If It Goes Well, I Might Just Get Hit
I saw Ju Hyeon-jin.
He was in a sorry state. His face was flushed red, his hair and clothes were disheveled, and his eyes were dull and unfocused.
The stink of alcohol rolled off him in waves.
Seeing the liquor bottles scattered across the floor, it looked as though he had spent the whole time drowning himself in drink.
And from the bottle in his hand, it was clear that, as expected of a chaebol heir, he drank the expensive stuff. While ordinary people were blowing soju straight from the bottle, he was doing it with cognac.
A woman’s voice came from behind him.
“Who’s there, Oppa?”
He snapped back irritably. “Stay in the room!”
I was impressed.
Oh!
Even in a situation like this, he still had a woman with him?
So this was what being a South Korean chaebol was all about.
As that thought crossed my mind, Ju Hyeon-jin grabbed me by the collar.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing coming here?”
“Have I come somewhere I shouldn’t have?”
“You, right? It’s you, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“You’re the one who set all this up!”
“Me?”
“Yeah!”
“You really think so?”
“You think I wouldn’t know!?”
Well, I can’t exactly say he’s wrong.
Ju Hyeon-jin glared at me and shouted, “Do you know what you’ve done to me!?”
“How is any of that because of me? It happened because of what you did.”
The fact that he was still blaming others like a child told me he still hadn’t come to his senses.
“You son of a bitch!”
He raised a hand as if he meant to strike me on the spot.
I said, unbothered, “Looks like you might actually hit me if you do well. If you want to hit me, go ahead and try. There’s no law saying the chairman’s family can’t hit a shareholder.”
Ju Hyeon-jin’s clenched fist trembled.
Before, if he had struck some nobody he happened to run into, it wouldn’t have mattered. But now I was a representative of Continue Capital.
What would happen if it came out that he had assaulted a representative of an investment firm in the middle of a management control battle, especially when he was already drawing public outrage over his chauffeur abuse scandal?
The shareholders’ meeting was in three days.
If public sentiment flared up now, it would affect the meeting itself.
Ju Hyeon-jin looked as if he wanted to kill me on the spot, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to throw the punch. The hand gripping my collar slowly loosened.
“D-Do you really think I’ll do whatever you want?”
They’d said he had anger-management problems, and yet his patience turned out to be rather impressive. Still, I found it fascinating that his supposed anger issues seemed to activate only when he decided someone was beneath him.
Come to think of it, something about this felt oddly familiar, as though the roles had been reversed before.
I straightened the wrinkled collar of my shirt.
“Good. I heard someone say this once: if you’re poor and powerless, all you can do is endure it. Looking at you today, I guess that was true after all.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“There are ways to find out everything.”
It wasn’t exactly public knowledge that he was staying at the villa in Jeju, but it wasn’t some deep secret either.
Fortunately, Sung Yoon-ah had checked for me, and thanks to her, I was able to meet him safely like this. I’d have to buy her a proper meal sometime.
“So you approached me from the start with a plan, didn’t you? You used me!”
What was that supposed to mean?
“Have you forgotten that you were the one who picked the fight first?”
“You deliberately set me up!”
“Hmm…”
His face made it clear he genuinely believed that.
“What the hell do you even have against me?”
“Against you?”
“Yeah!”
Ju Hyeon-jin shouted as if he were the one being wronged. “What the hell did I do to you?”
“Are you asking because you don’t remember?”
“Is this really because of what happened that day?”
I gave a thin smile.
“Well, it’s not just because of that day.”
“Fuck! Then what is it? Do I even know you? Have we met before?”
He didn’t know it, but our connection ran far deeper than he imagined.
“I used to really like Hanjeong Chicken.”
“Hanjeong Chicken? What about it?”
“Someone I knew ran a Hanjeong Chicken franchise, and it went under because of the head office’s abuse.”
“……”
After staring at me in complete disbelief for a moment, Ju Hyeon-jin murmured, almost like a groan, “You’re messing with me, aren’t you?”
“Not at all.”
“You caused all this over something that trivial?”
“Trivial?”
Even now, the bastard still didn’t understand what he had done wrong.
How many people who run chicken restaurants are rolling in money? They’re all doing it just to make a living.
I smiled coldly and said, “If you’ve taken away someone else’s meal, you should understand that yours can be taken away too. Don’t you agree, Mr. Ju Hyeon-jin?”
