Episode 32. Awards Ceremony (1)
Today as well, Kang Dae-oh finished his commute at the usual time.
The landline phone installed on his desk rang busily.
Kang Dae-oh, who picked up the phone, soon nodded briefly and said.
“Yes. Please bring them this way.”
As soon as the call ended, someone knocked on the CEO’s office door.
At the same time, a face he hadn’t seen in a long time greeted Kang Dae-oh first.
“Hello, CEO!”
The woman with a bright expression faced Kang Dae-oh.
Yang Hayoung’s face was filled with excitement.
Kang Dae-oh invited her to sit on the sofa and asked.
“Did you finish the company tour well?”
“Yes! But I was a bit surprised.”
What part had surprised her.
Kang Dae-oh seemed to know what it was about, even though he hadn’t heard it directly.
“The office is smaller than you expected, right?”
“Well… Yes. That’s right.”
Yang Hayoung initially thought about making excuses and saying no, but knowing well that Kang Dae-oh wasn’t the type to get upset about such things, she soon decided to speak honestly.
As she expected, Kang Dae-oh instead added that he was grateful for her honest answer.
Yang Hayoung continued speaking.
“When you say Amare, I expected a larger scale than this. And looking at it, the number of employees isn’t small either.”
As this would be the company she would work for in the future, Yang Hayoung judged that it would be better to honestly state what she felt.
So she also had the thought of suggesting to Kang Dae-oh that it would be better to move the office to a larger place.
However, there was no need for that.
Because.
“Actually, we decided to move next month. To a place three times larger than now.”
“Ah, so you were already planning it.”
“Yes. I’ve found a place located about two subway stops from here. Coincidentally, I have a real estate expert around me. When I told them I needed properties with certain conditions, they immediately informed me.”
The real estate expert Kang Dae-oh mentioned.
Kang Yeyoung said she already had a place in mind and immediately recommended a suitable location for her father’s company.
Perhaps because she knew her father’s taste well, Kang Dae-oh had a hunch as soon as he saw the building.
He thought, ‘This is it!’
Thanks to that, the move could be swiftly pushed forward.
“Hayoung-ssi will probably start working after the move. At that time, the marketing department will also be reorganized.”
“I’ll have to work hard.”
“It’s enough if you just work as hard as you did at Fevertime. Oh, right. Did you receive any separate contact from them?”
“I did, but they were all just messages congratulating me on successfully escaping.”
As time went on, the decline in Fevertime’s sales was growing larger.
The number of stores was also gradually decreasing.
Even up until the early 2000s, Fevertime had once been named the company with the most stores in South Korea.
Nowadays, it was showing a much lesser performance compared to its past reputation.
Because of this, executives and employees working at Fevertime were looking for any opportunity to escape the sinking ship.
Yang Hayoung also belonged to this case.
But then, coincidentally, a lifeboat named Amare appeared. From her perspective, there was no reason not to board it.
Kang Dae-oh curled the corners of his mouth slightly and said this to her.
“If there are people you worked well with at your previous workplace, please recommend them to me or Director Shin anytime. As you know well, Hayoung-ssi, we are always short-staffed.”
Yang Hayoung was greatly delighted, as if she had been waiting for Kang Dae-oh to say such a thing.
“Actually, there were quite a few people who asked me if there was any vacant position. I’ll contact them right away today.”
“That’s good.”
As the company office was moving to a larger place, he wanted to supplement it with suitable personnel.
However, he had no intention of bringing just anyone.
As Amare was willing to pay high salaries, it would be perfect if they were suitable talents.
If they were talents Yang Hayoung had seen while working with her for several years, Kang Dae-oh also was willing to welcome them with open arms.
Thus, Kang Dae-oh, who finished the short meeting with Yang Hayoung, decided to hurry for his next appointment.
“I have an appointment. I’ll be leaving first.”
“Is it a company meeting?”
“No.”
From Kang Dae-oh’s mouth, a much more important appointment than work was revealed.
“I promised to go with Yebin to get her school uniform fitted.”
Nothing was as important as appointments with his daughters.
Following his eldest daughter, Kang Yera, Kang Yebin would also become a middle school student next year.
Originally, they had planned to get her uniform fitted early next year, but.
“Was next week the crank-in?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
After the success of the movie ‘Typhoon’, Kang Yebin received casting offers from numerous film production companies.
Her acting skills had already been sufficiently proven.
As a result, they were all fiercely vying to cast Kang Yebin.
In this atmosphere, Kang Yebin steadfastly chose the movie she had decided to appear in from the beginning.
Kang Yebin already had data on which movies could be commercially successful. Thanks to that, it didn’t take long to make a decision.
Since the filming schedule was starting next week, today, she, with her father and mother, decided to custom-make the school uniform she would wear for three years.
Kang Dae-oh took his wife and second daughter and headed to the place where the school uniform company was located.
It was the same store where Kang Yera had gotten her uniform fitted in the past.
As Kang Dae-oh and his family opened the store door and entered, the store owner, who had received prior contact and was waiting, greeted them enthusiastically.
“Actually, I was waiting for you to arrive. And you’ve arrived just in time! Oh my goodness! Yebin is even prettier than she looks on TV! She takes after her mother perfectly.”
