The more Junhwi watched Hana, the more he saw himself in her. She never said things like *I'm confident* or *I've got this*. The closest she ever got to expressing self-assurance was something like "I'll do my best" or "I'll give it everything I have."
Even when she pulled something off, she didn't look happy — she looked relieved. If someone said, "Hana, you did a great job on this," she'd answer, "Thank goodness." The unspoken version: *Goodness, I actually pulled it off. I was sure I'd blow it.*
She never mentioned how late she'd stayed or how much she'd worked over the weekend. For Hana, overtime and weekend work were just a given — the way extra tutoring is a given for a student who's behind.
But there's a reason the tortoise-and-hare story has stuck around. Even when the gap in raw ability is enormous, if you keep running while others play, keep running while others rest, keep running with a kind of stubborn, almost foolish persistence — one day you look up and you're ahead. Within just a few months, Hana had earned a reputation as a sharp, dependable employee who could be trusted with real work.
Junhwi could see that even as Hana grew, even after she'd quietly outperformed several colleagues with better credentials, the anxiety never left her. It was a chronic thing, the kind no achievement could cure. The fear that the hare had only lost *because it stopped running* — and that the moment it started again, everything would collapse.
In the fable, the tortoise just has to cross the finish line and it's over. But there's no finish line in office life. So the real-world tortoise spends its entire career haunted by the thought: *What if the hare wakes up?*
Junhwi felt a kinship with Hana — one tortoise recognizing another. He'd started projecting onto her without quite meaning to. He found himself wanting her to outperform the colleagues who'd taken the elite track, the ones who'd had every door opened for them.
*If more people like us make it,* he thought, *maybe the whole pyramid shifts. Maybe the people at the top stop being the ones who were handed everything — and start being the ones who earned it.*
That thought brought him up short. He felt a little embarrassed. *Nobody has any idea I walk around thinking things like this.*
He was still turning it over in his head when he walked into the large conference room.
At the front of the room, the new hires — this year's incoming class — stood in a nervous row.
Daeil Planning had a kind of initiation ritual: the new-hire English presentation. Everyone at the team lead level and above gathered to watch each new employee deliver a prepared pitch entirely in English.
Junhwi had done it himself when he was new. He remembered not being able to eat anything the day before, his face going completely white.
Because he knew exactly how terrified they were, he made a point of keeping his reactions warm and encouraging throughout.
Some of the senior staff believed in manufacturing the pressure of a real competitive pitch — arms crossed, expressions flat, radiating a *go ahead, impress me* energy. Junhwi thought that was just an excuse. The real reason was that some people had genuinely rotten personalities. Frogs don't turn back into tadpoles, so why would they bother remembering what it felt like?
The presentations began.
Getting hired at Daeil Planning meant your English was already at a certain level, and it showed. Everyone moved through their material without stumbling. Junhwi smiled and listened, but underneath the smile he felt a quiet unease at how polished this new crop was. Whatever they were teaching in college these days, it was working — the proposals were solid, and the presenters barely seemed nervous.
Watching a new hire deliver a smooth, effortless presentation gave Junhwi a faint, familiar irritation. Being a good presenter, he'd always thought, was basically being a good gift-wrapper. The contents could be identical to someone else's — or even a little thinner — but slick packaging made it look like the better present. A polished delivery had the same effect.
Junhwi was the opposite. He could spend weeks preparing something thorough and careful, and then his presentation skills would fail him at the moment it counted, leaving thirty percent of his work invisible to the room. Presenting was fundamentally an act of *showing off*, and Junhwi had spent so long cutting himself down that showing off didn't come naturally.
He still remembered the slow burn of watching a colleague who'd prepared less than he had walk away with a better reception, purely on the strength of their delivery. *It'll work out somehow,* that person had seemed to think — and it had. The resentment from those moments hadn't fully faded.
Not that doing well here meant surviving the company. Of the people who'd outpresented Junhwi when they were all new hires, not one was still at Daeil.
After each presentation, the team leads took turns giving feedback.
Some offered nothing but criticism. Junhwi kept his tone as gentle as he could — a genuine compliment first, then one specific note for improvement.
They were all rookies right now, every one of them. But any one of them could end up running something someday. That was why, no matter how junior someone was, Junhwi believed in leaving a good impression. You never knew.
Then it was Hana's turn.
She walked to the front with a look of grim resolve and bowed.
Her proposal showed real thought and preparation. The logic held up, and while the ideas weren't particularly original, there was nothing seriously wrong with them either.
Which meant, in plain terms: it was average. The lack of instinct for the room was obvious to anyone watching. She didn't know how to pull people in, didn't know how to vary her pacing or emphasis. She just read through what she'd prepared, conscientiously, from beginning to end.
"Haaah—"
The team lead sitting next to Junhwi let out a long, audible yawn. He seemed to catch himself — the sound had been too loud to ignore — and turned to Junhwi with a small, apologetic bow.
*Why are you apologizing to me?* Junhwi thought.
He glanced over at Hana.
