Chapter 6: A Vote She Will Not Sell
Kwon Sora’s name remained on the submission summary when I woke the next morning.
Han had left the page facedown on the bedside table. I had asked her to. Seeing it had kept me awake; hiding it had not helped.
A nurse checked my breathing and brought medication. I waited for the pain to ease before I called Han.
“Can Haneul tell us why Sora delivered the proposal?”
“Not simply because you asked,” Han said. “But the review panel can examine the submission history. They’ve agreed to hear your conflict disclosure this morning.”
I stared at the curtain around my bed.
“Will they hear about Ms. Choi?”
“Not unless there’s a reason, and not without discussing it with her first.”
Ms. Choi had trusted us with what she heard and with the message Sora sent her at 5:47 p.m. She had not volunteered to become part of a corporate dispute. She still had to earn a living in a house owned by the people she had spoken about.
Han sent me a draft disclosure. It said Daeho was my husband, that I had filed for divorce, and that his company had submitted a proposal to Haneul. It noted that I disputed an accusation made against me by the proposal’s listed delivery contact. It did not describe the assault or name a witness.
At the bottom, Han had written what I was asking for: preservation of the submission history, an independent review of any relevant conflicts, and no special treatment for the bidder, favorable or unfavorable.
I read it twice.
“Should we tell them I haven’t received my votes?”
“They already know the trust process is underway. We can say it plainly here.”
I added the sentence myself. I had not completed the trust process, could not direct my father’s voting interests, and held no office at Haneul.
It felt strange to insist on the limits of an inheritance I had finally agreed to claim. But those limits were real. I signed the disclosure on my phone and asked Han to send it.
By late morning, a tablet stood against a pitcher of water on my bedside table. Han sat beside me. On the screen were three members of Haneul’s independent procurement review panel: a procurement manager, a compliance officer, and an outside member whose name I wrote down and immediately forgot. I was tired enough that even listening took effort.
The compliance officer thanked me for putting the conflict in writing.
“We will not ask you to argue the merits of the bid, Ms. Seo,” she said. “Our job is to make sure the people who do that work have an accurate record.”
“I understand.”
The procurement manager explained that the panel could examine the full proposal and its administrative history. I would not receive the bidder’s confidential materials. Han could submit questions relevant to the conflict through the panel, but the answers might have to remain with its reviewers.
That was less access than I wanted. It was also the same boundary I would have demanded if the bidder had been a stranger.
The outside member glanced down at her notes.
“Our initial check found revisions in the submission record that need an explanation,” she said. “We can see changes to the delivery-contact information and a replacement of a disclosure page after the first intake entry.”
My hand tightened around the edge of the blanket.
“Was the replacement improper?”
“We don’t know. The bid period allowed certain corrections. We need the earlier versions, the reasons given for the changes, and the ordinary handling records before we make any finding.”
Han leaned forward.
“Will those records be retained?”
“Yes. The panel has requested preservation of each version and the associated submission log.”
I thought of the brown envelope Ms. Choi had seen Sora carry into Daeho’s study. I thought of Sora’s message claiming a file was missing hours before she later said she had noticed it. None of that told us what was on Haneul’s disclosure page. It did not tell us whether anything had been taken from the study.
“What happens to the proposal while you review it?” I asked.
“The regular evaluation can continue with safeguards,” the procurement manager said. “We’ll decide whether any reviewer needs to step aside. A concern about a revision is not, by itself, grounds to reject a bidder.”
I had expected to feel relief that someone else had found something unusual. Instead I felt how much I still did not know.
“Please use the same standard you would use if I weren’t related to Haneul,” I said.
The compliance officer met my eyes through the screen.
“We’ll record that request.”
After the call, Han closed the tablet. I asked whether the panel’s findings could be shared with the people handling my divorce and assault account.
“If they establish something relevant, we can ask through the proper channels,” she said. “We can’t assume a procurement record will answer what happened in Daeho’s study.”
