Chapter 214. Tip-Off (5)
Eun-Ho fixed his gaze at the bloated division chief, who was sunk deep and sprawled across the sofa.
“So, in other words.” Eun-Ho set the teacup down in his hand. “You’re saying that you know nothing about the private interference, the fabrication of evidence, the bribery and illicit solicitation, the illegal surveillance without a warrant, the unlawful detention of an innocent civilian, and even the aggravated assault... Is that correct, Division Chief?”
“Exactly. Didn’t I say that earlier? I don’t know anything.”
The division chief, his polished bald head matching his shameless attitude, steadfastly played dumb about every allegation. Eun-Ho had pretty much expected it.
“How long has it been since you were appointed team leader, again?” the division chief asked.
“About a week.”
“Right. You’ve just taken the position, so you probably don’t know how things work yet. When you reach my level, you just approve whatever minor paperwork comes up. If they ask for approval, you give it. That’s it. Do you think I have the time to read through every single proposal?”
Strictly speaking, that wasn’t wrong.
“Team Leader, sorry, but could you approve this real quick? It’s a commission payout, and it has to go out today.”
“Ah, I’ve got a meeting right now, so just do it yourself. I didn’t shut the computer down.”
His previous team leader had said the exact same things. If he scrutinized every approval one by one, the entire day would be gone. When things got busy, they would even hand over the computer itself.
Eun-Ho switched strategy. “Then how do you explain this?”
At the very least, he wouldn’t be able to deny his own face.
Fwoosh—
A screen bloomed to life, filling one side of the office. A single grainy clip flickered into view.
Apparently caught off guard, the division chief straightened up immediately. “Uh... Huh? You even prepared a video?”
It was footage Leira had found only after combing through every channel in the Operations Bureau over and over again. The short clip was extracted from the Eye of someone passing through the restaurant district.
“Hyungnim! I’m putting my faith in you!”
“Sure, sure. What’s company life anyway? We help each other out and move forward together.”
The two of them were leaving a drinking session. The division chief staggered drunkenly, while Mo-Ho stood firmly at his side, supporting his shoulder.
Fwoosh—
The next clip had been cut from the Eye attached to someone passing through the Inspection Bureau’s smoking area.
“... It’s a rookie named Lee Eun-Ho...”
“Lock him up.”
“Pardon?”
“You can at least do that much for me. I’m asking you.”
It was a conversation between the division chief, a cigarette hanging from his lips, and the inspector from earlier.
The color drained from the division chief’s face. Though the footage was blurry and low-quality, his profile was clearly visible. The inspector’s face, captured head-on, was even clearer.
“You’re saying that’s me?”
“I suppose it is. Unless you happen to have an identical twin.”
Even so, the division chief denied it. He kept saying it couldn’t be him, he had no reason to say such things, and he didn’t remember it at all. He even said this was slander and fabricated evidence, rattling off the same tired excuses people like him always used.
“You said you were detained on suspicion of mis-selling, didn’t you? Did you hold a grudge over that and fabricate this ridiculous nonsense?” the division chief argued.
“Is that what you think?”
“Of course! Don’t you know that for something to be accepted as proper evidence, you also need proof that it hasn’t been tampered with?”
Oh? Is that so? Eun-Ho was dumbfounded.
“Clipped or edited footage can’t be recognized as valid evidence. If you’re trying to threaten me, bring the original file,” demanded the division chief.
Bingo.
Eun-Ho almost scoffed, but instead he nodded calmly. “I see. Understood.”
“Hmph! You’re trying some half-baked trick—”
“Then the evidence used to report me is invalid as well, right?”
“What?”
“The testimony the inspector prepared. That one.” That statement alone practically served as his defense. “It was chopped up pretty badly. Cut here and there, stitched together front and back.”
“C-chopped up?”
“I don’t know how you handled the dialogue, but it seems you didn’t have time to mess with the background.”
The division chief’s face twisted sharply and he flinched. “The background?!”
“In one shot, the person was far away, and in the next, they were suddenly right next to him. It was a mess.”
