Seven Parts Luck, Three Parts Skill
Bang.
Back at the office, Kang Hyeong-seok headed for the rooftop, summoned by Department Head Kwak Young-ho. Whether it was because things had wrapped up so neatly in Danyang, or simply because it was the afternoon work shift, the atmosphere was anything but bad.
"Hurry on up! Assistant Manager Kang."
That much was clear from the reaction of Kwak Young-ho, who was already waiting on the rooftop.
"Manager Shin, you're here too."
Kang Hyeong-seok gave Shin Jeong-ah a short nod, and she returned the gesture, her face wearing much the same expression as Kwak Young-ho's.
"Have some coffee. Go on, coffee."
A cigarette clamped between his lips, Kwak Young-ho handed over a fresh cup he'd set on the rooftop railing. It wasn't from the office pantry — this was takeout from a proper café, the thick paper cup fitted with a plastic lid, the same kind that had been sitting on the desks of the other team members.
"Did you buy these yourself, Department Head?"
"Aigoo, Assistant Manager Kang! Is that obliviousness, or false modesty?" Kwak Young-ho crinkled his whole face into a grin and took a drag on his cigarette. "Mr. Ha Jang-seo sent these over as gift coupons. We talked on the phone, too. The hospital says there's nothing at all wrong with him."
Kang Hyeong-seok's eyes went wide — then a smile of relief spread across his face.
With the Yeommae curse gone, he had expected as much. But there was a world of difference between expecting it and actually hearing the hospital's verdict.
"Whew! I don't hold with any religion, but this business trip of yours — there's just no explaining it except as a miracle."
"Hahaha. That's a relief. Truly."
"Manager Shin, you see? This is the kind of man Assistant Manager Kang is. I keep telling you — heaven-sent luck follows him around."
Kwak Young-ho clapped Kang Hyeong-seok heartily on the shoulder and turned his gaze on Shin Jeong-ah — which meant Kang Hyeong-seok's eyes went to her as well.
He could see exactly what she was thinking. So he shook his head, as if to say, don't you dare.
"Modest to a fault, that one."
Kwak Young-ho, thoroughly misled, let it pass with a laugh — but the look in Shin Jeong-ah's eyes said she'd caught on that Kang Hyeong-seok had done something.
There it is. So what did he do this time?
Shin Jeong-ah had now watched Kang Hyeong-seok perform shamanic rites twice before. It hadn't been hard to guess that he'd pulled something in Danyang.
"Bit of a shame, though."
Only after Kwak Young-ho shot her a what is? look at the offhand remark did she go on.
"It's not exactly a small matter, but it's also the kind of thing that's awkward to report, isn't it?"
It was true the story didn't make for a pretty report. But that didn't make it unimportant, either. Handled carelessly, it could one day trip Kang Hyeong-seok up, and it could affect Namgoong Min-ah's conversion to a full-time position. A big deal, if you wanted to call it that — and yet raising it up the chain as some great triumph of Kang Hyeong-seok's felt somehow... off.
"Ah, don't you worry. I'll handle that part myself." Kwak Young-ho took a sip of his coffee and continued. "I'm having dinner with an Executive Director tonight."
"Which Executive Director would that be?"
In answer to Shin Jeong-ah's question, Kwak Young-ho said nothing at all — just crooked up the corner of his mouth.
That was answer enough.
"Then I suppose it'll be all right."
Executive Director Shin Chang-yong. The director Kwak Young-ho meant — and Shin Jeong-ah's uncle. Better still, as a founding member of the company, he was the perfect channel for letting upper management know about this affair at exactly the right level of detail.
"I'll make a point of telling him how grateful Mr. Ha Jang-seo was to Assistant Manager Kang. What do you think? Not bad, eh?"
"Shall I chip in a word if it comes to that?"
"I'd be grateful, but I suspect it won't be necessary. The Director already thinks well of Assistant Manager Kang."
"Does he, now?"
Kwak Young-ho grinned and set the cigarette back between his lips. In that easy atmosphere he smoked while Kang Hyeong-seok and Shin Jeong-ah sipped their coffee.
"Anyway, Assistant Manager Kang! Really, great work on this one. Mr. Ha Jang-seo asked me to pass along his thanks."
"Oh, please. I hardly did a thing."
Kang Hyeong-seok was talking through his hat, and across from him Shin Jeong-ah, coffee in hand, gave her shoulders a single soundless heave of laughter.
