Chapter Text
A beam of sun, traveling lightyears through space and vast strati of cloud, finally bounced off the steel and snow of Seoul’s streets, across its skylines, and into the penthouse of one Han Joowon.
Han Joowon squinted and turned his back to the window.
He would have to start letting realtors tour the apartment once he got back from Manyang.
Visitors were rare, with the exception of his attorney and erstwhile tutor Kwon Hyeok, who showed up in various attitudes of dismay and dissatisfaction whenever he suspected Joowon was incapable of representing himself.
“Close the blinds, would you?”
Kwon Hyeok clicked his tongue. “Aish, don’t you have a remote for that?”
Hyeok had once been part of the illustrious Han Group’s battery of defense lawyers. Joowon’s father had groomed Hyeok for the role since the day he’d hired him to teach his son English. Look at them now: Han Kihwan was languishing in prison (at the very least languishing, Joowon hoped) and, among the three of them, Joowon spoke the best English.
Kwon Hyeok once congratulated himself on his foresight in siding with the scion of the Han Group over his father when shit hit the fan and he'd emerged from the fallout relatively fragrance-free. He'd been grateful, then.
He rarely felt that way now. Now, he cursed whatever misguided sense of loyalty drove him to Joowon's door to keep the man from firing whatever gun he had aimed directly at his own foot. Joowon wasn’t a worse client than his father, at least according to a court of law or an amateur ethicist, but he was, in Hyeok’s estimation, the more pernicious pain in his ass. And, given the rate at which Joowon was currently liquidating and re-distributing his assets, Hyeok wouldn't even be able to count on him for billing hours in the long term.
For his part, it wasn’t that Joowon disliked Kwon Hyeok—or at least not in the same way he generally disliked other people. It was only that Kwon Hyeok had an uncanny ability to show up precisely when Joowon was sure he didn’t need him, and when Joowon did need him, Hyeok had to be contacted by phone, and only during work hours.
Three suits would be more than sufficient. Joowon didn’t anticipate staying in Manyang longer than a day and a night, possibly two. He folded his garment bag into his suitcase and zipped it shut. His lawyer had yet to state his reasons for interrupting the calendar hour clearly marked “Packing.”
“Just say it.” Joowon checked his smartwatch. “You have five minutes.” He loathed adjusting an itinerary.
“Say what?”
“Whatever is you came here to say.”
“Relax, would you? You know I would never tell you what to do.” Kwon Hyeok would, and did, often, although he was mostly ignored. Joowon was a hard man to stop, but he could be stalled. This was key to Kwon Hyeok’s strategy. “I just don’t think you’ve considered all the factors, here. A community impact study. Don’t you need another one of those?”
“We’ve commissioned three, from three different contractors, all of whom, after months of inexplicable delays, couldn't provide a meaningful justification for Han Group’s continuing involvement. Current leadership have been given plenty of opportunities and incentives to buy the company out, and have neglected to do so. I’d say we’ve done more than enough.”
“So where’s the fire? It’s not as if this all has to happen now.” Kwon Hyeok’s voice had a wheedling quality that Joowon found particularly unpersuasive.
“Check-in at the bed and breakfast ends at 8:30PM, and I’d prefer not to sleep in my car by the side of a field.” It had been hard enough for Joowon to find anywhere to stay remotely near his destination in rural Manyang. Judging by the terse and frankly unprofessional emails he’d received in response to his inquiries, the proprietor ‘Yoo Jaeyi’ was likely in her late eighties and not entirely computer-literate.
“Couldn’t you just wait a month or so?”
“Why would I?”
Kwon Hyeok positioned himself half-blocking the front door and half-blocking the coat closet. “Joowon-ah, even you have to know that it’s almost Christmas.” An eye roll was threatening. Joowon could feel it in his corneas. He swung his suitcase behind him and walked toward the door. “And that’s just a month or so until Seollal, and I know, I know you don’t care, but some people do. Do you really want to fire people right before the holidays, without a bonus? Think about the optics.”
“Who cares about optics for a company that no longer exists?” They were trapped in the foyer together, now. Joowon knew he might look desperate, crazy, if he allowed a hint of the real emotion he’d swallowed over the years to creep out onto his face, but it was almost over. “They can spend their severances on presents and travel. I. Don’t. Care.”
The severance packages Han Group offered were more than generous. Joowon made sure of it. He’d drained his own trust fund to restore the pensions devastated by their plummeting stock. Joowon didn’t like to think of himself as someone invested in significance beyond the immediate, practical, and close-at-hand, but this was the conclusion of years of hard work and humiliation eradicating the corruption his father and the Han Group had spread. After this, he’d be free. There would be nothing left of the Han Group when he was done with it, and all his father’s ill-gotten gains were redistributed into the bank accounts of the innocents whose livelihoods he’d taken for granted.
Joowon had known, from the moment he began looking into Han Group’s accounts himself, that there was no saving it. No part of the legacy he’d been brought up to carry on could be left standing. Even if his father somehow evaded part of his sentence, it was up to Joowon to make sure Han Kihwan had nothing to come back to.
Corruption had to be eradicated down to its roots, and Joowon had done that, even if it meant uprooting himself and the world he thought he knew in the process.
Joowon clenched his knuckles around the handle of his suitcase. For the last three years, had gone in person to the closing of every single building, branch, and office park owned by the Han Group, from skyscrapers to storefronts. He’d traveled the country in dark, somber suits, and sat under fluorescent lights in conference rooms next to HR representatives who could barely hold back their own tears, knowing they’d be fired next. Joowon himself had printed and filled the last folders in his attaché with “Next Steps” one-sheets.
He himself, alone, would dissolve the last Han Group subsidiary: Manyang Terrain. Some oversight in the byzantine structure of Han Group’s holdings—built that way to hide Han Kihwan’s deceptive accounting—had allowed a far-flung, five-employee construction and landscaping company to survive to the bitter end.
He’d shoulder Kwon Hyeok out the door in front of him if he had to. They’d deferred and delayed long enough. Neither Manyang Terrain, nor Kwon Hyeok, nor Christmas could stop him now.
Their hatred was no deterrent. He’d been cursed at, spat on, and punched in the face before—not to mention the threats he’d endured from Han Kihwan’s toadies who had evaded prosecution.
It was nothing less than he deserved. Joowon still had further to fall, and he almost relished the feeling of impact.
—
Joowon arrived in Manyang prepared for a lot of things. Eggs weren’t one of them.
Egging was new.