Chapter 1508 Taking Place (3)

[That cafe Choi Yeon-Ha shot the ad for? You shouldn’t go there. Someone posted their story online about how they got beaten up by the manager there.]

[Heol? The manager beat up a customer? Something like that still happens in this day and age? That guy must’ve lost his bloody mind!]

[I read the testimony. It looks like the customer got a proper beating, alright.]

[Maybe the customer was being unreasonable?]

[So what? Being unreasonable is enough to get you beaten up? If you’re being a Karen, you should have gotten kicked out of the store or gotten arrested, not eaten a knuckle sandwich! Assault cannot be justified no matter what.]

[Not going there anymore. Let’s boycott them!]

Choi Yeon-Ha’s eyes powerfully quaked.

“What are they even talking about?! What assault?!”

“S-say what?! Let me see!”

Han Eun-Sol rushed to Choi Yeon-Ha and stared at her phone’s screen. His eyes also widened after reading all the comments.

“Huh?!”

He quickly tapped on the link to the original testimony and began reading it.

Choi Yeon-Ha yelled, “Seriously! This is nonsense!”

The post featured several photographs and a lengthy recount of what happened in the cafe. The victim’s appearance, with the bandages tightly wrapped around his head and all the blood trickling out from his burst lips, proved incredibly damning. Anyone looking at these photos would’ve gotten enraged even without the wall of texts.

Choi Yeon-Ha roared unhappily. “This stinking bastard! What the hell does he think he’s doing?!”

“We should calm down first, noona.”

“What?! Why?!”

Choi Yeon-Ha was about to argue back, only to clamp her mouth shut. She knew that blowing her top right now wouldn’t solve the situation at all.

Han Eun-Sol leaned in closer. “Let’s read what this guy posted.”

“Fine.”

He skimmed through the testimony, but didn’t find anything too surprising. The victim said he had done nothing wrong, but the manager still got aggressive for no reason. That led to a heated argument, then the manager came around the counter to one-sidedly assault the victim. That pretty much summed the testimony up.

“Well, I’ll be...”

Han Eun-Sol scratched his head.

If true, this situation would become a big problem. Even if it was not true, this thing had already morphed into a serious problem. The cafe franchise had not been in business for long, and things hadn’t settled down yet, so being involved in such an incident would never lead to a favorable outcome.

Han Eun-Sol skimmed through the replies to the post before squeezing his eyes shut.

Dammit! You haven’t even verified anything yet!

Despite there being no response or statement from the cafe franchise, most of the replies were badmouthing Caffe Luogo.

“What the hell? It sounds like the police will investigate the matter, so the outcome is still up in the air, so why...”

Han Eun-Sol didn’t finish his sentence and began scratching his head roughly.

Choi Yeon-Ha groaned loudly. “Hah...! Why did it have to be now!”

It felt like they were sailing smoothly away with winds blowing in their favor, only for their ship to run aground abruptly on some rocks underwater.

“Will this become a serious problem?”

“Noona... One boycott campaign can sink a successful franchise, you know?”

“Really? What should we do?”

“Nothing. We might as well pack up our bags and go home,” Han Eun-Sol grumbled with a loud sigh. “This is not about finding out who’s guilty and whatnot. Because people care more about the customers holding the upper hand, not the truth.”

“Gimme a break...” Choi Yeon-Ha sighed. “Let’s send this link to Mister Jin-Ho.”

“Got it, noona.”

“I’m sure Mister Jin-Ho’s people will handle it. As for us, let’s stick to what we’re supposed to do.”

“I agree.”

Choi Yeon-Ha sighed again while watching Han Eun-Sol sending the link to the testimony to Kang Jin-Ho.

I hope this situation doesn’t blow up...

Of course, the situation had already blown up. But Choi Yeon-Ha still prayed that it wouldn’t get any worse from here.

***

“I’m sorry, sir.”

Kang Jin-Ho furrowed his brow slightly at the sight of the franchisee bowing deeply toward him. “Raise your head.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The franchisee, whose name was Jang Yeong-Cheol, stood up straight while biting his lip. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the protagonist of this incident was a former Assembly member.

Kang Jin-Ho stared at Jang Yeong-Cheol for a while, before asking, “Why did you hit that guy?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I know I should've held myself back, but like an idiot, I just couldn’t. I’ll accept any punishment you deem appropriate. If you tell me to close up my shop, I’ll do so. If you say I must apologize, I’ll do whatever it takes to apologize to the victim.”

Kang Jin-Ho sighed deeply. “That’s not what I asked. I want to know why you beat up the guy.”

“I... I got too angry, sir,” Jang Yeong-Cheol replied, his voice trembling from suppressed emotions. “I honestly tried to endure, sir. But, but...! That guy was being so unreasonable, and... I tried, but I just snapped at that moment.”

