Sitting in the office and looking over the documents Hi-Dot-Com had prepared, Manager Byeong-ju Jeong nodded as if satisfied and said,

“Looks right.”

Hyeong-jin Kang, who’d been waiting for the document review to finish, rubbed his palms together and said,

“Then it’s all settled now, yes?”

The anticipation on Hyeong-jin Kang’s face was plain for all to see.

Looking at him, Manager Byeong-ju Jeong wore an indifferent expression as he drew documents from his bag and said,

“Yes. The moment you stamp these papers, twenty billion won goes into your account, President Kang, and Hi-Dot-Com becomes a company owned by the Ilhyeon Group.”

Then he held the documents out — not to Hyeong-jin Kang, but to Seong-ho Kim.

“There. Assistant Manager Kim, you close it out.”

Handing over the papers, Byeong-ju Jeong wore a displeased look.

This acquisition negotiation had been designed for Seong-ho Kim.

It was a matter engineered and handed down from above, a gift for marrying the youngest daughter of the Ilhyeon Group.

Byeong-ju Jeong passed the documents to Seong-ho Kim and gave him a look urging him to hurry up and get on with it.

He wanted to wrap up this unpleasant business and leave as fast as possible.

But Seong-ho Kim, having received the documents, opened his mouth instead of performing the simple act of handing them to Hyeong-jin Kang.

“President Kang.”

Hyeong-jin Kang, who’d stretched out his hand to receive the papers, looked up at Seong-ho Kim’s address.

“Yes? What is it?”

“Do you happen to know a company called KA Station?”

At those words, Hyeong-jin Kang flinched, startled.

Watching Hyeong-jin Kang’s face drain of color, Seong-ho Kim gathered up the documents and went on.

“I heard you’ve been doing business with KA Station.”

“How do you… how could you…”

Frozen in the posture of a man reaching out to receive papers, Hyeong-jin Kang’s face went from steadily whitening to downright pallid.

Byeong-ju Jeong stared at him strangely, then asked Seong-ho Kim,

“KA Station? What are you talking about? What does that have to do with the Hi-Dot-Com acquisition?”

“It has quite a bit to do with it. Isn’t that right, President Kang?”

Hyeong-jin Kang could give no answer to Seong-ho Kim’s question.

Thrown by the sudden turn, Manager Byeong-ju Jeong could only look silently between President Kang and Seong-ho Kim.

Seong-ho Kim lifted the documents Manager Byeong-ju Jeong had handed him up into the air and said,

“On reflection, I’m inclined to think this acquisition shouldn’t go ahead.”

“You won’t go through with the acquisition? But this was already settled with President Lee—!”

Hyeong-jin Kang cut himself off and hastily shut his mouth.

In his agitation, he’d very nearly blurted out something he shouldn’t have.

But the fact that he’d broken off mid-sentence and clamped his mouth shut didn’t mean there was anything Seong-ho Kim didn’t already know.

‘I already know. That you and the eldest brother-in-law got your stories straight.’

Seong-ho Kim knew perfectly well, from his experience in his past life, that Mun-jong Lee was deeply involved in this affair.

A thick smile on his lips, Seong-ho Kim spoke in Hyeong-jin Kang’s stead.

“I’ll take this acquisition back with me and give it another close look. So please understand that, and—”

Seong-ho Kim gripped the acquisition-contract documents Byeong-ju Jeong had handed him in both hands and tore them apart.

“Assistant Manager Kim. What are you doing?”

Startled by the act, Manager Byeong-ju Jeong cried out.

In the end, documents were nothing more than paper.

He could just print them again once they got back to the office.

But tearing them up in front of the very party to the acquisition negotiation could only be read as carrying a different meaning entirely.

Byeong-ju Jeong realized that this affair — which had been driven from the upper reaches of Strategic Planning, or perhaps from somewhere even higher — had morphed into something far too big for him to handle.

Tap, tap.

Unlike Byeong-ju Jeong, into whom worry came flooding like a tide, Seong-ho Kim breezily scattered the torn paper into the air and dusted off his hands.

