Daily Life (3)
I went to the Korean branch for work after a long while.
The Continue Capital Korean branch was basically closed for business at the moment. As soon as Kim Beom-seok got back to Korea, he’d taken a temporary leave to focus on his music.
Dongho-sunbae leaned back in his chair and said, “Coming back, it’s quiet. It was loud when I was working with the Burger brothers on Wall Street. I hope everyone’s doing well.”
“Already missing them?”
“I’m worried they’re already missing me.”
“...You really do worry about the strangest things.”
“Thinking about the Burger brothers makes me want a O'Connor Burger. I heard it’s huge in Silicon Valley these days.”
He sounded so bored he was just following whatever thought crossed his mind.
Still, I wanted one too.
“Oh! You got the invitation, right? I got a call saying Ha Gyeongtae and Choi Hanbyeol are getting married.”
“I got it.”
I thought of the class couple I’d met at a gathering before.
“Weren’t those two always at each other’s throats? I feel like they fought all the time.”
“Maybe they fought long enough to get attached.”
They’d probably gotten married around this time in my first life too.
“But why get married so fast?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Don’t tell me it’s the reason I’m thinking of?”
“It’s probably that reason.”
Dongho-sunbae looked at me. “You’re going to the wedding, right?”
“It’s a classmate’s wedding. Of course I’m going.”
“Then we can go together.”
“Sure.”
Dongho-sunbae folded his arms. “It’s been a while since all the seniors and juniors from our department were together in one place. At events like this, you always end up meeting two kinds of people.”
“What kinds?”
At my question, he held up a finger as if he’d been waiting for it.
“One is the guy selling insurance.”
That sounded about right.
“And the other?”
“A scammer.”
“Come on, no way.”
“Seriously. That’s the conclusion I reached after going to every reunion from elementary school through college.”
“I don’t know why you went to all of them, but since that’s coming from experience, I guess I can trust it.”
Dongho-sunbae said with confidence, “You’ll see. You’ll realize I was right.”
Winter passed, and the season that smelled of spring came rolling in.
Ha Gyeongtae and Choi Hanbyeol’s wedding was held.
I went into the venue with Dongho-sunbae.
“How much should I give?”
“Just give an appropriate amount.”
“Under whose name am I supposed to put it?”
That was the problem when you were close to both the bride and the groom.
“Let’s split it half and half, then put it under both names.”
Since it was a wedding between classmates from just a few years above and below us, the hall felt half like a wedding and half like a reunion.
Classmates, seniors, juniors, and even professors had shown up.
There wasn’t a single face I didn’t recognize.
“Hey! Lee Dong-ho. You came with Miru? You two were glued to each other back in school too, and you’re still glued together now?”
“Oh! Hyuk-su, Hyuk-su—Kim Hyuk-su!”
I bowed my head. “Long time no see, sunbae.”
“Oh, Miru. How’ve you been?”
Hyuk-su-sunbae had been the class rep when I first entered the department. He also bought meals for the younger students often, so he was on good terms with both seniors and juniors.
Dongho-sunbae went off to exchange happy greetings with our classmates, and I ran into Park Seunghun, who had just arrived.
“When I first heard the two of them were dating, I thought they’d break up before long. Who would’ve guessed they’d end up getting married? That’s how you know you can never tell with people.”
“They fought enough already. From here on out, I figure they’ll probably live well.”
Off to one side, I could see the girls from our class gathered together.
At the center of them was Jin Se-yeon.
“I saw you on TV.”
“At first I didn’t realize it was you, Se-yeon. I just thought some woman who looked like you was on screen. Then I realized it was actually you and nearly jumped out of my skin.”
“My friend’s an announcer now.”
“You were even on that variety show where celebrities talk stocks. Do you actually keep in touch with the celebrities who appear on it?”
“Let’s take a picture together. I need something to brag about.”
She was now an SBC announcer.
It wasn’t a terrestrial network, but she was active on an SBC-related cable channel.
Did the job shape the person, or was it the other way around?
She used to have a somewhat wild, playful air about her, but now that she was an announcer, she seemed much calmer and more refined.
Jin Se-yeon noticed me and greeted me warmly. “How’ve you been, Miru?”
“Eh, not bad.”
