—Director Seong-ho Kim, who wants to drive out the staff, step down!
—Step down! Step down!
—Director Seong-ho Kim, who wants to wreck the Ilhyeon Hotel we built, step down!
—Step down! Step down!
Gathered in Ilhyeon Hotel’s grand conference room for the bidding, representatives from various companies wore expressions that seemed to ask “is everything all right?” at the noise coming from outside.
They’d heard the Ilhyeon Hotel union’s protest had gone on for over a month now, but they hadn’t expected it to still be at this pitch.
The people who’d come representing their companies could only steal glances at Seong-ho Kim, seated at the front.
With his own name being shouted like that just outside, they couldn’t begin to guess what kind of situation this must be for him.
“Are you all right?”
Byeong-jin Jo asked Seong-ho Kim quietly beside him.
Arms crossed, Seong-ho Kim asked back at his question,
“All right? What do you mean?”
At Seong-ho Kim’s question, Byeong-jin Jo pointed a finger discreetly toward the window.
—Step down!
—Step down!
—Seong-ho Kim, step down!
Following Byeong-jin Jo’s finger toward where the protesters’ voices were coming from, Seong-ho Kim gave a short laugh.
Seeing him laugh, Byeong-jin Jo asked, puzzled,
“Doesn’t it bother you? They’re out there shouting your name outright and staging a protest like that?”
Seong-ho Kim turned his head back to Byeong-jin Jo, put a hand on his shoulder, and said,
“There’ll be plenty of situations worse than this ahead, so you’d better get used to it too.”
“Worse situations are coming…?”
Recalling his past life, Seong-ho Kim nodded and continued.
“Yes. Because from now on, we’ll be the villains no matter where we go.”
A person carrying out restructuring has no choice but to become the villain.
There’s no such thing as a peaceful restructuring.
In his past life, Seong-ho Kim had suffered plenty — attacked by disgruntled employees, portrayed in newspapers and on the news as a ruthless chaebol’s henchman.
At restaurants, no one would sit near him; in unfamiliar places, he’d been pelted with eggs, and sometimes even stones.
Having lived through more than twenty years of that, the current protest at Ilhyeon Hotel felt to Seong-ho Kim not like a threat but almost endearing.
The Ilhyeon Hotel union’s voices sounded to his ears no different from sparrows chirping.
But to everyone else, unaware of this history, Seong-ho Kim looked no different from a man of iron.
“He doesn’t seem bothered at all.”
“How can he be like that? Does he not have feelings?”
“It’s not even my name and my head’s spinning just from this… how can that Director Kim be so calm?”
Watching Seong-ho Kim converse quietly with Byeong-jin Jo, utterly composed, the people around clicked their tongues and kept stealing glances at him.
“Manager, let’s begin now.”
When Seong-ho Kim, mid-conversation with Byeong-jin Jo, said to begin, Manager Byeong-ju Jeong followed the instruction and addressed the people gathered in the conference room.
“We’ll now proceed with the bidding.”
At Byeong-ju Jeong’s words, the noisy room settled at once.
The representatives took their seats, discussing the plans each had prepared, and finished readying themselves to take part in the Ilhyeon Hotel bid.
“As everyone here knows, starting today, Ilhyeon Hotel plans to procure all necessary hotel supplies through a continuing bidding process. Today, first, we’ll conduct bidding for cleaning supplies, and the company that submits the lowest price will be granted exclusive rights to supply Ilhyeon Hotel for one year.”
“One year? Wasn’t it supposed to be two?”
“One year is barely enough time to get set up before it’s over…”
“One year is far too short.”
At the news that exclusive rights would only be granted for one year, the assembled bidders stirred.
Byeong-ju Jeong calmed the bidding participants and explained the reason for the shortened term.
“Our company is running a bidding process for the first time, and we expect to encounter a good deal of trial and error. So for this first round only, we’ll run it as one year, check what issues arise, and from the next round on, fix the term at two years when selecting vendors.”
