To Chairman Tak-hyeon Lee, who had been gazing for a moment at the door Seong-ho Kim had left through, Chief Do-beom Hwang asked carefully,

“Chairman. According to what we’ve looked into…”

“It was a board Mun-jong rigged to gorge himself on, wasn’t it.”

“You knew?”

“Why wouldn’t I know that?”

Snorting, Tak-hyeon Lee leaned back at an angle against the sofa.

Then, looking at Do-beom Hwang, who watched him curiously, he said,

“That company — Hi-Dot-Com, or Bye-Dot-Com, or whatever it’s called — is a puppet Mun-jong put up front. He was using it to skim our company’s money and, on top of that, to make a fool of Seong-ho too, wasn’t he.”

Startled — if only for a moment — at the sight of Tak-hyeon Lee seeing straight through to the facts as precisely as if he’d read the report himself, Do-beom Hwang composed his expression and said,

“In that case…”

“Just leave it be.”

Tak-hyeon Lee laughed as though it were nothing and rose from his seat.

Then, heading back to his desk, he said,

“You need that much nerve and that much of a head on your shoulders to move a group like our Ilhyeon. The problem is only that he got caught and failed.”

Bang.

Tak-hyeon Lee brought his fist down on the desk.

Then he turned and, looking at Do-beom Hwang’s tense face, said,

“I don’t care what schemes you cook up behind my back — but if you’re going to do it, you’d damn well better not let anyone else catch you at it!”

That his son had tried to acquire some absurd company, that he’d put up a puppet firm to skim Ilhyeon’s money — none of this was a problem in Tak-hyeon Lee’s eyes.

What displeased him was that someone else had caught on before the job was finished, so that it couldn’t be seen through to the end.

“Clean it up spotless. So spotless that no word ever gets out that Mun-jong or Sang-jong had anything to do with it.”

“Yes. Understood.”

“And…”

Tak-hyeon Lee sat down at his desk and thought hard for a moment.

Watching his face, Do-beom Hwang caught on to what he was mulling over and asked first,

“Is it about Assistant Manager Kim?”

At Do-beom Hwang’s words, Tak-hyeon Lee stopped his thinking and nodded.

“Yes. How on earth did that fellow know?”

Tak-hyeon Lee lowered his head and gently drummed on the desk as he spoke.

“Mun-jong cooked up the scheme and meant to dump the whole thing on Seong-ho. And naturally I assumed that’s how it would go… but then that fellow caught on and flipped the whole thing over.”

“Does that displease you?”

“There’s no question of it pleasing me or not.”

Tak-hyeon Lee lifted his head and leaned back in his chair.

Then, looking once more at the door Seong-ho Kim had gone out through, he said,

“It’s only that I’m curious how he knew.”

“So depending on how he knew, your appraisal of Assistant Manager Kim will change.”

At Do-beom Hwang’s words, Tak-hyeon Lee sank into thought for a moment.

It had been a marriage brought about by his youngest daughter’s stubbornness.

Suk-ja Chu had taken to her bed in protest, insisting it couldn’t happen, from the day she met Seong-ho Kim right up to the wedding day, and Mun-jong Lee and the rest of the older brothers and sisters, along with the sisters- and brothers-in-law, had opposed it with all their might.

But Tak-hyeon Lee had taken Gyeong-eun Lee’s side, and the marriage had gone ahead.

In truth, Tak-hyeon Lee’s siding with Gyeong-eun Lee hadn’t been because he liked Seong-ho Kim.

It was because the thought had struck him that it wouldn’t be so bad to let one of his five children marry the partner they wanted.

On top of that, since his youngest, Gyeong-eun Lee, had no ambition for the group, he’d permitted her the marriage she wanted.

But quite apart from it being the marriage Gyeong-eun Lee wanted, Tak-hyeon Lee was no more taken with Seong-ho Kim than the rest of them.

Which was why there had only been a change of posting, while his rank had been kept right where it was, at assistant manager.

Do-beom Hwang’s question had been whether that position of Seong-ho Kim’s might now change.

Having sorted his thoughts for a moment, Tak-hyeon Lee shook his head and said,

“I can’t go changing my appraisal of the fellow just because he pulled off one thing I can’t account for. But… I do think there’s a need to keep watching him.”

Tak-hyeon Lee wore a meaningful expression and instructed Do-beom Hwang,

“That Jisan Group matter we’re about to move on — bring that fellow in on it.”

“On the Jisan Group deal, you mean?”

“If you’re going to appraise someone, you’ve got to give them a test, haven’t you? The Jisan business seems the most fitting for finding out whether the fellow really is of use or of no use at all, so let’s watch how he handles it.”

Tak-hyeon Lee smiled quietly and said in a low voice,

“Gyeong-eun may just have dragged home a fellow worth having.”

Hearing Tak-hyeon Lee’s words, Do-beom Hwang lightly closed his eyes.

Because those words, seemingly full of expectation, didn’t sound to him like they meant anything good.

‘Showing that you have ability… in this place, that isn’t always a good thing.’

Do-beom Hwang was worried about Seong-ho Kim’s future.

But unlike Do-beom Hwang’s worries, Seong-ho Kim knew a place like Ilhyeon better than anyone, and so from the moment he stepped out of the study — even before Tak-hyeon Lee had given Do-beom Hwang his instructions — he was already preparing for what came next.

“You’re not sleeping?”

Lying in bed, Gyeong-eun Lee looked over at the lit table.

There, Seong-ho Kim sat at the table in his pajamas, a desk lamp turned down low, reading something.

“You must be tired after work today.”

“Ah, I’ll sleep once I finish just this. You go on and sleep first, Gyeong-eun.”

When Seong-ho Kim held up the diary she’d given him as he spoke, Gyeong-eun Lee broke into a soft smile.

