episode_0458

At that time, a conference room in a building in Daegu.

“People don’t buy air conditioners because of Baek Sul-hee!”

Those in the conference room fell silent at the shout of a middle-aged man in a black suit.

“Air conditioners are selling like hot cakes even in mid-August!”

By mid-August, people will be thinking, ‘Do I really need to buy an air conditioner?’, but no salaryman would dare say that out loud in front of the salary decision maker.

“Even those who said, ‘Let’s just endure this year’ because of the hot weather, couldn’t bear it anymore, so they bought an air conditioner!”

“Well, boss….”

“Amy, it’s so hot that I won’t buy it anymore. Let’s go to the house and stay for a few days. So what will the children do? Should I take my old parents home with me? Honey, I need to put an air conditioner in your father’s house, I will!!”

bang!

“Air conditioner sales have dropped by a whopping 10%! A whopping 10% compared to the previous week!! This makes sense!!”

“That, that.”

“People who should buy air conditioners are holding on without buying them. He bought a fan for not much money, which he wouldn’t even have enough money to buy a chicken if he sold it, and then he said, ‘It’s a little hot this summer, huh,’ and forgot about watermelon! Damn it!”

The executives and employees just looked at each other in response to the president’s shout.

“If sales drop, all responsibility falls on us, you idiots! Why are you staring so quietly!”

“Sir, boss.”

” Come up with a solution, a solution! Why do these guys who earn 8,000 a year and always show off their business cards, calling themselves ‘Sunshade Man’, can’t even respond when sales of their company’s main product drop by 10%?!”

“That’s because the target is a hero…”

The only one who had time barely opened his mouth.

“If you touch Baek Seol-hee now, it is the same as turning the entire nation into an enemy. Thanks to hanging something like a cooling fan in the sky, Baek Seol-hee is now being praised more than Carrier, who developed an air conditioner…”

“So you’re saying we should just sit back and watch 10% of sales disappear?! uh?! If 10% of their salary is lost, they will wear red headbands and protest as if the world is going to ruin, but the company’s sales are nothing?!”

“Well, it’s not like that!”

“Then come up with a solution!”

“First of all, let’s assume that it is less hot than usual due to abnormal temperatures or something like that…and we will prevent this from happening next year.”

“…Phew, yes. Keep going.”

As if the fever had subsided, the president collapsed into a chair.

“How are you going to prevent it from happening? Tell me how we can stop the tyranny of that adulterous princess who made even the Minister of National Defense blow away.”

“You are making yourself tired. Using people in the Seoul area, people in the provinces, and local governments.”

“…Hmm. Let’s use public opinion?”

“Yes. Doesn’t Baek Seol-hee leave ice cream everywhere that needs air conditioning? And if we connect well, we may be able to hire Baek Seol-hee as an advertising model for our Haegeuneul air conditioner.”

“How?”

“Settlement money for when an affair lawsuit is filed, money for raising children, money for top bids for Do Ji-hwan’s one night stand by other S-class women, etc. Aren’t there many places where money can come from?”

“Umm….”

The CEO of Haegeuneul Electronics sighed with a sad expression on his face.

“How in the world can you be persuaded for that reason?”

“Sorry, sorry. I’m off topic…”

“No, no. The reason I’m sad is because I thought that would work.”

The executives and employees internally cheered at the president’s words.

“It didn’t work on hero Baek Seol-hee, but it worked on an adulterous woman. Sigh…. How did Baek Seol-hee become such a slut.”

“Well, then.”

“Go ahead. Whether it’s an adulterous woman or something, let’s see next year. You never know. The baby that will be born next year is S-class, and if they ask to sign an advertising contract then, the price will skyrocket.”

“Okay. Then-”

“and.”

The president quenched his appetite and made the executives and employees who were about to get up sit down with one word.

“Air conditioning was a problem in the summer, but something else was a problem in the winter.”

“Is it a boiler…?”

“Okay. It’s not directly related to us, but wouldn’t a similar situation occur again?”

“But if you use this ability in winter, it will get colder…”

“You idiot. If you put ice in the sky in the summer, you’ll make flames seep into the ground in the winter.”

“Ah!”

A woman flashed through the employees’ heads.

“You want to use Firefox!”

