IMCT 10

Chapter 10

Kim Si-min was walking through the streets at night. Through the Bluetooth earphones in his ears, he could hear the sound of a radio playing.

Is water the tears of flowers?

Or are flowers the tears of water?

The calm voice of the DJ flowed from the radio, followed by lines from a poem. As he listened quietly, the face of a woman suddenly came to mind. Her eyes had been filled with tears, yet she had desperately tried not to cry.

Even if water wants to leave the flower, it cannot.

Even if the flower wants to leave the water, it cannot.

“This is a line from ‘Water Lily’ by poet Jeong Ho-seung.”

He did not know what the poet had intended to express, but looking at that woman’s tearful eyes and the way she had struggled to hold back her tears, he had felt both sadness and beauty.

At this moment, he could somehow understand the heart of someone who could not leave the side of another person’s tears.

Man, this is making me sentimental.

He took out his phone and searched for a name.

[Park Min-young]

[Are you feeling a little better? If things are hard, I can at least buy you a beer. Give me a call.]

He wrote and deleted the message several times before finally sending the awkwardly worded sentence flying through the air.

Ding.

[Would you like to meet in Hyehwa? There’s a cocktail bar I like.]

[Sounds good.]

Almost as if he had been pulled there by a magnet, Kim Si-min found himself sitting at a bar in Hyehwa.

“My dad was a really good person. He was never lacking when it came to our family.”

“…”

He simply listened. There was not much he could say.

“Please don’t hate my dad too much. I really think the business he was trying to start was a good one. My dad had devoted his whole life to battery research. He was so happy when he succeeded in developing technology related to secondary batteries.”

Kim Si-min’s eyes lit up for a moment.

If the development of the secondary battery technology had been completed, how could his business have gone so badly?

“Anyway, thank you so much for today. To be honest, I tried to act like I was fine, but I was a little scared.”

“Anyone would have been scared in that situation.”

If he had not changed after everything that had suddenly happened to him, he would have been terrified in the same situation that morning.

In fact, Park Min-young was the impressive one for standing up to those thugs so boldly.

“If anything happens, call me right away. I might still be able to help a little.”

“…Why are you being so kind to me?”

“Hm?”

Why was he flustered?

It was strange. There was no reason for him to feel embarrassed, yet he found himself getting flustered.

“Honestly, when you think about it, you didn’t do anything wrong, Manager. So why are you being this kind to me?”

“Well…”

His eyes fell on Park Min-young, who was already quite drunk, her body leaning slightly to one side. She was still forcing herself to smile as if she were fine, but her eyes were filled with sadness.

“I just wanted to help. I don’t really know why.”

His eyes met Park Min-young’s.

For a moment, silence passed between them.

For one brief instant that felt like an eternity, time seemed to stop.

Then it started moving again.

And Park Min-young’s forehead dropped toward the table.

Tap.

Instead of letting her head hit the table with a loud thud, Kim Si-min gently caught it with his arm.

He then carried the drunk Min-young on his back and walked out of the bar.

Rattle.

The sound of the door opening followed him outside, but Kim Si-min suddenly stopped.

Come to think of it, I don’t know where Park Min-young lives.

She said she lives alone, too.

He checked the time.

It was already past two in the morning.

With no other choice, he headed toward his own home.

Slowly, her eyes opened.

This definitely wasn’t her home.

My clothes? These aren’t mine.

She quickly looked around the room.

Park Min-young was lying alone in a neatly organized bedroom.

What happened?

She slowly pieced together her memories.

The thugs who had come that morning. Everything that had happened afterward.

All those events, coming so soon after her father’s death, had finally broken the heart she had been struggling to hold together.

It’s too hard to live.

Someone, please help me.

Just as her head had begun to spin amid the shouting thugs, one of them had thrown a punch at her.

Park Min-young had squeezed her eyes shut.

“Ah! Fuck!”

She had been certain she was about to get punched at least once.

Then someone appeared in front of her.

The man had fearlessly pushed the thugs back and, without saying much, pulled out a handkerchief and placed it in her hand.

She had watched his back as he walked away.

It was big, broad, and warm.

That evening, she had been sitting alone at home, staring blankly out the window and thinking about her father, who was no longer in this world.

Then—

Ding.

[Are you feeling a little better? If things are hard, I can at least buy you a beer. Give me a call.]

The unexpected message had caught her off guard.

Without even realizing it, her fingers had slowly begun to move.

Before she knew how she had ended up there, Park Min-young had arrived in Hyehwa and shared several drinks with the man.

