Real Man

Chapter 74

At that moment, Kim Hyun-min, the manager who was next to him, whispered to Oh Jae-hwan, the team leader.

“Hey, team leader. If you’re going to nag, do it outside.”

“Manager Kim, when did I nag? I was just…”

“I know. I know. I know everything. Don’t you want a cigarette? Let’s go.”

Kim Hyun-min dragged Oh Jae-hwan outside while winking at Park Seung-woo, the Assistant Manager.

Park Seung-woo bowed his head in gratitude and looked at Yoo-hyun.

Yoo-hyun was surrounded by people.

He didn’t look tired at all after a long seminar.

Yoo-hyun was still listening to his seniors with a serious expression.

Park Seung-woo felt sorry for him.

It wasn’t just because he didn’t take care of him while he was preparing hard.

‘That guy, he really cared about the PDA project…’

He could tell by watching his presentation.

He was trying his best to make the project of his senior successful.

Looking back, he had received a lot of help from him while he was busy and distracted.

He felt ashamed of himself for always complaining that he didn’t want to do it in front of his junior.

After the seniors finished their compliments, Shin Chan-yong, the Manager, approached Yoo-hyun who was organizing his laptop.

His eyes had calmed down by then.

He knew that he had been too excited during the Q&A session.

But it wasn’t easy to take back what he had spilled.

“You prepared a lot, didn’t you?”

“Thank you.”

Yoo-hyun smiled lightly at his insincere greeting.

But Shin Chan-yong didn’t look very happy.

He looked around and bit his lower lip, even growling.

“Don’t smile.”

“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”

“You think everything will go well because it’s your first project?”

“I hope so.”

“Of course. If you fail, you’ll lose the project.”

That was exactly what he wanted.

He hit the nail on the head.

Yoo-hyun laughed inwardly and answered.

“I’ll try not to let that happen.”

“Well, will it be as easy as you think?”

Yoo-hyun looked up and met Shin Chan-yong’s sneering face.

Yoo-hyun didn’t avoid his eyes.

‘You want it so bad, don’t you? You want to take it away? Go ahead. Take it. Please take it.’

Then he hid his feelings and said with a very calm expression, without smiling or getting angry, with the passion of a new employee.

“I’ll do my best!”

After the seminar ended,

Park Seung-woo took Yoo-hyun to the rest area on the 10th floor.

He drank his coffee and said with a bitter tongue.

“Geez. How can you just accept what he said?”

“I’m sorry.”

When Yoo-hyun bowed his head, Park Seung-woo waved his hands and bounced his hips.

“Hey, hey, I’m not saying you should apologize.”

“Then what?”

When Yoo-hyun asked as if he didn’t know, Park Seung-woo continued.

“You did well. You did well, but I feel sorry for you. You should have asked me for help.”

“You looked so busy. And you already sent me all the materials.”

“Did you sit down and look at them all? Ha…”

“I looked at them whenever I had time.”

As if he had seen them all.

He could find the necessary materials by just looking at the titles or the folder structure.

It wasn’t just the materials that Park Seung-woo gave him.

It wasn’t hard to find the materials in the company’s research information room or on the internet.

Of course, it might have been like finding a needle in a haystack for someone who knew nothing.

But Yoo-hyun had already drawn a picture in his head from the beginning.

It was easy to find the materials that he could just paste together.

Park Seung-woo felt sorry in his eyes.

“Anyway, next time, make sure you tell me. I’ll help you.”

“Yes. I’ll do that. Thank you, Assistant Manager.”

“Stop saying thank you, man. People will think I did some great training or something.”

“You are a great mentor. I hope you teach me more in the future.”

When Yoo-hyun bowed his head again, Park Seung-woo frowned.

“Hey, don’t do that. People are watching. Hey, lift your head. Come on.”

“I will serve you faithfully.”

“Don’t overdo it.”

Did he hate it so much?

No way.

He covered his face, but the pulse in his neck and the change in his breathing from his throat showed his hidden emotions.

As if to prove it, his shoulders started to bounce and his head shook back and forth.

He finally bowed his head and snorted.

Was it that fun?

He felt like he would fly away if he teased him a little more, so Yoo-hyun changed the subject.

“By the way, when will the seminar results come out?”

“Ha ha, you’re worried, aren’t you?”

“Just curious.”

“Don’t worry. It seems like you passed. I heard from Manager Kim  that…”

Park Seung-woo told him what he had heard from Kim Hyun-min.

According to the compiled results, there was no problem in passing.

He also said that he was scolded for being worse than his junior.

He didn’t hesitate to say that in front of his junior.

‘He’s such a straightforward person.’

Yoo-hyun felt that Park Seung-woo’s attitude was admirable.

It wasn’t easy to lower oneself.

Especially in front of a fresh junior.

They talked for a while.

Park Seung-woo asked him.

“Oh, aren’t your colleagues having a seminar soon?”

“Yes. There’s still some time left.”

“Help them out. They’ll feel pressured because you did well. The other team seniors will also ask more.”

“I will. Thank you.”

