Chapter 12. A World Where the Strong Devour the Weak
As Team Leader Seung-jin and Geonshin, just back from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology, stepped into the first-floor lobby, they spotted Section Chief Park Seong-gi heading out. He planted himself in front of them with a rotten smile.
“Mo-team. What mess did you just stir up?”
“Pardon? What are you talking about?”
“Heh heh heh. Never mind. Anyway, good work. See you later.”
Geonshin watched Section Chief Park’s retreating back after he tossed out his frivolous jab and left.
Stirred up a mess? That’s suspicious.
“Hey! Spacing out again?”
“…No.”
Assistant Manager Soo-min greeted them with a smile when they entered the office.
“Team Leader Mo! That was amazing! How on earth did you persuade them?”
“It wasn’t me.”
“Sorry?”
“Him.”
Pointing at Geonshin, Team Leader Seung-jin headed to his seat. With wide eyes, Assistant Manager Soo-min looked at Geonshin and shot him a thumbs-up.
Ah. This kind of thing is so awkward.
The rumor that Subdivision 7 had secured the KIST connecting bridge spread in a flash. The fact that the client had already sent over a preliminary contract left the other subdivisions in shock.
In truth, this rapid progress was thanks to the Facilities Chief’s hair-on-fire panic, but…
Pulling off this kind of bait-layered business development was as hard as plucking a star from the sky. The fact that Subdivision 7, the dump yard, had pulled off that impossibility threw Yeongjo Architects into a tizzy. Of course, the mood was closer to jealousy and envy than admiration, with most people sneering that the nobodies just got lucky.
Only Subdivision 7 was in party mode over what should have been good news for the whole firm.
But even that mood vanished like a dream the next day.
“Director! Is it true?”
“Hm?”
From early morning, Team Leader Seung-jin barked at Director Yoo-uk. Startled, Assistant Manager Soo-min poked her head toward the director.
But Director Yoo-uk calmly met Team Leader Seung-jin’s gaze.
“How is it that, after our subdivision landed the bridge, Subdivision 1 is preparing the research facility and dormitory?”
“They say that’s going to be an invited competition anyway, so what’s the difference? We’ll be competing with other firms.”
“That invited competition should be our subdivision’s to enter. Why is Subdivision 1 taking it?”
“The President told them to. What power do I have to snatch it back?”
The design of the research facilities and dormitories.
Back to the beginning: the bridge for this research institute was merely a service job to land the upper work. Once we took that on, we’d naturally get the research facilities and dormitories too… that’s why we went all-in…
And now Subdivision 1 was taking that work.
“Cooking the porridge just to feed it to the dog” was exactly right.
“We’re not snatching it. We got snatched. We should be entering the invited competition and winning it, too, shouldn’t we?”
“Right now our subdivision has just Soo-min and one temp. And that temp is only here through this week. With that manpower, how do we do an invited competition? For research facilities and dorms you need at least ten people piling on; with this headcount can you even submit?”
“Even so, this isn’t right, Director. We could be the main and collaborate with another subdivision.”
“It’s already decided. It’s an important project. It makes sense the President’s own subdivision handles it. If we lose, who’s going to take the heat? That Seong-gi punk has no manners, but he does win competitions. That’s good for us, isn’t it?”
“Director! How can you even say that!?”
Unable to contain himself, Team Leader Seung-jin slammed the door and stormed out.
Watching him go, Director Yoo-uk spat a curse.
“That bastard always treats the director like a joke! What, want me to kick him out, too?”
“Was it you who sent over the PPT file, Director?”
“What the hell are you on about now, barging in here?”
Having had it out with Director Yoo-uk, Team Leader Seung-jin charged into Subdivision 1 to confront Section Chief Park Seong-gi. The identical concept Samin Architects had brought, seeing Subdivision 1 grab the upcoming KIST invited competition made him suspect it was all part of Section Chief Park’s grand plan.
This was exactly the sort of thing that guy would do.
“You handed our proposal to Samin Architects, didn’t you. Wreck it, then go win the job yourself. Is that your plan? Or did you cut a quiet deal with Samin? Subcontract it out to them?”
“What? You’re mad ’cause we snagged the project?”
“I held my tongue out of respect for our old subdivision chief, but this crosses the line.”
“Hey! Mo Seung-jin! I get it, but you’re going a bit far, aren’t you?”
A senior team leader who’d been watching from behind shouted. But Section Chief Park waved him down as if to say let it be. Everyone in Subdivision 1 was used to Seung-jin’s temper by now.
“If you’re jealous, why don’t you come on secondment and run it? Or better yet, show off by ignoring the President again and grandstanding solo like you used to. I’m curious how far you’ll get pushed this time, past Subdivision 7, maybe.”
“It was designated non-exportable. I’ll tell the security team you violated internal policy.”
“That? Go ahead, let’s see what happens. I’m curious too.”
“You planted someone in the security team? Or you think your connection to the President will make it go away?”
“Pointless to talk. I never received that PPT from Assistant Manager Soo-min.”
“Assistant Manager Soo-min would never give you that. You leaned on the security team to jiggle it loose, didn’t you!”
“No. Didn’t need to. I told the President right after the design pool.”
“Told him?”
“That if a KIST project came out, I wanted to do it. I knew you guys would land that bridge.”
“…What?”
“Watching your presentation, that’s what I thought. Looked like you’d land it. Anyway, the proposal was good. Infuriatingly so.”
At the proud Section Chief’s blunt admission, Team Leader Seung-jin went blank.
“Mo Seung-jin, you always trashed my work like it was nothing, but you think I’m sitting here for no reason? Pride doesn’t put food on the table. You have to stake your claim early to survive. This field is like that. What good is being good at design? If you dawdle, it gets stolen. You got your nose cut clean off with your eyes open.”