Long legs, small head. She boasted perfect proportions and beauty to the extent that she could be called the epitome of beauty.
At the clothing store owner’s praise, Min Seung-yeon looked more embarrassed than Kang Yebin.
Before it got more embarrassing, Min Seung-yeon quickly brought up the topic of the uniform her second daughter would wear to the store owner.
“How long will it take to be completed?”
“It’ll be similar to Yera’s time. About a month? By the way, your younger sister has a better size than her older sister. Yera might get jealous if she finds out, don’t you think?”
Regarding this, Kang Dae-oh recalled an anecdote related to it.
As they were family and sisters, after all, there were often times when they revealed even each other’s embarrassing parts.
Of course, Kang Dae-oh, even though they were family, tried to be as cautious as possible since their genders were different, but.
Among the daughters, if they were really busy, they would occasionally go into the bathroom together to shower.
That day also fell into exactly this category.
Although there were two bathrooms, Kang Yeyoung was using one.
Ultimately, with the one remaining bathroom, they had to solve Kang Yera and Kang Yebin’s showering problem.
Kang Yera, who finished showering first and came out, made a face full of dissatisfaction.
Then, Min Seung-yeon, just in case, asked this.
If they had fought while showering with her younger sister.
However, the answer that came back comfortably exceeded Min Seung-yeon’s imagination.
“Yebin’s chest is bigger than mine!”
Her voice was so loud that it could be heard by Kang Dae-oh, who was sitting far away.
Thanks to that, Kang Dae-oh couldn’t help but spit out a little of the coffee he was drinking.
Kang Yera was expressing strong dissatisfaction, saying, ‘Shouldn’t the older sister naturally have a better figure than the younger sister?’ but.
Reality was not so easy (?).
‘At that time, it was really… awkward.’
As a father, he couldn’t get a grasp of how he should resolve such troubles between his daughters.
Ultimately, Min Seung-yeon stepped in and somehow mediated.
‘If my wife hadn’t been there then… Ugh. It’s terrible just imagining it.’
Perhaps the greatest crisis might have arrived in Kang Dae-oh’s life.
Meanwhile. Kang Yebin, perhaps because she was the type to feel more embarrassment than pride about her body, did not show much reaction to the store owner’s words.
She only wanted to quickly get her measurements taken and go home.
Before that, the store owner pointed to a finished ready-to-wear uniform and asked Kang Yebin.
“Would you like to try this on first? It’s more specific and accurate to say what parts you’d like emphasized and altered after trying it on yourself, rather than just looking at it and telling me.”
“Yes, that would be good.”
Kang Yebin seemed to be of the same mind, so she took the girls’ uniform the owner handed her and headed to the fitting room.
A moment later.
As the fitting room curtain drew open, Kang Dae-oh’s eyes widened.
It was because he was seeing Kang Yebin in a school uniform for the very first time in his life.
In addition to that.
“It suits you well.”
Perhaps because Kang Yebin had such a clear-cut personality, she looked exceptionally good in uniform-like clothing, such as school uniforms.
The feeling was quite different from when he saw Kang Yera’s first school uniform attire.
When the thought, ‘So their images can be this different, even though they’re sisters?’ came to him, Kang Dae-oh felt a very strange sensation.
Min Seung-yeon also seemed to have felt the same way as Kang Dae-oh, so to capture her second daughter’s uniform attire in photos, she diligently pressed her smartphone’s shutter button.
Kang Yebin stood in front of the full-length mirror and turned her body this way and that.
“I’d like the waistline on the side here to be taken in a bit more.”
“What about the skirt length? Kids these days like to wear them shortened.”
“I don’t really want it that short… And if it’s altered too much, it goes against school rules.”
Kang Yebin, unlike Kang Yera, showed a tendency to follow set regulations and rules as much as possible.
It was the same when custom-making her school uniform.
She wanted to emphasize a student-like appearance as much as possible, even if it was plain.
In Kang Yera’s case, there were many trivial requests.
However, Kang Yebin, without any such things, had already expressed her wish to make the uniform strictly according to the rules, so compared to Kang Yera’s time, they could finish the schedule relatively quickly.
Since they were already out, perhaps feeling it would be a shame to just go home, Min Seung-yeon made this suggestion to Kang Dae-oh and Kang Yebin.
“Shall we eat dinner before going home? Anyway, Yera and Yeyoung today, they’re coming home late because of filming, right?”
“Hmm, shall we?”
Perhaps because it was a family dinner out after a long time, Kang Dae-oh was all for it.
Kang Yebin also seemed to have wanted to eat out with her mom and dad after a long time, and immediately accepted her mother’s suggestion.
The three of them thus got in side by side in Kang Dae-oh’s car, parked nearby.
That’s when it happened.
Weee-ing!
Kang Dae-oh’s smartphone rang.
“Just a moment.”
Before starting the engine, Kang Dae-oh answered the call first.
Not long after, Kang Dae-oh doubted his ears.
“Me? Yes… I understand for now.”
As he hung up the phone, Min Seung-yeon asked Kang Dae-oh what the call was about.
Kang Dae-oh, showing a slightly flustered expression, replied like this.
“They asked if I could attend the year-end awards ceremony.”