Seeing the room still stirring even after hearing it was only for this round, Byeong-ju Jeong continued,
“We acknowledge that one year is a short period. Which is why, for the company that wins this bid, we plan to settle payment in cash rather than by promissory note.”
“Cash settlement?”
The stirring among the bidding participants grew even greater.
But everyone in the room could tell this new stirring carried a different meaning from before.
Just then, Byeong-ju Jeong poured oil on that stirring.
“Payment will be processed on a following-month basis.”
“Cash, the following month?”
“Is that really true? You’ll really settle in cash the following month?”
The reaction was so great that Seong-ho Kim’s name, being shouted at the top of someone’s lungs outside, could no longer even be heard.
Under the barrage of questions, Manager Byeong-ju Jeong glanced briefly at Seong-ho Kim, seated at the front.
Seong-ho Kim nodded, signaling him to go ahead and say it.
“Yes. Cash settlement, paid the following month. This is the special privilege Ilhyeon Hotel is offering to whichever company wins this bid.”
The eyes of the bidding participants lit up.
If they could be paid in cash the following month, even a one-year exclusivity term felt like a good deal.
Watching the stirring settle and the bidders’ eyes light up with hunger for the win, Seong-ho Kim thought to himself,
‘In an era where promissory notes are taken for granted, nothing is as tempting as a cash settlement.’
Just as he’d expected, watching the participants’ eyes light up over the cash settlement, Seong-ho Kim let a smile touch his lips.
Transactions in the present era were mostly conducted through promissory notes.
Payment was settled with notes promising money would come — sometimes in a matter of days, sometimes months later.
Because of this, subcontractors commonly had to discount the notes they received to turn them into cash in order to raise funds.
Which meant the actual cash they ended up holding was always smaller than what they were owed, and they could never stop worrying about the possibility of the issuing company going bankrupt.
With Ilhyeon Hotel breaking this era’s convention and offering cash settlement the following month, the bidding participants’ enthusiasm couldn’t help but run hot.
—Step down!
Though the Ilhyeon Hotel union was shouting itself hoarse outside at the news that the bidding was happening today, it no longer reached the ears of anyone in the bidding room.
Their minds were filled entirely with the eagerness to win this bid.
Seeing that things seemed roughly settled, Byeong-ju Jeong proceeded straight to the bidding.
“We’ll begin the bidding process now. You have 15 minutes. Please think carefully during that time and place your bidding documents into the wooden box you see here. Once bidding concludes, we’ll check the bid prices right here on the spot and announce the winning company.”
Once Byeong-ju Jeong announced that bidding had begun, the participating companies began revising the bid prices they’d brought with them.
Even though the exclusivity term had shrunk to one year, the cash settlement satisfied them far more than they’d originally anticipated.
But amid this increasingly heated atmosphere in the bidding room, there was one group behaving quite differently.
“Those people aren’t doing anything?”
Byeong-jin Jo looked with puzzlement toward where the DS Furniture staff sat gathered.
Centered around President Eun-mun Kim, the DS Furniture staff sat perfectly still amid the commotion, not moving an inch.
Seong-ho Kim glanced toward DS Furniture and said, corners of his mouth rising,
“Guess they’re confident.”
“Confident?”
Byeong-jin Jo started to ask what they could possibly be confident about, then stopped.
He felt he understood what Seong-ho Kim meant.
Seong-ho Kim smiled lightly at him and said,
“Revising the price now won’t lower it by more than 10%. At most, they could shift it by around 5%. But…”
Seong-ho Kim paused for a moment and looked at President Eun-mun Kim.
Sensing Seong-ho Kim’s gaze on him, Eun-mun Kim turned his head, and their eyes met briefly.
His mouth moved slightly as if he had something to say, but nothing came out, and he only offered Seong-ho Kim a faintly sneering smile.
After exchanging looks across the room like that for a while, the two of them returned to their own business as the bidding got fully underway.
The participating companies began revising their bid prices one by one and submitting them.