As their glasses went back and forth, she could feel the man’s eyes on her.

And the moment their eyes met, she had fallen silent.

…Why are you being so kind to me?

I must have been crazy. Why did I say something like that?

Before she could even finish thinking, their eyes met again.

In the silence, with no answer coming, she had been unable to keep her eyelids open.

Remembering what had happened the day before, Park Min-young’s face suddenly turned bright red.

Forget it. Just forget it.

She repeated those words to herself several times.

I must have gotten drunk and passed out… Then where am I?

Her eyes and mind quickly moved as she looked around the room.

Don’t tell me… this is Kim Si-min’s house?

The color drained from her face.

She could not understand where her original clothes had gone or why she was wearing a T-shirt.

Ding.

Just as she was lost in her thoughts, a message arrived.

[I made some dried pollock soup. Eat it. Your clothes got pretty dirty yesterday, so I left them at the dry cleaner.]

At that moment, all of Park Min-young’s memories came rushing back.

Including the humiliating memory of getting sick and throwing up by herself.

“Did something good happen?”

When Kim Si-min arrived at Lighthouse Co., Ltd., Park Won-jung had already returned from his outside work.

At his kind smile and question, Si-min gave an awkward smile.

“Nothing happened.”

“I see. So nothing happened.”

“Yes, well.”

“I heard from Woo-jin. You asked about the snack bar.”

“Yes. Well, I suppose this request is something that is related to me.”

“That’s right. It is something related to you, Representative.”

“Does something like this happen often?”

“Not often. I believe this is a rather special case.”

A special case, huh? Then that’s fine.

Somehow, he had a feeling that constantly having things like this happen around the people close to him would not be a good thing.

“By the way, is it possible for me to ask Attorney Hwang Su-ho for help?”

“Of course. You are in a position to give orders to every employee here, not simply ask them for favors.”

“I don’t think it would be right for me to recklessly order people around when I still don’t know anything.”

Especially when it came to something as serious as giving someone an opportunity or taking one away.

“You are right to think that way. Still, if you give an order for any reason, Representative, it will be absolute to us.”

“What would you do if I ruined all of this because I acted however I wanted?”

“If you were the kind of person who would do that, I doubt Lighthouse would have chosen you as its Representative in the first place.”

At his words, Kim Si-min awkwardly nodded.

“Ah, actually, there is something I would like to ask you to do.”

“Yes. Please tell me.”

“If possible, I’d like you to investigate those guys.”

“You mean the ones who came to Lee Sun-hye’s store.”

“You already knew?”

“Well, if we make up our minds to find something out, there’s almost nothing we can’t uncover. Anyway, I’ll let you know the results of the investigation soon.”

Kim Si-min smiled and nodded at his answer.

“And there’s something else. I’ve never run a company before. I’ve met plenty of owners, but I don’t really know what they actually do. Especially with a company like this.”

“I imagine so.”

“I heard you’ve been running this company for a long time without a Representative. I want to learn how I’m supposed to do this.”

Park Won-jung looked at his somewhat expressionless but clear face and smiled brightly.

“I’ll teach you as much as I can.”

“Thank you.”

“For now, if you focus on the work you’re already doing, you’ll learn quite a lot.”

“I’ll do that.”

After finishing his conversation with Park Won-jung, Kim Si-min opened a book he had bought recently, What an Owner Should Do.

[Establishing Vision and Strategy: Set the company’s long-term goals and vision, and establish strategies to achieve them.]

Lighthouse Co., Ltd. was a place with an incredibly clear goal and vision.

Is there even any strategy I could add to this?

[Organizational Management and Leadership: Design the organization’s personnel structure, place key talent in the right positions, raise employee morale, and share the company’s vision.]

His eyes stopped on one section.

Designing the personnel structure. Placing key talent. Improving employee morale.

Maybe this is it.

Kim Si-min remembered a conversation he had accidentally overheard outside the building a while ago.

“These days, I hear there are a lot of problems with the field agents.”

“Field agents? Why?”

“You know Han Mu-sik.”

“Oh, him? Han Mu-sik has always been famous for that.”

“Even so, this is already his tenth disciplinary action. Don’t we have internal regulations or something we’re supposed to follow?”

“The new Representative has arrived too. Things might change from now on.”

Han Mu-sik.

That was his name.

Kim Si-min decided he would ask either Kim Woo-jin or Park Won-jung about him later.

Then he got up and headed toward the snack bar.