“What nonsense are you spouting?! I clearly told him to record it one-on-one!”
The division chief had just played a losing move out loud.
“Oh, so you saw it? And you even instructed him to film it one-on-one.”
“T-that’s not what I—”
Eun-Ho increased the pressure. “Didn’t you say earlier that you knew nothing about this tip-off case?”
The division chief’s face flushed red, then blue. His breathing grew labored, hot air bursting from his flaring nostrils.
“Wait. You said this is about the youngest one of Team Four’s case?”
“You already know that.”
The division chief’s sweat beaded, making his bald head shine even more. “I don’t! I don’t kn—haa. I got carried away for a moment. Anyway, let’s summon the ones involved and sort this out properly one by one clearly.”
Clearly, he was planning to get their stories straight. If that failed, then at least it meant cutting off the tail.
“That works for me. I have a few people I’d like to call as well,” Eun-Ho answered.
“What? Who?”
Knock, knock.
“Oh. I guess they’ve already arrived,” Eun-Ho said.
Now then, let’s see if you can keep playing dumb after this, Eun-Ho thought.
In an instant, the division chief’s head bowed all the way down to his knees. “Hic! Oh my. What brings you to a place like this?”
“They’re my witness.”
A single bead of sweat dripped from the division chief’s gleaming scalp and fell to the floor.
***
“How did this even happen?!”
“I-I don’t really know either...”
No one knew how Lee Eun-Ho had talked his way through it, but the inspector who had been raising hell nonstop was now pounding away through telepathic transmission.
Please, just shut up already, Mo-Ho thought.
After getting beaten senseless by Eun-Ho, Mo-Ho’s head felt like it was about to split open.
“Keep it down...” Mo-Ho said.
“Fuck, how can I?! The boards are blowing up right now!”
“The boards?!”
[Expose] Revealing the Filthy Truth Behind a Certain Sales Department Team Leader
You all know Sales Department Team Leader M, right? He’s infamous, after all.
There are tons of employees he threatened after grabbing their weaknesses, all to keep his number one sales ranking. People say they quit because sales was dirty work, but that’s not it. They all ran because they couldn’t stand working under M.
He climbed the ranks by constantly begging for promotions, then pulled the same crap on his subordinates. If you wanted a promotion, you had to prepare cash first. Just to make assistant manager, three hundred thousand points, wasn’t it?
And don’t even get me started on how much settlement money he skimmed off the top. He’s a professional. A real professional.
I thought things would improve once he became team leader, but he’s still doing the same shit. How long are we supposed to keep crawling under people like this?
W-what the hell is this? Mo-Ho thought.
The refunds pouring in, the whistleblowing from his own team, and even Lee Eun-Ho’s brutal violence hadn’t been the end of it. The real end was somewhere he couldn’t see—invisible, untouchable, yet closing in on him from every direction. It was the public opinion.
└ I know who this bastard is, and this is a hundred percent real. He’s insane.
└ Damn, I’ve been waiting for this to blow up forever.
└ Another exposé just dropped. Added the link. #NONAME...
“Hey! Is all of this true?!”
Fuck!
If this became an accepted fact, he was done for good.
The inspector demanded to know. “Hey, answer me! Am I getting dragged down with you too?!”
Mo-Ho had to explain and clear this up somehow, “I-it's a retaliatory rumor. Lee Eun-Ho, that bastard spread it!”
“Who’s going to believe that now, you moron?!”
The moment two strands of despair grabbed onto each other, the holding cell door opened. Apparently, it could still get worse.
“G-Guk! Is the interrogation over? It went well, right?” the inspector asked.
“The division chief is looking for you,” said Guk matter-of-factly.
“Huh? You mean this bastard?”
“No, both of you.”
***
“Division Chief, this is all a misunderstanding!” Mo-Ho seemed genuinely aggrieved. It was as if someone had held a knife at his throat, forcing him to act pitiful, as though his life depended on it. “You saw it, didn’t you? His performance numbers went up even though he didn’t sell a single piece of content in that one second!”
