Company Work Gets Easier (1)

Monday morning.

I'd leveled up to Level 3 — estimated — and still hadn't chosen between the two options.

I'd spent half the previous night scouring the neighborhood before I finally found those little kids who'd been out playing. Out of gratitude, I went straight over and put them under. Odds were they'd gotten a serious scolding from their parents once the hypnosis wore off. Since I'd leveled up thanks to them, maybe I ought to buy them a toy later.

My current hypnosis level was Level 3, by estimation. It wasn't like a game where a system window popped up in front of my face. I'd simply treated the moment I first gained the ability as Level 1. After that, each time I felt that leveling-up sensation and a choice appeared, I counted it as another rank. This was the second time a choice had shown up, so I figured I was at Level 3.

At Level 2, I'd chosen to extend the duration by one hour. That left me able to hypnotize one person for two hours. Now that I'd hit Level 3, I had to pick between adding one more person or adding two more hours of hypnosis time. Choosing the time extension would bring the total to four hours.

What pulled at me was the duration boost. Same as last ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠time — adding one more simultaneous target didn't have much practical use yet. Of course, the mere thought of being able to hypnotize one extra person at the same time sent a steady stream of filthy images curling up through my mind: two women on a bed. Honestly, that was the whole reason I was even hesitating.

My cold, rational brain insisted that stretching the hypnosis window by two full hours — up to four — would deliver far greater utility. Versus my cock, which simply screamed, "Two women means two pussies!"

Looking at everything I'd done since gaining hypnosis, I had to admit I was more drawn to the cock than the brain. The whole contest had basically been settled the moment a single ultra-orgasmic, hypnosis-upgraded pussy entered the picture. Still, my brain croaked out a dying protest: "Your dick doesn't have a brain, you idiot!"

Hmm. Was that true?

I dropped my pants, pulled up Park Min-seo's profile picture on my phone, and watched my cock lift its head as if to ask, Is it time?

Verification complete. Dicks do not have brains.

I'd already told myself I was going to take Park Min-seo a week from now.

Good. Now I needed to get out of the house in a hurry. I still had to stack proficiency by hypnotizing kids who looked like kindergartners or first- and second-graders. Something simple — listen to your teachers, play nice at school — ought to do it.

NPL — Non-Performing Loan.

That was the business my company dealt in. The company name was Donglim Asset Management Co., Ltd. A total shithole. In broad strokes, we bought up non-performing loans held by first- and second-tier financial institutions and recovered them. Put more simply: banks and savings banks would offload loans they'd given up on collecting — or were struggling to collect — at fire-sale prices, and if our company recovered more than we'd paid, we pocketed the difference.

Our firm went a step further into the shadows, though, and regularly bought NPLs from loan sharks as well. That was why I'd learned boxing. You ran into some rough situations in this line of work. The case from last Saturday — the guy who'd been importing drone parts and quietly siphoning off the collateral — was a similar type of job. Getting hit only hurt me, so better not to get hit.

Given the nature of an NPL company, the base salary was low, so I'd always been careful with money. Perform well and you could rake in solid incentives — but everyone claimed they had no money, no assets. How were you supposed to know if they were telling the truth?

Things would be different now. I had hypnosis. Nobody could lie to my face anymore. Maybe that was why I felt strangely calm, psychologically. Was it because I finally had something to lean on? And that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠something was a superpower called hypnosis, no less. Was this how chaebol kids walked around with their shoulders squared?

"Hey. Deputy Kim. Heard you closed a deal."

So even running into the kind of guy who would normally ruin my mood the second I walked into the office didn't faze me at all.

Bae Jin-su. Same rank — deputy — and same hire year. And a complete bastard.

"Still got those fast ears, I see."

"Whoa. Looking at a decent incentive, huh? You busted your ass Saturday night — you deserve it."

This son of a bitch. He clearly thought I didn't know he'd gotten a tip from the department manager that weekend work was coming, then dumped his own assignment on me. The reason I'd been stuck doing company business Saturday night was because this guy had tossed me his work on Friday. Being tight with the manager, he wouldn't care about the incentive from resolving it anyway.

"I was looking at three or four thousand recovered. Five thousand recovery — that put you at about a hundred? No, wait — fifty?"

