My Company Is Black

#021

That night, Hwi-kyung had trouble sleeping.

No matter how much he thought about it, it was strange that Gyo-ha had regressed along with him. What was Gyo-ha to him anyway? It’s embarrassing to say, but Hwi-kyung had no interest in Gyo-ha until he came as a parachuted Executive Director.

As a member of a chaebol family, the media often reported about him, but when Hwi-kyung saw articles about Gyo-ha, he only thought, “They’re just paid to say nice things about him.”

If Hwi-kyung had been even slightly interested in Gyo-ha, he would have noticed earlier that the newspaper headlines related to Gyo-ha changed with each regression.

But despite paying attention to his surroundings, Hwi-kyung didn’t notice such subtle changes. After all, he knew nothing about Lee Gyo-ha as a person!

Moreover, Gyo-ha only discovered Hwi-kyung after the thirteenth regression. Who would have thought there was a fellow regressor on the opposite side of the world?

No matter how much he pondered, Hwi-kyung couldn’t clearly understand why Gyo-ha was involved in his regression. Sure, he was an annoying boss, but if the structure involved regressing with a terrible superior, Hwi-kyung should have become the Pied Piper, leading countless people back to the past.

He had asked Gyo-ha why he was regressing with him, but Gyo-ha clearly didn’t know the reason for his own regression. Anyway, that parachuted bastard… not even helpful with the regression…

Hwi-kyung cursed Gyo-ha in his mind. It was surprising that there was another being living multiple lives like him, but he hadn’t expected this being to be so unhelpful. Not only did he make work life uncomfortable, but he didn’t even know why he was regressing.

Moreover, Gyo-ha seemed to only peek at Hwi-kyung’s system window without having his own system window or regression button. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have tried so hard to prevent Hwi-kyung from regressing.

There’s no way Lee Gyo-ha, the youngest son of the Baekgyeong Group, would have the same black company avoidance conditions as Jung Hwi-kyung…. If possible, Hwi-kyung wanted to confront the Bodhisattva grandmother who had trapped him in the company and ask why she had thrown in this guy as a bonus.

If she was going to add another regressor as a bonus, she should have given him someone useful. Someone smart, competent, self-sufficient, and talented enough to be promoted when Hwi-kyung became team leader with age…

Lee Gyo-ha and Jung Hwi-kyung were completely incompatible. While Gyo-ha was thinking positively about Hwi-kyung, Hwi-kyung’s likability towards Gyo-ha had already hit negative numbers.

What could he do with a parachuted Executive Director? Hwi-kyung pondered Gyo-ha’s usefulness until dawn. Lee Gyo-ha’s position was ambiguous. If he were an only child, it might be different, but with two older siblings, he was pushed down the succession line and had no absolute power.

Just a good-looking guy who caught the eye but had nothing good to offer. That was Lee Gyo-ha’s current position. Even if he was the chairman’s most beloved child, it was clear that his sister and brother would amicably divide the major businesses between them.

So using Gyo-ha as a shield to take over the Baekgyeong Group was nearly impossible. Hwi-kyung recalled the formidable presence of Lee Jung-hye, whom he had seen only once. If Gyo-ha was a fox, Jung-hye was a tiger. How could he beat that?

There wasn’t much he could do with this airheaded chaebol’s youngest son. Hwi-kyung thought that when dawn broke, he should lay out for Gyo-ha, one by one, the things he shouldn’t do.

Anyway, realizing he wasn’t alone in this hellish cycle of regression gave him a bit of strength. Two heads are better than one, right?

But life never goes according to plan.

“Director Jung received disciplinary action?”

“Yes.”

“Just in case you don’t know, it has nothing to do with me.”

“Really?”

Jung Hwi-kyung felt his blood pressure rising from the morning. If he died of high blood pressure before retirement, he would come back to life… He needed to take care of his health if he didn’t want to spend his last years groaning and extending his life.

But no matter how many healthy things Hwi-kyung ate, this damn company dragged his health through the mud. To be precise, the parachuted Executive Director who claimed to be regressing with him wasn’t helping his life at all.

“There’s a big commotion because of that. The team leader was called up…”

“…”

“I heard the HR team will be reorganized. You and I probably won’t be affected, but the deputy managers who’ve been here for a long time might be moved to sales or management.”

“Is this because of the Executive Director?”