"That's how men are, you know. When you feel your strength giving out, the person who stands beside you is the one you're most thankful for."
Kwak Young-ho, no spring chicken anymore, laughed once with a strangely bitter face.
"Anyway, that's why I was thinking we ought to do a team dinner — or is that overdoing it, back to back like this?"
"How about waiting until the next good occasion comes along?"
It was Kang Hyeong-seok who said it. For a heartbeat Kwak Young-ho didn't follow, eyes narrowing — then his mouth fell open. "Ah!"
"Of course. Of course! Once Min-ah makes full-time, better to roll it all into one big celebration then."
"Yes, that's what I was thinking."
"You haven't let anything slip to Min-ah, have you?"
"Not a word."
At the firm answer, Kwak Young-ho nodded and ground his cigarette out in the ashtray.
"Ooh, good. Very good."
Rolling his shoulders in big circles to loosen up, he turned toward the door with new life in his eyes.
"I'll head down first, then — you two finish your coffee. Assistant Manager Kang, there's nothing urgent on your plate, so head home whenever you like."
"Yes, sir!"
Perhaps to prepare himself for dinner with Executive Director Shin Chang-yong, Kwak Young-ho descended the stairs first.
On the rooftop, where only the two of them remained, Shin Jeong-ah fished out a cigarette and put it between her lips.
"You still haven't taken up smoking with the Department Head?"
"Feels wrong. He's practically a father to me."
"Doesn't seem like a man who'd care about that sort of thing."
"I know."
One corner of her mouth tilted up, Shin Jeong-ah lit the cigarette.
"Phew! So — how did it go this time?"
Her eyes already knew he'd done something. Kang Hyeong-seok simply smiled without a sound and sipped his coffee in front of her.
"Same as always."
"Honestly, the things you put yourself through."
"And thanks to that, everything turned out fine. That's what matters, no?"
"I don't think I could live the way you do."
Kang Hyeong-seok looked at her and let out a laugh — an empty sort of laugh.
"What? What's so funny?"
Shin Jeong-ah asked, brow furrowed, but he gave no answer. The way he saw it, Shin Jeong-ah simply wasn't fated to say such things. She might never be driven to become a shaman, but her constitution was far more open to that other world than most people's.
"Hey. Why are you laughing?"
"It's nothing."
No one knows where a person's road will end. Swallowing the rest of the thought, Kang Hyeong-seok tossed his empty cup into the trash, then thumbed toward the door — and Shin Jeong-ah, glowering her displeasure at him, stubbed out her cigarette.
"Executive Director, right this way."
Kwak Young-ho opened the door of a respectable sashimi restaurant. Dinner there after quitting time — and yet, it being a weekday, empty tables dotted the room, making it decent enough for conversation.
"So what is it you wanted to talk about?"
Shin Chang-yong asked once he'd stepped inside and settled into the seat across from Kwak Young-ho.
"You know Assistant Manager Kang, sir."
"Ah! That young man."
Shin Chang-yong nodded vigorously, and Kwak Young-ho smiled with satisfaction. Then he ordered from the waitress a Course A set sized for two, along with a bottle of bokbunja — Korean black raspberry wine.
Glug-glug-glug-glug.
Kwak Young-ho carefully poured the bokbunja, which had arrived first, into Shin Chang-yong's glass.
"Assistant Manager Kang recently returned from a business trip with an intern named Namgoong Min-ah, and I felt you ought to hear about it, sir."
"With an intern? Where to?"
"Danyang, sir. One of the garlic farms."
"Ah, that place. I know it well."
It was a supplier Shin Chang-yong had dealt with since his younger days. Even now, with the company's partners grown so numerous, it still held a special place in his heart.
"Well — the truth is, this time they talked about ending the business relationship altogether."
"What?"
Just as he'd expected, Shin Chang-yong's face froze solid. Even so, Kwak Young-ho pressed on, not the least bit cowed.
"There's no need to worry, sir. It's been resolved."
"What? Wait — how?"
"Apparently his health had him thinking of giving up farming for good. But while Assistant Manager Kang was down there, his health came back. The hospital has even declared him fully cured."
Wearing relief on his face but with a question lurking in his eyes, Shin Chang-yong raised his glass. Kwak Young-ho snatched up his own in a hurry for the toast, then turned his head aside and knocked back the bokbunja.
"Phew!"
As Kwak Young-ho pushed out a breath at the liquor's surprisingly fiery path down his throat, the first dish arrived: a salad dressed in black sesame sauce, steamed sea snails, and abalone served still in its shell.