He was needling me even though he knew full well it'd be around fifty. Fifty man-won for a few hours of work on a Saturday night. Big money, if you looked at it that way. But I'd also pocketed a side payment. And the real prize was tonight: the Guro Warehouse. Recovering nine thousand man-won worth of drone equipment from there would net me an incentive of roughly four hundred fifty man-won by the book.

Our company's incentive rate was five percent — five percent of whatever amount exceeded the recovery target the company had set. But this one fell outside normal operations. It was recovery the company hadn't even identified, which left plenty of room to treat it as a special achievement. That could bump it to ten percent — nine hundred man-won. They probably wouldn't go as high as fifteen. Even if they did, the department manager would take credit upstairs, skim a cut for himself, and hand me ten percent. So I should safely figure on nine hundred man-won.

I was curious what this guy's face would look like tomorrow, once today was over. How twisted up would he get when he realized the scrap of work he'd tossed me like table scraps had netted nearly ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ten million won in incentives?

"Eh, they'll give me something reasonable."

"You owe me a round. I was going to keep that job for myself since I had so much on my plate — Manager gave it to you because he was thinking of you."

I ignored his bullshit and sat down at my desk. I was killing time, thinking through the night's plan, when the department manager walked in.

Park Cheol-gon, Department Manager. Word was he'd been a gangster once. I'd overheard employees who'd gone to the sauna with him making a fuss about knife scars in certain places. Before I got hypnosis, I'd let that talk wash over me. Now? Interesting.

"Manager, good morning."

Bae Jin-su was first to jump up and suck up. Beyond the brown-nosing, the truth was he was better at the job than me — annoying as that was. If he'd just kept his head down, he'd have been the office ace and nothing more than a source of my inferiority complex. Instead he was the kind of irritating bastard who used his flattery with the manager to monopolize the easy, high-paying assignments, then strutted around needling everyone else about it.

But things would be different from now on. With hypnosis, this kind of petty crap was nothing.

"Manager. Here's the report."

As soon as the manager settled into his seat, I submitted the report on the job I'd closed Saturday night.

"Ah, Kim Ju-hyuk. Good work. What would've happened if that bastard had bolted?"

"Right? Exactly."

"See? Kim Ju-hyuk. You can do it when you try. Keep it up next time."

"Yes, sir. Give me some good assignments."

A pause. The manager, still looking at the report, shot me a look that said, Look at this guy.

"What? Suddenly feeling motivated?"

I'd always been working. Who was he calling a salary thief?

"You usually drift around like a ghost. What's gotten into you?"

"……."

"Fine, whatever. Like I always say — you've got to live by those eyes of yours. Got it?"

What the hell was wrong with my eyes? He'd been on about that forever. The manager's eye comments had started the day I joined the company, and now the whole office stared at my eyes a little too carefully whenever they looked at me. Bae Jin-su had been running his mouth behind my back, saying my eyes looked like a psychopath's. Want me to show him what a real psychopath looks like — with hypnosis?

"Here. Take a crack at this."

I took the documents the manager handed me.

"Guy says he's broke, right? But it's obvious, isn't it? Claims his business went under and he got divorced — classic. He'll have put everything in his wife's name. Dig into it."

Ah. A tedious one. But this…

"Manager, this one's been sitting a while, hasn't it? Isn't it already in progress?"

"Yeah. Bae Jin-su was on it, but he's been dragging his feet. You're taking it."

Whether he'd been pretending not to listen or actually overheard, Bae Jin-su came over and snatched the papers.

"What? No, Manager — this is my active case. You can't just do this."

"I'm doing this because you've been dicking around!"

"Aigoo… come on."

I took the documents back out of Bae Jin-su's hands and looked them over. Definitely a tedious case. The borrower side was playing dumb — no money, what do you want from a failed business — and claimed he was divorced from his wife. Real divorces from business failures and the friction that followed were common enough that you couldn't jump to conclusions. But in this line of work, every single guy I met turned out to have staged a sham divorce to hide assets.

"Where's the rest of the file? Husband and wife's real estate records, resident registration extracts, collateral lists."

"Hey, I already did all of this."

