BYB 3

Chapter 3

The tteokbokki came out. It was the exact tteokbokki whose trademark rights he had to get no matter what.

—If you go to Hanju City, there is an old beer pub called . The tteokbokki at that shop tastes incredible. Go and get the trademark rights. It’s a flavor worth betting Songhwa’s future on.

Up until now, Eunho had dutifully completed every job his father gave him. Thanks to that, Songhwa Food was creating a unique brand value in the meal-kit field that no one could match.

He signed trademark contracts one after another with famous restaurants nationwide—such as Sokcho’s raw fish soup and Chuncheon’s spicy stir-fried chicken—and released meal kits that became hits every time. All of that was thanks to Eunho’s efforts. His father probably couldn’t even imagine how hard it was to persuade those stubborn local shop owners.

Why was his father making him go out to the field again when he clearly said last time was the absolute final time?

—I don’t want to. I also want to participate in management like my older brother.

He resisted weakly, but what returned to him was a cold sneer. Unlike toward his older brother, his father was not generous at all to Eunho, who was born outside of marriage. Eunho knew very well that if he kept being stubborn, he might even lose the position he was currently holding.

Since I came here anyway, let’s taste it.

After holding out and refusing to go until the end, this was the last card Eunho brought out. Tasting the food in person to see if it was really delicious enough to get the trademark rights. When Eunho claimed he would follow his father’s will if the taste was convincing, Song Dongyoung, who thought about it for a long time, finally nodded his head.

—Fine. Try it, and if it’s not good, you don’t have to do it. Instead, evaluate it properly on your conscience. Don’t have prejudice.

Eunho focused on the tteokbokki. But in the corner of his view, the woman kept bouncing around. The small woman employee who talked about the Earth.

She was quite firm when arguing with him step by step, yet she smiled so pretty and well to other customers. The smile that remained like an afterimage bothered him quite a bit.

Was the money too little? Would she have done it if I called ten times the price? Should I try?

Eunho, swept up in a strange urge to poke and tease her unnecessarily, checked the woman out of the corner of his eye and suddenly ruined his expression. What am I doing when I came to work?

A woman who raises impulses is dangerous. Eunho turned his head firmly.

“Noona, I’ll push one more table next to this one!” “Okay!”

In between, the woman’s voice could be heard. A clear voice that resembled the color of her eyes. Every time, his concentration crumbled away. Eunho looked at the woman as if pulled by a magnet. When their eyes met, the woman glared at him.

Where does the confidence to treat a customer who wants to buy a lot badly come from?

Feeling an incomprehensible urge, he played a little joke, and seeing her jump up and fight back was quite fun. Calling it double was barely a million won, so why was she taking it so seriously?

“Noona, one more tteokbokki!” “Order after you finish eating! Stop leaving food behind.”

Watching the woman who snatched the menu from a customer on purpose and turned her back, a chuckle leaked out again. Worrying about the Earth when she works in an old pub—he thought taking care of her own front yard came first.

<Please Earth food. hurting♥ is leftover reduce ♥The>

Eunho looked at the cute handwriting posted all over the shop as if it was a little absurd, and took a sip of beer. The thought crossed his mind that the handwriting was also small and cute, just like its owner.

Suddenly thinking of his own situation, a bitter smile came out. Who was judging whose life right now? The situation where he had to come all the way down to Hanju City, sit in an old pub, and judge the taste of tteokbokki was extremely sad.

Song Eunho, worry about your own life.

“Please try it first, Executive Director.”

Secretary Jeon, who was reading Eunho’s mood, spoke as he pushed the side dish forward.

Tteokbokki. Right, he came to eat this.

What could be so special about it? A pub like this obviously would have used store-bought sauce.

Eunho didn’t believe Minhyuk’s explanation. Not adding artificial flavorings, using only natural ingredients, and so on—it was because he had experienced countless times that most of those explanations were lies.

With an unenthusiastic mind, he picked up his chopsticks and put a piece of wheat rice cake into his mouth.

Even without his father’s advice, he planned to evaluate it fairly. Eunho was a person who clearly separated public and private matters. If this tteokbokki was a menu item that would help Songhwa, he planned to endure sacrificing himself one more time. Because Songhwa Food was his future.

Eunho’s lifelong dream was to produce results somehow, beat his older brother, and become the successor.

He tasted the tteokbokki with a careful attitude. While doing so, he searched inside the plate to check what ingredients went into it. Compared to the price in the ten-thousand-won range, the amount was large and generous. First of all, the cost-effectiveness passed.

“Secretary Jeon, try it.” “Ah, yes.”

While watching Secretary Jeon scoop tteokbokki into a small plate and eat it, Eunho chewed the rice cake slowly. Maybe because they made the broth with a seafood base, the unique savory flavor was felt softly. It couldn’t be called the flavor of a standardized store-bought tteokbokki.