Performance going up without selling anything? Oh...
Eun-Ho recalled the reward he had received for successfully clearing the virgin ghost’s sub-trial.
[The Prepared Bride falls deeply for the partner’s charm!]
[Your relationship status has been updated to Trust.]
[The Prepared Bride offers a token of affection to one she trusts.]
[A special reward has been granted!]
It was the Ghost-Weep Liquor. Besides, as thanks for the painting he had drawn himself, she had even added performance points as a gift. That part, Eun-Ho could explain.
“That was my gift,” said the virgin ghost.
Although, there was no need for him to step in because the party involved had spoken herself.
“W-what?! What was that voice just now?”
Mo-Ho and the inspector whipped their heads around, faces drained pale. They couldn’t see her. Well, that was precisely why they had made such a stupid mistake.
“In one shot, the person was far away, and in the next, they were suddenly right next to him. It was a mess.”
“What nonsense are you spouting?! I clearly told him to record it one-on-one!”
During the interview, they hadn’t even realized there was a woman in burial clothes standing behind the elder, and had freely cut and rearranged the sequence.
Pzzz—
The ceiling lights flickered. Briefly, the room was drowned by midnight-like darkness, before dim light slowly returned.
The two idiots kept looking around in confusion.
“What the...”
“Why did the lights just flicker?!”
Meanwhile, the division chief’s face had already gone deathly pale as he grasped the situation. “Shh! Shut up!”
Sss—
Then, a cold wind swept in from one side of the spacious office. A chilling presence crawled up their arms, raising goosebumps. From the corner, a woman in white burial robes slowly emerged.
“Hieeek!”
“I-i-it’s a g-g-ghost!”
“W-what!”
[Prepared Bride]
[Skill]
Ghost Aura Release(Lv. 99)
Specter Howl(Lv. 99)
Levitation (Lv. 99)
Curse(Lv. 99)
Frostfall(Lv. 99)
Since all of her skill was level ninety-nine, Eun-Ho had known she wouldn’t be an easy opponent.
Still, I didn’t think she’d be this terrifying.
“It was an additional fee paid on top of the content purchase,” said the virgin ghost curtly.
She was concise, yet with every syllable, a chilling wave of ghostly energy poured out and spread across the room. The temperature also plummeted in an instant.
“T-that’s what’s wrong with it!”
“Shh! Just shut up!”
Mo-Ho kept rambling even as he trembled violently, “Why would you give such a huge amount to some rookie still in OJT—hieeek!”
It seemed the teeth he had forcibly shoved back in had replaced his sense of self-preservation. To him, there probably hadn’t been another option. He was sinking into a depth he had never experienced before, below rock bottom.
“VIP purchase prices are contract-based. You of all people should know that the price varies by client, shouldn’t you?” asked the virgin ghost.
“T-that’s!”
Even stubbornness had to read the room.
This is scary even for me, Eun-Ho thought.
Thud—
Then, the woman moved closer. She did not even touch the floor to begin with.
“Mo-Ho. Mo-Ho. Mo-Ho,” she called his name. Her lips never parted, yet her voice rang out all the same.
“W-why why are you doing this to me? I was just—”
Thud—
She drew closer again. In the still air, her loosened hair fluttered, as if caught in an unseen wind. “You knew wealthy VIPs don’t read contract terms closely. I’m aware you took advantage of that by making the written terms different from what you said verbally.”
“W-well, I mean...” Mo-Ho stumbled backward. His face had gone corpse-white, as though all his vitality had already been drained from him. “P-please, don’t come any closer. Let’s sit down and talk—”
“Or do I need to talk about something else?”
“Hieeek!”
However, her advance was faster than his retreat.
Thud—
In the blink of an eye, she was right in front of him. “Should I also talk about how you sweet-talked naive people and leeched off them?”
“I-I-I...”
Her hair spilled over Mo-Ho’s face. “If not, shall we go to my house and talk about it there?”
“Hieeek!”
