Novelist Running Through Time - Chapter 225



Only Noblemtl

The plant manager of Baekhakmunko.

Snow White’s main tasks are as follows:

As soon as I got to work, I watered the succulents with a sprayer, got chased by the office staff while changing the water purifier, avoided the vice president who kept flattering me, played golf with the old men who were directors, translated a novel in the office, stamped the documents that Im Yang-wook handed me, set up a ballpoint pen on the desk, watched cute harp seal videos on YouTube, etc…

If you feel like something is not working properly, that is not an illusion, it is normal.

Of course, the brilliant achievements brought about by Baekseol’s ‘leadership’ have brought him appropriate authority.

Even employees who were not dazzled by titles like Booker International or Baekhak Bloodline now know that the young CEO has his own abilities.

That authority was not granted by anyone, but was something Snow White earned on her own.

In that sense, it can be said that Baekseol has finally taken his first steps as a CEO.

You have seized the power to achieve what you set out to do, that is, the drive to drive your work.

So where will the first step of that great leap be headed?

What is Baekhakmunko’s vision for a bright future?

What will tomorrow be like when the princess of the legitimate Baekhak bloodline leads the way?

If people with such expectations asked, Snow White would probably answer like this.

‘I don’t know…’

Yes, that’s right.

The ability to ‘promote work’ and the ability to ‘plan what work to do’ are separate things.

In Snow White’s case, the former existed but the latter did not.

It can’t be helped.

Snow White is not a regressor and does not have a status window.

It is unreasonable to expect a 30-year-old translator (who claims to be 29) to have a vision for the future of a giant company leading the Korean publishing industry.

Therefore, in Baekhakmunko under the leadership of President Baek Seol, there were several powerful figures behind the scenes who shared the role of president. Let’s take a look at them as follows.

First, there is Lim Yang-wook, a ‘returnee’ who was expelled from the company and then returned with cheating abilities.

Second, Vice President Kim Geun-tae, the ‘distribution king’ who still dominates the book distribution headquarters, is the former head of the headquarters.

Third, Kim Myeong-un, also known as ‘Hwa-ta’, was the right-hand man of President Baek Do-hyeon and personally operated Baekhakmunko.

These three people were constantly cooperating and checking each other, forming a sort of triumvirate, and Baekhakmungo was also under their thumb and going through a period of regency rule.

It was around that time that Baek Seol, the ‘CEO’ of Baekhakmunko, received a call from Baek Do-hyeon, the ‘CEO’ of the Human Resources Support Team at the headquarters’ strategic planning office.

EP 14 – The Future

“How is work going these days?”

President Baek Do-hyeon, with a kind smile, personally brought his niece a cup of mixed coffee.

Snow White nodded as if embarrassed and accepted the coffee, then smiled weakly.

“It’s too difficult···”

“Haha, of course it’s difficult, you punk. Did you think company work would be that easy?”

“Honestly, I feel like giving up my position as CEO···”

“Oh, I can’t accept it. It can’t be returned. No. Go back.”

Although it was almost a joke, the head of the HR support team in the strategic planning office actually had limited power to appoint executives of affiliated companies.

In the first place, it was Baek Do-hyeon who ‘appointed’ Baek Seol as the president of Baekhak Publishing House, so the joke just now ended as a joke, but it cannot be purely a joke.

Snow White, who realized the fact a little too late, vowed to be careful with her words and spoke to her uncle in a slightly more serious and businesslike manner.

“Excuse me… why have you called me here?”

Baek Do-hyeon didn’t pretend to be upset like usual and didn’t whine, “Do you have to come see our daughter for something?”

Instead, he lowered his voice and smiled slightly coldly.

“Seol-ah.”

“yes.”

“I think something noisy is going to happen soon.”

“yes?”

“I don’t think Baekhakmunko will be involved, but since you never know what will happen in the world, I think it would be best to keep a low profile for the time being.”

“uh······”

“Do you know what I mean?”

I don’t know.

“hmm!”

But Snow White nodded resolutely and trustworthily, as if to say, ‘Hmm… I completely understand!’

The icon of faith and trust, the constellation of Funkulsec, ‘that gesture’ that brings to mind Shinjiro Koizumi.

If it were anyone else, they would have seen the dignity of the white crane bloodline in Snow White’s face, but President Baek Do-hyeon, who had been watching Snow White since she was a toddler, was not fooled by the bluff.

“Don’t answer as if you know when you don’t.”

“oh.”

