It was the substitute holiday. The rest of the staff had one more day off.

Go Junyong headed for the chairman's office at Ilseong Group headquarters, as he always did. Mun Gunghyeon, the chief of the general secretariat, followed a step behind him.

The last few years had gone by in a blur.

His father, the pillar he had always leaned on, had lost his memory and lain in a sickbed for years before he passed.

What still weighed on him was that he had failed his father while the old man was alive: he had not kept his own family together.

But his wife's life mattered too, so he had agreed to let them each go their own way, as she wanted.

Before he knew it the children had grown up and left home, and the group had swelled almost past recognizing.

The pressure came often enough, too, rising and falling with the political tides.

At times like that, Go Junyong would come in to the chairman's office alone, the way he had today, and take time to think.

When his thoughts were tangled or a problem had knotted itself up, this was the place where his mind was most at ease.

Step.

Go Junyong carried a cup of his usual black tea over to the window.

Through the floor-to-ceiling glass he could take in Namsan and all of downtown Seoul at a glance, already touched with the smell of fall.

This was the head of Ilseong, the group at the very center of the Korean economy.

His clear gaze settled slowly on a spot beyond the forest of buildings.

"Anything more on Dongmyeong's money?"

Mun Gunghyeon answered without hesitation.

"Chairman Go Jaeyong is throwing everything he has at the short selling that poured in the day before the holiday. His overseas slush funds, every affiliate's available cash."

"All-out war, then."

Go Junyong's eyes narrowed.

Pour trillions of won in liquid cash into the market and crush the other side flat: that was the strategy.

Anyone could see it was a textbook chaebol chairman's show of strength.

Stamp the…