“Stop saying thank you.”

Park Seung-woo got up from his seat, feeling awkward.

But his lips were still curling up.

Yoo-hyun realized that a good word had a lot of power.

Yoo-hyun helped Kwon Se-jung and Min Jung-hyuk with their seminars.

He used empty conference rooms where there were no people, because it could be troublesome if he caught the eyes of other seniors.

The reason was simple.

There was no senior who would like to see his junior getting help from someone else, especially from another team’s new employee.

While he was looking at the materials, Min Jung-hyuk shook his head after seeing a message on his phone.

“Ugh, I have to go. My senior is looking for me.”

“Then you should go.”

“Sorry. You made time for me.”

“We can do it next time.”

Yoo-hyun replied calmly, and Min Jung-hyuk’s face turned angrier.

“Ugh, these seniors know that we’re preparing for the seminar, but they don’t give us any time. And they don’t even bother to look at our materials.”

“Me too. They just scare us.”

Kwon Se-jung nodded as if he understood Min Jung-hyuk’s feelings.

It would be nice if their mentors helped them, but they still didn’t care.

Instead, they kept asking if they were still worried about that and warned them to be prepared if they failed.

They said that their mentors barely passed the seminar after two tries.

After Min Jung-hyuk left, Kwon Se-jung sighed deeply and said.

“This is really hard. How can I summarize what I know?”

“Just do your best.”

Kwon Se-jung glared at Yoo-hyun’s clichéd answer.

“How did you prepare all that stuff?”

“I don’t know either. I just made all the materials first.”

“How did you get the materials?”

“Come here and see.”

Yoo-hyun opened the materials from the research information room on the company’s website on his laptop.

He also opened a patent and paper search page on another window.

The good thing about being in a large company like Hansung Electronics was this.

He could access expensive materials that he would have to pay for as an individual from anywhere.

Yoo-hyun typed in a search term and clicked the mouse a few times.

Then Kwon Se-jung saw the material he was looking for.

“You can find the sales data of Nokia phones in Europe here, and the number of patents and papers last year is…”

“This was here?”

Kwon Se-jung’s eyes widened.

“The interface is a bit crappy, but it’s useful if you know how to combine search terms. Or you can go to the research information room and find it yourself.”

“Wow… This is something my mentor couldn’t find.”

“He was too busy and distracted.”

Yoo-hyun shrugged it off.

The company had a huge database, but few people used it properly.

There was a research information room on the first floor, and there were many materials in it, but there were hardly any people who went there to find them.

‘Would it even be 1%?’

This was a serious issue that Yoo-hyun had dealt with when he was in the group strategy office in the past.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to teach his juniors, but that the seniors didn’t know how to do it either.

They all used the existing materials out of habit.

And once they got used to a method, it didn’t change easily.

OJT period 6 months, the experience then determined their future in the company. 

It wasn’t an exaggeration.

Kwon Se-jung started to dig through the materials as if he had discovered a new continent.

“Hold on, let me look at this some more.”

“Sure. Don’t mind me.”

Yoo-hyun leaned back and drank his coffee leisurely.

The way Yoo-hyun helped was simple.

He didn’t catch fish for them, he taught them how to catch fish.

He didn’t fix their materials, he gave them direction.

He also didn’t find things for them, he taught them how to find them.

It was something they should have learned from their mentors, but there was no proper system in place yet.

Then Kwon Se-jung asked him.

“This looks similar, but… I don’t understand German. I want to use a translator, but I can’t copy the text because it’s a PDF.”

“Are you looking for data on the phone replacement cycle of Europeans?”

“Yeah. Right. But I don’t understand why they analyzed it.”

“Hold on.”

Yoo-hyun opened the document and explained its contents.

“What this is about is…”

As he spoke, Kwon Se-jung’s eyes grew bigger and bigger.

When he finished listening, he lost his words and blinked his eyes.

“You can speak German too?”

“Oh, a little bit.”

“…”

“What are you surprised about? I’m just a bit familiar with it.”

“Does that make sense?”

Why not?

He used to travel back and forth between Germany and France every day to persuade customers.

He learned their languages without sparing any sleep for smooth negotiations.

He especially dug deep into German.

-Why are you trying to take everything for yourself? We could have done it together!

For a moment, he flashed back to Kwon Se-jung’s resentful eyes.

He thought he was out of his mind because he was drunk, but he remembered what he had said then.

That night.

After finishing his workout and coming home, Yoo-hyun received a message.

It was from his younger sister, Han Jae-hee.

He opened the attached image and saw a duck character.

It was a picture she drew with the tablet he gave her as a gift.

“She still remembers it in the meantime.”

He thought she was drunk and out of it, but she remembered what he had said then.

-You like drawing cute characters, don’t you? Design some icons for your phone. Emoticons are fine too.

It was a suggestion he made out of hope that his sister, who was depressed by her lack of artistic talent, would do something she liked more.

It wasn’t now, but it would be a very popular field in a little while.

“I didn’t think you’d actually send it…”

Yoo-hyun chuckled and looked at the picture.