“What did he do, then?”

Lee Hyeon-Ju replied to Kang Jin-Ho instead. “Sir, would you like to confirm the CCTV footage first?”

Kang Jin-Ho nodded at her. Even if the franchisee tried to explain as objectively as possible, his statement would still contain his personal feelings. Since that was the case, it might be better to just watch the video first.

Lee Hyeon-Ju connected an external hard drive to a computer, then turned the monitor toward Kang Jin-Ho. Soon, the footage began playing, and Kang Jin-Ho deeply furrowed his brow.

The camera perfectly captured the busy interior of the cafe. More specifically, a man was busy shouting and pointing fingers at the franchisee from across the counter. That man must be the alleged victim in this case.

The man’s shouting and pointing seemed to intensify, but then, he threw the coffee in his hand at the franchisee.

Hwang Min-Su and his subordinates all gasped in shock.

“Heol?!”

“What the hell?! Is that man crazy?!”

“Wowsers... Hang on, isn’t that hot coffee?”

The cup in the man’s hand wasn’t the branded plastic cup used specifically for the iced coffee, but a paper one to hold the still-hot drinks. To think that man unhesitantly threw the coffee, which should still be piping hot, at another person like that? He must've been out of his mind.

Jang Yeong-Cheol also saw the footage and explained, the anger in his voice getting more palpable. “It’s a good thing that I was the one manning the counter at the time, sir. What if it had been a regular employee? They could have been burned badly from the coffee!”

That sounded logical. What happened was no different to having boiling water dumped on you, after all. Considering people sometimes got scalded by hot coffee, this incident was far more serious than Kang Jin-Ho and his subordinates had expected.

The footage showed Jang Yeong-Cheol, now soaked in coffee, rushing around the counter before grabbing the customer by the collar. And that was when the customer began punching Jang Yeong-Cheol in the face.

“Hold on...? At this point, isn’t that, like, our franchisee was acting in self defense?”

“That man must be out of his bloody mind!”

Hwang Min-Su and his subordinates began gritting their teeth as if they were the ones getting punched. At the start of this briefing, they were glaring at Jang Yeong-Cheol in unhappiness for hitting a customer at such a crucial period for their franchise, but now, their much-softer gazes were filled with sympathy instead.

In the footage, Jang Yeong-Cheol could be seen responding to the assault by punching the so-called customer twice. The customer went limp after that, so Jang Yeong-Cheol simply dragged that man outside the store. That was where the CCTV footage ended.

Jang Yeong-Cheol bowed again. “I’m so sorry, sir.”

Click...

Kang Jin-Ho wordlessly pulled out a cigarette, mouthed it, then lit it. After taking a deep puff, he exhaled the smoke as if he was sighing.

“Now I get why you beat up that guy.”

“...”

“Even so, you should’ve held yourself back.”

“I’m sorry.”

Kang Jin-Ho’s gaze grew icier just then. “I’m not saying that because you’re a manager of that store or a franchisee. Did you not give us your word you’d refrain from violence as much as possible when leaving the Assembly?”

“I... I did, sir.”

“If that was the limit of your patience, I must say, I’m deeply disappointed.”

“I’m genuinely sorry, sir.”

Jang Yeong-Cheol couldn’t be any more remorseful even if he tried.

If this event only concerned him, he’d never apologize to this extent. In fact, he was sure of never uttering the words, “I’m sorry,” had this event only affected his store. But that wasn’t the case. The fallout wouldn’t only be his to bear.

Whatever the truth was, the rumors of a cafe manager assaulting a customer would lead to the public image of the cafe franchise falling to the pits. That was inevitable. But the franchise’s “boss” was Kang Jin-Ho, while the managers and franchisees of other cafes were Jang Yeong-Cheol’s comrades and peers.

At this rate, everyone he cared about would have to pay the price for his impatience.

“What should we do now?” Gu Jeong-Beom asked while shrugging a little. “Should we release this footage right away?”

From his perspective, Jang Yeong-Cheol hadn’t done anything worthy of apologizing. In fact, he thought that anyone holding themselves back after getting hot coffee dumped on their face was a weirdo instead.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think it’ll make any difference,” said Lee Hyeon-Ju. For some reason, she sounded skeptical of their chances. “Excuses or favorable developments rarely have much bearing on troubling situations, like the one we’re facing. Even if we release a public statement containing evidence in our favor, the public still won’t pay much attention.”

“What? Why? Even though the evidence is crystal clear...?”

“The reason is simple. The rumors might start spreading from online communities, but the real impact comes from regular people who see such posts and spread their interpretation of the situation to their circle of acquaintances via word of mouth. But those people would never recant their version of the truth, because doing so would be the same as admitting that they were gullible idiots who had rashly spread false information.”

