Bubbly Duck

“I’m sorry I’m late!” Yoochun apologized to the board members as he hastily entered the conference room. He settled himself at his seat at the head of table and cleared his throat. He was now ready for business. “so shall we begin?”

“what about your wife?” an elderly man asked.

“she had to go…somewhere….” He wasn’t going to tell them she was at the doctor’s for food poisoning. “she won’t be joining us today.”

The minute he said that, all 15, elderly and senior executives looked dismayed. The only female woman, well into her 60s even pouted.

“is something wrong?” Yoochun asked, quite taken aback at the collective childlike dejection of people who are much older than him.

“well, you see Yoochun…..” elderly lady, like everyone else on the board, was on first name basis with owner of the hotel chain as they’ve known him since his diaper days. “we sort of look forward to your wife. She has this bubbly energy that lights up the day.”

Yoochun felt an immense sense of pride. Junsu is undoubtedly as cheerful as she was in high school. Being the vice-president of a multi-million dollar, worldwide hotel chain didn’t tone down the bubble of joy that she was, and he preferred it like that. Although, today was the first time he realized that others were affected by her joviality too. It was understandable though.

These board members had joined The Park Hotels when Yoochun’s grandfather had founded it. They had put in the blood, sweat and tears alongside his grandfather to bring the group to its current position. That is why Yoochun disregarded his parent’s policy of ‘in with the new, out with the old’ and chose to retain these founding members in the board. With Junsu’s encouragement, he even managed to bring back old executives who had been forced into retirement by his parents.

These executives had joined his grandfather when he was in his 40s and they were in their 20s. So now, they were old enough to have that affection for Junsu that grandparents usually have to their lively grandchildren.

Too bad, Junsu is not here.

“let’s continue shall we.” He smiled at them, “I assure you Junsu will be there the next time. So what called for this meeting?”

A well-built elderly man, the oldest of the group stood up and passed a file to Yoochun, “the Busan project.” He supplied. “it’s hit a roadblock.” He gestured for another man to take over.

“apparently some of the locals are not convinced that the new hotel would bode well. They think it would put an end to their livelihood.” The other guy said.

“that’s rubbish!” Yoochun slammed the file shut, “a new hotel would mean more tourists and more customers for them. I thought they knew that when we purchased the land. And they decided to protest against it when the construction is hallway through! I don’t buy it. There is something fishy here.”

“I agree too.” The same man said, “so I had it investigated. It seems Mr. Han the man from whose father we brought the land had approached our project supervisor claiming the value of the land has gone up from when Park group bought it 4 years ago. The supervisor didn’t give in to his demands citing that the land was sold by his father and not him and the changing real estate values don’t apply to land that has already been sold and he was right too. But this man wouldn’t give up and threatened that he ‘weilded considerable influence to shut down the work’ as I was told.”

“so it’s an extortion.” Yoochun said and the man nodded.

“the supervisor is trying to handle the problem himself. Hence we haven’t received a