Entering the Director's Office (2)

After solidifying my resolve to crush Kwon Je-gyun, I opened the file and found a single handwritten letter scrawled in crooked, heavily pressed pencil strokes. The most entertaining part of working in the audit team was receiving letters like this—or rather, anonymous tips. It seemed a surprising number of people viewed a chaebol's audit team as something akin to an official investigative body like the prosecution or police. Whenever a matter was too ambiguous for an official complaint, or when someone had already filed one and QS Group was involved in any way, letters pleading their case would fly into the audit team.

Most of them were on the level of "Someone at QS borrowed my money and won't pay it back"—content the audit team could never possibly handle. Cases like the one where a man named Hwang Sang-pil exposed hiring irregularities at QS Telecom, prompting the audit team to launch an investigation and produce results, were almost nonexistent. Of course, I didn't believe that an audit team at a company the size of QS Group bore no public responsibility whatsoever. Nor did I want anyone affiliated with QS to suffer harm because of the group. But the audit team was neither the prosecution with thousands of prosecutors and investigators, nor the police force with over a hundred thousand personnel. With fewer than twenty full-time staff, it was an extremely small organization—albeit one with considerable power. That made sense, given the company's primary goal was to make money, and the audit team brought in no revenue from outside. From a management perspective, there was simply no way to arbitrarily expand its scale. Consequently, nearly all letters arriving at the audit team were read once by an employee and then buried forever in the filing cabinet. The person who wrote the letter I was now holding, having read it more than ten times, could be considered fortunate.

What made this letter stand out was precisely that it made no effort to stand out. People submitting tips to the audit team seemed to understand that their letters were unlikely to receive careful attention. Letters written in brush with red ink that looked like blood at first glance, messages assembled by cutting letters from newspapers like a criminal's warning note—every conceivable trick to force someone to read them was employed. Yet this letter had been written on A4 paper with a pencil pressed hard into the page, so I had nearly dismissed it as a child's prank. Even the addressee wasn't the audit team. It had been sent by regular mail addressed to QS Tower, and the customer satisfaction team had forwarded it, judging it belonged with the audit team.

What was more interesting than the content itself was the sender information written on the very last line.

In other words, it really had been written by an elementary school student. The main content was as follows.

The QS FnB mentioned in the letter was a business division under QS Food, which Je-gyun oversaw, and had recently been spun off into an independent subsidiary. There had been considerable controversy surrounding the corporate separation of QS FnB from the beginning. At the group level, the prevailing opinion was that there was no need to forcibly turn a single, relatively small division into a separate company. Within QS Food itself, there had been significant resistance, as spinning off a profitable division would obviously reduce the company's overall performance. QS FnB's main business was operating cafeteria services for corporations, schools, and hospitals. It was an industry plagued by cutthroat price competition, but the strategy of charging higher prices while providing premium cafeteria services had proven effective. When the decision to spin off this division was announced, QS Food's stock price took a heavy hit. Nevertheless, Je-gyun, who ranked first in the group for his stubborn refusal to listen to others, pushed the separation through and, absurdly enough, installed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠himself as president of the new entity.

Up to that point, it seemed like another instance of Je-gyun's obsession with collecting president titles. But reading the letter revealed there was more to it. At the newly established QS FnB, where he held near-absolute influence, he had been stealing performance bonuses from other executives and claiming their achievements as his own. The contents of this letter were confirmed as fact by the verdict I could preview. [Ruling. The defendant is sentenced to (...) years in prison.] What Je-gyun was doing constituted clear embezzlement. While the lack of sufficient information about the case made it impossible to predict the exact sentence, the guilty verdict was clearly legible. And the fact that my ability to preview verdicts showed a guilty ruling meant the embezzlement had definitely occurred.

