chapter4:< Destiny Cannot Be Avoided (1) >
The next day, when Yeonghun arrived at the office, the first person he greeted was the female accounting clerk, who welcomed him by smacking her gum like she owned the place.
“Hello. I’m Choi Yeong-hun, and I’ll be starting work today...”
“I know. You’ll be learning from that person over there.”
The accounting clerk glanced behind Yeonghun and pointed.
When Yeonghun turned around, he saw a man with a somewhat displeased expression.
He looked to be around Yeonghun’s age, and though he was sitting, his long legs were immediately noticeable.
With his long face and sharp eyes, he seemed so perfectly suited for this job that one might think he was born for debt collection.
“Hello. I’m Choi Yeong-hun, the new employee starting today.”
“Not a new employee, but a kind of... what was it? An intern? Something like that, right?”
He immediately started using informal speech.
“Yes. I’ll be working for a fixed salary for three months...”
“Whatever. How you get paid is none of my business. Anyway, nice to meet you. I’m Yang Tae-pyeong.”
He abruptly stuck out his hand, and Yeonghun shook it.
“Yes. I look forward to working with you.”
“Looks like you’re a year younger than me. Mind if I drop the formalities?”
“Of course. I’m more comfortable with that, too.”
Strictly speaking, it wasn’t so much comfortable as it was novel.
At the temple, aside from the Head Monk, no one had ever used informal speech with him.
When he was a child monk, people would half-jokingly say, ‘Monk, are you going to the prayer service?’ or ‘Monk, have you eaten?’ and once he entered his teens, no one spoke to him informally at all.
He had never considered following the Monk to serve the Buddha, and the Head Monk hadn't wanted that either. So, aside from a few times he had followed the Monk out of curiosity as a child, he had rarely participated in prayer services, yet everyone refrained from using informal speech with him.
A few Buddhists had suspected he might be the Head Monk’s child from a mistake(?) made in the outside world, but in any case, people had treated him as the Monk’s equal.
So, this situation, where someone was so bluntly using informal speech with him, felt amusing.
“Follow me for now. We’ll talk on the way. Assistant Manager Yun, I’m heading to Ilsan today, then Pocheon.”
“So you’re saying you won’t be back?”
At the reply from Assistant Manager Yun, the accounting clerk, Yang Tae-pyeong grinned.
“If I finish early, I’ll come back early.”
Instead of answering, the clerk sighed and shook her head.
Yang Tae-pyeong began to talk as he led Yeonghun out of the building.
“When people hear my name, they usually think, ‘Ah, he must be a super laid-back guy.’ If you thought that, you’d be mistaken. It’s rare to find someone as diligent and meticulous as me. Do you drink coffee?”
“Huh? Yes. I do.”
“Right, it’s not like cigarettes; who doesn’t drink coffee these days? By the way, do you smoke?”
“I don’t smoke.”
“You look the type. Just looking at you, I can tell you’ve never had a hard day in your life. Is your family rich?”
“No, they’re not.”
Yang Tae-pyeong roughly pushed open the door to a large franchise coffee shop, Starbucks, and said.
“Don’t even think about lying to me. I know a thing or two about Face Reading, you see? Two iced Americanos, please. To go. Americano’s good, right? Or do you prefer something like a latte?”
“No, Americano is what coffee is all about.”
“You know what’s up. Anyway, clumsy lies won’t work on me. When you work here, all you hear day in and day out are lies. ‘It’ll be done tomorrow.’ ‘The day after.’ ‘I have no money.’ ‘I don’t even have enough to eat and die.’ It’s all~ lies. Because of that, now I can just look at someone and size them up. You’ve never really struggled, have you?”
As he spoke, Yang Tae-pyeong stared intently at Yeonghun’s face.
Yeonghun wanted to laugh inwardly but managed to control his expression and replied.
“It’s not a lie. I’m really not rich.”
“Then how did you get in through the President’s connections?”
“Someone I know just introduced me, and I happened to end up here. I originally lived down in Goseong, Gyeongnam, and this is my first time coming up to Seoul...”
Yang Tae-pyeong cut Yeonghun off.
“Goseong, Gyeongnam? The Goseong famous for dinosaurs?”
“Yes. It is famous for dinosaurs.”
“So you’re from the complete and total country...side.”
He was clearly about to say ‘country bumpkin’ but stopped himself.
“That’s right. It’s the countryside.”
“Then how come you don’t have an accent at all?”
Yeonghun was about to say it was because the Head Monk didn’t use a dialect, but he figured bringing up the Monk would make things even weirder, so he made something up.
“No one in my family used a dialect.”
“Hmm...”
He tilted his head, lost in his own thoughts.
He didn’t speak again until a short while later, when they had gotten their coffee and arrived at a public parking lot.
“The person we’re going to meet now is an ajumma who borrowed ten million won early last year and hasn’t paid it back. She’s repaid 1.2 million of the principal, so the principal we need to collect is 8.8 million won.”
“How much interest has she paid?”
“Why do you need to know that?”
“Pardon?”