“So. If possible, don’t meet with the directors, don’t do any visible business, don’t mention SNS or anything like that, don’t expose yourself to mass media like newspaper interviews, and above all, don’t meet other relatives… Got it?”

“yes!”

“Yeah, yeah.”

So, after finishing the short meeting, Baek Seol returned to Baekhak Library, being seen off by Baek Do-hyeon, who was a ‘terrifying collaborator, but a warm man only to his niece.’

But even as I watered the succulents lined up on the sunny windowsill, a thought kept popping into my head.

‘What is this noisy thing that’s going to happen soon?’

And a further question is raised by the intellect of a student of Okdae University and the political instinct of a person of Baekhak bloodline.

‘How does Grandfather know what will happen in the future?’

Those two questions didn’t go away until Snow White returned home and tucked herself into her cozy blanket.

Snow White closes her eyes with a troubled expression.

What resolved this confusion was the breaking news that was plastered all over the news a few days later.

– Breaking news. At 4 AM today, former Baekhak Media Group Chairman Baek Do-jun ended his life at the Seoul Detention Center…

* * *

Money calls for power, and power calls for blood.

The game of thrones surrounding the succession of Baekhak Group was a common tragedy that did not deviate much from this simple principle.

The old chairman tried to make the next president his own by hand for more money and power, but failed.

Before he could even recover from his failure, time took the chairman away, and the ‘eldest son’ was locked up in a detention center, suffering retaliation for the karma of his predecessors.

With the chairman dead and the eldest son gone, the second son purged the eldest son’s power and ascended to the empty throne.

A quarrel between brothers.

A very common occurrence that has always happened throughout human history.

It’s a tragedy, like a drama.

But reality is not a drama, so the story never ends and continues.

The eldest son, who had to face the collapse of everything he had as he was locked up in a detention center, having lost his throne and shouldering all his mistakes.

He was not given the mercy of being neatly removed to the backstage like a sacrificial lamb in a Shakespearean tragedy, but was still forced to watch the play until the end on the stage of life.

The sight of his younger brother taking what he deserved, the sight of those who were loyal to him flirting with him, the sight of those who were loyal to him until the end being purged by his younger brother.

and,

The sight of his children, who should have inherited everything about him and this huge group, being driven out of the country…

Unable to bear such a sight, the man who took on the role of the ‘eldest son’ endlessly stabbed himself in the neck with a fork, hung himself with his clothes, jumped off the stairs, cut a plastic spoon in half to make a knife and used it to cut his wrists, and smashed his face into the bathroom sink.

The ‘eldest son’ went crazy.

The ‘second son’ always received reports on his older brother’s condition from the chairman’s office in the headquarters, which was like the deepest part of the palace.

A crazy old man who is dragged around by prison guards but tries to commit suicide whenever he gets a chance.

The older brother whom he had feared and opposed his entire life.

Even though he knew that his brother had fallen into such a miserable state, the ‘second son’ did nothing.

Even the executive who was supposed to take care of the ‘eldest son’ by getting him out of prison disappeared from the company without anyone knowing, so there was no way anyone would bring up the ‘eldest son’ in front of the ‘second son’.

The ‘second son’ just had a wrinkled face and a blank expression, as if he had no interest in anything in the world, and he just leisurely wandered around the garden.

Rumor has it that even when the chief secretary, who had come running in a hurry, told him of the death of his ‘eldest son’, he just smiled faintly.

However, the reactions of other people were not so strange, because there were so many people who were so desperate that they even had to use the death of the ‘eldest son’.

* * *

The news that the ‘eldest son’ who was eliminated in the competition to succeed Baekhak Group committed suicide in prison and even attempted suicide several times is enough to make anyone who hears it frown.

That is, the sound of stock prices falling.

Therefore, Baekhak Group needed to hide this ‘bad news’ in order to protect the image of the owner’s family and its stock price, and conversely, those who wanted Baekhak Group’s current system to be shaken had to blow up this ‘bad news’.

President Baek Do-hyeon belonged to the latter.

And in the end, the fact that the news of the death of the former chairman of Baekhak Group made the front page of every news story means that he had finally won the conspiracy that occurred right after the death of the ‘eldest son’ that he had told Baekseol about.

So the ‘eldest son’ of the ‘second son’.

The crown prince of Baekhak Financial Group, who had to protect the throne from three younger siblings, numerous uncles and aunts, and the representative of a collateral family named Baek Do-hyeon, had to grit his teeth.

“Baek Do -hyun will eat the pair of pairs!

