Chapter 35

Chapter 35

Chapter 35 Newcomer (5)

‘These lunatics aren’t human.’

The beer glass in front of Dohyeok kept filling with alcohol like a well that never ran dry.

He drank, and it filled. He drank, and it filled.

How many glasses had he emptied and had refilled like that?

“By the way, Assistant Manager Joo Dohyeok doesn’t eat much when he drinks, does he? Is it because he’s such a heavy drinker?”

“Still, try a bite. The pork rind here really tastes like nothing you can get anywhere else.”

Joo Dohyeok shook his head firmly from side to side. An unmistakable refusal.

It was food he had never eaten before. No, in the first place, it didn’t even look like something that should be eaten.

Wasn’t it a piece of skin with a vivid purple stamp on it?

Regardless of the savory smell, he simply couldn’t summon the courage to put it in his mouth.

And so, even while repeatedly drinking the bomb shots known as ninety-ten liquor, all Dohyeok had eaten as side dishes were water and a few pieces of pickled vegetables.

‘This is bad. I seriously can’t hold out any longer. Damn it, why is that bastard still perfectly fine?!’

His eyes had nearly closed several times already. If he hadn’t gotten up under the excuse of going to the bathroom and secretly vomited, he might have lost consciousness long ago.

But what the hell was with this guy?

Every glass raised for a toast was drained cleanly before being set back on the table. Yet he showed no sign of being affected at all.

Even so, Dohyeok couldn’t back down now.

Whatever else might be true, he prided himself on having trained in drinking and partying his entire life.

Losing to some ordinary office worker who drank nothing but cheap soju instead of expensive whiskey was unacceptable.

‘I just have to beat that bastard. I only need to drink one more glass than him!’

___________

“Hahaha! So then, the raccoon dog came sliding down from above the window...”

-Thud.

With a heavy crash, Assistant Manager Joo Dohyeok collapsed forward.

“See? I told you to drink moderately.”

“Mr. Dohyeok! Mr. Dohyeok! Wake up! You have to go home! Where do you live? Where’s your house?”

“I’m Joo Do-hyeok, damn it.”

“I know your name is Joo Dohyeok, but you still have to go home.”

“He never even served in the military, but he sure recites his name and rank well.”

“This is no time for jokes. Who’s going to carry someone this huge all the way home?”

“You know how in dramas chaebol families have personal secretaries? Maybe someone like that will come. Or he must at least have a driver.”

“I hope so.”

“Even if he does, I don’t think calling them will be easy. We can’t unlock his phone.”

“Ah! Manager Kim is right. How are we supposed to contact anyone? It’s not like his driver is waiting somewhere nearby.”

We couldn’t go through his phone.

Even if he were an ordinary coworker.

We had only met him today, but he was still a member of our team.

Calling around everywhere trying to find someone to clean up after him would be a negative for everyone. For us and for the unconscious Assistant Manager Joo Dohyeok.

In the end, only one option remained.

“I’ll put him in a motel somewhere before I go home.”

“He’s really big. Will you be okay? Want me to help?”

“No. You’ve been drinking too, Department Head.”

I had no desire to turn one burden into two.

Nor did I want the unexpected event of hearing, ‘You worked hard carrying Assistant Manager Joo Dohyeok, so how about a quick can of beer at the convenience store?’

“Hrngh.”

I grabbed Assistant Manager Joo Dohyeok and pulled him upright.

“Whoa, I was about to help you. How are you lifting him so easily by yourself?”

“Why do you think? I put you into taxis every time you get drunk, Department Head. I’ve gotten plenty of practice.”

“Ahem.”

That was right.

The only difference was that the distance to the company parking lot had become a little longer. Even I had to admit that my movements when lifting a drunk person and carrying them to a car were those of a highly trained instructor.

Not that I had ever wanted to train for it.

“Then be careful. Get him there safely!”

“Call us if anything happens.”

And so we called a designated driver and arrived at a motel along the route to Namyangju.

“Driver, I’ll pay extra. Would it be all right if you wait about five minutes?”

“Oh, sure. Take your time.”

“Thank you. Assistant Manager Joo Dohyeok! Wake up!”

“Mmmh... don’t wanna.”

“Assistant Manager!”

This was bad.

He wouldn’t come out of the car.

Getting him inside had been relatively easy thanks to countless training sessions(?), but now that he was lying across the back seat and refusing to move, I couldn’t budge him at all.

“Would you like some help?”

“I’m sorry. You must be busy. Then could you take this arm, please?”

“It’s fine, haha.”

“One, two, three!”

“I said I’m not goiiing.”

This bastard, seriously!

____________

‘Where am I?’

Joo Dohyeok sat up while clutching his head, his hangover still lingering.

It was a clean room.

There was only the bed he had been lying on, a desk, and a chair.

If he had to find something that wasn’t a basic necessity, there was only a strange chain decoration made by linking pieces of paper together.

“Ugh, my head.”

He couldn’t remember anything.

The last thing he vaguely recalled was, for some reason, a raccoon dog.

‘This isn’t the time for this. Let’s see... my phone is here, and the battery is dead, as expected.’

It wasn’t his first time waking up in an unfamiliar place, so he moved quickly.

After rummaging through his pockets and finding his phone, he draped the neatly folded leather jacket beside him over his shoulders and stepped outside.

“Damn it, my head already hurts like hell, and I was on the second floor.”

The staircase across the living room was too much for him in his current condition, when even walking on level ground was difficult.

As he crouched awkwardly and carefully took one step at a time, a face he had never seen before suddenly popped out from the first floor.

“Hello!”

“Huh? Oh, hi. Whoa!”

-Crash.

He reflexively waved back at the foreign child cheerfully waving at him and ended up losing his balance, tumbling over in an undignified heap.

