Proof of Ability
I arrived at the office later than usual.
Truth be told, this job had an unofficial flex-time quality to it. When you had fieldwork, you didn't need to show up at the office at all. How were you supposed to stake out a location if you came in early only to leave again for the job?
The photos I'd submitted as evidence—shots of the target living in an officetel under his wife's name—those weren't the kind of thing you could casually grab after a leisurely commute to the office. Like I'd said before, we were no different from errand runners.
So normally, people either clocked in on time, spent the morning at the office and headed out in the afternoon, or finished their fieldwork with results and reported back late in the day. Almost nobody strolled in around ten like some company president—past the official start time but well before lunch—the way I was doing now.
The roads were clear. Nice. I could get used to commuting at this hour.
When I walked into the office, I drew a few looks, as expected. Not quite Who the hell is this guy? More like What's he doing here at this hour? Among those glances was the manager's.
He kept staring, which was exactly what I wanted, so I went straight to him.
"Manager. Here."
I pulled the report on the fake divorce case from my bag and handed it over.
"Oh, already? Find anything?"
The manager sipped his coffee and asked halfheartedly.
"The guy was living in the officetel under his wife's name, just as expected. And I found the hidden assets."
At that, the manager set down his coffee, gripped the report with both hands instead of flipping through it casually, and started examining it in earnest. Bae Jin-su, working nearby, whipped his head around.
"It's a commercial property in Dongtan transferred under his mother-in-law's name. Current market value could go as high as six hundred million won. Our company's claim is a hundred eighty million. We can recover the full amount."
"Hold on."
The manager set aside the photos in the report and scrutinized the property registry for the Dongtan commercial unit.
"What's the connection to the commercial property?"
"It overlaps with the cash flow from his ex-wife's gallery. Right after the divorce, the gallery made several high-value art transactions, and the commercial property was acquired immediately after. We haven't reviewed the financial records yet, but once Legal pulls the documents, there's plenty to dig into."
Bae Jin-su had already gotten up from his desk and drifted over behind the manager. Seemed he was still invested in the case he'd originally been assigned.
I glanced at him and smirked. Bae Jin-su's expression hardened further with displeasure.
"You talk to Legal yet?"
"Yes. With what we have now, they say we can prepare a provisional attachment. Once we confirm the gallery's cash flow, we can move for fraudulent conveyance cancellation."
"Good work. Really good work. So with this, our… how much was it again?"
"A hundred eighty million."
The manager checked the figure on the report and broke into a bright smile.
A case they'd gone into expecting maybe twenty million at best—and even that would have required Legal grinding away for a maybe—and now they could recover every last won. In this line of work, the raw amount mattered, sure, but what really counted was buying a claim that first-tier banks had written off as uncollectible, then recovering it in full.
That was the whole point of an NPL firm: buy distressed debt cheap and squeeze out whatever profit you could.
"Yeah. This'll do. The numbers look great. The whole package is solid."
The manager beamed at me. Bae Jin-su shot the scene a sour look, then started examining my report on the manager's desk.
"Manager."
"What?"
"There's no guarantee this commercial property belongs to the debtor."
Bae Jin-su's eyes darted as he analyzed my report. Seriously—put that energy into your own work.
The manager looked at him with an expression that said, What's this guy on about now?
"Who in their right mind would put a commercial property under their mother-in-law's name—not even their own mother? She could just swallow it whole and he'd be screwed. Plus the ex-wife handles real money herself. She's got a café in Gangnam, even if it's on the outskirts."
"That's why Legal is verifying it."
"No, but—"
I cut Bae Jin-su off, tapping the photo clipped to the report he was holding.
"Right. She could swallow it whole and he'd be screwed—except the husband's living in his ex-wife's officetel?"
"…"
I wasn't worried. I'd heard it straight from the man himself under hypnosis. And no matter how much Bae Jin-su ranted, once Legal traced the gallery's cash flow, it was over. This guy must have been feeling the heat lately.
"Bae Jin-su, you little shit. When I tell you to do something, you drag your feet and stall. If you know so much, why didn't you do it yourself, huh?!"
The manager roughly snatched the report from Bae Jin-su's hands, his voice rising. Eyes throughout the office snapped toward us. It was morning—people were already half-distracted—and now they had something to watch.
Is this the moment?
"Manager."
I pulled another file from my bag and held it out. Assignment and assumption of claim contracts—debts I'd bought dirt cheap from clients A and B.
"What's this?"
The manager examined the contracts with a puzzled look. Then he flinched.