Swish, swish.
Tossing the salad with his chopsticks, Kwak Young-ho spoke up.
"Mr. Ha Jang-seo seemed truly grateful to Assistant Manager Kang. Said he'd never met his like, and charged me — very earnestly — to take good care of him."
"Is that so? And your own read, Department Head Kwak?"
"I'd say he's a young man with good luck, sir."
Shin Chang-yong rubbed his lips together, thinking hard, then tilted his head.
"Does 'lucky' really cover it? If that man was ready to give up farming, things must have been quite serious."
"Assistant Manager Kang is no doctor, sir. A run of coincidences, I'd imagine."
"For heaven's sake... Well, it's a relief he means to keep farming, at any rate."
"You know how it is sometimes, sir." Kwak Young-ho set the well-tossed salad in front of Shin Chang-yong and pulled the untossed one toward himself. "Every so often you meet one — a friend with luck so good it's absurd."
Shin Chang-yong, chopsticks just poised over the salad, arched his gray-streaked brows. Before him, Kwak Young-ho went on with a faint smile.
"You spend long enough in the sales division and you run into that type now and again."
"And that's Assistant Manager Kang?"
"Yes, sir. And in a business built on people, you of all people know how much recognition — and luck — matter."
"Hmmmm."
Shin Chang-yong set his chopsticks down altogether and folded his arms, his face crowded with thought — leaving Kwak Young-ho to watch the salad quietly marinate in its dressing.
"Well, I'll grant you — luck is a skill of its own."
"Yes, sir."
"But that boy — nothing much stood out about him before, did it?"
Kwak Young-ho smiled a touch ruefully before answering.
"There are those who press their own luck down flat, aren't there, sir?"
"Ahh — now that makes sense."
It had started precisely after Noh Soo-chul was gone. Kang Hyeong-seok's momentum had picked up, strangely enough — the force with which he drove through his work, and the growing sense that anything tangled up with him had a way of turning out well. All of it dated from Noh Soo-chul's departure.
"The way I see it, sir, Assistant Manager Kang is only now beginning to shine."
Shin Chang-yong, who had been listening intently with his lips pressed firm, nodded.
"You know the saying — luck seven, skill three?"
"Of course! Seven parts luck, three parts skill — that's what it takes to succeed."
"That saying is a cruel one, you know. Turn it around, and it means that no matter how skilled you are, if luck doesn't ride with you, you will never succeed."
Kwak Young-ho raised his bokbunja with a face that asked, can you really spin it like that?
Slurrrrp.
Accepting the drink Kwak Young-ho poured, Shin Chang-yong pushed a heavy breath out through his nose.
"If the boy's luck has finally cracked open, that's good news. And by all appearances, he's a young man of fine character as well."
"Yes, yes. He's a subordinate I lean on a great deal myself."
"Third year since he joined, wasn't it?"
Kwak Young-ho weighed the man's mood, then nodded. "Yes, sir."
"This particular matter is a bit thin on its own, so you whip up something more presentable. Do it right, and I'll see about carving out a position for him."
A broad smile spread across Kwak Young-ho's face.
"Thank you, sir!"
"Enough of that. We're near the office — watch your tongue. By the way, that intern who went along with him. What's she like?"
"I didn't send her out with Assistant Manager Kang for nothing, after all. She's exactly the kind who ought to go full-time."
"Hmm — Namgoong Min-ah, was it? I'll keep her in mind."
"Thank you, sir!"
"Lower your voice. I told you, we're near the office."
Kwak Young-ho made no sound this time, but the smile never left his face. How could it have? Executive Director Shin Chang-yong had just promised to back Kang Hyeong-seok — and Kwak Young-ho was far too decent a man to begrudge a subordinate his moment of recognition.
"Sir, have the rest of this abalone. It's good for the body."
"You, right now... oh, never mind!"
"It's nothing, sir. You love abalone. Eat up — and if it runs short, I'll order more."
"I said never mind!"
Clink, clink.
Around then, dish after dish began landing between Kwak Young-ho and Shin Chang-yong. Of them all, Kwak Young-ho shoved everything like eel or sushi across to Shin Chang-yong, while pulling the silkworm pupa soup and boiled beans to his own place.
"Doing this makes me uncomfortable!"
"It's because I want to, sir."
"Oh, come off it! Enough, enough!"
And so, in just such an atmosphere, the meal drew to a pleasant close.