Chapter 10

Kim Si-min was walking down a street at night. Through the Bluetooth earphones plugged into his ears, he could hear the sound of a radio.

Is water the tears of a flower?

Or is the flower the tears of water?

A calm DJ’s voice flowed from the radio, followed by lines from a poem. As he listened quietly, the face of a woman who had desperately tried not to cry, her eyes brimming with tears, suddenly came to mind.

Water cannot leave the flower, even if it wants to.

And the flower cannot leave the water, even if it wants to.

—These are lines from Water Lily by poet Jeong Ho-seung.

He didn’t know what the poet had intended to convey, but seeing the woman’s tearful eyes and the way she struggled to hold back her sobs, he felt both sadness and beauty at the same time.

At this very moment, he felt the heart of someone who could not leave the side of another person in tears.

What a sentimental mood.

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 or two. Give me a call.]

He typed and erased the message several times before finally sending the awkwardly worded sentence floating into the night.

Ding.

[How about Hyehwa? There’s a cocktail bar I like.]

[Sounds good.]

As though pulled by a magnet, Kim Si-min found himself sitting at a bar in Hyehwa before he even realized it.

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

“…”

He simply listened. There wasn’t 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 devoted his entire life to researching batteries. He was so happy when he succeeded in developing technology related to secondary batteries.”

Kim Si-min’s eyes suddenly gleamed.

If the development of secondary-battery technology had already been completed, how could the business have gone so disastrously wrong?

“Anyway, thank you so much for today. Honestly, I pretended I was fine, but I was a little scared.”

“Anyone would have been scared in that situation.”

If he hadn’t changed after everything he had suddenly gone through, he too would have been terrified in a situation like that earlier that day.

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

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

“…Why are you so kind to me?”

“What?”

Why had that question made him flustered?

Kim Si-min found it strange that he had become embarrassed even though there was no reason for him to be.

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

“Well… I’m not sure…”

His eyes fell on her.

She had drunk quite a lot and was sitting with her body slightly tilted. She was forcing herself to maintain a smile as though everything were fine, yet her eyes were still 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 an instant that seemed to last an eternity, time stopped.

Then it began moving again.

Her forehead suddenly 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 hoisted the drunk Min-young onto his back and carried her out of the bar.

Rattle.

The door opened, and Kim Si-min stepped outside.

Then he froze.

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

She had said she lived alone.

He checked his watch.

It was already past two in the morning.

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

Swoosh.

Her eyes slowly opened.

This definitely wasn’t her home.

My clothes? These aren’t my clothes.

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 gangsters who had come that morning.

Everything that had happened afterward.

All the incidents that had occurred so soon after her father’s death had finally broken down the emotional wall she had struggled so hard to maintain.

It’s too hard to keep living like this.

Someone, please help me.

Just as her head had begun spinning amid the shouting gangsters and one of them had raised his fist toward her, Park Min-young squeezed her eyes shut.

“Ah! Fuck!”

She thought she was inevitably going to get hit.

Then someone appeared in front of her.

The man had fearlessly confronted the gangsters, then taken out a handkerchief from somewhere and placed it in her hand.

Without saying much, he simply turned away.

She could see his back.

It was broad, large, and warm.

That evening, she had been sitting alone at home, blankly staring out the window and thinking about her father’s face—the face of someone who no longer existed in this world.

Ding.

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

She had been caught off guard by the completely unexpected message.

Before she even knew it, her fingers had slowly begun moving.

Without even realizing how she had ended up there, Park Min-young found herself in Hyehwa, exchanging several drinks with the man.

As their glasses went back and forth, she could feel the gaze of the man sitting across from her.

And the moment she met his eyes, she fell silent.

Why are you being so kind to me?

What was I thinking? Why on earth did I say something like that?

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

In the silence where no answer came, she couldn’t control her drooping eyelids.

Park Min-young’s face suddenly flushed as she remembered what had happened the previous night.

Forget it. Just forget it.

She repeated the words to herself several times.

I must have passed out because I was drunk… Then where am I?

Her eyes and mind raced as she looked around the room.

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

The color drained from her face.

She couldn’t understand where the clothes she had originally been wearing had gone or why she was wearing a T-shirt instead.

Ding.

Just then, while she was lost in a whirlwind of thoughts, a message arrived.

[I made some pollack soup, so eat some. Your clothes got pretty dirty yesterday, so I took them to the dry cleaners.]

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

Including the humiliating memory of getting sick alone because her stomach was upset.

“Did something good happen?”

When Kim Si-min arrived at Lighthouse Co., Ltd.’s office, Park Won-jung, who had been out on business, had already returned.

At his question, accompanied by his benevolent smile, Kim 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. How should I put it… This request is related to me personally.”

“That is correct. It is related to you, Representative.”

“Does this sort of thing happen often?”

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

A special case.

Then that was fine.

He had a feeling that it wouldn’t be a good thing if incidents like these kept happening to the people around him.

“Would it be possible for me to ask Attorney Hwang Su-ho for help?”

“Of course. You are the Representative. You can give orders, not requests, to every employee here.”

“I don’t think it would be right for someone like me, who still knows nothing, to recklessly start ordering people around.”

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

“You have thought it through well. In any case, if you give an order for whatever reason, Representative, it will be absolute to us.”

“What would you do if I recklessly ruined all of this?”

“If you were the kind of person who would do that, Lighthouse probably wouldn’t have chosen you as its Representative in the first place.”

Kim Si-min awkwardly nodded at his words.

“Oh, in that regard, there is actually something I’d like to ask you to do.”

“Yes. Please go ahead.”

“If possible, I’d like you to investigate these people.”

“You mean the men who came to Ms. Lee Seon-hye’s shop.”

“You already knew?”

“Well, if we set our minds to finding something out, there isn’t much we can’t uncover. In any case, I’ll let you know the results of the investigation soon.”

Kim Si-min smiled and nodded.

“There is something else. I’ve never managed a company before. I’ve met plenty of business owners, but I don’t really know what they actually do in detail. And I know even less about this company.”

“Of course.”

“I heard you’ve been running a company without a Representative for a very long time. I’d like to learn how to do it.”

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

“I’ll be happy to teach you.”

“Thank you.”

“For now, if you simply 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 the 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 for achieving them.]

Lighthouse had an extremely clear goal and vision.

Is there even any additional strategy I could offer?

[Organizational Management and Leadership: Design the organizational structure, place key talent in appropriate positions, boost employee morale, and share the company’s vision.]

His gaze stopped on one particular section.

Designing the organizational structure.

Placing key talent.

Boosting employee morale.

Maybe this is it.

Kim Si-min remembered something he had accidentally overheard in front of the building a while ago.

—“I heard the field agents have been causing a lot of problems lately.”

—“Field agents? Why?”

—“You know Han Mu-sik.”

—“Oh, Han Mu-sik. Well, he’s always been notorious.”

—“Still, this is already his tenth disciplinary action. Shouldn’t we do something? We have company regulations and everything.”

—“The new Representative is here now, too. I suppose things might change from here on out.”

Han Mu-sik.

That was the name.

He decided he would ask Kim Woo-jin or Park Won-jung about him sometime.

Then Kim Si-min rose from his seat and headed toward the snack bar.