Man. He’s going to need a new pair of pants, Eun-Ho thought grimly.
***
After that, everything moved at breakneck speed. Revelations piled on top of revelations, chaining together akin to a runaway locomotive tearing down the autobahn.
“Mister! That division chief is completely finished!”
“He should be.”
“Damn. He really stuffed his pockets full, didn’t he?”
One corruption scandal after another spilled out, strung together like sausages. In the end, the division chief was formally brought before the disciplinary committee and officially stripped of his position. Naturally, the inspector—who had acted as his right-hand man—went down with him.
“Ugh, but I’m still pissed,” Yeo-Jin said, huffing nonstop. “Just a dismissal from office? Won’t they quietly reinstate him after some time passes?”
She clearly wasn’t satisfied.
“Nope.”
Under normal circumstances, it probably would have ended there. This time, though, it didn’t.
“It’s over,” Eun-Ho said.
“Over as in—”
“Deleted.”
That was the scale of a self-destructive mud fight within the Sales Department. Worse, an utterly embarrassing scandal erupting inside the Inspection Bureau, the very place that claimed fairness as its highest value.
With employees rising up in protest, the Inspection Bureau couldn’t hush it up or sweep it under the rug. To restore trust, they had no choice but to bring the hammer down.
“Oh my... I thought he’d be exiled to some restructured wasteland at best,” remarked Ji-Eun.
“It’s even scarier than that, Noonim!” said Jae-Hyuk.
“Eh, still, the division chief might actually be better off,” said Yeo-Jin.
“Ah, true,” said Eun-Ho.
Yeo-Jin had a point. Mo-Ho hadn’t just been stripped of his position, but also humiliated to the point of posthumous dissection.
“They said he even got inducted into the Hall of Fame, right?” asked Eun-Ho.
“Yeah.”
The anonymous confession video uploaded to expose the division chief’s corruption climbed all the way to the Hall of Fame. Then, in the end, it spawned a bizarre meme, Sales Pee Guy, and exploded uncontrollably.
[You have completed the hidden trial, Hall of Fame Induction.]
[One Point and one thousand Welfare Points have been granted as trial rewards.]
[Registered Content: 3 items]
└Does anyone wanna come see Sales Pee Guy?
└What’s that?
└Sales Department dude pissing himself LMAOOOO
“You edited that way too well, Noonim!” said Jae-Hyuk.
“I didn’t have a choice. We had to fight the Inspection Bureau on the public opinion front,” said Ji-Eun.
Thanks to that, Mo-Ho was being dragged through endless mockeries, thinly disguised as investigation.
As for Eun-Ho’s team, they held the number one spot on the internal search rankings for two straight days now.
└Was it the Labor-Management Cooperation Team that leaked all this?
“Are we still trending?”
“Seems like it.”
└What even is the Labor-Management Cooperation Team? Sounds fancy for no reason.
└I didn’t expect much, but they’re actually doing real work this time.
└If you report workplace issues, they actually resolve them, apparently.
└If that’s true, I’m convinced.
└There’s a shared mailbox. So can we just send reports there?
Most importantly, they no longer had to hunt down dissatisfied employees one by one. The complaints were flooding in on their own.
“The tips are pouring in!”
“Through the channels too! This is insane! I can’t even read them all!”
“This is huge. We’ll hit our target in no time!”
[Core Objectives(Total: 0%)]
1. Improving the work environment to boost performance(50%)
2. Establishing a labor-management council for smoother communication(30%)
3. Collecting VoE to improve employee satisfaction(20%)
In other words, objective number three was going to complete itself while they sat still.
“Accept every request that comes in.”
“What? All of them?!”
“Yes. But have all of them sign.”
Eun-Ho took it one step further.
-Sub-trials:
1. Obtain 100 signatures(Complete)
2. Obtain 1,000 signatures(Incomplete)
3. Obtain 10,000 signatures(Incomplete)
...
He planned to build up performance, clear the team objectives, and even knock out trials along the way, clean and simple.
“Alright! Everyone, let’s get to work! Move it!”