After savoring the tea in the white porcelain cup, Ji-eun carefully placed it down.
Beyond the thinly-lit windows, warm sunlight seeps into the private room. She glanced down at her wristwatch. The other party was more than five minutes late to their promised meeting time. After meaninglessly looking around the room as if it were at an antique furniture exhibition hall, she grabbed her handbag. When she stood up, her cell phone rang.
“I’m sorry, but I have to cancel the appointment. You can go ahead and have a meal if you’d like. I’ll keep in touch.”
There wasn’t the faintest trace of irritation or even a sincere apology in the man’s voice. She, too, did not feel the slightest discomfort with the man’s businesslike tone.
No, she was rather grateful.
“No, it’s alright. Thank you for calling.”
The man was silent for a moment due to her awfully calm words, but he hung up after saying a simple goodbye. Upon leaving the room, the restaurant staff who stood guard outside smiled awkwardly and saw her off. Among them, an elderly manager pulled along a large silver suitcase and stood beside Ji-eun.
“A taxi will arrive soon.”
“Thank you for your trouble.”
“Please come back again.”
The manager’s attitude was extremely polite. It was regrettable. Ji-eun felt burdened with the staff standing in line behind her. She stood waiting for a taxi and thought about her father. Soon after, a taxi arrived in the open yard. Pulling the suitcase with her, she tied up her long hair and called her father.
“Is it already over? How was Executive Director Kwon?”
His tone was authoritative enough to kill the hilarity of the situation. While trying to hold back her laughter, Ji-eun gave an account of what happened.
“He stood me up. He informed me that he was busy and couldn’t come. I’m on my way out of the restaurant.”
“Stood up?”
“Yes. I don’t know if you’ve been in contact with him, but he said he couldn’t come. In any case, I kept my word and complied, so follow through with your promise. What are you going to do about Mom’s store?”
“…I sent you out to do a good job and you get stood up? If he said he couldn’t come then you should have made an appointment for next time! How do you think I managed to snag the opportunity!”
Her father’s worked up voice and the bustle of her surroundings meshed together. It was an expected response, so she spoke steadily.
“I know, but it’s not fair for me either. Did I stand you up? I’m innocent, so please resolve the issue by today. I’m on my way to the airport right now. I’m trusting you, Father.”
“How long are you going to rot in that little company?”
“Well, I’m in my sixth year as an architect. Since I passed the architecture exam, I’m thinking of changing jobs around next year. Even though the place is small, I’ve learned a lot of good skills.”
“Tsk. You always have to talk back to me like that. At any rate, call me as soon as you get here. I transferred the store deposit this morning.”
“Thank you, Father.”
“There won’t be a second chance. This is the last one, alright?”
Please, I hope this is the last time.
Ji-eun sighed and said she understood, then hung up. She sat in her seat, feeling the heavy vibration of the car, and noticed an unfamiliar number that she had received on her phone a while ago. She pressed down firmly to delete it.
Before she had even matured, her parents divorced. Her mother was from a mid-sized construction company and her father was a young manager. They both fell in love at first sight. However, by the end of 1997, a financial crisis struck South Korea and drove her grandfather’s company into bankruptcy.
Bankruptcy. No one could save her grandfather’s company.
Construction companies that failed to survive the IMF management system eventually disappeared and faded to the back of history, leaving her family’s company. However, Ji-eun remembers that time as a family crisis that destroyed her family, not an economic crisis.
She was the daughter of a highly educated father and a ruined entrepreneur. Her mother, who couldn’t be Princess Pyeong-gang*, and her father, who wanted to be Prince Ho-dong*, were an unmatched pair, so the end was self-explanatory.
After a series of events, Ji-eun came to the conclusion that her father’s instinct to be Daryl’s son-in-law was innate.
During the springtime of 1999, her father divorced her mother. He remarried the daughter of the head of a leading trading company, who was three times divorced.
Of course, being Daryl’s son-in-law, the family admired her father’s intelligence and announced that they had accepted him into the family, taking into account that he was highly educated as well his achievements in construction. But she knew.
They gave her father approval due to the various self-fabricated stories from the youngest daughter of the house, who was thoroughly infatuated with her father.
After exiting the Gangbyeon highway, the taxi drove across Yeongjong Bridge without stopping and soon arrived at Incheon Airport. She was dropped off at the international departures entrance, and her phone rang as soon as she entered the lobby.
“Yes, Director. I’ve just arrived.”
“Oh, we’ve already checked in our luggage and went over to the duty-free shop. Come to MHK Prestige Lounge. If you need to buy something, you can have a look around the duty-free shop.”
“Is everyone here?”
“No, only those who are new to the business. I was excited, so I came as soon as ticketing started. Since we won the Red Dot Award, CEO Shin is making money.”
