SM Ch 4

“Wouldn’t it be weirder not to know? These days, I doubt there are many people in the company who don’t know Mr. Lee Seodan’s name.”

“…I didn’t apply for the project team because of that incident.”

“I know.”

He picked up the words nonchalantly.

“However, from my position as someone who has to select team members, how Mr. Lee Seodan has carried out organizational life until now, what kind of team member he was within a team, and how much capability he possesses.”

He counted off one by one on his fingers. He tightened his chokehold on my breath with dry and distinct pronunciation.

“Doesn’t the current state of affairs speak for itself?”

Our eyes met. Before I could even realize it, I opened my mouth and asked.

“Are you not going to hear my side of the story?”

And I regretted it immediately. It was an absurd plea. His neatly shaped eyebrows rose slowly, as if finding it amusing. The shape of his eyes beneath them was cool.

“There is nothing to hear. It’s obvious enough even just hearing the rumors about how the situation turned out.”

“Team Leader.”

“Do you really not understand at all why the company has been noisy lately because of you, Mr. Lee Seodan, or why you are being ostracized by the team?”

When I remained silent, he narrowed his brows ever so slightly. His finely shaped lips thinned.

“You have an expression that says you don’t know.”

“…It’s not that I don’t know.”

“In that case, although I am not Mr. Lee Seodan’s direct supervisor, I will ask as an interviewer. During the time you spent feeling it was unfair, did you ever reflect on yourself as a member of the community?”

“…”

“If you couldn’t stand seeing injustice, you should have become a human rights lawyer. Why did you join a major corporation? From your own perspective, Mr. Lee Seodan, it might be the realization of justice, but from the company’s perspective, it is nothing more than an individual’s self-satisfaction. Referring to a personality like yours, Mr. Lee Seodan, who cannot easily accept that difference, is what people call being completely unfit for corporate life.”

Sharply articulated language with clear pronunciation. Once he started spewing it out, he was so relentless that I wondered if he had held malice toward me normally. His moving, neat lips were smooth without a single hangnail. Something crumbled down inside my head. I closed and opened my dizzy eyes. I corrected my posture and held my head straight up.

“You are talking about my personality, but Team Leader, you have seen me for ten minutes.”

Pausing, the man smiled, showing his white teeth.

“It has been ten minutes since we saw each other face-to-face, but—”

He picked up the document binder beside him, opened the front page, and kindly pushed it toward where I was.

“—there are many ways to know a person.”

“This is…”

The document I looked down at was familiar. A copied photograph replica was attached to the top, and a long text was attached below. It was the self-introduction letter I had submitted before joining the company.

I turned the pages with fingertips whose sensations had dulled. Resume, graduation certificate. The report I submitted for the first time, proposal. Meeting minutes. PT sample. Everything was there. The thick pile of documents was all words I had uttered.

Setting the pen down, Team Leader Han leaned deep back against the seat. His slanted gaze lingered on my face.

“By company principles, applying for a project is from the 3rd year onward. Are you aware of that?”

“…Yes.”

“Are principles a joke to you, Mr. Lee Seodan?”

A soft voice. Feeling like I wouldn’t be able to control my expression, I bowed my head. This time, he didn’t bother saying to raise my face. His smooth movement of slowly raising his body flickered at the edge of my field of vision.

“There is something I particularly dislike.”

Perched on the desk with his back turned to me, he spoke. It was a flat voice from which all traces of the previous laughter had been completely wiped away.

“It is packaging crude, rule-of-thumb logic like ‘knock and the door will open’ with words like youth or adventurous spirit.”

“…Team Leader.”

“Did it seem like principles don’t apply in front of passion? To speak clearly, that is not having a flexible mindset, but simply not knowing your own place.”

“…”

My photograph was where my gaze dropped. There was the self-introduction letter I had stayed up for days writing and revising a year ago. Ideals, best effort, hard work. I had written it with a heart vomiting blood, but in the end, words like the outer skin of emotions. Words like deflated water balloons were lying limp and stuck to the paper.

