Looking around the empty restaurant, Gyeong-eun Lee leaned toward Seong-ho Kim slightly and said in a bewildered voice,

“Every time I went to hotels with friends, they never once suggested Ilhyeon Hotel, and I thought they were just being considerate of me…”

Gyeong-eun Lee lifted her head, looked around again, and said,

“Turns out our hotel just wasn’t popular. I’ve never seen a hotel restaurant this deserted before.”

“That’s exactly why I’m here, isn’t it.”

“I suppose it is. If it were doing well, there’d be no reason for you to come.”

Just as Gyeong-eun Lee, having realized the real reason her friends never chose Ilhyeon Hotel, let out a sigh, a waiter carrying a tray of food approached their table.

“Your dumpling set has arrived.”

The waiter set down a plate of dumplings in front of Seong-ho Kim and Gyeong-eun Lee each, gave a bow, and turned to leave.

Seong-ho Kim picked up his spoon and said to Gyeong-eun Lee,

“Don’t be too discouraged. Let’s eat first.”

“Yes… thank you.”

Having exchanged pleasantries, Seong-ho Kim and Gyeong-eun Lee scooped up dumplings with their spoons and put them in their mouths.

“Ugh!”

Gyeong-eun Lee let out an involuntary sound at the strange texture of the dumpling.

Unlike ordinary dumplings, this one had a dry, crumbly texture that killed any desire to keep eating.

Gyeong-eun Lee spat the dumpling out and looked at Seong-ho Kim.

She wanted to see whether it was only her dish that was wrong, or whether his was too.

“Seong-ho. The dumplings are…”

“Not good.”

Seong-ho Kim chewed the dumpling in his mouth with a furrowed brow.

Then he let out a hollow laugh and set down his spoon.

“To think they charge money for food like this… It’s even worse than I expected.”

“I know. To think our own Ilhyeon Hotel has sunk to this level…”

Seong-ho Kim picked up his chopsticks and sampled the other dishes one by one.

The quality was low enough that it hardly felt like hotel food at all.

The kimchi and diced radish kimchi tasted off, and the seasoned vegetable side dishes had dried out and gone stiff.

If the food wasn’t good, the rest of the service should at least make up for it — but the water glasses still bore visible fingerprints, and a small smear of kimchi juice sat uncleaned at the edge of the table.

Seong-ho Kim set down his chopsticks, looked out the window, and said,

“Aside from the view — being right in the middle of Seoul — there’s not a single thing here that’s decent.”

Having gazed out at the scenery with him for a moment, Gyeong-eun Lee said, unable to understand,

“Could Father really not know Ilhyeon Hotel has fallen this far?”

“I doubt the chairman is unaware.”

Seong-ho Kim wiped his mouth with a napkin and said to Gyeong-eun Lee,

“Gyeong-eun, let’s get up.”

“It really was terrible, wasn’t it. Let’s try somewhere else.”

“Let’s try the Japanese restaurant next door.”

“You want to go to the Japanese restaurant right next door?”

“Yes. Since we’re here, it’s good to take a look while we can.”

Seeing Seong-ho Kim smile as he said this, Gyeong-eun Lee recalled that today’s visit wasn’t purely a date, but also a chance to inspect the hotel, and quietly followed after him.

The two of them left the food untouched and headed to the Japanese restaurant next door.

The Japanese restaurant, too, had no customers.

Shown to a window-side table, Seong-ho Kim ordered the chef’s special course.

While looking out at the view and chatting with Gyeong-eun Lee for a moment, a palate-whetting rice porridge arrived first.

But upon tasting it, far from whetting the appetite, it ruined it instead.

“This is…”

Having tasted the abalone porridge with her spoon, Gyeong-eun Lee tilted her head, unable to make sense of it.

“We’re the only customers here right now — so why is the porridge cold?”

“Seems they just serve out whatever they made ahead of time.”

“They made the porridge in advance? Surely not. No one could be that thoughtless…”

Just as she was about to say it couldn’t possibly be that bad, Gyeong-eun Lee took another small spoonful of the porridge and fell silent.

Tasting it again, it really did feel like something made ahead and simply served as-is.

“Your chef’s special sushi platter has arrived.”

Setting aside the porridge, which neither of them touched further, they waited, and the waiter set down the sushi platter before Seong-ho Kim and Gyeong-eun Lee.