Having confirmed this, I conducted a full review of all tips received by the audit team over the past five years and found four more similar cases. Two of them had originated from QS FnB, suggesting ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Je-gyun had a particularly thick straw inserted there. One occurred at QS EnM, and the remaining one did not specify a company name. When I previewed verdicts assuming Je-gyun as the defendant in these cases, all four returned guilty verdicts. In total, there were five cases I could confirm through the tips, meaning Je-gyun had been routinely siphoning performance bonuses from other executives. The reason this had remained hidden until now was likely because Je-gyun was the son of Chairman Kwon Byung-do, and the executives whose bonuses had been stolen had been complicit, receiving preferential treatment in performance evaluations and work assignments in return.

I had intended to expose Je-gyun's corruption before publicly raising the issue of the executives' concurrent position restrictions, using it to sway public opinion. I judged that support from those aligned with me at the presidents' meeting, combined with the release of the elementary school student's handwritten letter, would generate significant emotional sympathy. However, upon entering this director's office, my plans shifted slightly. The reason there was no HR team in the Central Management Headquarters, and the reason Chairman Kwon Byung-do had insisted on entrusting this position only to his successor, was one and the same: the Central Management ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Headquarters held personnel authority over all executives, including the presidents of each subsidiary. This personnel authority was the alpha and omega of Junggyeongbon—the very source of power that could control the entire group. Now that I had seized that power, there was no need to end this embezzlement case with mere public opinion manipulation. I would strip Je-gyun of his positions not only at QS FnB but also at QS EnM. Losing two subsidiaries simultaneously would surely leave a bitter taste in the mouth of Je-gyun, who was obsessed with accumulating president titles. Moreover, since QS EnM was the next largest company after the group's three main pillars, losing its presidency would inflict substantial real damage on him.

Of course, to achieve this, I would need more thorough preparation beyond this tip. No matter how much personnel authority the director of Junggyeongbon held over executives, deciding on dismissal based solely on this letter risked being perceived as an abuse of power. I had reviewed documents from QS FnB and QS EnM using my authority as audit team leader, but in terms of evidentiary value, they were little different from the tip itself. They might allow me to find fault, but they would not constitute clear proof that Je-gyun had committed embezzlement. It seemed he had been diligently searching for and either fabricating or destroying any evidence within the company. Thanks to the previewed verdict, I was certain, but I needed irrefutable evidence that could be shown to others. If I fired Je-gyun without this process, I would inevitably be accused of going mad the moment I became director. Building such an unpalatable reputation would surely hinder my path toward the chairman's office, not just the director's office of Junggyeongbon. If that happened, even if I could eliminate Je-gyun, Seong-gyun would seize the opening and snatch the chairman's seat. I could not allow that to happen under any circumstances. So where could I find evidence so solid that no one could possibly doubt it? My ability to preview verdicts was useful, but it had this chronic problem. Since the verdicts only recorded the final outcome, I had to personally locate the necessary documents in between.

"Aaaagh!"

While grumbling internally about this, a scream escaped my lips without warning. An intense migraine had struck, as if a massive needle had been driven deep into my left temple and pierced through to my brain. It was similar to the headache I had felt earlier in the day, but fortunately, the intensity was much lower—I did not lose consciousness or collapse. When I opened my eyes, which I had squeezed shut from the sudden pain, an unfamiliar document floated before me.

Some parts were clear, while others were too blurry to read—exactly like the previewed verdicts. I reached out to touch it, but my hand passed straight through, just as before. Yet no matter how I looked at it, this was not a verdict. Verdicts ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠did not include fields like "Title" or "Created by." Moreover, the format was so different from any other documents I was accustomed to that I stared at it for a long time. After blinking several times, something occurred to me. I turned on the laptop I had brought along with the document file and opened the word processor program. When I clicked "File" and then "Document Properties," a window of the same format as the one I had just seen appeared.

- Title: Unspecified

- Created by: Ho K

- Size: 0kb

- Character count: 0

In other words, the document that had just appeared before my eyes contained the metadata for a word processor file titled "Ledger Regarding Representative Director Kwon Je-gyun." Just as I had done countless times when flipping through previewed verdicts, I moved my eyes sideways, and the information window vanished, replaced by the actual document.

Excellent! This was not a verdict about the case I had been investigating—it was a different document entirely. My ability to preview verdicts had finally been upgraded.