He had to defend his power from the prosecution and police investigation that was closing in on Baekhak Group, which was trying to cover up the ‘death of a former chairman’, and from paper companies that started buying stocks suspiciously, taking advantage of the stock price crash.

While the younger brothers were happy that their older brother was in a bad situation, they also kept in check the growing influence of President Baek Do-hyeon.

The salaried executives below him began to move busily according to their own interests amidst the increasingly fierce competition within the Baekhak Group.

The chairman, who was supposed to stop this internal strife, acted as if he had no regrets about the group, and even more so, he was leisurely walking in the garden as if he had no regrets about life…

Everyone slowly realized that war clouds were gathering.

And Baekhak High School was no exception.

* * *

“······”

“······”

Silence.

The silence that had descended upon the classroom was so cold that it froze everyone, and it was as tense as a bowstring that seemed ready to snap at any moment.

Even the teachers who used to whine, saying, “What’s going on? Why is everyone so quiet?” hesitated in front of the students’ silence.

The noise of the class next door, chattering away, only served to emphasize the silence that had descended upon Baekhak Arts High School’s creative writing department…

“What is it? What’s going on?”

“fizzle!”

I went to school for the first time in a while, and I didn’t know what was going on, so I opened my mouth without being able to read the atmosphere, but was immediately stopped by my seatmate, Guyuna, and my mouth was shut.

“Ugh, ugh···!”

I’m honestly a little embarrassed when a soft hand suddenly covers half of my face.

Even though I was startled and pulled away from Guyuna’s hand, her gaze was fixed somewhere.

I realized belatedly that not only Gu Yu-na, but also Moon-chang and all the children in the classroom were looking at one place, so I glanced over to see what was there.

“uh?”

In that place where everyone’s eyes were focused, two people, Ahn Joo-hee and Moon Ji-seop, were looking at each other.

Last time I heard that the two of you had decided to date···

The atmosphere is somehow strange.

“······Do you have anything to say to me?”

An Ju-hee opened her mouth first.

But the dialogue is a little strange.

“Huh? Huh?”

“fizzle!”

Guyuna covered my mouth again.

This time, I also focused on Ahn Joo-hee and Moon Ji-seop.

Moon Ji-seop answered Ahn Joo-hee’s question with a gloomy face.

“······doesn’t exist.”

“No? After sending a text like that?”

“······What can I say to you?”

“No. I think you have a lot to say. I’ll listen.”

At that time, Moon Ji-seop stared at Ahn Joo-hee with a sculpted face.

The worry, concern, and guilt on his face seemed to cast shadows across the marble bust, casting a picture of his emotions.

However, if emotions cannot be expressed through the mouth, they will remain just emotions, so Moon Ji-seop hesitated for a long time in front of Ahn Joo-hee, wondering what he was hesitating about.

An Ju-hee was staring at Moon Ji-seop’s hesitation.

An Ju-hee’s fierce face, which could not be hidden even by her round glasses, was especially sorrowful today.

What on earth made her so round?

Ah! Love! It is the sharpest emotion…

As if urging the hesitant Moon Ji-seop, An Ju-hee spoke to him, breaking down his own lofty pride.

“Is this how it ends for us? Is it going to end like this, just because of a text message I received one day, for no reason?”

“······”

“Say something. Or catch me. Or at least tell me why you’re doing this. Were we so close that we couldn’t even say that?”

“······”

“······”

“······”

Moon Ji-seop couldn’t shake off his hesitation until the very end, and his silence became the cruelest answer he could give to Ahn Joo-hee.

“I see.”

“······”

“That’s all I was to you.”

“······”

“This, this is bad… this is bad…!”

An Ju-hee, who was a famous literary student even at a young age, could not finish a single sentence properly.

An Ju-hee, who was so picky, sensitive, and neurotic, couldn’t even utter a single curse word that she usually used to say.

She just stared at Moon Ji-seop without saying anything, then wiped away the tears that were welling up in her eyes with her forearm and ran out of the classroom.

“······”

And until that moment, Moon Ji-seop remained frozen like a stone statue, blankly staring at the spot where Ahn Joo-hee had left······

* * *

“No, wait a minute.”

I asked Guyuna if I had correctly understood the farce that had just unfolded.

“Are they broken up now?”

“huh.”

“······How long have you been dating?”

weird···

As far as I know, it hasn’t even been a month…

As I was tilting my head at that thought, Gu Yu-na looked intently at the classroom door that An Ju-hee had escaped through, and then suddenly said to me.

“That’s what love is.”

“······”