“What does Mr. Lee Seodan, who has been with the company for one year now, have to put forward? Your own ambition? Potential?”

“…”

“To me, your current attitude, Mr. Lee Seodan, seems less like desperation and more like impatience. It seems you want to comfort yourself by submitting an application, as if to say you at least tried before wrapping up corporate life, but I don’t feel particularly great about my TF team being used for your self-gratification like that, Mr. Lee Seodan.”

At the end of every sentence, it fell cleanly as if cut by a knife. Square words pierced through my chest densely like blunt thorns and exited. Only a hollow void remained in that place.

In front of me, who kept my mouth shut, he gathered up the folder. As if signaling the end of the interview, he covered it with his neat hands, set it down in front of himself, and asked in a light voice:

“So what are you going to do now? Are you planning to write a resignation letter?”

“That, with Team Leader Han—”

My voice came out muffled. I forced the words up from my throat and spat them out.

“…what does that have to do with Team Leader Han?”

My head throbbed fiercely as if it would burst. Sleep deprivation was white and swollen inside my eyelids like mold. “Well,” he answered slowly. His sharp eyes lingered on my face for a long time.

“It certainly is none of my concern.”

“Then I will be going now. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule.”

By now, the next interviewee might be standing outside the door waiting. Laughter pushed all the way to the tip of my tongue. Unable to understand why I was still sitting here, I pushed the chair back and stood up quickly.

“I will take the words you gave me to heart.”

Fortunately, my voice came out normally. I turned around without looking at him again. I could feel his gaze obsessively sticking to my back. Because of that, for a moment, my steps slowing down upon reaching the front of the door. I thought he would call and stop me.

It might have been an illusion. Until I came out into the hallway and closed the door, not a single sound was heard from behind my back. I stood quietly leaning my back against the closed door. There was no one in the hallway outside the conference room.

∞ ∞ ∞

I thought the day was long, but it was about to get even longer. As soon as I returned to my seat, my senior co-worker stood up from his seat as if he had been waiting. At the chin gesture suggesting we talk, I followed silently behind.

There was no one in the pantry. Closing the door and standing against it, my senior co-worker asked point-blank:

“How was the interview?”

There was no telling why he was asking something so obvious. I slumped down onto the sofa for the time being. My senior co-worker, who had chased after me unable to wait through that short moment, perched on the opposite sofa and urged:

“What did Team Leader Han say?”

“…I got scolded for not even knowing my place.”

Now laughter came out. As if what was packed tightly inside my lungs burst out spasmodically. My senior co-worker, who was looking at my face sullenly, sat back comfortably against the backrest with a thud.

“Figures.”

“…Yes.”

“Nothing else besides that?”

“Just that I’m not up to the task.”

Throughout the entire day, I had lined up expected questions and answers densely in my head, but even if given the right to speak, there was nothing I could have said anyway. Would anything I said have been of any use? That was the kind of setting he had created. In the groove of my ear, his dry voice remained pooled.

‘What does Mr. Lee Seodan have to put forward? Your own ambition? Potential?’

“What a strange man, taking the trouble to set up an interview just to say that… Well, anyway. Let’s stop talking about this. You must understand well enough what the problem is, Mr. Lee Seodan.”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“So, what about the department head this morning? Ah, make me a cup of coffee. Why am I so tired today?”

“Yes.”

Standing up, I took out mix coffee from the pantry cabinet. Shaking the contents into a paper cup, I filled it with hot water. As I was stirring it around, my senior co-worker, having finished yawning, asked from behind my back:

“Where are you going to go?”

Handing over the coffee and sitting down in my seat, I replied:

“I don’t know yet. I’m supposed to decide between the Sales department or Daegu and let him know by tomorrow.”

I could tell without even having to look at his expression. Leting out a low groan, my senior co-worker took a sip of coffee and spoke as if reasoning with me:

“That’s why I told you to cater to his mood.”

“…Yes.”

“You said last time that Sales doesn’t suit you, right?”

“Yes.”