“No one’s saying it out loud, but it seems that way.”

“…”

“Even the operations team is in an uproar, saying he’s a parachute himself but doing this.”

Since the regular employees they had hired and trained hard were likely to be cut, there was no way the operations team would look kindly on Gyo-ha.

Hwi-kyung’s heart raced because of this fellow regressor who wouldn’t listen even if told to just stay put. It wasn’t fluttering with excitement, but pounding with high blood pressure. It wasn’t love, but arrhythmia.

Clutching his left chest, Hwi-kyung emphasized to Kang Moon-chul that he really had nothing to do with it. But Moon-chul’s response didn’t seem to believe a word Hwi-kyung said.

Finally, Hwi-kyung headed up to the Executive Director’s office, using work as an excuse and carrying documents. Although an email could have solved the problem, he needed an immediate excuse to meet Gyo-ha.

Fortunately, Gyo-ha was already at work. The only thing Gyo-ha was better at than the HR team leader was keeping to office hours. As soon as the Executive Director’s office door closed, Hwi-kyung threw the documents on the floor. From the moment he realized Gyo-ha was a fellow regressor sharing the same fate, it became really difficult to maintain politeness in front of him.

“Why on earth did you do that?”

Condition Not Met: You threw documents in front of your superior!

Condition Not Met: Your superior is shocked by your behavior.

Do you want to regress?

He wanted to just regress. It was a shame to lose over a year of work, but his grandmother hadn’t passed away yet, and he still remembered the listening section answers for TOEIC without having to start studying again.

However, instead of pressing Y, Hwi-kyung looked at Lee Gyo-ha beyond the system window. The face visible through the opaque window looked innocent and upright, as if he had committed no crime.

“I heard the HR team is being reorganized. Why did you do that?”

“…Does that have anything to do with the regression?”

“Of course it does! What do you think I’m regressing for?”

“Because you’re not satisfied with your company life?”

“…”

“So I thought if I could make the team a bit better, it would be okay.”

“Ha, really…”

Really, damn it…

Seeing Gyo-ha’s reaction, Hwi-kyung immediately realized his mistake. He should have confessed right away on the emergency stairs yesterday that he regresses when he gets hired by a black company. Before warning him to just shut up and stay put, he should have revealed why that was necessary.

But this was also Jung Hwi-kyung’s first experience with another regressor appearing. Hwi-kyung had lived a damn long time through thirteen regressions, but two-thirds of that long life was spent as a new employee in society.

He might be good at company work, but he was bound to be clumsy in these areas. If there was a regressor skilled at explaining the situation to a suddenly appeared fellow regressor, that would surely be a mythical creature.

“I just thought… since it was about not meeting proper conditions…”

“…”

“I thought maybe if the team or company environment improved, it would be okay.”

How tragic is it that someone’s goodwill doesn’t always have a positive effect? Instead of cursing at Gyo-ha, Hwi-kyung repeatedly rubbed his face dry.

The HR team had been turned upside down, and since the reorganization issue had surfaced, rumors linking Lee Gyo-ha and himself would surely become more concrete. It was fine if words only spread offline, but in today’s advanced world, they had to worry about things spreading online as well.

Just because Hwi-kyung didn’t check, it didn’t mean that anonymous online communities for office workers would disappear. If any strange posts with the BK International tag appeared, bored office workers would pounce like hyenas, instantly crashing BK International’s external reputation to black levels.

How others see you is important too. In Korea, reputation also determines whether a company is considered black or not! However, the Lee Gyo-ha in front of him couldn’t possibly consider such detailed issues.

“Executive Director.”

“Yes.”

“I regress when I get hired by a black company.”

“What?”

“I also regress if the company I’m working for becomes a black company.”

“…”

“You don’t understand what I’m saying, right? That’s understandable. You probably thought I chose to regress all thirteen times myself.”

Hwi-kyung decided to explain his situation to Gyo-ha step by step, with the mindset of when he was directly teaching student interns. While doing so, he needed to find out how Gyo-ha had lived his past lives.

Asking if he had ever met a strange Bodhisattva grandmother might also be key to solving the problem. Hwi-kyung pushed aside the overwhelming confusion filling his head and pulled up a chair to sit in front of Gyo-ha.

“I’m not, well, some great regressor… I’m just a person trapped in a company…”