No flexibility whatsoever, this one. Taeheon muttered that and left the CEO’s office.

The conclusion he reached was the in-company contest.

He held one. He had been prepared to keep holding them, fair and square, until Kim Yiseo took first place. There had been three contests up to now, and this was the first time Yiseo had won the grand prize. All that remained was to run into her by apparent coincidence at the award ceremony, greet her warmly, and hand her his business card. From there, use the congratulations as a pretext to arrange a meal, catch up over the time that had passed, and ease naturally into closeness. That was how the opportunity to start something new with Yiseo would come about.

If he hadn’t heard those words out of nowhere at the dinner that evening, he would never have come here, to Yiseo’s doorstep.

“CEO, you mentioned you were planning to deal with Marketing Team 3 soon?”

“That’s the plan.”

Marketing Team 3 was a team put together by his friend, the previous CEO. His friend had been a placeholder CEO, holding the position until Taegyeom was ready to take over, and during that time, nothing he had started outside of Taegyeom’s directives had ever been seen through to the end.

Marketing Team 3 was one of those unfinished projects. Originally it had been set up as a dedicated marketing team for the company’s popular companion robot brand, but it had failed to produce any meaningful results since. Apparently, even when decent proposals were submitted, the previous CEO had already moved on to his next interest and redirected the team’s budget to s*x robots, making it impossible to run any proper projects.

“Our company’s s*x robots are a bit lacking. I found a good startup this time. The positions and play styles their s*x robots can execute are genuinely beyond imagination. Apply that to our robots and we’ll have a s*x robot no one in the world can match.”

S*x robots were one of a robotics company’s primary revenue streams and simultaneously one of Atlas Robotics’ weaker areas. It was a reasonable proposal even by Taegyeom’s assessment, so he had agreed readily. His friend had seen that one thing through to the end before stepping down. The rest was now Taegyeom’s to clean up.

“Come to think of it, I heard one of the female employees in Marketing Team 3 submitted her resignation recently. She seemed like someone who was doing quite well in the team.”

Marketing Team 3 was both the place he was planning to overhaul and the department where Kim Yiseo worked. There were only two women in that team. A bad feeling took shape in Taegyeom’s mind.

“I understand she’s the one who won the grand prize in this contest. She had real ability, which makes it a shame about the position she was in. She must have had a hard time of it.”

This was clearly his oversight. Atlas Robotics had good benefits, above-average pay, and was a company with a future. The teams under his oversight were all running well, so he had simply assumed Yiseo was doing fine too.

He had been focused on robot development all this time, and he had only gotten a proper grasp of the marketing team’s situation after taking the CEO position. Looking at the internal reality laid bare, Kim Yiseo was the only person in that team actually doing any work. The rest were just occupying their seats.

He had started trying to fix it, belatedly. He called in the marketing division head and first sought to hire experienced staff to keep the team functional. He needed someone who could lighten Yiseo’s load, act as a buffer for her, and at the same time teach her what proper work looked like. The person the marketing division head brought in was a talent who had made it to team lead at a major foreign electronics conglomerate. The division head introduced her jokingly as his niece, but that wasn’t actually the case. She was the daughter of a close acquaintance, and without that personal connection, convincing her to join would have been nearly impossible.

The other people occupying space in the team were each going to be dealt with one by one in ways suited to their situations. The plan was for the newly arrived senior to take over as team lead, and for Yiseo to be promoted to senior herself. He had laid out a plan to wrap everything up within six months, including hiring new support staff, and then the center of it all had collapsed.

“CEO, it seems like you’re drinking quite a lot tonight……”

He couldn’t remember clearly what was said after that. He drank more than was like him, and the directors drinking with him dropped out one by one, soaked through with alcohol.

“Hey, what’s going on with you? Why are you throwing it back like this. How is your face not even changing color. Are you even drunk?”

The last founding member still standing squinted at Taegyeom. He was the type who showed no sign of being drunk no matter how much he drank. His friends said things like what a waste of alcohol, or asked if he was actually a robot, but he was a perfectly ordinary human being who got drunk when he drank.

The last director finally went down. After sending the wrecked men home, Taegyeom headed to the office as though pulled by something. Getting his hands on Kim Yiseo’s personal information turned out to be incomparably easier than all the legitimate effort he had put in up to that point. By the time he came back to his senses, he was standing in front of her apartment.

He hadn’t intended to do anything in particular. Seven years had already passed between them. To Yiseo, he was probably just a senior from her department she had known once. Maybe even less than that. Did Yiseo remember him? Had she known this was his company when she applied? Why was she trying to quit…… The thoughts came in no particular order. Even if they couldn’t meet, he had simply wanted to be close to her, even in a way like this.

“Wow, it’s CEO Jeong Taegyeom.”

At first he had thought it was a dream. Three-thirty in the morning. The hour when most people would be deep in sleep. The very person he had assumed would naturally be asleep inside appeared before his eyes, thoroughly drunk.

Kim Yiseo recognized him at a glance, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Then she smiled at him, bright and open. His mind went completely blank in that instant, and his c*ck went hard as though it recognized its owner.

Drunk as he was, he was an intelligent person. He was also a man of principles, someone who kept to a code. First and foremost, he needed to explain that he was not a robot but Jeong Taegyeom himself, and explain why he had been standing there. But what was he supposed to say. Taegyeom was at a loss for words from the very start.

Should he confess that he had gone through employee records and looked up her home address? Or should he start from the beginning, with the seven years he had spent thinking about her. If he told her he had heard she submitted her resignation today and that was why he had drunk too much, would she consider that sufficient grounds to excuse what he had done……

“Let’s go in.”

The moment she pulled him inside, he erased every thought. It was the moment emotion finally won over reason. Everything after that was instinct. Maybe it was the weight of suppression over too many years. The reins snapped, and he crossed lines he should never have crossed. Unauthorized access to personal information, stalking, unlawful entry, s*xual harassment, s*xual misconduct……

All those years of restraint, and in the end he had caused a disaster.

“……What functions do you have?”

Fortunately, Yiseo seemed to believe until the very end that he was an android. The grand prize for this contest had been a rental voucher for an android that looked exactly like him, and it appeared she had happened to put in a rental request at the right time.

This contest had been an event he held, at the end of his patience, specifically to give Yiseo the grand prize. There was no way she would miss a contest like this. She was the kind of person who gave her best even to small things, so of course she would come up with a good idea.

As expected, Yiseo’s idea took the grand prize. It had been decided by unanimous agreement among the board of directors, which made it all the more perfect. All he had to do now was present her with the award, re-establish their acquaintance, hand over his business card, and naturally arrange a meal. That was how a new bridge between the two of them was supposed to be built. Legitimate and proper, unlike what had just happened.

“I joined this company to see Senior.”

The deed was already done.

Kim Yiseo remembered him. In her mind, he was still Senior. She had not stumbled into Atlas Robotics by coincidence. She had come in to see him.

And she had told him there was something she had always wanted to say to him, if they ever met.

“I have a lot I want to say to you too.”

Taegyeom lifted the sleeping Yiseo into his arms and carried her toward the bedroom, murmuring in a low voice.