Chapter : 10
“……Yes?”
“Why?”
Sojin blinked.
“I’m the team leader, aren’t I? Is there something wrong with this?”
Sojin looked at Hyunju with an innocent expression, almost like a child.
A chilly silence descended over the office.
Hyunju said nothing, but her fingertips pressing the keyboard grew tense.
Sojin smiled as if she were enjoying the atmosphere.
Then she went to her desk and turned on the computer.
What appeared on the monitor was not a work screen, but a luxury clothing website.
Sojin left the website open, leaned back in her chair, and put wireless earbuds into both ears.
Minjun cautiously approached her.
“Team Leader, I……”
Sojin moved only her lips while wearing the earbuds.
“Hm? What did you say?”
“Could you take those out for a moment……”
“Oh, I like listening to music.”
Sojin lightly tapped her earbud with her finger.
“Leave me a message.”
Minjun frowned. Raising his voice slightly, he said,
“Didn’t you say it was difficult to type?”
Sojin opened her eyes wide and smiled.
“That’s right! If you leave it in the messenger, I’ll send you a voice recording as my reply. Please do it, Assistant Manager Kwon.”
At that moment, Minjun’s face turned bright red. Eunha, who had been listening beside him, did not even smile.
Sojin continued her strange behavior after that. Being late was now the norm.
“The General Manager called for me? I have to buy a limited-edition bag right now, so Assistant Manager Kwon, you go instead.”
Even when Dohyun called for her, she sent Minjun in her place.
“I happened to discover this really atmospheric café while I was passing by! I bought cakes for everyone, so take one.”
Disappearing during lunchtime and returning two or three hours later was the least of it.
“Sorry, I forgot about the meeting, so I’m late. There wasn’t anything important to discuss anyway, so it’s fine, right?”
She even started arriving late to meetings.
“I have to feed my dog, so I need to hurry home~ Let’s end the meeting now.”
Leaving in the middle of a meeting had become something they were almost accustomed to.
The team members increasingly marveled at Sojin’s bizarre behavior.
Had there ever been a team leader this strange?
What felt even more peculiar was that they did not feel that Sojin was a bad person.
She was simply irresponsible in her conduct and did a lot of unusual things.
The team members ate the cakes Sojin had given them while staring blankly at her.
For some reason, the dazzling rhinestones embedded in her fingernails seemed especially painful to look at.
Yoo Seungjun, the team leader of Planning Team 3, snapped at Hyunju.
“Manager Song, I told you to make sure this was discussed at the meeting. You didn’t?”
“……I’m sorry. If you give us a little more time, we’ll discuss it and report the results.”
Hyunju’s head naturally lowered.
Rather than unnecessarily tattling that Sojin was not doing her work, it was better to apologize unconditionally.
Whatever the reason, she had failed to complete the task the Planning Team 3 leader had requested.
Hyunju, who had many years of experience at the company, knew that very well.
Regardless, Hyunju was boiling inside.
‘She’s a parachute hire, so she probably has nothing to worry about. She probably doesn’t even think about the employees whose livelihoods depend on this.’
Seungjun waved his hand, saying that he understood and telling her to leave.
Hyunju apologized once more before walking outside.
Eunha and Minjun were waiting for her.
Eunha’s expression was already icy.
“……I’ll say something to Team Leader Lee……!”
“It’s okay. If we step forward for no reason, we’ll be the ones who suffer. Let’s just take care of whatever work we can handle ourselves. Don’t wait for the team leader’s instructions.”
For the first time, the normally cheerful expression on Minjun’s face darkened.
They looked toward the team leader’s desk.
The empty team leader’s desk, because she had disappeared somewhere again.
‘She doesn’t seem like a bad person…… but if she keeps doing this, we’re the ones who will suffer.’
Hyunju turned her head away from the team leader’s desk.
Even the team members who had not thought badly of Sojin were beginning to frown at her increasingly bizarre behavior.
Jihwan entered the General Manager’s office.
Dohyun was working on his computer.
Jihwan reported everything Sojin had been doing. Dohyun listened to him with an expressionless face.
