“Sir… the office is…”

“Why, is it cramped?”

“No. The opposite. For two people to use…”

Yu Se-ra came in to work the next morning.

The office near Gangnam-daero, leased to give the corporation a registered address.

I had gone big and rented an entire floor of one hundred and twenty pyeong.

The luxury top floor of twenty-one, at that.

The monthly rent was cheap.

Two hundred million in deposit and only twenty million a month.

The previous business had gone under, so for twenty million won in interior costs I took over all the office furnishings.

The man must have been a con artist, because the office was ultra-luxurious.

The leather sofa in the president’s room was good enough to make the sofa in the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank branch manager’s office weep.

From the fax machine to the tea and coffee in the pantry, the refrigerator, the built-in air conditioning and the cool, crisp steel-and-glass chairs, it was a fully equipped office with every option.

There were even two meeting rooms.

Just as Se-ra noona said, it was much too big for two people to use.

“I’ve hired a cleaning lady separately too. Don’t worry about the cleaning.”

“Yes…”

“As I said yesterday, there isn’t much work to do. It’ll get busy from here on, but for now you can concentrate on developing yourself.”

“Developing myself?”

“Language study would be good, or if there’s a certificate you’d like to get, it would be fine to go for it. You wouldn’t happen to be thinking about the bar exam, would you? I know an excellent cram tutor who specializes in the state exams~.”

“…”

Yu Se-ra noona lost her words and looked at me.

If she said yes, I have the confidence to put her at the top of the pass list within a year.

Every past exam question is stored in my head.

There wasn’t much work.

We aren’t selling goods.

There’s nobody to haggle with.

The investing is entirely my part.

That is the advantage of my financial business.

“Ah! We didn’t do the salary negotiation yesterday. If it isn’t rude, could you tell me what your salary was at the law firm?”

“Thirty million. That’s the annual salary with the four insurances included.” (TL Note: 사대보험, the four insurances — national pension, health, employment and industrial accident cover. Korean employers withhold them from pay and split the cost with the worker, so a salary quoted “with them included” is worth noticeably less in hand.)

Meaning that after all the deductions the monthly take-home was a little over two million.

She doesn’t have long service and she isn’t a lawyer, so it’s probably a reasonable amount.

Law firms seem to be stingier on labor costs than I thought.

A beauty like that has a large advertising effect just by existing.

And yet only thirty million?

“Would it be all right to set your annual salary at forty million won? The company will bear the four insurances in full.”

“Yeees??? F-forty?”

I raised it to about the level of fifty million.

Honestly, with somebody like Yu Se-ra noona, it wouldn’t be strange for the entertainment industry to call.

That she hadn’t gone off somewhere strange and had held down a job instead was remarkable.

I understood the law firm’s lawyers going after her too.

“Is it too little?”

“No. It’s such a radical amount that…”

“There are bonuses too. Four hundred percent as a base, plus leave allowances, holiday bonuses and vacation bonuses, all paid separately.”

“S-sir.”

“Yes?”

“You aren’t running a pyramid scheme, are you?”

“What? Hahahahahahahaha.”

Se-ra noona put me in a good mood.

That is how much I liked Se-ra noona.

Our CEO is a strange man.

The first time I saw him I thought he was a good-looking gangster.

The first impression wasn’t bad.

His hair was short.

He wasn’t a high schooler, and the cut didn’t match today’s fashion.

But the suit fit him splendidly.

He was well over a hundred and eighty, too.

And his build… good grief!

But the interview being at a hotel had thoroughly soured me.

I thought it was a maneuver, using the interview as an excuse for a drink and then making a move.

The story that usually follows is the trick of sneaky men who take your hand and then reach for other things.

I went in that day determined to smash him in the balls and walk out.

I trusted the character of Attorney Jo of the firm, a former Deputy Chief Prosecutor, but I thought even he had times when he was wrong.

But…

The hotel buffet was splendid.

I’d quit the firm and been so stressed for a week that I had no appetite.

Sons of bitches!

The moment they get liquor in them they treat my body like a bar snack and keep pawing at it!

I put up with it a few times.

It’s an era when getting hired is hard.

Out of a mid-to-upper-tier Seoul university, a job like that isn’t common.

I thought they’d do it in moderation and stop.

I trusted their character, since after all they were this country’s upper class.

That was my misunderstanding.

The educated, clever ones were worse.

The senior judges and prosecutors who were the firm’s partner lawyers were pure gutter punks.

Wear a skirt in and you spend the day with their eyes crawling over you.

What changes if you stare a hole through my chest?

To put it bluntly, I’m not the mother who gave you milk!

The gutter punks had plenty of time on their hands.

They practiced golf inside their private offices and watched porn on the internet all day long.

They hung out a lawyer’s sign and hardly ever went to court.

What they did was make phone calls.

I saw the real face of former-official courtesy.

They made one call and the judges and prosecutors who used to be their juniors scrambled.

That was the whole of it.

If they drank in the evening they were forgiven for not coming in the next day.

It was easy enough to guess they had gone somewhere nice(?) in the name of entertaining clients.

And they took hundreds of millions per case.

With phone calls and entertaining, cases ended in a win for money or for the powerful.

Wow… I felt for myself that there is another world above the world.

But!

Our CEO was different.

He was as solid as his name, Tae-san, the great mountain.

There he was eating buffet food, and — my God!!!

He drank cola.

He never once pressed a drink on me either.

