Chapter 17

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Translator: Harry Potta
Chapter: 17
Chapter Title: A Rotten Rope
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Without answering the warning not to mention the land to An Yuna's uncle, Taeseo made a large wrap of meat and lettuce and stuffed it in his mouth.

Watching Taeseo eat, Hyunwoo raised his chopsticks toward the spicy stir-fried pork in the center of the table.

Hyunwoo's hand, holding the chopsticks, moved with the same swiftness as Taeseo's.

It didn't take long for the food filling the table to disappear.

* * *

After finishing their meal, Hyunwoo came out and patted his full stomach.

“They say country ladies are the best cooks, and they weren't kidding. That was amazing.”

The food had been so good that they had each polished off two bowls of rice. Seeing this, the restaurant owner even peeled some Korean melons for them, saying they were from her garden, and it was only after they'd been treated to instant coffee mix that they could finally leave.

“And it was only 6,000 won. In Seoul these days, you can’t eat this well even for 15,000 won.”

Taeseo, standing in front of the restaurant, was silent as he put a cigarette to his lips. He puffed out smoke for a long while, seemingly lost in thought, before finally speaking.

“More importantly, once this job is taken care of, we can go straight back to Seoul, right?”

“Taken care of?”

“You heard me. An Yuna’s uncle.”

The mention of An Yuna’s uncle wasn’t new, but Hyunwoo still flinched, his shoulders tensing. Taeseo grinned as if he had expected it.

It was Hyunwoo who felt a sense of dread at that smile.

“No matter how I look at it, I don’t think we should involve An Yuna’s uncle in the compensation issue.”

Hyunwoo was not the same kind of person as Taeseo.

“From what the restaurant owner said, he sounds like a total scumbag. For An Yuna’s uncle to negotiate the land sale, he’d have to be the landowner’s legal representative, and I doubt someone like that would go about it through legitimate means.”

Taeseo had anticipated as much. The moment he even hinted at negotiating the 400-pyeong plot with An Yuna's uncle, that scumbag would probably show up with a forged power of attorney.

This was a man who would smash a soju bottle over someone's head for a mere 600,000 won; the value of the land was incomparably greater than the rent for the second floor.

“Whatever happens, all I have to do is go through the motions and get out, right? As long as there are no legal problems.”

“There’s such a thing as common decency in this world. There are things people just don’t do because of moral issues.”

“…”

As if unsettled by Taeseo’s silence, Hyunwoo added.

“Manager, didn’t you feel any sympathy after hearing An Yuna’s story?”

“Am I supposed to?”

Kwon Taeseo, who had reigned over others from birth, was the type to naturally utilize every resource at his disposal for his own goals. Hyunwoo, raised in an ordinary family, was the type who had painstakingly built up his own resources one by one.

Unlike Taeseo, who had never felt a shred of moral doubt about his actions, Hyunwoo knew that the money for his education had come from his parents’ blood, sweat, and tears.

Having made choices where his gains meant his siblings got less, Hyunwoo possessed a different kind of conscience than Taeseo.

“Yes, you should. She’s still young. And she’s acting as the head of her household at such a young age.”

“I’ve got my own problems to deal with. What do I care about sympathy?”

In fact, from Taeseo's perspective, Hyunwoo's conscience seemed trivial.

“It’s people like you, who worry about everyone else’s situation, that slack off on the company dime. Huh? Repeat after me. Salary.”

“Salary.”

“Thief.”

“Thie—hey, are you going to keep this up?”

“What do you mean, ‘keep this up’? You’re the one trying to be a salary thief while worrying about everyone else’s business, so I’m just saying my piece as a member of the owner’s family.”

At the words “salary thief,” a clear look of injustice washed over Hyunwoo’s face.

“You call me a thief, but for your information, I was hired as the second-highest scorer in Namgyeong Group's open recruitment…”

Taeseo smirked and cut him off.

“If you’d gotten third place, you wouldn’t have had to be my secretary. What a shame.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“They probably thought the top scorer was too good to be wasted on the black sheep second son of Namgyeong Group. But they couldn’t just assign any random person either, since it would take a serious sense of responsibility to handle me. So, they assigned Woo Hyunwoo, the second-place hire, to work under me.”

“Is that how it happened?”

“Yep, that’s how it happened. Too bad the rope Woo Hyunwoo happened to grab was a rotten one. Tsk.”

Hyunwoo’s face stiffened at the words “rotten rope.”

Born into a middle-class family, he had studied for twelve years, shuttling between school and private academies. He had graduated from a prestigious university and joined Namgyeong Group with excellent scores, only to be told he had grabbed a rotten rope.