Then he rose from his seat and looked down at Hyeong-jin Kang, president of Hi-Dot-Com, who stood white as a sheet and trembling.

“You must have chased this right up to the moment twenty billion won was within your grasp. A shame it turned out this way.”

“You… do you even know what you’ve just done?!”

President Kang, unable to hold his anger in any longer, shouted.

Seong-ho Kim regarded him, curled up the corners of his mouth, and answered,

“Better than you do. So sit tight and wait. Next time it won’t be me who comes to see you — it’ll be a prosecutor.”

Tossing off a sneer, Seong-ho Kim turned to the blank-faced Manager Byeong-ju Jeong and said,

“Manager Jeong. Let’s go. There’s no need to stay here any longer.”

“Huh?”

Even at Seong-ho Kim’s let’s go, Byeong-ju Jeong couldn’t collect himself amid the situation that had erupted so suddenly.

Then, catching sight of Seong-ho Kim’s back as he turned to leave first, Byeong-ju Jeong rose from his seat with a flustered face.

“Assistant Manager Kim! Wait up.”

Hurrying after Seong-ho Kim as he left the conference room, Byeong-ju Jeong stole a glance back.

Hyeong-jin Kang, president of Hi-Dot-Com, his face contorted, was doing nothing but staring blankly at the torn-up contract strewn across the floor.

Unable even to say goodbye to Hyeong-jin Kang, Byeong-ju Jeong hurriedly followed Seong-ho Kim out of Hi-Dot-Com.

“What in the world is going on here?”

Pulling out of the building in the car, Manager Byeong-ju Jeong shot sidelong glances at Seong-ho Kim in the passenger seat, his face full of disbelief.

Unlike Byeong-ju Jeong, Seong-ho Kim answered indifferently, his eyes on the diary.

“It’s nothing, so don’t fret over it too much.”

“You tore up a contract right in front of him and you’re telling me it’s nothing, don’t fret? Assistant Manager Kim, this thing was already all set up. We didn’t come to decide whether to make the deal — we came just to get the stamp. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Looking up from the diary, Seong-ho Kim met Byeong-ju Jeong’s eyes and answered,

“How could I not understand? It was a deal set up for me, after all.”

“Someone who knows that, and yet…”

At Seong-ho Kim’s matter-of-fact acknowledgment, Byeong-ju Jeong was left speechless.

Seong-ho Kim paused a moment, then turned toward Byeong-ju Jeong, who kept driving, and said,

“Don’t worry. I broke a deal that was arranged for me, so no harm will come to you, Manager.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about. More to the point—”

“And since breaking off the acquisition negotiation has freed up some time, Manager, take your child to the hospital, just like I told you.”

“Assistant Manager Kim…”

“You absolutely must take them. Otherwise, you might come to regret it.”

At Seong-ho Kim’s firm words, Byeong-ju Jeong could say nothing.

He merely struggled to hold on to a mind that kept threatening to fly apart.

Because Seong-ho Kim’s instruction to take his child to the hospital — even more than the words acquisition talks collapsed, which somehow felt inadequate — had thrown Byeong-ju Jeong’s mind into turmoil.

Watching Byeong-ju Jeong drive with a hardened expression, Seong-ho Kim smiled and looked away.

Inside the diary spread open in Seong-ho Kim’s hands, written in letters only he could see, was the fact that Manager Byeong-ju Jeong’s child was ill.

When the two of them returned to the company, the Ilhyeon Group’s Strategic Planning Office was thrown into an uproar over what had happened at Hi-Dot-Com.

And word of it reached all the way to Pyeongchang-dong.

“Kim. What in the world did you do?”

Before Seong-ho Kim, home from work, had even taken off his shoes, Mun-jong Lee’s voice rang out.

Gyeong-eun Lee, who had come out to the door to welcome Seong-ho Kim and walked in with him, looked at him with a startled face at her brother’s voice.

Seong-ho Kim lightly stroked Gyeong-eun Lee’s back to tell her it was fine, and finished taking off his shoes.

Then he greeted Mun-jong Lee and Sang-jong Lee, who had come storming up, huffing.

“I’m home.”