She laughed along with him.
“Thanks to senior Lim, we get to eat soybean paste. Then, I’ll just be looking around the cosmetics section for a little bit.”
“Okay, come as soon as possible. There aren’t many seats left. Why are there so many people? I think there are too many rich people in Korea.”
Ji-eun hung up and stood waiting in the prestige line. After a staff member checked her ticket, an assistant came over to help accompany her to the luggage drop-off area. Fortunately, she arrived earlier than expected, so she was able to go to the departure lobby with a light heart.
The architecture office she worked at was called SIN. Not because the CEO’s surname was Shin, but because he used the character 宸 (sin), meaning ‘god’, to say he was the god of the architecture office. However, the staff did not immediately buy into the CEO’s argument. She dared to speculate that CEO Shin, who lived in good taste, was inspired by the significance and meaning of the word ‘god’.
After entering the duty-free area, Ji-eun had a look around the endless rows of stores. She bought lipstick that her mom had asked her to buy, face cream that she’s been looking for, and a perfume bottle. When she arrived at the lounge after paying for the cigarettes Lim Soo-wan had asked her to buy, there were only 40 minutes left until departure.
Ji-eun grabbed a coffee and some cookies and sat down face-to-face with a fellow co-worker who was slurping ramen. As the director said, the lounge was rather noisy. The atmosphere wasn’t luxurious like she had envisioned; instead, there was commotion everywhere around her.
“You can drink on the plane too, aren’t you drinking too much? You’ll get drunk.”
“It’s not that much. The ticket is worth a few million wons, so let me do this. Ji-eun, you should eat a little. We’ll be on the plane for 12 hours…”
“Yes, I’ll bring something to eat.”
“Anyway, if you go over there and turn the corner, that’s the First Class Lounge, right? I took a look earlier and saw people from SR Industrial Development. I think they’re executive level, are we taking the same plane? This time around, they’ll be taking the Red Dot Best of the Best.”
SR Industrial Development was the only company to dominate in the construction business industry among a sea of thriving conglomerates. It was the construction company of other construction companies. The top leading conglomerates shouted for shared growth with smaller companies and carried out shady deals to accomplish their objective. Those smaller companies were pushed to surrender their profit margin to less than 3% in subcontracting transactions, but SR was not one of them. SR Industrial Development, a subsidiary of the Seoryang Group, was able to establish itself in the industry thanks to the first chairman, Kwon Ho-seop. He made efforts to guarantee a reasonable and fair unit cost of delivery and directed all of his power into developing SR Industrial Development. Ironically, SR grew significantly with the help of small and mid-sized companies and in the end, reached a position that overtook the holding company.
Of course, all of the information is public knowledge. People had no idea how dirty that world could be.
“Maybe. Usually, the lounge is used by passengers boarding at similar times.”
Ji-eun answered in a calm manner. By the time the boarding announcement for the flight to Germany rang out, she had finished two coffee cups. It wasn’t until ten minutes before takeoff that she and four other men, including Director Ko, made their way towards the gate carrying duty-free shopping bags. After her ticket was checked, she stepped through the exclusive entrance and tried not to look back at the heavy footsteps that followed behind.
The faces of the office employees in the prestige seats flushed under the guidance of the dedicated flight crew. Although they had tried to pretend to be calm, they couldn’t hide their excitement and took photos as proof before lowering back their seat.
[Your dad deposited the money under his company name. What happened? You said you were going on a business trip, was it?]
As she exchanged messages back and forth with her mother, who was asking about the circumstances surrounding the deposit, she raised her head, feeling strange.
“I’ll take you inside.”
Four men dressed in suits entered with an unusually tense-looking flight attendant. They passed by, exuding a heavy presence, and disappeared straight back into the first-class cabin past the prestige.
Three spaces were divided by curtains. All Ji-eun saw were the back of the men’s heads and the nervous faces of the crew members, who were closing the curtains.
“Airplane seats are exactly typical of the Pyramid dynasty.”
“It’s as Director said, they’re from SR. I saw the cufflinks a while ago.”
“Then is it really Kwon Lee-hyun? It’s my first time seeing him in real life, so I wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen someone like that before. I wonder if there are others like that in Seoryang.”
“Is the real thing better?”
“Search it up. You’ll know what I mean.”
Ji-eun pressed her fingers against her aching temples and turned her gaze out the window. She could search it up like Director Ko said, but she was unwilling.
She was not one to meet twice anyway. She didn’t know what golden connection her father had obtained to be able to call Kwon Lee-hyun to the meetup place, but she wouldn’t be giving him a second chance.
She thought it was better if she didn’t meet him. Just thinking about accidentally encountering him was terrible.
After not replying to her mother’s constant questions anymore, she switched her phone to airplane mode.
The 12-hour flight began.