Gyeong-eun Lee looked down at the sushi and sighed.

“Haah… every single piece is different.”

The size and shape of the sashimi on top of the rice all varied.

Even the amount of rice varied piece to piece, giving the whole plate a chaotic, thrown-together look.

“Even if it doesn’t look great, it’s fine as long as it tastes good — shall we try it first?”

Seong-ho Kim picked up a piece of sushi with his chopsticks first.

He dipped it in the soy sauce dish and put it in his mouth.

“Hm…”

Seong-ho Kim let out an involuntary groan and furrowed his brow.

“There’s far too much wasabi in this one.”

“I can’t taste any wasabi at all in mine.”

When Seong-ho Kim used his chopsticks to peel all the fish off the rice on his piece, he found the amount of wasabi inside was inconsistent piece to piece as well.

“Are these people out of their minds? Excuse me.”

Unable to hold back her anger any longer, Gyeong-eun Lee called the waiter over.

“Where’s the chef? Have the chef come out here.”

“Is something the matter, ma’am?”

“Why is the amount of wasabi in the sushi so inconsistent?”

Gyeong-eun Lee held out the sushi to the waiter and said,

“I can understand a hundred times over if there’s no wasabi at all, but putting in this much — are you trying to kill someone? Is this some kind of murder attempt?”

Gyeong-eun Lee spoke loudly, almost shouting, but the waiter only looked down at the sushi with an indifferent expression.

At the commotion, the chef, who’d been in the kitchen, came over to Seong-ho Kim and Gyeong-eun Lee’s table.

“What’s going on?”

“The customer here says there’s too much wasabi in the sushi.”

“Then just scrape it off and eat it. What’s the problem?”

The chef stuck his hands in the pockets of his jacket and said to Gyeong-eun Lee,

“If there’s too much wasabi, scrape it off; if there’s too little, add more — what’s the issue? Making a fuss over nothing…”

“Look here.”

“Honestly, so noisy.”

Muttering, the chef turned as if he had no wish to hear any more.

At the sight of him, Gyeong-eun Lee rose from her seat and said,

“Do you know who I am?”

“Would it make any difference if I knew who you are?”

When the chef sneered and dismissed her words, Seong-ho Kim raised a hand to calm Gyeong-eun Lee and rose from his seat.

“It would make a difference, actually.”

Seong-ho Kim looked around the restaurant’s interior, then said to Gyeong-eun Lee,

“Gyeong-eun, let’s just go.”

Gyeong-eun Lee, her anger still unresolved, shouted at the chef,

“You’ll see.”

“You think ‘you’ll see’ scares anyone? Sprinkle some salt at the entrance. What rotten luck, letting all kinds of people wander in today.”

“What did you say?”

As Gyeong-eun Lee whirled around as if to lunge at the chef, Seong-ho Kim held her back.

“No need to fight here. I’ll make sure all your anger gets resolved, Gyeong-eun.”

Calming Gyeong-eun Lee, Seong-ho Kim turned to look at the chef, who stood there smirking with his hands in his pockets.

The chef, indifferent either way, simply stood at an insolent slant, staring at Seong-ho Kim and Gyeong-eun Lee.

Seong-ho Kim calmed Gyeong-eun Lee and walked back to the car with her.

Coming outside, he looked up at the hotel for a moment and thought,

‘This can’t end with a simple restructuring.’

Seong-ho Kim resolved to show Ilhyeon Hotel, in full, everything he’d learned over more than twenty years working his way through the Ilhyeon Group.

“Father. Do you know what state Ilhyeon Hotel is in?”

Though Seong-ho Kim had tried to calm her and said he’d resolve her anger, Gyeong-eun Lee didn’t forget to report it to Chairman Tak-hyeon Lee.

“It’s a complete mess. The doorman doesn’t even open the door, we had to park the car ourselves, and there wasn’t a single person in the elevator, if you can believe it.”

Still unable to shake her anger, Gyeong-eun Lee poured out everything that had happened at Ilhyeon Hotel to Tak-hyeon Lee.

Listening beside them, Suk-ja Chu grew even angrier than if it had happened to her personally.

“How dare those people, not knowing who you are! Husband.”

But the arrow of Suk-ja Chu’s fury turned toward Seong-ho Kim instead.