As soon as Subdivision 7’s design pool ended, Park Seong-gi swallowed his pride and begged the President. It felt like mooching a spoon to the table set by that eyesore Director Yoo-uk and that obnoxious Team Leader Seung-jin but so what?
He had a team to protect and a mandate to keep the President’s subdivision on top.
Damn it.
Team Leader Seung-jin had nothing to say. He was right. This world is survival of the fittest. If you move slow where work is scarce, you starve. He’d been taken by the sly Park Seong-gi.
He had to walk away without even breaking even. And Park called after him, to his turned back:
“And next time, if you’re curious about a leak, don’t come make a scene here, go bark at the security team or the server room. Why do you all come here to throw fits? You know how your director was this morning? Honestly, f…”
“Hello. I’m Na Geonshin from Subdivision 7. Our assistant manager’s PC is acting up. It’s lagging a lot.”
“Is that so? One moment.”
Because Assistant Manager Soo-min’s computer had been acting up since morning, Geonshin carried the tower to the server room in her stead. The spry temp doing office life, you could say.
Sure enough, the server room’s a bit half-baked at this point in time.
Various computer parts were piled up in disarray, and along one wall an obviously high-end machine claimed space, humming loudly. Nowadays, with a small external drive you can store over a terabyte and keep files on an internal network, but back then, to store the firm’s massive trove, they had to burn everything to CDs. Compared to the days of printing and binding mountains of drawings and volumes, this itself was a revolution.
For an architecture firm, archiving projects properly was paramount. When a project finished, they’d sort the months of work by drawing number, bind, box… Just hearing the old-timers’ stories from the old days was dizzying.
Thankfully, by the time Geonshin started in the field after graduation, 4x and 8x CD burners existed, so he’d dodged some pain.
The tech in charge opened the tower and began checking the internals. Watching closely, Geonshin suddenly had a thought.
Hold on! If this is the server room, they probably handle non-exportable files here. Maybe…
“Um, excuse me… I’m a trainee, and since this is my first time in a company I’m just curious—do messages sent over the company messenger get logged?”
“Pardon?”
The server admin gave him a strange look. Why would a trainee care about that?
“Oh! It’s nothing, I’m just like an intern… I thought it’d be good to learn how things run. Haha!”
The admin cocked his head for a second, then answered as if it made some sense.
“Ah, sure. Could be curious. But it’s a bit off to call it a company messenger, we don’t use an in-house system. We use MSN.”
Gasp! They use MSN?
They wouldn’t have given a temp like Geonshin the company messenger anyway, but Yeongjo’s in-house comms at the time used MSN Messenger. Microsoft’s early chat program, whose service ended around 2013.
“We provide the IDs and passwords and limit it to internal use.”
“Then if someone logs in with a personal ID, non-exportable files could get out, right?”
“Well, that’s true, but once a file is designated non-exportable, Security sets a password on it for storage, so even if it goes out, it can’t be opened.”
“Oh, they put a password on it?”
So a non-exportable file meant, in short, it got locked.
A new fact dawned on him.
“Sorry… password? You mean like a passcode, right?”
Oops, right, they might not recognize the shortened slang yet…
“Yes. A password.”
“If a restricted file did get leaked, they’d definitely ask us for the password check, and then Security would come wipe through that employee’s computer. Then we can trace who it went out through.”
“Ah… I see.”
Sure, being a big firm means it’s inconvenient, but it’s pretty thorough. Nothing is as fatal as a design leak.
“But, well, nothing like that has happened during my time in the server room…”
“You’ve never had a case yet?”
“I mean, if someone really set their mind to it, would it be that hard to leak? But Security bluffs that they’ll find out no matter what, which is scary, and honestly, I think it’s mostly loyalty to the firm.”
“Loyalty?”
“I’m not an architecture major, so I don’t really know, but Yeongjo people have serious loyalty.”
Something flashed through Geonshin’s mind.
Wait! Once a file is designated non-exportable, even if you wrack your brains to leak it, the password becomes the problem. Even if you steal the file, you’d have to ask someone who knows the password.
Which means there’s exactly one easiest way to leak it.
A time when you don’t need the password and no one cares about that file.
Namely… before it’s designated non-exportable.
Simple, but the cleanest conclusion.
Damn. So that’s what it was. Then the person who could’ve done it is…
There was exactly one person who could have done that.
Realizing something, half out of it, Geonshin trudged out of the server room.
“Hey! Aren’t you taking the tower with you?”
In the hall outside the server room, Yeongjo’s well-known buildings lined one wall in framed photographs. Olympic stadiums, hospitals, hotels… countless buildings you’d see around different cities.
In his eyes, the frames vanished one by one, revealing dark, cobwebbed, empty buildings. Before long, the firm he’d admired would vanish into history. A downfall their vaunted loyalty couldn’t stop.
Now it was certain. The PPT couldn’t have gone out after it became a non-exportable file. No one would be stupid enough to leave a trail by asking for the password.
The leak didn’t happen after the design pool. It happened before. It must have been delivered to Samin before the design pool even began… which is exactly why the exterior bridge design was identical, but the interior images were different. I made the interior renderings after Subdivision 1’s design pool had already started. The PPT they got wouldn’t have had that part yet.
In that case, at that time, only one person had the PPT.
Just then…
“Mr. Geonshin. You were still in the server room. The Director’s treating us to lunch. Come on.”
From the opposite side of the corridor, Assistant Manager Soo-min approached with a smile. Geonshin stared blankly at her face.
Damn.
Leave a Reply