Chapter 994. Crank Up 9

“You don’t need to say that you’re obliged to do anything. I’ll visit you whenever you feel bored, just give me a call.”

“You really know how to scratch where it itches. There are many people who look spiteful despite their eloquent talking skills, but I like you because you aren’t like that. It’s a skill to make flattery sound good. I hate people who blatantly try to suck on my toes.”

The chairman pressed the bell on the table. Not long later, women wearing hanbok brought new dishes. The main dish, the steamed clams, was placed in the center, while multi-colored seaweed-like food filled the empty spaces. As for the drink, it was just a bottle of rice wine commonly found on the market.

“I was raised in Busan. I was born in Seoul but had to go down there during the war. Everything was chaotic because of the war, but men had to work even amidst the chaos. I sold instant bread[1] at an age where I should be going to school. I was told I had to pay half of my sales for borrowing the machine, but what could I do about that? I didn’t know how my father was doing since we got separated during the war, and my mother had fallen ill and collapsed. I got us a tattered room with whatever little money we had, but I had to do work in order to feed my little brothers. It wasn’t that uncommon back then. That was how everybody was like. It was an era where everyone had a snot-nosed younger sibling or children who would be dying if not for them working.”

Maru looked at the label on the rice wine. It was a made-in-Busan brand. This probably contained a lot of memories, as well as resentment, for the chairman.

“Then one day, I was offered the chance to buy the instant bread cooker. That was the first scam I experienced. That man was quite something. Actually, that man had borrowed the cooker from someone else. I was buying a borrowed item. Somewhat like tenant farmers leasing their land. That was when I realized.”

He poured the rice wine into the chairman’s glass. It was only appropriate to keep listening when an elderly was bringing up the past.

“I realized that having an item in my hand is not useful at all. While I got my hands on the bread cooker, the one who profited was the one who sold me the cooker. Of course, if I keep selling instant bread, I should be able to earn money. I should have been able to make a living. But that’s it. All I would ever get my hands on is money that I sell from selling instant bread. Do you know what I did next?”

“You must have lent it to someone else.”

“Yes. I lent it to someone else while I learned woodcraft from a craftsman. I got my hands on another cooker with the rental fee and the wages I earned and positioned it in the next town over. Like that, I eventually managed over thirty of those cookers. How is that? I must have become rich, right?”

“More than half of those thirty, or even all of them, might have gone missing or sold as scrap metal.”

The chairman swallowed the rice wine in an instant.

“Correct. If the first-ever scam I experienced was buying the bread cooker, this was my first-ever business failure. I was merely sixteen back then. Though, back then, sixteen was treated like an adult. I was satisfied seeing the cookers increasing day by day. For a few months, the borrowers gave me money. But after some time, everyone disappeared all at once as though they planned it behind my back. They took my cookers as well. It was frustrating. I searched everywhere and found the man who took my cookers. I grabbed him by the collar and demanded he cough up my cookers, but he said he didn’t have any because he sold everything. Then I demanded the money, and he said he used it all. I couldn’t go to anyone to vent my frustration, so I tried looking for the cookers myself. There I met the man who scammed me in the beginning. It was flabbergasting.”

“What did you do after that?”

“I grabbed him by the pants and followed him everywhere, telling him that I want to earn money like him.”

“Did that man tell you the method?”

“He did. He told me to chase the man, not the money. After that, when I did business, I thought about the man’s words from time to time. But nothing about it was right. That’s because people always betray. The one who stabs you in the back is always a person, while money is truthful the whole time. I changed my perspective. I erased what that man said from my mind entirely. I created my surroundings solely based on money, and my wealth increased rapidly. Money is the best, money is the measure of credibility, money is the only rule and order.”

The chairman clenched his right hand as he spoke with intensity. His trembling eyes then calmed down. He loosened his grip and his shoulders.

“But I was wrong. The one stabbing you in the back is a person, but the one blocking it is also a person. That made me wonder. Just what kind of people should I have by my side so that my business does not fall apart and can become a pillar that supports the history of this nation? Society treats me like I’m some kind of freak, but I’m not that monstrous. If anything, I’m very feeble. Before the financial crisis hit, I picked people based on my emotions. I even held very unconventional job interviews. I did not look at their origins or specs and solely picked people based on their nature. Do you know how much effort and money you need to verify someone’s personality?”

“It’s definitely more consuming than giving out standardized entrance tests.”

The chairman nodded.