“……”
Hanjeong Chicken.
In South Korea, the so-called chicken republic, it was a franchise with a staggering 40 percent market share.
In my first life, I had opened a Hanjeong Chicken franchise with Sunwoo.
It was a precious shop, one we had poured everything into. We fried chicken and made deliveries with all our strength, and business actually went quite well.
But after we exposed the company’s unfair practices, the owner retaliated by opening a directly managed store right across from us.
That owner had been Ju Hyeon-jin.
Well, from his point of view, it was probably something that had never happened at all.
But I still remembered the sight of him when he had come to our store, as vividly as if it were yesterday.
In my first life, the merger succeeded, and Ju Hyeon-jin secured HJ Food as his own share. But this time, he had been driven out of the company and exiled to Jeju.
Seeing him like this made me think, once again, that I was truly fortunate to have regressed.
Ju Hyeon-jin no longer seemed to have the strength to stay angry.
“Get out. Now.”
“Come on, don’t be like that. I came today to talk business.”
“Business?”
“The shareholders’ meeting is in three days. Everything will end there.”
Ju Hyeon-jin broke into laughter.
“Ha! You really think you can win?”
From the way he said it, he still seemed to believe Ju Cheol-jin had the upper hand. That made sense; they had been buying up shares with every means available, even dipping into slush funds to do it.
“Do you want your brother to win?”
At my question, Ju Hyeon-jin looked at me like I’d said something absurd.
“What the hell are you talking about? You think I’d want you guys to win?”
I nodded.
“Good. Let’s say Vice Chairman Ju Cheol-jin wins, just as you want. Then what do you think happens to you?”
“...What?”
“Chairman Ju Min-jae has officially retired, and the group will be handed over to Vice Chairman Ju Cheol-jin. Blood may be thicker than water, but do you really think the vice chairman will bring his younger brother back into management? Looking at how he sent you all the way down to Jeju, I doubt it.”
“……”
Ju Hyeon-jin couldn’t answer.
The merger had failed, and now even management control was under threat. The biggest reason things had gone so badly was him.
That meant Ju Cheol-jin would never restore him to management. And a spin-off from HJ Food would never happen either.
He had to know by now that his return was a lost cause.
Grinding his teeth, Ju Hyeon-jin said, “You came all this way just to mock me?”
“I didn’t come all the way to Jeju just to mock you. I came to make you an offer.”
“An offer? Cut the bullshit and get lost.”
“You can decide after you hear it.”
He sat down across from me, grabbed one of the liquor bottles on the table, and took a drink. He still wore a look that could rip me to pieces, but the fact that he wasn’t saying anything told me he was at least curious about why I was here.
I didn’t drag it out.
“Side with us.”
“Pffft!”
Ju Hyeon-jin choked and spat the liquor back out.
He bent over and coughed for a long time, and I handed him the water bottle beside me.
He gulped down the water, then looked at me and asked, “What the hell do you mean by that? You want me to betray them?”
“It’s not betrayal. It’s a choice.”
At that, Ju Hyeon-jin burst out laughing.
“Hahaha! You’re completely crazy. Even if I were to betray them, why the hell would I side with you? Get out before I call someone.”
His reaction was perfectly understandable.
Since I had expected as much, I said calmly, “Think about it for a second.”
“Think about what, asshole?”
“Even if you barely manage to defend control of the company, there’ll be noise everywhere. From the shareholders’ perspective, Chairman Ju Min-jae may be trustworthy, but Vice Chairman Ju Cheol-jin’s management abilities haven’t been proven yet. On top of that, after getting caught treating the shareholders like pigs and dogs, they promised every kind of shareholder-return policy imaginable. That includes disposing of non-core subsidiaries unrelated to the main business. Construction and food don’t really have much to do with each other. So they’ll probably sell HJ Food.”
“……”
HJ Food had originally been set aside as Ju Hyeon-jin’s share.
Even if he kept holding onto it, one day he would have to hand it over to his brother and split the group. Better to dispose of it and turn it into cash.
Looking at him, I said, “Which means you’ll have nowhere to go back to.”
Ju Hyeon-jin’s face hardened.
He had probably already sensed as much. But I still wasn’t done.
“Inheritance tax is a problem too. I don’t think they’d sell off holding company shares to pay it, so they’ll hurry the listing of the unlisted subsidiaries instead.”
