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Chapter 05
For a moment, he felt overwhelmed, but now that he had made up his mind, there was no turning back.
‘First, let’s wash up. I need to get myself together.’
He took off his glasses and splashed cold water on his face.
When he looked up, the mirror reflected a face that had become noticeably gaunt in just a few hours, along with bloodshot teal eyes. Strikingly clear, too.
In truth, his eyesight wasn’t bad at all.
‘If anything, it’s pretty good.’
Even so, he always wore glasses. It had become a kind of habit.
First, because he had entered society at a young age and didn’t want people looking down on him.
Second, because debt collectors had chased him around so much that hiding his face became second nature.
And third…
“Your eyes…”
Because of something his father once said.
His father’s voice brushed past his ears, but there was no time to get sentimental.
He slapped his cheeks lightly, put his glasses back on, and left the restroom.
‘An annoying employee. An incompetent employee, huh.’
Creak, creak.
There was a document storage room along the hallway connecting the restroom and the office. The floor in front of it seemed old, because it squeaked every time he stepped on it.
Aden probably hates loud noises. Maybe I should stomp down this hallway on purpose?
As he thought that, an irritated voice rang out.
“Why do you keep wandering around?”
“Ah, sorry about that.”
“Tch.”
The owner of the voice was Jeremy.
‘Wait a second.’
As he turned back toward his desk after being scolded, a thought suddenly occurred to him.
‘Does it really have to be Aden? Wouldn’t it work if the other employees hated me instead?’
In other words, he just had to become the “that guy” in “I seriously can’t work with that guy anymore!”
After cautiously observing the atmosphere, he headed over to Jeremy’s desk to test the idea.
“Um, Mr. Jeremy.”
“What now? Talk from there.”
As his voice got closer, Jeremy abruptly straightened up in his seat, seemingly trying to block the desk from view.
“Is there something I should start with? Any handover notes or—”
“What? Handover? You’re supposed to learn that stuff by reading the room!”
“Then… is there anything I can help you with?”
“You’re just a trainee, what could you possibly help with? Stop bothering me and, if you’re bored, go dust the cabinets or something!”
Oh.
Unexpectedly, there was already a perfect example of a hopeless employee nearby.
People who are bad at their jobs often pull that “read the room” nonsense while bullying juniors. Jeremy was exactly that type.
And his personality sucked too?
If this were really his senior coworker, he’d be sighing in despair, but not right now. Internally, he was thrilled.
‘Perfect. I’ll go with the concept of an unbearably clueless newbie who keeps being a nuisance!’
Ahem.
He cleared his throat and deliberately asked in a dull, empty-headed tone,
“Then after I finish dusting, what should I do?”
“Do I have to explain every little thing to you? Read the documents in the cabinet! Though even if you read them, you probably won’t understand a thing.”
“Yesss, sir.”
“And don’t talk to me again until you’ve read everything!”
“Understooood.”
“Seriously, why did the boss stick something like this on me as a trainee…?”
Jeremy was already grumbling. This might actually work.
Suppressing a grin, he picked up a duster and rag and headed toward the cabinets.
‘Still, isn’t Jeremy technically my mentor? Didn’t anyone tell him I worked at a trading company before?’
Even if the field was different, he had worked for seven years. To assume he wouldn’t understand anything was ridiculous.
And why had Jeremy hidden his desk earlier?
Well, it made sense if he didn’t want a trainee casually seeing confidential company documents.
‘Luther said earlier that Jeremy had only been working here for about six months too.’
Aden’s personality might have been awful, but surprisingly, most of La Mar’s employees stayed loyal to him until the very end.
Probably less because of charisma and more because he paid them absurd amounts of money, but still.
Because of that, he remembered the names of most of the key employees who remained by Aden’s side a year later.
But “Jeremy” wasn’t among them, despite being an important in-house secretary.
‘Did Jeremy cause some kind of incident within that year…?’
Lost in thought, he snapped back to reality at the sound of vigorous scrubbing.
There wasn’t even much dust, so he could’ve just pretended to clean, but out of habit he had started thoroughly wiping down the cabinets.
Seriously. Habits really are scary.
“I finished cleaning the office cabinets. Should I wipe the desks too? Or maybe the cabinets in the document storage room?”
“What?! The storage room? Trainees aren’t even allowed in there! I told you to read the documents! And I also told you not to talk to me until you finished reading them!”
“Ah, right. Sorryyy.”
“Ugh!”
While also conveniently polishing Jeremy’s temper a bit, he opened the cabinet.
Inside was complete chaos.
‘Why is the classification system such a mess? Did they slap on index labels at random or what? …Ah, Jeremy must’ve organized this.’
Remembering Jeremy’s incredibly messy desk, he shrugged.
Jeremy being bad at his job wasn’t surprising, but it was surprising that Aden had let this slide.
Maybe the cabinets here didn’t contain major documents like the storage room did, so he’d left it entirely to Jeremy and ignored it?
‘I was curious how La Mar operated at this point in time.’
La Mar was a merchant company Aden had deliberately established to break into high society. In other words, it was for image laundering.
Since it would be troublesome if people found dirt on him before he gained control of noble society, the company was still operating just barely within legal boundaries at this stage.
He had been curious about how they made money during this period, and how much.
‘Should I take a look?’
And so, almost unconsciously, he began sorting through and reading the documents out of habit.
Then suddenly—
The hand turning the pages froze.
‘Wait a minute. This…’
Something was wrong.
No matter how he looked at it, really no matter how he looked at it—
‘…This is a paper company.’
If La Mar itself had secretly been a shell company scamming people, he would’ve just accepted it.
But that wasn’t it.
Shockingly, it was the exact opposite.
‘Someone is scamming La Mar?!’
Who in the world would dare make an enemy of Aden…?
For the first time in his life, he found himself curious about the sheer audacity of someone he didn’t even know.
‘This is insane. Whoever it is, they really committed to this.’
There wasn’t just one or two signs proving that the cargo handling company listed in the documents, Ronen Logistics Services, was a shell company.
First—
The cargo unloading schedule written in the documents.
‘Schedules can change depending on port conditions, and voyages can be delayed or moved up because of sudden weather changes. So how can the intervals be this perfectly consistent? That’s impossible.’
Second—the disposal costs.
Naturally, defects and missing items occur during cargo transport. But—
‘This isn’t agricultural produce, it’s timber. A loss rate approaching seven percent? What, were they having campfires on the ship? That number is absolutely impossible.’
Third—the labor costs.
‘Every single time the port was supposedly overcrowded, causing delays and requiring extra workers? Seriously? At least make an effort to vary the excuses!’
Shockingly, the amount embezzled this way had already reached 300 million gold just in the first half of the year alone.
And recently, the amounts being charged had gotten even larger. At first they must have been testing the waters, but after realizing La Mar hadn’t noticed, they clearly intended to bleed it dry.
When did this even start?
As he frantically flipped through the papers, he failed to notice someone approaching.
“Hey, trainee.”
“Yesss?”
The sudden voice nearly made him scream, but he barely managed to keep himself composed.
Looking up, he saw Jeremy staring down at him with an expression that was half suspicious, half annoyed.
“I’m going to grab lunch, so don’t slack off while I’m gone.”
Not “I’m going to eat, come along if you want,” but “don’t slack off.”
He hadn’t intended to eat with him anyway, but being harassed even during lunch break still irritated him.
Fortunately, he had the perfect way to get under Jeremy’s skin.
“Got it. Oh, by the way, while I’m ‘walking around,’ would it be okay if I looked around the office a bit? There are still a lot of areas I haven’t seen yet.”
You hate seeing me wander around, don’t you?