I let out a careful breath. The pain beneath my ribs made me stop halfway.
My grandfather arrived with a paper bag of pears he had cut himself. The pieces had turned slightly brown by the time he opened it. He set them on my tray without comment, then looked at Han.
“She told me about the panel,” he said.
“I asked her to.”
He pulled a chair close to the bed. For a moment he only looked at me. He had seen me the day before, yet his eyes still went to the bruising near my collar.
“His company shouldn’t be considered,” he said.
“That’s for the reviewers to decide.”
“I know people who could end it with a phone call.”
Han said nothing. My grandfather’s face told me he had expected her to object; hearing it from me was harder.
“Please don’t make that call,” I said.
“He hurt you.”
“Yes.”
“You’re lying in a hospital bed because of him.”
“I know where I am.”
His expression changed. He looked down at the unopened fruit and pushed the bag a little farther from my arm.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to speak as if you could forget.”
I wanted to take his hand. I also needed him to hear me.
“If his proposal breaks a rule, I want the panel to find it. If it doesn’t, I don’t want people to pretend it does because they’re afraid of you—or of what I might become.”
“He hasn’t shown you that courtesy.”
“Then we should be better at it.”
I picked up a piece of pear. He waited until I had eaten it before asking whether I needed anything else. This time I could answer him without arguing.
“I need you to let them do their work.”
He nodded once. It was not an easy promise for him, but he made it.
An hour after he left, Han’s phone rang. She stepped into the hall. When she returned, she kept the door open for a nurse coming through with my afternoon medication.
“What is it?” I asked.
Han waited for the nurse to finish, then showed me her screen.
Sora had posted a statement under her own name. She wrote that she had been the delivery contact for Daeho’s company’s proposal. According to her, I had used my family name to seek confidential bidding files and was trying to interfere with the review. She repeated her accusation that I had sought documents from Daeho’s study.
She offered no document, date, or source for either claim.
I read the post again. It turned my request for an independent review into a demand I had not made. It made the accusation that had preceded Daeho’s assault sound like a settled fact.
Under it, strangers were already discussing what kind of woman concealed her name from her husband for three years. Someone asked whether I had married him to spy on his company. Someone else said a rich family could make any evidence disappear.
I gave the phone back before I read more.
“How did she know I wouldn’t block the bid?” I asked.
“The panel sent the bidder a procedural notice,” Han said. “It says a conflict was disclosed and an independent review has begun. It doesn’t share your letter, but it makes clear you won’t take part in the evaluation.”
Sora had taken the one part she could see and supplied the rest herself.
“Can we answer?”
“Yes. We can correct the claim that you asked for confidential files. We can confirm you made a written disclosure and asked for an independent review.”
“What about her accusation?”
“We can deny it. We should be careful about how much more we say before we’ve checked the records.”
I pictured Ms. Choi standing in Han’s office, asking whether Daeho would find out she had come. She had given us the time on Sora’s message because she wanted the truth recorded. She had not asked us to put her name in front of thousands of strangers.
“If we say Sora accused me before she says she did, people will ask how we know,” I said.
“They will.”
“And then they’ll look for whoever was at the house.”
Han set her phone on the table.
“We don’t have to publish the message. Ms. Choi can decide what she’s willing to say if it becomes necessary. You can make a narrower statement now.”
I wanted to defend myself completely, with every detail we had. But I remembered how carefully Ms. Choi had described the edge of what she knew. She had not entered the room. She had not seen what was in the envelope. I could not ask her to bear the risk of claims she had never made.
Han drafted three sentences. I had requested an independent review because of a disclosed personal conflict. I had neither requested nor received confidential bidding files. I denied taking documents from Daeho’s study.
I approved them, and Han sent them through counsel. I put my phone face down. The statement was true, but I knew it would not satisfy everyone.
May you like
Near evening, Han’s phone lit up again. She read without moving, then turned the screen toward me.
A second account had repeated Sora’s claim. This one said the information came from someone inside Haneul.