“Okay. Let’s prepare in advance. Before that woman is impressed by Baek Seol-hee’s behavior and starts heating the boiler in every house, let’s sign an advertising contract in advance and let’s do it. Instead of making the winter warm out of mere mercy, let it be cold so that boilers and heaters sell well.”

“Indeed….”

“So-”

Beep beep.

“What, some guy is wearing a Taegeuk watch during a meeting?”

While the meeting was going on for a while, the president’s Taegeuk watch sparkled.

“You obviously turned off the vibration…huh?! Uncle?!”

All executives and employees kept their mouths shut.

“Yes, Chairman! This is Hoyoung Choi! I received a call.”

He, who had been showing a clear bossy attitude towards the employees just a moment ago, quickly corrected his posture and answered the phone in a polite manner.

“Yes, yes. Regarding electronics…. Yes?”

The president had no choice but to open his mouth.

“The flame disappeared…?”

* * *

[Chief Do, have you ever been to Gumi?]

[This is my first time here on a mission.]

[what. Have you been here before?]

[This is my first time coming here.]

I took advantage of the darkness with Gungi and came down to the basement of the large factory.

What it looks like from the outside is an industrial complex where cutting-edge technology is concentrated.

However, the ‘fuel’ used inside is full of new-age technological power created by humans’ desire to somehow save money, which is difficult to simply call modern science and technology.

[Then let me introduce you. Is this the place where they trick that young, innocent girl, beat her up, and then burn her warm heart to run the machine?]

Gungi’s voice, full of sarcasm, was seething with cold anger.

[I used this ability to create a flame to burn in a briquette boiler to help the elderly stay warm in the winter, and voila. Oh my, it wasn’t burning the boiler, it was running the factory equipment that manufactures the boiler.]

[It’s not just the boiler.]

In front of us was a huge cylindrical facility.

It was quite ambiguous whether it should be called a generator or an energy conversion device, which I had probably seen a few times in the factory, but energy other than electrical energy was seething inside the rather strange-looking device.

[In the past, when I was on active duty, I once talked about how the flame never goes out. So we talked. It is said that the flame inside can be rekindled if someone infuses it with mana.]

Energy called ‘mana’.

[Should this be called a magic power plant?]

[Strictly speaking, it may be different, but the principle is the same, so there won’t be a big difference.]

Yoonhye and I looked at the glass cylinder placed in the huge device where it was supposed to burn petroleum fuel or electric energy.

[It’s been a long time. this. I didn’t expect to see this here.]

[You knew the information.]

[It was the last expectation. Knowing something and seeing it with your own eyes are two different things.]

In the cylinder, a flame similar to the color of Yoon Hye-ra’s hair was burning like a match.

It burns weakly, as if it will go out at any moment, but it is a faint flame that looks like it will burn again if someone just pours mana into it.

As if forcing blood from a dying person by keeping them alive while keeping them alive, all the flames that Hye-ra Yoon had created before her death were burning as if they would never go out.

[E-class or D-class superpowers were patrolling here and there so that just by placing their hands on the boilers in the homes of the elderly, they could immediately absorb mana and generate heat. …Haha, it’s burning so brightly here. To run the machines of the Sunshade Factory.]

Why do I have to do this?

Why do we have to do this?

If you think about it economically or in terms of energy resources, it may be natural.

A country that does not produce a single drop of oil.

But what if instead of running a factory with oil, instead of burning oil to generate thermal power, you could burn people’s mana and run the factory with that?

-Ah, someone with superpowers! Cheaper than oil!

It could be a similar situation.

Haeshauneun created such a facility.

[Chief Do. If this thing breaks down, what will happen to the people who work here?]

[If the factory is destroyed, workers will naturally have no place to work.]

When a workplace disappears, it is not only the company that suffers in the end, but also the workers who worked in the factory.

[But there is also this saying.]

This is from a movie.

[It’s not me that’s screwed, it’s the company.]

If only the workers had another way to make a living, if only they could make a living somewhere else.

[The world will not collapse if one Sunshade Factory closes.]

[yes?]

Click.

[Then shall we take some keepsakes? I gave it to you as a favor, but I didn’t give it to you to use it for something like this.]

Gung-gi put his hand in, breaking the glass tube containing the flame he left behind during his life.

Wow!

[…I wasn’t doing you a favor to use it in a place like this.]

And Gunggi grabbed the flames with his hands and completely extinguished them.

[Whether the factory stops or not is none of my business.]