“It was impossible to standardize anything, so I employed people myself, or had someone I could trust pick them. That procedure created dramatic losses both economically and time-wise, but I believed that that was what was best for the company. I promoted people based on other people’s evaluations of them, even if their skills were lacking. It was a really harmonious office. Everyone was like family. Although this expression is used in a different meaning now[2], it was really fun back then. Whenever there was something to congratulate, we would all congratulate that person with all our hearts, and we would cry together if something bad happened.”

Maru poured the rice wine into his glass. The chairman looked at the glass and spoke,

“Then the IMF crisis came. A family-like company, a company without lies, a company with affection.”

The chairman laughed in self-loathing and spoke after emptying his glass,

“That was my company. What do you think happened to it?”

“I do not know.”

“Of course you don’t. It’d be strange if you do. Men who called each other brothers called me in the middle of the night. It was back when I was not in the right mind because of all the debts I had to pay. I asked them what happened. They said the same thing, just changing out the subject and the object in the sentence. They made it roundabout, but it ultimately came down to one thing: don’t fire me, fire the other guy. The ones who laughed together had changed their attitudes when there were knives held in their throats. I’m sure that wasn’t their real intention. They probably asked me because it’s inevitable as the breadwinners of their respective houses. They thought that having someone else’s family suck on their thumbs in hunger is better than their own family no longer having a place to live.”

The chairman looked at him straight and asked,

“What would you have done? There’s a close colleague at your workplace, and one of the two of you will have to quit the company tomorrow. Will you ask your superiors to save your own butt? Or are you going to be loyal to your friend and just wait until orders come down?”

“If I can secure my own life with a phone call, then I’ll make that choice.”

“Even if that results in your close friend leaving the company?”

“I do not hesitate when it comes to things I cannot handle. I only do whatever I can. It’ll definitely be heartbreaking for that friend to resent me. However, if I can protect my family in compensation for being hurt, I’ll think that it’s a cheap price to pay.”

“What a coldblood.”

The chairman pouted his lower lip in dissatisfaction. Maru drank the rice wine without minding it. His relationship with the chairman was okay like this. He neither wanted to form a close relationship with him to the point where they would give everything for each other nor did he want to get on his bad side and affect his acting career. Someone who knows to adequately flatter, but that’s everything about him — that was enough.

“Well, I guess that’s just how everyone copes. Skills above nature, talent above personality. The company became a wolf’s den where one might be chased out the moment their wounds were exposed, but it became a lot firmer and sturdier. However, to this day, I remember that man’s words. Chase man, not money.”

The chairman waved at him to leave. It was rather sudden. Maru quietly stood up and said goodbye to the chairman. When he opened the door and walked outside, he saw lawyer Park standing there.

“You’re leaving?”

“Yes. The chairman told me to leave. It seems he doesn’t like me.”

“Alright, I see. Let’s have a meal sometime.”

“I’ll be taking my leave first.”

Maru said goodbye to lawyer Park before bowing towards the chairman once again through the opening of the door. The chairman wasn’t even looking at him.

* * *

“I’ll get going now.”

“Alright, I’m expecting good work from you. Do rest from time to time.”

Lawyer Park left the room. The chairman looked at the empty seat opposite him before calling for secretary Kim.

“Little Kim.”

“Yes, chairman.”

“If the prosecutors told you that they’ll harm your family if you do not tell them how I got my secret funds, what will you do?”

Secretary Kim did not hesitate to answer,

“I’ll have to apologize to you in advance, but I’ll tell them.”

“How spiteful. You should say that you’ll protect it with your life even if it’s just a lie.”

“If I was someone like that, you would have cast me away a long time ago.”

The chairman had secretary Kim sit down and poured some rice wine for him.

“The boy named Han Maru. He was quite bold. He flatters me but doesn’t cross the line. It’s like he doesn’t need my help.”

“I see you have taken a liking to him.”

The chairman curled up his lips slightly.

“He listened to this old man’s boring bedtime story, so I should give him a reward. Let’s give him some more on top of the advertisement I told you about before.”

“Yes, sir.”

The chairman recalled Han Maru’s answer and rested his chin on his hand.

“I don’t hate those willing to do anything to protect their family. In fact, they are the ones who brought me big benefits if they crossed the crisis in front of them. Pretenses are bound to break, so I like ones who gnash their teeth and try to protect their loved ones at all costs. That’s because they don’t chase money, they chase man.”

Secretary Kim lifted up the rice wine bottle. The chairman lightly grabbed his glass.

[1] Or 풀빵. It’s a flour-water mixture directly cooked in holed metal plates (something like takoyaki cooker plates).

[2] In recent years, Koreans calling a company ‘family-like’ is generally considered a bad thing, because employers try to coerce you to do certain things or do more work ‘for the sake of family.’