Someone murmured a small prayer for good luck before dropping their paper into the box; someone else hesitated, unable to commit the paper to the box in one go, apparently unhappy with the price they’d written.
Amid all these various scenes, the bidding nonetheless proceeded smoothly, and finally, the last company’s bid document was submitted.
“Now, let’s check the results right away. Director, if you’d come forward to announce it, please.”
At Byeong-ju Jeong’s request, Seong-ho Kim rose from his seat and stepped forward.
While Seong-ho Kim came forward, Byeong-ju Jeong and Byeong-jin Jo opened the box, collected each company’s bid documents, and checked the prices one by one.
After a short while, once the winning company had been determined, Byeong-ju Jeong handed one of the bid documents to Seong-ho Kim.
Seong-ho Kim checked the company name, then announced it to the people watching him.
“The company that will supply cleaning products to Ilhyeon Hotel for the next year will be… IG Optain.”
“Woohoo!”
“Yes!”
At Seong-ho Kim’s announcement, the IG Optain staff let out cheers of joy.
Winning the contract to supply a five-star hotel like Ilhyeon Hotel was worth more to them than the money alone.
The other companies, who’d secretly hoped for the win, let out sighs of disappointment.
But knowing there’d be another chance in a year, they set aside their disappointment and congratulated IG Optain on the win.
But not every company was congratulating IG Optain.
“This makes no sense!”
The backlash erupted from the DS Furniture side.
“We can’t accept this. Why was IG Optain selected?”
A DS Furniture employee spoke loudly to Seong-ho Kim.
Standing at the front, Seong-ho Kim looked toward DS Furniture with a puzzled tilt of his head and said,
“Wouldn’t it naturally be because they submitted the lowest price?”
“Submitted the lowest price… that can’t be right. We… we submitted the lowest price.”
“How can you be so certain of that?”
At Seong-ho Kim’s question, the standing DS Furniture employee faltered for a moment.
He seemed to have plenty he wanted to say, but hesitated over whether he should.
“Allow me to explain that.”
President Eun-mun Kim rose from his seat and patted the employee’s shoulder.
Understanding that Eun-mun Kim would take over from here, the employee sat back down, and Eun-mun Kim stepped forward slightly and spoke.
“We take pride in having bid at a lower price than anyone else.”
“I imagine every other company here would say the same. Each of them would have written down what they believed was the lowest price.”
“No.”
Eun-mun Kim spoke with a face full of conviction, raising his voice.
“We wrote down the lowest price no one else could possibly match. That much, no one can deny.”
“Is that so?”
Seong-ho Kim let a faint smile rise to his lips and picked up DS Furniture’s submitted bid document.
Looking at the number written inside, he said,
“As it happens, I was about to go over the winning price and each company’s price, so President Kim, why don’t you tell us first. What price did DS Furniture submit?”
President Eun-mun Kim of DS Furniture looked around at the other bidding companies and said in a loud voice,
“We submitted 23,500 won as our baseline price for one set of cleaning supplies per room.”
But the reaction from those around him was nothing like what Eun-mun Kim had expected.
The other bidders, who’d been curious just what price he’d submitted, looked at Eun-mun Kim with bewildered eyes.
At this unexpected reaction from those around him, Eun-mun Kim turned his head to look at Seong-ho Kim.
Seong-ho Kim smiled at him and said,
“That’s correct. DS Furniture submitted 23,500 won. I’m not sure why you’re so confident about that price, though. The 23,500 won DS Furniture wrote down wasn’t even the runner-up — it was the highest bid among every single price submitted here. And the gap was substantial: the next-highest price after DS Furniture’s was 19,800 won.”
Setting down the paper with DS Furniture’s bid price on it, Seong-ho Kim asked President Eun-mun Kim,
“Don’t tell me DS Furniture believed you had to submit the highest price to win the bid?”
Hearing Seong-ho Kim’s words, Eun-mun Kim realized something had gone terribly wrong, but the situation could no longer be undone.
He had already sunk deep into the trap Seong-ho Kim had laid.
(End of Chapter 40)