While we ate, this and that came up in conversation.

Beyond my expectations, we talked well.

The troubles of job seekers, the pains of the age, even politics — it all flowed with nothing blocking it.

So this is how a man becomes a CEO, I thought.

He had a different class from the senior lawyers at the firm, whose heads held only money and women.

His manners were excellent too.

He listened to what I said.

I ate a full dinner, as though I were with a boyfriend of long standing.

I asked about the company and he told me only that it was finance.

I got a firm answer that it wasn’t a pyramid scheme.

I set the condition that I could quit any time if anything seemed strange.

The CEO agreed readily.

Feeling that I would watch and see for now, I promised to come in.

The Gangnam office is thirty minutes from home, which was just right.

Honestly, I had no expectations.

It’s a new company, so I thought thirty pyeong at best.

If it suited me I was ready to do the cleaning and all sorts of odd jobs.

From childhood I had been raised right by my father, who retired as a school principal.

That it’s good manners to earn your keep, reading the room for yourself.

Sadly!

At our company there was no room to read.

Once the CEO went into his office he didn’t come out much.

He wrestled with several computers all day long.

At most he came out at lunch and toured the good restaurants with me.

And at half past eleven, before the crowds, at that.

He leaves right at five, too.

Not even the usual phone calls came in.

Applying for business cards, applying for the corporate card…

Piling the refrigerator with all the snacks I wanted…

That was the whole of what I did for a week.

I felt bad taking the money.

Even so, today he gave me work.

Saying he was going to Hong Kong on business, he instructed me to book a round-trip first-class ticket on the national carrier and a suite at a top hotel.

Generous, isn’t he~.

He said it to me like a joke.

That for vacations he would pay for business-class tickets for up to two people, anywhere in the world.

Hotel costs included, of course.

A thought suddenly came to me.

That this was a present from the gods, a bonus for holding out against the world’s temptations all this time with this face and this body.

So I made up my mind.

Until this company goes under, absolutely!

I swore I would not walk out on my own two feet first!

The CEO was… that impressive~.

Ah! So this is what language is!

The moment I stepped into the departures hall at Incheon International Airport, I tasted a vision.

Every word being spoken by every race gathered from every country was perfectly and automatically interpreted for me.

The Korean food I had at the airport today was terrible.

Is this all our love amounts to!

Mom, why do you distrust what I say so much!

Today at the resort, hotly…

Damn it! That was a line I did not want to hear.

It was a miracle done in a single night.

Truly, the illegal tutoring of the gods deserves to be praised.

Fast, exact and fierce.

I don’t know exactly what happened, but the moment my mouth said I will give twenty-five percent of my karma points to Chris Barnsdale, the deal was done.

Chris was overcome and took my hand and wept.

Even in the world of the gods, the sorrow of a man with nothing came through to me grain by grain.

Part of me wanted to donate one percent more so he could buy a decent garden tree, but I held it in hard.

I was afraid that giving things away for nothing would get me called a populist.

And then the transmission happened.

Chris, laying his hand on my head and praying.

He told me to be sure to visit his house later.

And so I opened my eyes and it was morning.

It was a miracle!

I went around every country’s websites on the internet.

My God…

All of it was visible and audible and interpreted.

And out of my mouth, flowing: English, Japanese, French, German, Russian, French, Spanish, Indian, Arabic, Chinese and the rest.

For hours I tasted happiness in a sea of miracles.

And I confirmed that English textbooks are garbage.

The harm of the academic approach Chris talked about was laid bare in the textbook.

It was a case built for failure.

“Passengers on Hanguk Airlines flight HE603 to Hong Kong, boarding is now in progress at Gate 12. Please do not be late for departure.”

While I was window-shopping at the duty-free stores, departure time came.

“First-class customer, thank you for flying Hanguk Airlines today. Please enter through the dedicated lane.”

They really do pick the national carrier’s flight attendants by their faces.

When I held out my ticket, a lovely attendant smiled warmly and guided me courteously.

For the first time in my second life, I set foot in the first-class lane.

When I entered first class, beautiful attendants with their hair in buns showed me to my seat with fresh smiles.

There were only a few first-class seats.

The only passenger was me.

And from then on the full service began.

There’s a reason people pay to fly first class on the national carrier.

When the plane reached a stable altitude, the meal came out.

The first-class in-flight meal, the wine list and the Korean set menu were presented.

I ordered the Western course, with a grilled ribeye steak as the main.

Whoa…

Beautiful noonas in sky-blue scarves brought out bread, dessert, salad, steak and fruit, full service all the way.

Sadly, being a minor, I turned down the wine myself.

The beautiful noonas made surprised faces.

It was a first-class cabin I had to myself, so every time our eyes met they smiled…

Ah… it’s torture.

I would like to stay still, but the world will not leave me that way.

Not having seen my personal information, the youngest noona secretly passed me a note as we landed.

A phone number was written on it.

Noona! I’m in a suit but I’m a high schooler! — I couldn’t say it.

Giving off the image of a chic city man, I got off the plane.

I said a regretful goodbye to the noonas, bowing their heads neatly to the last.

I think I understand why rich people fly first class.

The service was on another level.

It was another cross-section of a capitalist society.

And so I landed at Chek Lap Kok International Airport.

The moment I finished the formalities and came out into the arrivals hall, I saw a person holding up my name.

And I shouted, desperately, inside my heart.

God! Lead me into temptation no further today!

(End of Chapter 36)