“Come on, Manager. Don’t put yourself down by calling yourself a rotten rope. You can become a golden rope, starting now. Then I’ll have grabbed a golden rope too.”

But those who had climbed so far to make their place in the world did not know how to give up.

“I’m just some manager now. What golden rope?”

“That’s why you have to try. You know, *effort*.”

Woo Hyunwoo would have no choice but to rush around, trying to turn the rotten rope he held into a golden one.

“You need to resolve this property holdout issue properly, make a grand return to Seoul, and reclaim your position as Senior Managing Director. I’ll roll up my sleeves and help you.”

Even if Hyunwoo’s efforts resulted in the ruin of An Yuna’s family, as an employee, he would have no choice but to do the job.

“Now you’re starting to sound like a secretary.”

He had reminded the man who worked for him what his job was and even given him a clear direction. With that, Taeseo’s work for the day was done.

“Well then, I’m clocking out.”

“What? We just had lunch.”

“When has that ever stopped me?”

Taeseo got into the Porsche parked in front of Seongwoo Diner. Hyunwoo tried to get into the passenger seat, but Taeseo locked the doors, only rolling down the passenger window.

“You can walk.”

“What? You want me to walk under this scorching sun?”

“The driver’s waiting with the computer. I have to go pick it up.”

“Oh, come on. Manager,”

“You need to exercise. Exercise. You’ll get fat if you just sit at a desk all day like a nerd.”

Ignoring whatever Hyunwoo had to say, Taeseo left him behind and sped down the two-lane road in front of the diner.

“Manager! Manager!”

Only Hyunwoo’s empty cries remained where the car had been.

* * *

The driver had placed the box containing the computer on the ground and was waiting for Taeseo in front of the studio apartment.

He seemed to be debating whether he should carry the box into the room or just leave it at the door.

While Hyunwoo wanted to hold onto the rotten rope and turn it into gold, the driver looked like he wanted to run away from it.

When Taeseo told him to just leave, the driver looked visibly relieved and fled.

After moving the computer into his room and setting it up, Taeseo, contrary to Hyunwoo’s expectations, didn’t start playing a game. Instead, he opened the documents sent from the head office.

While An Yuna’s grandmother was raising hell at the town office, Taeseo had gone to his own office and requested some files from headquarters.

Taeseo despised reading. He even wondered if he might have an allergy to the printed word.

For someone who was born despising boredom and had an aversion to text, reviewing documents on a small tablet was torture.

“Ah, now I can breathe.”

The document Taeseo had requested was a transcript of conversations with the local residents during the initial land acquisition.

[Kim Kkotnim: You’re telling me our land is right in the middle of the golf course. And you want to buy it for the same price as everyone else’s? It’s always been the rule that you pay more for a prime plot.

Manager Choi Chansik: Ma’am, you keep talking about rules, but the market price for all the land around here is 200,000 won per pyeong. We’re already offering five times that at 1 million won per pyeong. Asking for more than that isn’t reasonable. Besides, being in the middle doesn’t automatically make it a prime plot. Your land is landlocked, with no road access.

Kim Kkotnim: You can’t develop without buying our land anyway. It’s not like you’re going to open for business with a big hole in the middle of your golf course. And you’re not going to have a bunch of rich folks swinging their clubs around someone else’s grave, are you?

Manager Choi Chansik: That’s what I’m trying to say. Please sell the land for 1 million won per pyeong like everyone else, and we’ll do our best to handle the grave relocation process.

Kim Kkotnim: Forget it. I told you I’m not selling for that price. It hasn’t been that long since my old man was buried, so he probably hasn’t even properly decomposed yet. If you’re going to dig up my husband's grave, you’d better compensate me properly. That amount is nowhere near enough to dig up a grave that fresh.]

What is a property holdout?

It is the act of deliberately refusing to sell land in a large-scale development area to demand a price several, or even dozens of times, higher than the market value.

Usually, people well-versed in real estate engage in this practice to profit from the price difference, but Kim Kkotnim was relying solely on her gut feeling.

Five times the market price was already a generous offer for the land, and the residents of this town, which lacked any infrastructure, had gratefully sold their properties for that amount. But Kim Kkotnim wasn't satisfied with five times the price; she demanded more.

If she had proposed a negotiable price, Namgyeong Development might have considered it, but her demands were unreasonable.

Others in the area had sold plots ranging from a thousand to several thousand pyeong for 1 million won per pyeong, but Kim Kkotnim wanted to receive the same amount of compensation as them for her mere 400-pyeong plot.

It was the typical behavior of a property holdout.