The mere fact that he was using the gift she’d given him brought a smile to her face all on its own.

Gyeong-eun Lee told him not to stay up too late and went to sleep first.

Seong-ho Kim watched her settle in, then turned his eyes back to the diary.

And among the contents written inside it, he checked the parts having to do with the Jisan Group.

‘Knowing my father-in-law’s character, he’s sure to try to bring me in on this project.’

Having taken on all the dirty work under Tak-hyeon Lee for over ten years, Seong-ho Kim found it no trouble to read the man’s thinking.

If it were Tak-hyeon Lee, then with a man he’d never counted on having slipped past this whole affair, he’d want to test him — and at this point in time, the business best suited to that test was none other than the matter involving the Jisan Group.

‘Jisan… Jisan…’

Thinking of the Jisan Group — which had begun as an educational foundation and had by now expanded its businesses to include cement and construction — Seong-ho Kim pored over the contents written in the diary.

‘Around this time, the negotiations over acquiring the cement company Jisan Group held were underway.’

Seong-ho Kim carefully checked the diary, in which was written the account of the Jisan Cement sale negotiations — the Jisan Group having fallen into a liquidity crisis and moved to sell off the major affiliates it held.

And after fitting all the relevant details into his head, he sank into thought for a good while over what method would earn him a good score on this test Chairman Tak-hyeon Lee had prepared.

Having seen Seong-ho Kim off to work on foot and come back inside, Gyeong-eun Lee spoke to her mother, Suk-ja Chu, in a curt voice.

“Mother.”

At Gyeong-eun Lee’s curt voice, Suk-ja Chu responded curtly in kind.

“Why are you calling me?”

Displeased that the precious youngest daughter she’d raised so dearly had married some beggar who’d rolled in from who-knows-where, Suk-ja Chu had no kind words for Gyeong-eun Lee.

“Assign a car to Seong-ho, too.”

“A car? What car?”

“Doesn’t it look pitiful to you, him walking to the company alone like that?”

As if a chill still lingered, Gyeong-eun Lee pulled her coat more tightly around herself even though she’d come inside, and said,

“Or else let him ride in with Father when he goes to work. How long do you intend to make him walk like that?”

“Are you still half-asleep because it’s morning? Whoever heard of a mere company employee riding to work in the same car as the chairman? Just the thought of what people would whisper makes my skin crawl.”

Suk-ja Chu looked at Gyeong-eun Lee with an incredulous face and said,

“Get a grip. And if he needs a car, you two can earn the money and buy one. It’s not as though you left a car in our keeping — demanding we hand one over is awfully brazen behavior, don’t you think?”

Angered by Suk-ja Chu’s words, Gyeong-eun Lee flung off the coat she was wearing and all but shouted at her.

“If it was going to be like this, why did you tell us to move in?! You won’t lend a single bit of support — did you plant us here just to keep us under watch, is that why you told us to come live here?”

“Well said.”

Suk-ja Chu snorted at Gyeong-eun Lee’s words and said,

“That’s exactly right — I told you to move in so I could keep watch.”

“What did you say?”

“I told you two to live here in case that man got insolent, strutting around going, ‘I married an Ilhyeon Group daughter, I’m an Ilhyeon Group son-in-law.’ Because I have no intention of acknowledging that man as an Ilhyeon Group son-in-law.”

“Mother!”

But Suk-ja Chu, as if she had no wish to talk any further, whirled around.

“If you drag home some man of unknown origins, you’ll just have to put up with that much inconvenience.”

Watching Suk-ja Chu’s retreating back, Gyeong-eun Lee trembled.

At the family’s attitude toward Seong-ho Kim — harsher than she’d anticipated — she felt a wave of disbelief.

And she felt it in her bones: without her in this household, Seong-ho Kim had not the slightest place to stand.

‘I have to protect him. For Seong-ho’s sake, I have to be the shield in this household.’

Gyeong-eun Lee steeled her heart once more and turned around.

While Gyeong-eun Lee and Suk-ja Chu were having it out in Pyeongchang-dong, Seong-ho Kim, who had arrived at the company, was called to the deputy head’s office before he’d even sat down.

“Director. You called for me?”

“Ah, yes. Come in.”

Director Gyeong-deuk Lee, who’d been attending to some business, rose from his seat to greet Seong-ho Kim and invited him to sit.

Then, seated on the sofa, he opened the channel of conversation with a bit of small talk.

“So? Have you settled in a little?”

“Yes. Everyone’s been a great help, so I’m settling in without much trouble.”

“Good. That’s just fine.”

Director Gyeong-deuk Lee smiled warmly, rubbed his palms together, and said,

“I heard about the Hi-Dot-Com business. Those fellows were real crooks, I hear? They say the Hi-Dot-Com president, or whatever he is, will likely be arrested. Apparently he embezzled over ten billion won, and there are fraud charges on top of it. Good grief. If it weren’t for you, Assistant Manager Kim, we’d have been in real trouble.”

Hearing that the Hi-Dot-Com president would be arrested, Seong-ho Kim got the feeling that the direction of his life had definitely diverged from his past one.

But Seong-ho Kim couldn’t be satisfied with this alone.

Because to take his revenge on the people who had used him like a dog and, not content with that, driven him to his death, he needed a far bigger turning point.

And another opportunity for that turning point came looking for Seong-ho Kim.

“So, on that note — I’m thinking of entrusting the Jisan Cement acquisition to Team 2, where you are. Pull this one off well, and I’ll push hard to back you, so bear that in mind and give it your all. All right?”

When the Jisan Cement matter was assigned to him exactly as he’d anticipated, Seong-ho Kim wordlessly let a smile touch his lips.

(End of Chapter 7)