“She seems to think the company is her playground.”
“……I don’t know what she was thinking when she joined the company, but she looks like someone who is desperate to get herself fired. Could there be some other reason……”
“There’s no hidden motive behind that woman. She probably doesn’t think at all.”
Jihwan was startled by Dohyun’s harsh words.
“Ah, no……”
“She’s simply doing whatever she feels like. Leave her alone. She’ll leave on her own.”
Even though she was his fiancée, Jihwan felt uneasy seeing how ruthless Dohyun was toward her.
“Hey, still, she’s your fiancée……”
“This is a company, Secretary Ahn. Refrain from making remarks that reveal personal relationships.”
“Ha…… Understood.”
Dohyun added in a flat voice,
“There’s no need to report anything about that woman anymore. Secretary Ahn, focus more on other matters.”
“……Understood.”
Jihwan bowed and left the room.
Only then did Dohyun take his eyes off the computer and press his fingers against his eyes.
‘What is she thinking?’
Suddenly, Chairman Jung’s words came to mind.
“Perhaps you want to keep an eye on her because she’s the General Manager’s fiancée?”
“He even called me separately and asked me to make sure his fiancée could continue working at the company.”
“He also told the HR team to make sure that, no matter what happened, they were not to fire Sojin.”
‘Ha…….’
Dohyun repeatedly rubbed his dry face.
As soon as he came to Kangseong Media, he had carried out a major personnel reshuffle.
He fired employees who did nothing but collect their salaries without properly doing their jobs and replaced them with talented people.
Every single one of them had been personally selected by Dohyun.
‘And of all people.’
That strange woman had entered his perfect arrangement.
He had planned to announce the beginning of the project gradually, once the newly hired employees had become accustomed to the company.
If only that woman had not gotten involved in the arrangement.
Since Sojin was the team leader of Planning Team 2, she was technically eligible to participate in the project as well.
The Replay Project had been decided as a project involving the entire Planning Department.
Dohyun bit down on his lip.
An error-like variable.
An indelible blemish.
A woman as irritating as his own birth.
‘Is the chairman trying to interfere with me, or is he supporting me?’
He had even expressed his support for the marriage by hiring the daughter of a powerful family as a “parachute hire.”
And yet he had exiled Dohyun to this small company.
Coldly. Without a moment’s hesitation.
‘Perhaps he’s doing this because he knows that woman’s true nature.’
She was stupid enough that sooner or later, she would inevitably cause an incident.
Since he could not publicly reject Dohyun because he was his son, perhaps the chairman’s hidden scheme was to get rid of him through the worst possible marriage.
Chairman Kang was always like this.
He tested Dohyun, was pleased with him, and sometimes became disappointed.
As if he were a child constantly poking at a hamster he was raising, the chairman tormented him while pretending he had no malicious intentions.
Dohyun opened the very last drawer of his desk.
Inside the drawer was a red desk clock that did not match the dark, modern office at all.
On the far left side of the clock were the words, “Love That Does Not Flow.”
It was currently 10 a.m. But the desk clock showed 2:45 a.m.
Dohyun stared at the clock with an unreadable expression before sending Jihwan a brief message.
[Exclude Planning Team 2 from the project. Take care of the paperwork accordingly.]
At 11:30 a.m., Dohyun left the office early for an appointment with a business partner.
As he was walking through the company lobby, words that caught Dohyun’s attention reached his ears.
“Have you seen the team leader of Planning Team 2?”
Dohyun turned his head toward where the voices were coming from.
Two men were chatting while waiting for their coffee at the café.
Dohyun looked away. Just as he was about to continue walking, one of the men spoke again.
“She looked incredible today too.”
“It is kind of ridiculous that she comes to work wearing clothes like that, but she sure is easy on the eyes.”
The men snickered as they commented on Sojin’s appearance. They continued talking about her figure, her body, and various other things.
“Her breasts are really……”
“Was it Manager Min?”
Manager Min hurriedly bowed his head when Dohyun suddenly approached.
“G-General Manager!”