“Oh...” Gu Jeong-Beom understood what Lee Hyeon-Ju was trying to say and nodded at her. “You mean, those people aren’t willing to say, Oops, I was wrong about that stuff. Something like that?”

That part about the human condition was easy enough to understand. Because admitting to such a thing would be too embarrassing. Even Gu Jeong-Beom would’ve been unwilling to admit to his acquaintances that he had badmouthed someone innocent for no good reason.

“Then, even if we release our statements, no one will hear about them?”

“It’s the question of public perception, really. Humans get swayed not by logic, but by something as vague as perception. Once you have an unfavorable perception of something, you won’t readily change your opinion, no matter how sound the counterarguments are. That’s how people’s perception operates.”

“...Damn. This is getting trickier.”

The frowning Lee Hyeon-Ju shifted her attention back to the monitor. “However, there is something I just don’t understand.”

“Mm? What is it?”

“When you look at how this man threw the coffee, his actions seem unnatural to me. Should I say his gestures look exaggerated? Something in that vein. He doesn’t act like someone overtaken by rage.”

Everyone stared back at the monitor when she said that.

“Mm...?”

“Right, something about this situation feels a little...”

“Yeah, it looks staged, somehow.”

Lee Hyeon-Ju stared at Jang Yeong-Cheol and asked, “What about you? What was your impression at the time?”

“I... honestly can’t tell you, ma’am. Even before the coffee thing, I was already angry and not in the right state of mind to notice things like that. Maybe I thought he was insane or something.”

“Mm...”

Just as he said that, Kang Jin-Ho suddenly broke his silence. “Rewind the footage.”

Lee Hyeon-Ju tilted her head slightly. Rewind it? What for?

She didn’t ask and did as told. Kang Jin-Ho leaned in closer and peered closely at the footage being played from the beginning. Then, he pointed at a table near the counter. “Here. These two men.”

“Sir?”

“A customer was raising a fuss, then threw a cup of scalding coffee at another person. See how others are reacting?”

“They are... all surprised?”

The responses of the cafe patrons were broadly similar. Some shot up to their feet, some covered their mouths in horror, and some began swearing immediately. However, they all shared one common emotion, and that was shock.

But the table Kang Jin-Ho pointed out was the sole exception.

Lee Hyeon-Ju muttered, “...Those people aren’t surprised?”

Kang Jin-Ho nodded. The two men sitting around the table in question witnessed everything from a vantage point, yet their reactions could only be explained as flat. However, it wasn’t as if they were disinterested. No, their eyes were glued to the unfolding situation. In that case, why weren’t they shocked by what they saw?

Even more weirdly, they remained not “surprised” even as Jang Yeong-Cheol had dragged the unconscious customer outside.

“They are just filming everything with their phones.”

“Now, let’s see what happened before the confrontation began.”

The footage was restarted from even earlier. And that revealed new information.

“What the f*ck...?! These bastards, they were getting ready to record with their phones even before the confrontation began?!” Gu Jeong-Beom shouted as the expressions of everyone in the room stiffened.

Could this be...?

“This stinks, sir,” said Hwang Min-Su.

“Mm...!”

Kang Jin-Ho weightily nodded.

Now that they had time to dissect the footage closely, everything seemed so unnatural. For one, who would throw boiling coffee at a person behind the counter just because they got angry?

Lee Hyeon-Ju muttered, “That means someone deliberately staged this whole thing, but... Why?”

“You already said it yourself,” Kang Jin-Ho replied flatly. “You said that perception is important. They must’ve thought that their job is done as long as they can spread malicious lies about us.”

“But what would they gain from...”

Lee Hyeon-Ju hurriedly clamped her mouth shut. She realized this incident might not be as simple as it appeared on the surface.

Kang Jin-Ho glanced at her. “Lee Hyeon-Ju.”

“Yes, chairman.”

“Get to the bottom of this. Someone is behind this situation.”

“Yes, sir!”

Kang Jin-Ho narrowed his eyes and glared at the monitor before glancing at Jang Yeong-Cheol next. “By the way...”

Jang Yeong-Cheol cautiously replied, “Yes, sir?”

“The argument before that man threw the coffee at you. What were you two arguing about?”

“That crazy bastard... Uh, I mean, that customer...”

“Yeah?”

“He said he wanted a cup of boiling-hot Iced Americano, sir!”

“...”

“So I gave him the regular Americano. But then, he started shouting at us, accusing us of being deaf and stupid because we didn’t give him hot Iced Americano.”

Kang Jin-Ho slowly got up, walked over to Jang Yeong-Cheol, then patted the latter on the shoulder. “You... It must’ve been rough for you.”

“...”

Kang Jin-Ho almost praised Jang Yeong-Cheol for not slapping the living daylights out of that so-called customer on the spot.