The yawn had broken her. She started stumbling over her words, and her hands began to shake.
Junhwi knew exactly what was happening inside her right now. He'd been there — mid-presentation, watching the evaluator in front of him pick at a loose thread on his sleeve with the bored patience of someone waiting for a bus, and feeling his mind go completely blank.
Something hot moved through him. *How can someone be that careless? That inconsiderate?* This wasn't about simulating pressure. This was just rude. It was practically sabotage.
He made himself breathe. Getting emotional at work was poison.
Hana finished her presentation in a state that made everyone watching wince.
The feedback that followed was as unremarkable as the presentation itself. One person's comments were so vague it was obvious they hadn't been listening at all.
*Then what was the point of any of this?* Junhwi thought. *How many people are in this room? How much time did this take? Even just in hourly wages, this meeting cost real money. And it's turning into a school pageant — everyone sitting back, watching the new kids perform, and nobody actually doing their job.*
Then it was Junhwi's turn.
"Okay, thank you — I was listening carefully. So, first — the competitive analysis section was genuinely excellent. You pointed out that while most men's skincare ads lean into masculinity, what consumers actually want from men's skincare is *simplicity*. That was a sharp observation, and the supporting data was persuasive and well-structured. The way you built from that insight toward your concept felt very coherent. The issue is that the coherence became the whole focus — and the concept and ideas themselves didn't get the same energy. But here's the thing: what evaluators are really watching for is the concept and the ideas. The market analysis, the competitive breakdown at the front — evaluators usually already know that material. A lot of the time, they went through those exact steps when the product was being developed. I actually think the yawn from Team Lead Seo was his way of communicating that — passing along what a real evaluator's mindset would feel like. I want to be very clear: it had nothing to do with Hana's presentation being boring. Not at all."
Team Lead Seo scratched the back of his head, looking sheepish.
The other team leads around the table gave him a few pointed looks.
Junhwi kept going, working through the feedback in detail.
The length of it drew quiet, puzzled glances around the room.
He said everything he thought might actually help her. Only then did he stop.
Hana, standing at the front, gave a small bow and stepped down from the podium.
Eunyoung walked out of the conference room.
She smiled at the new hires she passed in the hallway, telling them she'd really enjoyed their presentations.
But the smile faded the moment she was clear of them.
Her eyes followed Hana as she came out of the room.
*What is her deal? Why does Junhwi care about her that much?*
What he'd just done in there was basically a public announcement: *This one's mine. I'm invested in her.*
Sure, she got it — team leads and managers always had a favorite or two. That was just how it worked.
But why Hana?
If Hana had been genuinely more talented than Eunyoung, Eunyoung would have accepted it. She would have studied her, tried to figure out what she was doing right.
But no matter how carefully Eunyoung looked, she couldn't find it. Hana wasn't just unremarkable — she was the kind of unremarkable that made you wonder how she'd gotten into Daeil Planning in the first place.
No killer ideas. No natural social ease. Not particularly fast. She was just... diligent. That was it. But Eunyoung was just as diligent. She took courses to get better at her job, dug through academic papers in English, worked out to keep her energy up, did video calls in English every morning before work.
It wasn't that Junhwi ignored Eunyoung. But there was a difference between paying attention to someone out of obligation and paying attention because something in you just *gravitates* there. Those two things were worlds apart.
*Why?*
Was he sorry for Hana? Was she his soft spot — the one he couldn't help rooting for? Was it some instinct to give more to the one who seemed to need it most? But hadn't CEO Jang said it herself — that Junhwi's time and energy were valuable? Wasn't it obviously smarter to spend them somewhere other than on a new hire like Hana? Junhwi had to know that.
When the company-wide channel had announced that Eunyoung's team had won a pitch, Junhwi hadn't reacted at all. Everyone else had commented, dropped a congratulations, hit a confetti emoji at minimum. Junhwi hadn't even done that much.
It was only when Eunyoung ran into him and said, "Did you see? Our team just landed a new account," that he'd finally said, "Oh, right. I saw. Good work."
Meanwhile, Hana had gotten praised for writing a decent daily report. A *daily report*. There was nothing to get right or wrong about a daily report — you pulled the data, you formatted the numbers so they were easy to read, and you were done. Eunyoung had been past that stage for ages.
And it wasn't like Hana was some kid fresh out of school. She was only two years younger than Eunyoung. She'd joined as a new hire late, for whatever reason. But Junhwi was acting like she was twenty years old and needed to be cheered on for tying her shoes.
The more Eunyoung thought about it, the more it irritated her. The whole situation irritated her — feeling jealous of a new hire who shouldn't even register on her radar. Junhwi irritated her for creating the situation in the first place. *If you're going to play favorites, at least pick someone worth it. Why her?*
"...Did you need something?"
Eunyoung had been staring at Hana. Their eyes met.
*That quiet little act she puts on. I bet she's completely different underneath.*
Eunyoung let the tension out of her gaze and smiled.
"Nope. Keep it up."