest we’ll discuss among ourselves.”
Bow, bow, bow.
The three teachers, clearly shaken by the suffocating atmosphere in the executive office and Bang Jiseon’s unyielding defiance, avoided eye contact and hurried out. With the student agreeing to leave, the school’s internal disciplinary measures were resolved at the highest level. Now it was time to discuss civil and criminal actions against Bang Jiseon.
Even after that, Bang Changho and his daughter argued for a long time. Bang Jiseon insisted she would handle it herself and told her father to stay out of it, while Bang Changho kept glancing nervously at me and Seong-gyun, looking utterly exasperated. I was starting to think I should send the pair to a lounge somewhere in QS Tower to settle things and come back later. Neither Seong-gyun nor I had time to sit here listening to Bang Jiseon’s nonsense.
Finally, Bang Changho spoke with grim determination, driving the point home.
“If you’re going to handle this yourself, then from now on, handle your entire life yourself. No financial support, obviously. I won’t even look at your face anymore.”
At those words, Bang Jiseon finally shed tears.
“Dad, why would you say that? I’m doing this so my mistakes don’t hurt you! So why are you saying you won’t see me?”
“The biggest harm to me would be watching you end up in prison because of how you’re acting.”
Fortunately, from that point their differences narrowed rapidly. Bang Changho begged for leniency regarding the civil and criminal measures we would take. He promised to calculate exactly how much Bang Jiseon had extorted from Shinyong and repay double that amount. However, for the criminal punishment, he asked that we consider additional legal action only after Bang Jiseon submitted a written apology to Shinyong at Central Management and Shinyong had read it.
As far as I was concerned, this would prevent any further harm to Shinyong. Since Shinyong was the clear victim, it felt odd for me to be the one passing judgment on the perpetrator. So I nodded and asked Seong-gyun for his opinion.
“What do you think?”
Seong-gyun nodded back, and as the Bang father and daughter left the executive office, we decided to leave the final judgment to the victim, Shinyong. With that, the stormy meeting came to an end.
* * *
Yet before Seong-gyun returned to his own company, he tacked on one remark unrelated to the Shinyong incident.
“Do you like sitting in that seat?”
Honestly. He said he didn’t want to talk about company matters with me, and now this?