He grumbled without handing over what I'd asked for. This bastard was clearly pissed about having his work dumped on me. Even if the principal was in the hundreds of millions, cases like this always worked the same way — the recovery target, or rather the recovery hope, sat under twenty million won. Once someone decided to declare bankruptcy, siphon off the money, and play dumb, finding it through legal channels was a nightmare. It took forever, and lawsuits cost a fortune. Factor in the cases where the guy really had gone broke and been stripped clean, and it made sense why first-tier banks washed their hands of these assholes and dumped the NPLs on companies like ours.

Drag it out and it could take months.

"So. The materials?"

Only then did Bae Jin-su, making no secret of how much he hated handing them over, dig up the files and pass them to me. A quick skim showed nothing but the bare basics — the kind of stuff you could pull with a few clicks at a desk computer and a couple of phone calls. He hadn't even properly started.

"Ah, this is ridiculous. I worked hard finding all this. A few more days of grinding and I'd have it done. I've just got too much on my plate. But hey — we're the same year, so I'm being generous."

This dumb bastard. The manager played favorites a little, and somehow he'd gotten the wrong idea.

"Then you do it."

"Huh? What?"

I looked at the momentarily flustered Bae Jin-su and spoke in a perfectly even tone.

"You said you'd wrap it up in a few days, right? If that's the case, I can't take it. You already did all the work. Manager — give me something else."

At that, the manager's face twisted as he turned to Bae Jin-su. Bae Jin-su looked so rattled he was practically short-circuiting.

"Hey, Bae Jin-su! Can you actually finish this in a few days?"

"No, Manager… I mean, not a few days exactly, but a little more—"

"A little more? How much more? A week?"

"Well, a bit more…"

"You little shit! A bit more what? Can you finish it soon or not?!"

When the manager finally raised his voice, Bae Jin-su crumpled.

"Hey. Hand every last scrap of material over to Kim Ju-hyuk, and you go do something else useful. Got it?!"

"Yes, Manager…"

Did ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Bae Jin-su think he worked at some major conglomerate? Playing office politics at a company this tiny? The only people he was competing with for results were underlings like himself. The department manager, at least on the field side of this company, was essentially the boss — a king. At a real conglomerate, even a department manager might have to climb the ladder through factions. But in this specialized trade, "department manager" was just a title. He deliberately didn't take a director's post, and the president's seat felt permanent. From the manager's perspective, whether it was Bae Jin-su or anyone else, he just needed a subordinate who got results — whoever that was at the moment.

And now that I had hypnosis, I was about to plant myself firmly in that "subordinate who gets results" seat.

I looked over the documents. Hmm. The company seemed to be treating this as a sham divorce. As I'd said before, actual divorces after a business collapse were common. But when you read through the paperwork carefully, a staged divorce had a different feel from the real thing.

On the husband's side, the real estate records didn't offer much to dig into. Same with the asset listings. That usually meant you had to go after the wife.

The husband had been in the imported furniture and interior materials distribution business before shutting down. Principal and interest owed to the Taechung NPL Investment Association: roughly one hundred eighty million won. Donglim Asset Management's projected recovery: under twenty million. Divorced from his wife right before the default. Virtually no assets left under his own name. Textbook, really.

As for the wife — on the surface, she'd gone independent after the divorce and was running a high-end gallery café. The company suspected a sham divorce, but her assets under her own name weren't conspicuously large. If anything, they were too clean, which was why Bae Jin-su had given up. According to his notes, he'd even called the four main business partners and found nothing.

Still, I should try calling first.

…As expected. If phone calls were going to crack it, great — but no. I'd have to pound the pavement myself.

I told them I was heading out on a field visit and left the office. The reason Bae Jin-su hadn't wanted to properly work this case was exactly what he'd said — it was the kind of job that made you suffer. Real field stakeouts and door-to-door inquiries. There was no errand service for this. How were you supposed to figure everything out legally? Maybe if you were a hacker who could illegally map every capital flow, sure. But in the ordinary world, it came down to this:

Was the divorce real? Were they actually living separately? Where did the husband live? Where did the wife live? Whose name was on the place they were staying? Where was the husband going right now — should I tail him?

All of it had to be tracked down on foot, evidence gathered the hard way. On a job this long, dirty, and barely profitable — just how much help would hypnosis be?

I was looking forward to finding out.