“If she’s paid over ten million in interest, are you going to call it even?”
He squeezed himself into a Matiz parked in a corner of the lot, gestured for Yeonghun to get in the passenger seat, and continued.
“There’s only one thing we need to think about: getting the principal back. If we can get the interest too, that’s a bonus. If it’s possible, that is.”
“I see.”
“The people we meet are the shameless types who refuse to pay back the money while the lender is desperate. You need to think carefully about who’s good and who’s evil. You can’t think of us as some loan sharks from the year 1988. There are always newbies like that, the ones who mistake us for the root of all evil. You’re not one of them, are you?”
“No, I’m not.”
“That’s what they all say. Here’s the contract, take a good look at it on the way.”
With that, Yang Tae-pyeong started the car towards Ilsan, and Yeonghun began to carefully examine the contract.
Having never borrowed money from a financial institution or anyone else, Yeonghun found such a contract quite interesting.
“Seoil Savings Bank? I think I’ve seen that on TV.”
“You have. They lend a lot to ordinary people. The approval amounts are relatively high compared to income, so a lot of people borrow from there. A good number of the people we deal with are Seoil Savings Bank customers.”
“Ah...”
“If she says she has no money again this time, we’re going to get a compulsory execution order from the court. But trying to use the power of the law on every single debtor costs money too. And if we’re not the only creditor, then all the creditors have to fight over what little money there is, which is another headache. So what’s the best option?”
“To have them pay back the money on good terms?”
“Exactly. That’s our job. The collection team goes and encourages repayment as much as possible, and if that doesn’t work, we take legal action. But what do you think would happen if we just kept waiting and being nice? The other creditors would swarm in and pick the bones clean, right?”
“That makes sense.”
“Information is key. You have to be quick-witted, too. In the end, it’s this, this right here.”
Yang Tae-pyeong raised his index finger, pointed to his head, and emphasized.
“This has to be sharp. If you don’t keep your edge, you can’t do this job. Got it?”
“Yes.”
“Sigh~ I don’t know if I should be teaching someone who might not even be here for long so passionately.”
It was a remark meant to openly embarrass the listener, but he paid no mind to Yeonghun at all.
Yeonghun, for his part, was thinking of this as just an experience, so Yang Tae-pyeong’s words actually made him feel more at ease.
After about an hour’s drive, they arrived in a village in an area of fields and paddies just outside of Ilsan.
The house looked quite old, and its current state alone made it hard to believe the owner had any money.
Yang Tae-pyeong knocked threateningly on the door, bang, bang, bang.
He probably wanted to intimidate the owner.
Should this be considered a kind of collection skill?
“Who is it?”
A woman’s weak voice came from inside.
“We’re from Myeongil Financial. Please open the door.”
“Okay...”
There was a slight hesitation, but the door opened right away.
She was younger than expected, probably in her mid-thirties, but her face was sallow without a trace of makeup, and her eyes were lifeless.
It was the typical face of someone living on simply because they couldn’t die, without a shred of hope.
What was a little surprising was that, had she been a bit younger with life in her eyes, she would likely have been considered quite a beauty by those around her.
Yang Tae-pyeong walked past the woman without a moment’s hesitation and plopped down on the wooden floor of the main room.
“Please, have a seat. You know why we’re here, right?”
“Yes... If you could just give me a little more time...”
“That’s difficult. Very difficult. We’ve already given you a lot of time. You kept saying next month, then next month again... The month before last, you were incommunicado for nearly a month, and then you promised you’d pay this month for sure, but you broke that promise too. We can’t give you any more time. You need to repay at least a portion of the principal and interest today.”
“I want to, but I don’t have any money to give you.”
“If you keep this up, we can’t wait for you any longer. You know that if we file for compulsory execution, this last house of yours will be taken over, right?”
“Please, not this house. If we lose this, my child and I have nowhere to go.”
Yang Tae-pyeong looked at the pleading woman with a pathetic expression.
It seemed that even to him, there was no conceivable way she could come up with the money.
“Hoo... I guess there’s no choice. I’ll have to report to the company that repayment is difficult.”
“Please, just wait one more month. The baby’s father said he’ll be able to give you some money next month.”
“It’s out of my hands now. There’s nothing I can do. We’ll be going.”
“Please don’t... Just give me one more chance.”
As Yang Tae-pyeong stood up with a frosty demeanor, the woman grabbed the hand of Yeonghun, who had been standing quietly beside him, and begged.
But there was nothing Yeonghun could do for her.
He couldn’t offer to pay it back for her, so he had no choice but to leave.
But just then, another hand grabbed Yeonghun’s arm.
“Please help us.”
Had she just started elementary school?
A small girl was crying along with her mother.
“Hey! What are you doing over there?”
Yang Tae-pyeong shouted at Yeonghun, who had suddenly frozen, his feet seemingly glued to the ground.
But even after hearing Yang Tae-pyeong’s yell, Yeonghun just kept staring intently at the little girl, as if possessed by a fox.
< The Four Pillars of Destiny are Inescapable (1) > End
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