Hearing the noise, Jinseong came out of the kitchen and into the coffeehouse.

“You’re awake? I was just about to wake you. It’s almost ready. Sit down and wait a little.”

Having met Jinseong in such an embarrassing state, Dohyeok hurriedly stood up and brushed off his clothes as though nothing had happened.

“This place is...”

“My house. I run a coffeehouse as a side business. Though I hardly get any customers.”

“A coffeehouse?”

Jinseong, who was holding a pair of tongs, went back into the kitchen to finish preparing breakfast, leaving no one to answer Dohyeok’s question.

Only then did Dohyeok have the leisure to look around and, like most first-time visitors to Jinseong’s coffeehouse, slowly wander through it.

With Lia as his guide.

“We roast sweet potatoes on that stove! And that seat over there is where I draw pictures with Sani. Oh! And you shouldn’t touch that golden toad too often. The gold paint comes off. And also...”

‘Her Korean is good.’

Blond hair and blue eyes.

She looked unmistakably foreign. Cute enough to appear as a child actress in a movie.

The coffeehouse tour she delivered in her clear voice was rambling, but it gave him a rough idea of what life here was like.

‘He lives pretty miserably. Does our company pay that badly?’

There wasn’t a single item that looked new.

If anything, the second floor where he had been sleeping felt far more like a place where people actually lived.

“Breakfast. Eat something to settle your stomach.”

While he was following the little girl around and being fed information he hadn’t asked for, Jinseong came out carrying a tray with ramen.

He couldn’t bring himself to say that he normally didn’t eat breakfast.

Not because he appreciated the effort Jinseong had gone through to cook it, but because he simply couldn’t ignore the powerful aroma rising from the ramen in the stainless-steel bowl.

-Slurp.

Instead of saying thanks for the meal, the sound of slurping came first.

To Joo Dohyeok, who had spent his entire life being served by others, someone else’s kindness was simply a natural right.

“If you’re done eating, go wash up. We’ll go to work together in my car. Ah! You drank quite a lot yesterday, so if you’re feeling rough, I can tell the Department Head and have today treated as paid leave.”

Absolutely not.

It was the perfect setup for rumors to spread that the great Joo Dohyeok had embarrassingly blacked out at a drinking party with employees and couldn’t even get up the next day.

“I’m going, so don’t worry.”

Dohyeok snatched the clothes and towel Jinseong held out and headed for the bathroom.

Jinseong watched him go with a faint smile.

_____________

-Knock, knock.

“Chairman, I have a repor...”

“Get in here!”

As if he had been waiting, a booming voice rang out from inside.

“All right, tell me again what you said over the phone earlier.”

“A report came in that Assistant Manager Joo Dohyeok arrived at work normally today at 8:10 a.m.”

“Is that really true?”

“This is today’s attendance record.”

The attendance record Director Shin Jicheol had brought was not something he had prepared specifically to report to Chairman Joo Manho.

He himself had found it difficult to believe, so he had personally requested the record to verify it.

Assistant Manager Joo Dohyeok rarely even came to work, let alone arrived on time, to the point that writing attendance reports solely for him had become one of the secretary’s office’s major duties.

“The brat didn’t even come in on time.”

“No. He entered the office with Manager Kim Jinseong fifty minutes before the official start time.”

“I’ve put an expensive teacher beside him. Of course he should.”

‘It’s hard to believe, but it’s true. The two of them even arrived in the same car. But how in the world did he get that delinquent to come to work after only one day? And early in the morning, at that.’

Even Shin Jicheol, one of his father’s closest aides, only barely received polite speech from Dohyeok, so the idea of teaching him was absurd.

Perhaps things would have been different if he had siblings.

Simply having a rival for the inheritance of the company might have kept him from behaving as arrogantly as he did now.

But Chairman Joo Manho’s precious only son, born to him late in life, had had his future decided from the moment he was born.

And he himself knew that future all too well.

The company he entered after finishing his studies abroad was no different from a toy he already owned.

“Seven years ago, when you first met Manager Kim Jinseong, did you already know he would be useful like this?”

“I can’t even read my own child’s mind, so how could I know after seeing someone once? I just thought he was an extraordinary young fellow, and then after a few years I learned what kind of person he was, and learned about his personal circumstances too. I felt my way along like that and eventually decided to entrust the matter to him. It took quite a while before I trusted you with your position too.”

“Yes. I only managed to secure it by putting my resignation letter on the line.”

“Hahaha, don’t be too disappointed. If I’d backed you on the portal business that day and we’d gotten smashed to pieces, I would’ve stepped down with you and probably had to put some professional manager or other in the seat.”

The two men had staked the survival of the company on a gamble and, as the victors, had taken the rewards they deserved.

And now they had cast their second gamble.

Unfortunately, this time there was no share of the reward for Director Shin Jicheol.

“That fellow certainly has good fortune.”

“He won’t think so. When that brat stared at me with those eyes wide open, there wasn’t even a speck of ambition on his face. Didn’t you say you had to cajole and coax him just to keep him sitting there?”

“Yes. I even invoked your name, Chairman, and he still said he would resign.”

“What did you say? Hahaha! I kept saying he was expensive, and it turns out he’s a teacher who can’t be bought even with the three characters of my name, Joo Manho.”

Chairman Joo Manho was so delighted that he repeatedly slapped his knee and laughed heartily.

“Good grief, this expensive tea has gone completely cold while I’ve been running my mouth. Aren’t you going to drink yours?”

“Thank you.”

‘Hm?’

Floating in the teacup filled with the now-cold tea were black tea leaves he had never seen before.

Real tea leaves giving off a rich fragrance that could never have come from the cheap tea bag used last time.