Hanjeong Group was a corporate empire with dozens of affiliates. Some were listed on the stock market, but many were still unlisted.
The defining trait of those companies was that the chairman’s family held large stakes, and trading with affiliated companies accounted for a huge share of their business. They were the kind of firms built through the classic practice of funneling work their way.
The reason to keep a company unlisted even when it could be valued at several times, or even more than ten times, its current worth once it went public was simple.
Unlisted companies faced far less regulation and scrutiny than listed ones. They didn’t have to worry as much about shareholders breathing down their necks.
Under normal circumstances, there would have been no reason to rush the listing process.
But the situation was different now. Ju Cheol-jin would try to list the companies in which he held the largest stakes first, in order to secure funds for defending control.
Ju Hyeon-jin frowned.
“What are you talking about? Even if you guys take control, you’d do the same thing anyway, wouldn’t you?”
“That’s true.”
Once a company went public and its assets grew, its stock price could be pushed higher as well. In the end, whoever held control, the fact remained that the unlisted affiliates would be listed.
But from his position, there was one major difference.
“If Vice Chairman Ju Cheol-jin is the one who lists them, do you really think he’ll just preserve your share? I think he’d force you to hand over your stake at a bargain price before the listing.”
His expression changed at my words.
“What the—”
“If you refuse, he’ll probably drag your ownership percentage down through mergers, acquisitions, or paid-in capital increases among the affiliates. No, maybe before that he’ll demand that you hand over your Hanjeong Mulsan shares first.”
“……”
Ju Hyeon-jin’s position wasn’t just that of a director at HJ Food.
He had also served as an outside director or adviser for unlisted Hanjeong Group affiliates like HMH, HJ Smart, and HJ Plus.
But now he had resigned from all of those posts, and there was no longer any way for him to influence the company.
Chairman Ju Min-jae had handed the group to his eldest son, but he had also given his youngest son a share of the pie. That was why HJ Food could be spun off as a separate affiliate.
But would Ju Cheol-jin think the same way?
Absolutely not.
A father had reason to provide for his son’s share, but an older brother had no reason to provide for his younger brother’s.
Given the chance, he would try to cut his brother completely out of the group’s management. In the process, he would strip away most of the shares Ju Hyeon-jin held.
Watching him, I kept going.
“No matter who wins this shareholders’ meeting, you won’t be returning to Hanjeong Group. So shouldn’t you at least take your own share and walk away? Think about it. Even if Vice Chairman Ju Cheol-jin successfully defends control, do you think he’ll be grateful to his younger brother? Or will he blame you for everything that happened and resent you for the rest of his life?”
“……”
Ju Hyeon-jin still didn’t say a word.
He knew his brother’s personality better than I did.
Right now, because the recording had been exposed, Ju Hyeon-jin was being treated like trash. But compared to Ju Cheol-jin, that was hardly even a fraction of the truth.
Just by looking at the bruised, not-yet-healed face he had gotten from him, it was easy enough to see how he had been treated.
The chairman’s family held 7.8 percent of Hanjeong Mulsan.
Of that, Chairman Ju Min-jae held 2.7 percent.
Normally, the shares of the holding company would be passed to the heir, while other stocks, real estate, and the like would go to the other children.
And yet, for some reason, Chairman Ju Min-jae had divided Hanjeong Mulsan shares evenly among his three children.
Ju Cheol-jin got 2.3 percent, while Ju Hyeon-jin and Ju Hye-jin each got 1.4 percent.
If the planned merger with HJ Logics had gone through, that wouldn’t have been a problem. But the merger had failed, and management control was now under threat.
With 1.4 percent right now, the whole board could be flipped completely.
Ju Hyeon-jin’s eyes wavered with conflict.
His place in the company had already vanished, and if he went back, no one would welcome him.
To side with me meant betraying the company and betraying his family. It would amount to cutting ties for good.
It was not a decision anyone could make easily.
What choice would he make?
I knew far more about him than he realized.
Ju Hyeon-jin was petty at heart and put his own interests above everything else. He never forgot even the smallest grudge, and if the opportunity came, he would always take revenge.
Even if the other person was family.
At last, I said to him, “Do you want to get one over on your brother and walk away with your share, or do you want to spend the rest of your life getting pushed around under him?”
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