“If anything happens, just apologize right away. Don’t look them in the face. Keep that in mind.”
“Yes. I won’t look.”
“Looking makes it worse. Director Hwang, especially — he hit Yeongsu once before. He did pay damages, but Yeongsu had a rough few months after that.”
“Ah….”
Apparently his reputation was worse than expected, because Sunggil went on to rattle off a list of Director Hwang’s offenses. He had OCD, so everything had to be exactly in its place, and his mysophobia was so severe he couldn’t tolerate a single speck of dust in his office. On top of that, she warned Munyeong that if he was caught lingering around after the director arrived, it would grate on his nerves — and if Hwang was in one of his extremely irritable or foul moods, Munyeong could easily become a target for his temper.
Munyeong took everything Sunggil told him and wrote it down densely in the small notebook he kept tucked against his chest. In that notebook he’d recorded all the characteristics of the offices he’d been assigned to over time, as well as requests from the occasional employee he’d crossed paths with, so he wouldn’t forget anything. Things like asking him to move the trash can to a different spot, or to be especially careful when disposing of papers in the shredder, and so on. Even if it was something he already knew or a minor request, he tended to write it down anyway. His memory wasn’t the sharpest, so he always had to go over things dozens more times than anyone else.
“Anyway, good luck. I’ll see you at lunch.”
Sunggil waved at him as she got off first. Munyeong bowed and stood in silence for a little over three minutes, staring down the dim, seemingly endless corridor. Then he put on his mask, pulled on his latex gloves on both hands, and flicked on the lights in his practiced way to signal the start of another day.
The floors housing the executive offices were different from the ground up. The flooring in the general offices was typically carpet — tile-type materials that would amplify the sound of countless employees coming and going weren’t used in regular offices. Here, it was marble. Any shoe that came in trailing traces from outside would leave prints right there on the floor. He’d have to be careful when mopping, Munyeong thought, as he started with the office of the most notoriously difficult person — Director Hwang. It was the office at the very far end, so it was a natural starting point.
Despite what he’d heard about the mysophobia, Director Hwang’s office was filthy. The sleek interior was thoroughly contradicted by piles of trash and documents that were clearly used without any regard for cleanliness. The ventilation was poor enough that even with a diffuser, a musty, stale smell had settled into every corner. Without any change in expression, Munyeong opened the glass wall windows first and began neatly gathering the documents scattered across the floor. The papers on the desk were not to be touched, but moving ones off the floor and stacking them was fine. It had to be, or there’d be no way to clean.
After clearing the trash and papers from the floor, Munyeong emptied the overflowing waste bin. As he shook the garbage into a standard trash bag, a few rubber tubes filled with some kind of liquid tumbled out and hit the floor. He picked one up, recognized what it was, faltered for just a moment — then looked away and dropped it into the bag without comment.
Unless he was seeing things, those were tied-off condoms filled with semen. Munyeong wasn’t exactly worldly when it came to sex, but he wasn’t naive either. He’d worked cleaning jobs at lodging facilities before, and at a high-end hostess bar. He’d seen this kind of thing plenty of times back then, so it wasn’t enough to truly shock him. Though the location where he’d found them was, admittedly, a little surprising….
Reminding himself he’d need to be even more careful than he’d initially thought, Munyeong threw himself into the work in earnest. He checked and double-checked the special instructions the section chief had handed him, and by the time he finished, the sun was already rising. Winter sun rose late, which meant he’d run a bit longer than usual. Unavoidable, since this wasn’t familiar territory.
Probably because of the tension, a cold sweat was trickling down the back of his neck. Between the chief’s warnings and Sunggil’s worry, he’d been wound up tighter than he realized.
Next was the office of the incoming senior managing director. Everything had been cleared out, leaving it messy in its own way. He was surveying the space according to his usual routine — taking stock of what needed to be done first — when something dark caught his eye, rising up from the fabric sofa. Startled, Munyeong hurried to turn on the lights.
There, sprawled across the sofa in what appeared to be a careless sleep, was a man in a suit.
Is that actually a person…? Munyeong crept closer to check. It was definitely a person. The man was sleeping with one arm draped over his eyes, and while his face wasn’t clearly visible, Munyeong could tell he was young. His first instinct was that he might be an outsider, and he nearly moved to wake him — but he knew there was no way any outsider could simply walk into this floor. Even he needed a separate access card to come up here. Not the standard card used for regular offices, either — there was a passcode required as well. Even leaking information about the access system was a violation of his confidentiality agreement, punishable by up to ten years in prison or a fine of up to thirty million won.
Deciding the man was unlikely to be an outsider, Munyeong carefully turned the light back off and stepped out of the office. He couldn’t clean loudly with someone sleeping in there. He started with the lobby, which he’d planned to leave for last, then worked through the remaining directors’ offices before making his way through the secretarial offices, tidying each in turn. Perhaps because they belonged to the executives’ secretaries, everything was comparatively clean and far more organized. You could tell just from looking at the bookshelves — the document binders, arranged by year, were spotless to an almost unsettling degree. Munyeong pulled each one out, wiped away the accumulated dust, and returned them exactly as they’d been. He moved to the kitchenette, scrubbing the sink until not a trace of water stain remained, wiping down the coffee-stained floor, and cleaning the inside of the refrigerator smeared with old food residue, piece by piece.