It was the first time we’d seen each other since that gathering.
In my first life, she got caught up in the Primus scandal and vanished from broadcasting without a trace, but this time she was active and thriving.
I guess that was my doing.
“You saw me on TV?”
“Yeah. Just a little.”
Actually, I hadn’t.
I was busy enough as it was. Where would I find time to watch TV?
“Then why didn’t you contact me all this time?”
“...Huh?”
Why would I contact you?
Did I have some reason to call an ex I’d already broken up with?
“Later, after this...”
“Hey, Han Miru. You came too?”
I turned my head and saw a man in a suit standing there.
He was tall and neat-looking, with a sharp jaw and piercing eyes.
His name was Hong Gyeongseok.
He was a classmate, but we’d never exactly gotten along.
Back when we had to do a group project together, he’d been such a pain in the ass that we’d almost come to blows.
Later, I’d heard he’d liked Jin Se-yeon and had gone out of his way to act like that because she was dating me, but... whatever. That was none of my business.
Hong Gyeongseok sneered. “I thought you wouldn’t come today.”
“Why?”
He snorted. “I heard you quit DA Securities. You must be busy preparing to find a new job, so how’d you find the time to show up here?”
Did he really need to worry about me that much?
“Did you ever get a job?”
“Of course. I’m working for a foreign private equity fund now. You’d be shocked if you heard where.”
“Really?”
Was this guy actually working in private equity?
That hadn’t been the case in my first life, as far as I remembered...
Before I could even say anything, Hong Gyeongseok had already turned to Jin Se-yeon.
“Hey! Se-yeon. You’ve gotten even prettier since I last saw you.”
The wedding proceeded according to schedule.
The officiant was the department head.
“For two people to marry means they become one rather than two, and if they approach married life with generosity toward one another, then no matter what crisis comes their way, they will face it with one heart and one mind...”
It was the kind of speech that sounded meaningful enough, but no one actually listened to it, and after the long officiant’s address finally ended, it was time for the congratulatory song.
The emcee announced, “We have a very special guest here today to celebrate the couple’s wedding. These days, this person’s songs are echoing everywhere you go. Please welcome Jiyu!”
The person who appeared with that introduction was a woman in her early twenties.
She was about five-foot-three, with a round face, big double-lidded eyes, a straight nose, red lips, and a beauty mark at the outer corner of her left eye.
Wearing celebrity makeup, she bowed politely. “Hello, I’m Jiyu. Congratulations to my seniors on your wedding.”
Gasps broke out all around the room.
“Whoa!”
“That’s Jiyu.”
“No way! How did they book her?”
Her newly released song had shot to number one on every major streaming chart and was also taking first place on terrestrial music shows.
She must have been incredibly busy, and yet here she was, singing at a wedding just because she knew the couple. That was pretty loyal of her.
The bride and groom were visibly moved, and the guests all pulled out their phones in unison to take photos and videos.
The wedding came to a close amid a dazzling performance by a wildly popular singer.
After the wedding ended, the people who wanted to eat went home, and those who wanted to keep drinking stayed behind.
We all moved together to the bar the bride and groom had reserved in advance. They’d rented out the pub we’d often used for department gatherings in college.
“Man, it’s been forever.”
“This place is still the same.”
“First time here since graduation.”
Everyone gathered in little groups and talked about the wedding.
“Don’t the bride and groom look perfect together?”
“Totally. They fought so much, and now that I look at them, they were basically meant for each other.”
“Who knew they’d get Jiyu to sing at their wedding?”
“I’m posting the video I took earlier on Facenote.”
I was drinking with Dongho-sunbae when Hyuk-su-sunbae came over to our table.
“Let’s have a drink.”
Then he slipped into the conversation with a grin.
“By the way, do either of you need accident insurance?”
“Huh? Insurance, all of a sudden?”
As if he’d been waiting for that, Hyuk-su-sunbae pulled a product brochure out of his bag and held it out to us.
“This is a new product we just launched at Evergreen Life...”
Dongho-sunbae looked flustered. “Hey, wait a second. You’re an office worker. Why are you selling insurance?”
“Ah, I started doing it not long ago.”
I already knew the situation from my first life, more or less.
Hyuk-su-sunbae had originally joined Evergreen Life and earned a pretty decent salary.