“And you just stood there and let it happen? You should have given them a sharp word. And here I let the two of you go out for a date after so long, only for my daughter to be treated like this?”

Having vented her anger for a good while, Gyeong-eun Lee, seeing that Seong-ho Kim now seemed to be getting scolded on her account, said to Suk-ja Chu with an awkward expression,

“Mother. It’s not Seong-ho’s fault. Those people were the ones in the wrong — why are you turning on him?”

“Those people were wrong too, but your husband, unable to properly protect his own wife from being disrespected like that, hasn’t done anything commendable either.”

“Mother, why is the blame landing on him…”

“Enough noise.”

As the pointless back-and-forth continued, Chairman Tak-hyeon Lee cut it off.

And, looking at Seong-ho Kim, he asked about Ilhyeon Hotel.

“How was it, seeing it firsthand?”

“Worse than it looked on paper.”

“Seeing it with your own eyes is always the most accurate. So? Do you have a response plan in mind?”

When Tak-hyeon Lee asked, curious, Suk-ja Chu spoke first.

“What is there to figure out? Just cut every last one of them.”

Suk-ja Chu said to Tak-hyeon Lee as if there were nothing to even consider.

“From the ones loitering at the front door to that chef at the Japanese restaurant who disrespected our Gyeong-eun — fire every single one of them, without exception.”

“Fire them all? Then who does the work?”

Tak-hyeon Lee looked at Suk-ja Chu as if she were pathetic.

“Are you going to go work at the hotel yourself?”

Not wanting to lose face at Tak-hyeon Lee’s words, Suk-ja Chu nodded.

“There’s nothing I couldn’t do! I’ll go work there myself, so fire every one of them.”

Hearing Suk-ja Chu’s answer, Tak-hyeon Lee snorted.

“As if you’d ever actually go work there. Don’t talk nonsense.”

“Why not? I could do it too.”

“If we fired everyone the way you say, there’d be no shortage of empty positions — do you have ten bodies to fill them with? If you do, tell me how, because I’d love to split myself into even two, let alone ten.”

Being someone who, more than anyone, regretted having only one body, Tak-hyeon Lee found Suk-ja Chu’s words all the more laughable.

Tak-hyeon Lee looked at the huffing Suk-ja Chu with a mocking gaze.

Seong-ho Kim, judging this was the moment to bring it up, slowly opened his mouth to Tak-hyeon Lee.

“What Mother-in-law says may be extreme, but I don’t think she’s wrong.”

“What? What isn’t wrong?”

Tak-hyeon Lee, who’d been looking at Suk-ja Chu, turned to Seong-ho Kim with a bewildered expression.

But it wasn’t nearly as strange to him as it was to Suk-ja Chu, who felt Seong-ho Kim was oddly taking her side.

“You said the food at Ilhyeon Hotel was strange — did you eat something bad there? What’s gotten into you?”

At Seong-ho Kim taking her side in the conversation with Tak-hyeon Lee, Suk-ja Chu spoke as if it were strange.

“Seong-ho. You don’t need to… go that far.”

Gyeong-eun Lee, too, thinking Seong-ho Kim was only saying this to curry favor with her mother, told him he didn’t need to bother.

Watching the three of them react exactly as he’d expected, Seong-ho Kim smiled and explained precisely what he’d meant by his words.

“Of course, firing everyone the way Mother-in-law suggests would be a problem, but I think leaving things as they are is also a problem. Employees who can’t hold their own positions properly, and staff like that sushi chef, absolutely need to be let go.”

Realizing this wasn’t simply blind support for Suk-ja Chu, Tak-hyeon Lee looked at Seong-ho Kim with an interested gaze.

Sensing the shift in Tak-hyeon Lee’s gaze, Seong-ho Kim continued.

“The hotel as a whole has lost its discipline. But since training alone has its limits in restoring discipline, I think — not everyone, as Mother-in-law says, but as a show of intent — some degree of staff cuts is necessary.”

“Discipline must be established, is it… That’s fair enough. So what exactly is it you want to say?”

Realizing Seong-ho Kim had something specific in mind, Tak-hyeon Lee asked directly.

At that, Seong-ho Kim bowed his head slightly and stated what he truly wanted.

“I’d like you to grant me personnel authority over Ilhyeon Hotel.”

(End of Chapter 33)