By the time he was done, the sun was high overhead, and the cleaning staff’s lunch break was only a few hours away. Only one place remained.
Munyeong slipped quietly inside and checked the sofa. The man was still asleep. But he couldn’t afford to stall any longer. On top of everything else, the office of the senior managing director arriving today couldn’t be left dirty. If word got out, he’d obviously be fired — and the section chief, as the person responsible, wouldn’t be able to dodge the fallout either.
He didn’t know who the sleeping man was, but it was clear he was no ordinary employee like himself. The watch on his wrist, the suit on his body, the dress shoes set aside — Munyeong had spent over half a year observing hundreds of salaried workers, and that was more than enough to know these were anything but ordinary. The watch was the same model the deputy general manager from one of his regular offices was always going on about whenever he caught Munyeong — the one he kept singing about wanting to buy someday.
After months of working here, he’d naturally come to exchange greetings with some of the employees. There were plenty who treated him like he was invisible, of course, but there were also many decent people like the deputy general manager who spoke to him warmly.
Couldn’t you just buy it? he’d asked, genuinely curious. The deputy general manager had looked at him with a pitying expression and asked quietly, Do you know how much this costs…? Munyeong had shaken his head, a little embarrassed. And when the answer came, his eyes had gone wide.
That’s three years of my salary. More than that, actually. And there are fewer than five of this model in all of Korea.
He didn’t know the deputy general manager’s exact salary, but he knew a deputy general manager at a major corporation earned several times what he did. Still — not just a month’s pay, but three times the annual salary of a major corporation’s deputy general manager. He couldn’t even begin to imagine it. The man in front of him had three years of the deputy general manager’s salary strapped to his wrist. The details might vary, but the flashy diamonds set in gold had lodged in his memory well enough to recognize it.
Whoever this was, he was clearly someone with the standing to come and go here as he pleased.
Having hovered in front of the man for about ten minutes, Munyeong finally made up his mind. He would wake him. Very, very carefully. Politely.
Munyeong crouched down and approached the man. Up close, the sharp smell of liquor hit him immediately. Realizing the man had been in this state because he was drunk, Munyeong reached out and took just the faintest hold of the man’s shirt — barely perceptible — and gave it a tiny shake.
“…Excuse me.”
His voice was barely above a whisper. Naturally, the man didn’t stir.
“Ex, excuse me…. Sir.”
Munyeong summoned his courage and gave the hem of the shirt one more shake. Just enough to leave no mark.
“I need to clean in here….”
At Munyeong’s murmuring, the man finally shifted. Munyeong startled and pulled back, but the man only stirred briefly before rolling completely over to face the other direction. Even so, Munyeong couldn’t very well grab the man’s body and shake him awake. Sunggil’s repeated warnings came back to him — don’t even look the executives in the face. He wasn’t even supposed to look at their faces, and he was going to physically touch one to rouse him from sleep? Absolutely out of the question.
“Sir….”
“……”
“…I don’t mean to disturb your sleep, but I need to finish cleaning within my time, so I’m afraid it may get a bit noisy without my intending it to — I wanted to ask for your understanding first… would that be all right?”
Munyeong bowed politely toward the man’s turned back. Wondering if he was still asleep, he tilted his head to sneak a look at the man’s face — and the man shifted again, waving a hand loosely in the air. Is that a yes? Munyeong asked again to make sure.
“When you waved your hand just now — did that mean it’s fine? Or did you mean for me to leave?”
“……”
The man said nothing, and waved his hand again, and then spoke — vaguely, and very slowly, in the voice of someone still deep in a drunken haze.
“…Do whatever… the f*ck… you want…”
It was unclear whether he was drunk or still half-asleep, but Munyeong’s face brightened at what counted as a positive response, and he wasted no time getting the vacuum going. The vacuum cleaner, one of the issued tools, boasted remarkable suction but in exchange produced quite a bit of noise. Feeling self-conscious, he stole a glance at the sleeping man — but even with all the racket, the man didn’t so much as twitch.
Impressive…. The complete absence of movement was mildly fascinating, but Munyeong quickly turned his attention away and picked up his pace. Time was running short.
**
He barely finished the cleaning within the time limit, and only then did Munyeong exhale in relief. Around that same moment, the sound of the secretaries arriving for work drifted in. Running a loud vacuum while employees were arriving would be a nuisance to everyone. Thank goodness, he thought, a relieved smile crossing his face.
Then a short command landed at his back.
“Make me some honey water.”
Munyeong, who had momentarily forgotten about the man entirely, spun around in shock. There he was — the man who had finally woken, one long leg propped up on the table, head tilted back with exhaustion written all over his face.
“What are you standing there for. I said make me some honey water.”