"Guys like this never borrow from just one place, right?"
"W-well, no."
The manager stopped mid-sentence. He looked at the contracts again.
The first: a goods payment claim with a face value of forty million won, held by an imported furniture supplier. Purchase price: seven million. The second: a storage and shipping fee claim with a face value of sixty million, held by a logistics warehouse company. Purchase price: ten million.
The manager looked back and forth between the contracts and my face.
Commercial property maxed at six hundred million. Our debt: a hundred eighty million. Subtract, and money was left over. What if we bought other creditors' claims at fire-sale prices?
Once he finished the math, the manager hurriedly scanned the materials.
"You little— you. You. You little—"
He muttered as he reviewed the debt details, then looked up at me.
Earlier, when I'd shown we could fully recover a hundred eighty million, he'd looked at me with fond pride. Now it was pure What the hell is this guy?
In all the time I'd known him, even Bae Jin-su—supposedly the current ace—had never gotten a look like that.
"Hey! Kim Ju-hyuk!"
The manager—the king of this office—roared.
Every pair of eyes in the room locked onto us. People were standing up, whispering.
That was why I'd deliberately come in late and drawn attention. Office life required a certain amount of peer recognition. Until now, I'd been the type who just scraped by for a paycheck. Changing that image needed an impact like this—so that later, when important work got assigned to me, people would think, Yeah, that guy can handle it.
Bae Jin-su's face had gone cold and rigid long ago. He looked almost pale. He'd built his position the same way I was doing now—proving himself with results and snatching the good assignments from the manager. In an industry where base pay was a pittance and most of your income came from performance bonuses, watching someone invade your territory like a rat was hardly surprising.
"Manager. This qualifies for the special incentive, right?"
The manager looked at me and grinned.
"You little shit. At least you know how to look after your own rice bowl."
"Of course I do."
The difference between special and standard incentives was five percent—not tens of thousands of won, but hundreds of thousands to over ten million. I was going to grit my teeth and claim every bit of it.
"Yeah. This wasn't a claim the company already had on the books. You went out, found external debt, and bought it yourself. Special performance, no question."
I locked down the most important confirmation. The manager got the team results and management evaluation credit; I got the special performance incentive. Neither of us lost out.
But I wasn't done.
"And Manager—that imported furniture guy? This isn't his only debt."
"Yeah? Now that you mention it, I think he had some smaller stuff tied up with financial institutions too."
"He's got debt with C Capital and D Savings Bank as well."
I handed over the financial institution debt documents I'd prepared in advance. The manager skimmed them and nodded.
"Ah, right. He did have stuff with those guys."
"I'll leave those to you, Manager."
At my bold request, the manager looked up from the papers and stared at me. A man who'd been through every kind of battle—he saw immediately why I was handing this off to him.
"Because a lowly deputy shows up and they'll smell it and bounce? And… you pocket all the incentive?"
"Manager, I did all the work on this. You just need to put your spoon in—"
"I know, you little shit. Who said I was taking it from you?"
The manager laughed, pulled out his phone, and scrolled. Looking through his contacts, apparently. He found what he wanted and tapped the screen.
"Hey, kid. Working hard these days?"
"I've always worked hard."
"Bullshit."
He tossed out the compliment while the call connected. It went through quickly.
"Hey, Manager Kim. How've you been? Yeah, so—there's a bad debt on your end that I need. We're bundling something this time, scooping up the scraps, and I want to clean that one up. What it is—"
The manager listened, leaning back in his chair.
"You already wrote it off as estimated loss. There's nothing left to protect."
The conversation wasn't long. The manager cracked a few jokes, hung up, then called a savings bank vice president and had a similar exchange. Since it was a vice president, he was a bit more careful with his tone.
"Three thousand's a bit steep. We'll go up to thirty-three hundred. We've got legal costs and time to factor in too. Yes, let's do that. Thank you."
After hanging up, the manager looked at me as if it were nothing.
"Done. They're transferring them over."
That was the manager's network and skill. I'd spent days setting the board, visiting clients, securing contracts—and he'd bought three hundred million won in claims with two phone calls from his chair.
The capital company's seventy million for fourteen hundred. The savings bank's two hundred thirty million for thirty-three hundred. Dirt cheap.
If it had been me, even showing up in person, I couldn't have gotten those prices.
"Manager. One more thing."
"What now? Is there more left?"
I spoke as he reached for the documents again.
"This case will take at least six months to actually collect on. Is there any way we could get paid a little faster?"
The manager stared at me with an incredulous look.