The Cutting Edge

008

"Uncle Ryu, can't you do something to help Hyejin?" Yeseul asked. "Hyunwon's not going to let her off so easily after what happened... Hyejin did it because of me, is there anything we could do?"

Standing up, Ryu stuffed his hands in his pockets and shrugged his shoulders. "Apologise to the man and pray that he doesn't bear a grudge," he said. "And don't create any more trouble here, understood? I'm trying to run a business, not a nursery."

Hyejin sank back into the seat and scowled. This entire place was a joke. They were the ones who played dirty and forced her to come here to work, yet their creative director obviously didn't want her on his turf whatsoever. Why couldn't these people just play their silly little games on their own and leave her out of it?

Right now, she just really wanted to go home.

#

Hyunwon was fuming.

He stormed back to his office and slammed the door, forgetting that Remington was following behind him. The latter jumped when the door slammed in his face, sighing as he opened it again and walked into the room.

"Are you alright?" he asked, even though he knew the answer. He, too, was still in shock after what had taken place over in the training room. Never before had anyone treated Hyunwon the way that Hyejin had just done. Hyunwon looked as if someone had just emptied cow dung over his head.

"Did that just happen?" Hyunwon looked up and asked incredulously. He still hadn't come to terms with what he had just gone through, even though the sting on his left cheek told him that everything had been real. This wasn't just a hallucination that he was having because he had drunk one too many cans of beer.

Remington nodded his head slowly.

Hyunwon didn't even know what else to say. He had just been slapped in the face and told off by some young punk who had only just stepped foot into this place, and he couldn't even come up with something to say in retaliation because everything she had said was absolutely spot on.

Unlike the others, Song Hyejin wasn't here because she wanted to be here. He had already heard that story from Remy. Ryu and Gina had basically blackmailed her into coming so that they could avoid a PR nightmare, which meant that unlike all the other staff that worked under this roof, she was the only one that he couldn't shout "You're fired!" at without needing to deal with all the troublesome repercussions.

He couldn't fire her even though she had slapped him in the face.

The thought of that made his blood boil even more, his face turning redder and redder with every passing second, like a volcano that was about to explode.

Remington quickly poured him a glass of water and placed it on the table in front of him. "Have some water and calm down," he said. "If you keep going on like this you're going to burst a blood vessel and get a stroke. I need a creative director who's not lying in hospital."

"Tell me Remy," Hyunwon said, gulping down a huge mouthful of water, "was it really my fault? Was I wrong to have expected her to know what a C-curl was? It's one of the most basic techniques in hair styling for goodness sakes! How can someone like that work here when she doesn't even know all these basics? Is Ryu trying to give me a heart attack so that he can be rid of me? That's it, isn't it? He's trying to do me in."

"No... You're right, it is one of the basic techniques—"

"Of course I'm right! When am I ever wrong?" Hyunwon exclaimed. "If she doesn't even have the basics, then she doesn't have any right to be working here. I'm going to tell Ryu that the girl needs to go right this instant. And the magazines even dared say that she'll take over my mantle? Who are they trying to kid?"