“We sent you to acquire Hi-Dot-Com, and you tore up the contract right there on the spot? Kim, are you out of your mind?”

“Ah, so you’ve heard?”

Seong-ho Kim nodded as though it were no great matter and gestured toward the study.

“Brother. Would it be all right if we saved the rest of this conversation for after I’ve greeted Father and come back out?”

“Greet Father and come back out to talk, you say?”

Mun-jong Lee burst into an incredulous, exasperated laugh and said,

“Never mind that — let’s talk together with Father.”

Without even waiting for Seong-ho Kim’s reply, Mun-jong Lee walked ahead with Sang-jong Lee toward the study where Chairman Tak-hyeon Lee stayed.

“Seong-ho, what’s going on?”

When Gyeong-eun Lee looked at him with worried eyes, Seong-ho Kim took her hand.

“Don’t worry. It’s nothing.”

Just as Seong-ho Kim was reassuring Gyeong-eun Lee, Mun-jong Lee, walking ahead, shouted back at him.

“What are you doing? Get over here.”

At Mun-jong Lee’s voice, Seong-ho Kim told Gyeong-eun Lee he’d be back soon and walked over to Mun-jong Lee, who stood waiting in front of the study.

As Seong-ho Kim approached, Mun-jong Lee knocked on the study door.

Knock, knock.

“Come in.”

Because Mun-jong Lee had called out right in front of the study, Tak-hyeon Lee — who thus knew who had knocked — immediately told them to enter.

Mun-jong Lee grasped the handle, opened the door, and the instant he stepped inside, greeted Tak-hyeon Lee.

“Father. I’m here.”

“What’s all this commotion?”

Seated at his desk, Tak-hyeon Lee closed the book he’d been reading and looked at Mun-jong Lee, who’d opened the door and come in.

Then, as Seong-ho Kim and his second son, Sang-jong Lee, followed in after, he furrowed his brow.

“From the way you’ve come as a group, it seems you’ve got something to say.”

Tak-hyeon Lee rose from his seat and, settling onto the reception sofa, said,

“Come, sit.”

“Yes.”

Mun-jong Lee and Sang-jong Lee sat down on the sofa first, elbowing past Seong-ho Kim.

“What on earth is this fuss about?”

At Tak-hyeon Lee’s words, Mun-jong Lee started in on the Hi-Dot-Com matter before Seong-ho Kim had even sat down.

“It was a twenty-billion-won acquisition, no less.”

Mun-jong Lee held up two fingers and shouted at Seong-ho Kim.

“Do you have any idea how much money twenty billion won is? A house goes for a hundred million. This was a deal worth two hundred houses at a hundred million each. And Kim here ruined the whole thing. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“We’d already worked everything out in advance, so all Kim had to do was go and get the stamp. But we told him to bring back the stamp, and instead he tears up the contract and comes home!”

After Mun-jong Lee, Sang-jong Lee too laid into Seong-ho Kim.

But Seong-ho Kim, with an expressionless face, took the words the two of them fired at him utterly in stride.

When Seong-ho Kim showed not the slightest hint of remorse, Mun-jong Lee turned to Tak-hyeon Lee.

“Father. This isn’t something we can just let slide. The moment he set foot in Strategic Planning, he blew a twenty-billion-won contract. He has to be held responsible for it.”

Just then, Seong-ho Kim, who had held his tongue all this while, spoke with a light smile.

“If I canceled the contract because there was a problem with Hi-Dot-Com… then how would that go?”

“What?”

“If the deal goes through well, I’d get the credit — but conversely, if it’s a contract with a problem, then I’d have to take responsibility for that too, wouldn’t I? But if I canceled the contract because I found a problem… if that’s the case, then how does it go?”

Seong-ho Kim looked at Tak-hyeon Lee, who was doing nothing but quietly listening, and said,

“My role was only to go and get the stamp. I had no involvement whatsoever in the acquisition process. And yet — if there was a problem with the Hi-Dot-Com acquisition from the very start, then who takes responsibility for that?”

A smile on his lips, Seong-ho Kim looked at Mun-jong Lee and Sang-jong Lee.

(End of Chapter 5)