“It seems like they made it directly?”

Secretary Jeon’s thought was the same as Eunho’s.

This time, Eunho took a piece of fish cake onto his small plate and disassembled it. Then, the star-shaped carrot inside ‘Songhwa Delicious Fish Cake’—Songhwa Food’s signature fish cake—revealed itself. Secretary Jeon saw that and clapped his hands once.

“It’s ours!” “They made the sauce directly, too. And they used pretty good ingredients.”

He expected a visual of a few frozen seafood pieces inside a store-bought sauce dumped with capsaicin, but it was surprising in many ways. It was a moment that made his steps down here out of petty rebellion look meaningless.

Just then, a group of male college students came in again. The woman walked over with bouncy steps and took their order. Her squirrel-like steps strangely picked at his nerves.

Why do I remember that woman?

He thought of her for a few days, but it was only for a short moment, and he had lived completely forgetting about the woman after that. But the moment they met again, that day came back clearly as if it were yesterday’s work.

I thought she would be an office worker, so why is she working in a place like this?

Thinking about that, Eunho let out a empty laugh because his thoughts were funny. Predicting someone else’s life was a foolish thing to do. She must have her own circumstances. Eunho tried hard to erase the questions that popped up.

“Ahem. Executive Director, it seems quite good to this extent, but…”

Secretary Jeon opened his mouth carefully. His whispering voice, fearing someone might hear, was quite serious.

“Are you really going to do it, though? The trademark rights for this tteokbokki.” “…” “The CEO is really too much, too. Undercover employment? How can a person like you serve in a beer pub? Doesn’t that make no sense? I think the CEO is thinking very wrong about this task.”

That was right. That was the exact reason why Eunho was holding out to death.

They said the owner of had been rejecting Songhwa Food’s offer for several years. Negotiation experts had failed continuously, too. So Song Dongyoung’s command was to get hired at that shop directly, get close, and learn the tteokbokki recipe. Saying this was the only final method.

—I will give you two months’ time. Get hired as an employee and learn the recipe completely. It’s even better if you get the trademark rights after two months, but even if you end up failing, if you have the recipe, it’s a winning fight.

This was completely on the level of a demotion.

Is his scheme to completely remove me, who was an eyesore all along, for the sake of my older brother’s smooth path?

Not just simply doing undercover employment, but the command to really live in a small studio apartment and live like a commoner came together with it. That was really crossing the line.

Just as Secretary Jeon said, the tteokbokki itself wasn’t bad. Although there were many soup tteokbokki and instant tteokbokki among meal kits on the market, there was almost no seafood tteokbokki. It felt like it could become Songhwa’s own unique competitiveness.

However, evaluating it calmly, it wasn’t so terribly delicious that his eyes popped open and made him clap naturally. It felt like if he made up his mind, he could find tteokbokki of this level as much as he wanted in downtown Seoul. It was an evaluation made objectively with his hand on his conscience.

If he returned to the main office and reported like that to his father, he wouldn’t have to go down to Hanju City and do this damn undercover employment. Once his thoughts reached there, he felt the lump that was stuck up to his throat slide all the way down.

However.

The face of the woman smiling prettily caught his eyes.

The strangely bothering feeling was uncomfortable, so his face frowned on its own. It was at the same time he thought that if he did the undercover employment, he would be able to see that woman every day for two months.

Her voice talking to the college students sounded like sweet music to his ears.

“Well. First of all, it is delicious.” “No matter how delicious it is, wouldn’t there be another shop similar to this? How about going to the CEO and just saying it wasn’t delicious? Because we need to dodge this weird command first.”

Looking at Secretary Jeon, who was full of complaints, Eunho smiled softly.

“Well.”

He knew that those words were the correct answer, but his mouth didn’t open easily.

He felt the scale of the evaluation, which should be calm, tilt a little bit, but he thought it didn’t matter.

“Let’s just…”

Eunho, who was looking at the woman’s back in a relaxed way, opened his mouth slowly.

“Do it.”

That undercover employment thing.

Looking at the door as he came in, a paper with written on it was posted at the entrance just in time. The situation was matching up perfectly.

“What? Gasp. Really? Will you be okay? How can a person who has never even seen a studio apartment…”

When the positive answer dropped, Secretary Jeon worried as if it were his own work. But Eunho brushed it off as if it were nothing special.

“First of all, because it’s delicious. To me.”

It was a strange feeling. Knowing that his sudden interest was quite dangerous, yet at the same time finding it fun made him quite troubled.

“Because I don’t think I can lie to my father.”

Eunho crossed his arms and smiled. At the end of his gaze, the woman’s image caught once again.

“Who knows? Once you get to know me, maybe I have a huge talent for serving.”