Cunning and Evil

SKYFALL

"You're early."

Yoon Seri enters her office, immediately spotting the man in a suit holding a broadsheet while sitting on her sofa. He sipped the coffee in front of him as he recognized her presence.

"You're late." He counters, folding the broadsheet in half and putting it on the center table.

"There's traffic." Seri reasoned, hoping that it would suffice as an explanation for her 30-minute tardiness.

Ri Jeong Hyeok wrinkled his eyebrows. "No, there isn't."

Yoon Seri stopped in front of her desk to deposit her belongings, then turned to Ri Jeong Hyeok, urging him to follow her to the adjacent mini-board room in her office. The assemblyman, chivalrous as he is, opened the heavy wooden door for the assemblywoman.

"You're right, there isn't." She entered the room, stopping in front of the man holding the handle of the heavy door. "I just don't want to see your face so early in the morning."

So feisty, he thought to himself, all the while suppressing a grin.

Ri Jeong Hyeok sat opposite Yoon Seri, as they both took the papers out of their respective binders.

There was a mini paper bag in Ri Jeong Hyeok's briefcase, and he took it out to reveal a breakfast sandwich from a coffee shop a few streets away from the National Assembly building.

He slid the neatly wrapped breakfast across the table and despite Yoon Seri's eyes being focused on the document that his staff sent last night, she caught the sandwich. "What's this?"

"Breakfast, what do you think?"

Yoon Seri redirected her gaze to the sandwich she caught on the table, seeing the mini sticker indicating the type of sandwich it was.

"I don't eat breakfast." Lie. "Thanks, tho."

"Suit yourself. Shall we start?"

"Go ahead."

They have this thing in the National Assembly— an inside joke shared between the staff of the assemblymen, where a bloodied paper will come back to them after their respective bosses review their work on a certain bill.

Yoon Seri caught her Junior Staff one time, staring at the piece of paper with red marks all over it, and for a moment she thought her staff was gonna cry.

Of course, it's not something that people should take offense on. The red marks are proof that they want the bill to be perfect, leaving no room for scrutiny of the opposition.

But now she wanted to slap Ri Jeong Hyeok in the face when he took out his red ballpen to mark her draft bill.

His audacity!

"What do you think you're doing?"

"Omitting some details," the assemblyman casually said, leaving the assemblywoman seething in her seat. "The bill is too idealistic, Seri. I understand that you've been pushing for this since your first day in the office but.."

"But what?" Seri asked defensively, her fists ready to bang on the table.

"Come on, Seri." Jeong Hyeok drew a massive red circle on one section and put an X mark beside it. "Don't make me say it."

"No, Jeong Hyeok. Say it." Seri taunted, "I drafted that bill with my staff with the farmers' best interests at heart."

"Exactly, Seri." Jeong Hyeok explained. "You're too close to the issue at hand that you can't see the mismatch with the absorptive capacity of the private sector. You think that your stakeholders are gonna agree to this?"