Like most new employees, his goal had been to get promoted quickly and climb high, but one day he learned that there were people earning even more than the company president.
Those people were the insurance agents selling the policies.
So he’d immediately shouted, “I’m going to be the Insurance King!” quit his salaried job on the spot, and decided to carve out a great new road for himself as an insurance agent.
Since the barrier to entry for insurance sales was relatively low, the competition was fierce.
Plenty of people had worried that someone who’d graduated from Korea University was wasting his talent by becoming an insurance agent, but oddly enough, he was doing well.
While other agents pushed people to sign up with brute force, Hyuk-su-sunbae had worked in office administration before, so he knew every insurance product his company offered, along with the pros and cons of each one.
He’d tailor his insurance consulting to the customer’s situation, and that naturally led to customer satisfaction.
Even when two people were both insurance agents, the one who’d graduated from Korea University’s business department was more credible when he explained things.
He was making far more now than he had as an office worker, and even if he never became the Insurance King, I figured he’d probably end up as the Insurance Prince.
Hyuk-su-sunbae kept pressing Dongho-sunbae. “Insurance is what gives you a sturdy fence when something unexpected happens. You saw our ad, right?”
“The one that goes, ‘I received 1 billion won after my husband died. I didn’t say a word’?”
“Exactly. That one. If a husband died and the family didn’t even get 1 billion won, what would’ve happened to them?”
Dongho-sunbae nodded. “That ad was famous.”
It had that odd, suggestive look in the eyes between a handsome insurance company employee and a young widow, along with the narration, “This man was her husband’s life planner. Now he’s our family’s life planner,” so people even mistook it for some kind of commercial encouraging affairs. Still, the ad itself had clearly worked, because after that, calls started pouring in from people wanting to sign up for husband-death insurance.
...Honestly, 1 billion won was enough to make people think that way.
Hyuk-su-sunbae sat down right beside Dongho-sunbae and started underlining parts of the product brochure.
“Look at it. The coverage isn’t bad. There aren’t many products that protect this much against all kinds of accident-related injuries. The margins are so thin on this one that we don’t even advertise it.”
Dongho-sunbae shook his head. “Man, I don’t need insurance. I’m not going to get hurt.”
“Don’t say that. At least think about it.”
“Think about what?”
“You never know what can happen to people. Do you think anyone gets hurt because they want to?”
“Why wouldn’t they? You’ve got insurance scammers and people who stage accidents for insurance money. I watched Ham Cheol-mun TV on AeTube, and there are plenty of lunatics who throw themselves in front of moving cars.”
The unexpected rebuttal threw Hyuk-su-sunbae off for a moment, but he quickly counterattacked.
“Those guys aren’t people.”
“Then what are they?”
“Just deer wearing human skin.”
“Hmm. Fair enough.”
“So take this chance and sign up for accident insurance.”
“I get what you’re saying, but I don’t work in a factory. I sit in an office all day. What kind of injury am I supposed to get?”
“Don’t think you’re safe just because you’re in a building. What if there’s a fire downstairs while you’re working? You saw the Hongcheon fire incident, didn’t you? Once a fire starts, it reaches the upper floors in no time.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“...”
Annoyingly enough, it did make sense.
At DA Securities, the fire had nearly killed both of us.
That incident had badly damaged Dongho-sunbae’s bronchial tubes, but because he hadn’t taken out separate insurance, he’d barely received any compensation.
In the end, he’d gone down to Jeju for the sake of the clean air and good water. Later, he’d complained that the island had become packed with tourists and was belching out exhaust fumes anyway.
I nudged Dongho-sunbae in the side. “Just sign up for one.”
“Why?”
Because even in this life, you never knew what might happen.
Insurance companies might have all kinds of bad images attached to them, but they still had to create decent products that people would actually buy.
Taking out one policy couldn’t hurt, could it?
Well, one insurance seller had shown up. What was the next one again?
As I was thinking that, I noticed a crowd gathering around Hong Gyeongseok.
“What? You work at Continue Capital?”
“Wow, seriously?”
“That place has been huge lately.”
“Isn’t that the best private equity firm on Wall Street?”
“...”
Huh?
What on earth was this supposed to mean?