L must choose between people and money in Numbers

by Jenzy

In the fifth teaser for Numbers: Watchdogs in a Concrete Jungle, we get to see L (Secret Royal Investigator) grapple with the morality of his job as an accountant at a big-shot firm.

The teaser opens with L’s character Jang Ho-woo starting his new job as an accountant at the prestigious Taeil firm. He’s the only new accountant that graduated with just a high school degree, which quickly puts a target on his back from other “arrogant pricks” that work there — one of those pricks being fellow Infinite member Sung-yeol (Time of Memory). *Squee*

Within the company’s deeply hierarchical structure, we see him get snubbed by his fellow accountants, who ignore his greetings and relegate him to menial tasks. Amidst this, we also hear his senior manager Han Seung-jo — played by Choi Jin-hyuk (Zombie Detective) — chide him in the voiceover, “If you were thinking like an accountant you would’ve already known this.”

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Still, the hazing doesn’t get to Ho-woo as much as the guilt does when he’s faced with the ethical consequences of his work — namely, that people’s financial livelihoods are at stake with every decision the firm makes. He’s torn when he sees a mob of distressed people at the company entrance, but when he asks, “Is the money worth more than people’s lives?” his senior associate Yeon-woo (Golden Spoon) reasons that they’re “accountants not problem-solvers,” and Seung-jo gives him another cold, “This is what an accountant does.”

But not to worry, for Seung-jo is not as robotic as he might seem. In a series of shots, we see him bristle under the demands of the shady VP Han Jae-kyun — Choi Min-soo (Extracurricular) — and blow up at an exploitative accountant: “Your work is making someone else’s life a living hell!”

It looks like Jae-kyun and his corrupt dealings will ultimately unite Seung-jo and Ho-woo to work together and expose their mutual enemy. In the final scenes, Ho-woo broodily looks at his DIY Jae-kyun conspiracy board and muses, “I’ve always known that accountants weren’t righteous people.” And Seung-jo corroborates in the voiceover: “Person never trusted the numbers to start with.”

The teaser wraps with the promise of Ho-woo making waves within the firm, telling someone, “I just did what any worthwhile accountant would’ve done.”

Written by Jung Ahn and Oh Hye-seok and directed by Kim Chil-bong (The Second Husband), Numbers will premiere on June 23 on MBC.