Coming out of the meeting room, Mun-jong looked at Seong-ho and asked, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Brother."

Seong-ho glanced around a moment. Confirming that some distance had opened up from the other siblings, he said in a low voice, "Whatever you'd said, you were in a position where you'd inevitably fall out of the chairman's favor."

"No — if anything, had I brought back the proper right answer, I might have earned praise greater than what you got."

Mun-jong looked at him with suspicion. "Don't tell me you kept it from me because you've got some other scheme."

Watching Mun-jong's suspicious streak start to flare, Seong-ho shook his head. "Brother. I'm a Kim."

"Exactly!"

Mun-jong grabbed Seong-ho by the collar and growled. "Exactly — so don't get any funny ideas. If you knew what to say to Father, you should have told me. Not gone and said it to Father yourself!"

He yanked the gripped collar toward himself. "If you hadn't fed me that strange talk in the first place, I'd have opposed what Sang-jong was pushing — and then today's praise would've gone to me, not you."

"Brother. Isn't that already water under the bridge?"

"Water under the bridge to you, maybe. Not to me yet."

Forgetting they were still right outside the meeting room, where Tak-hyeon might hear, Mun-jong pressed harder.

Gyeong-eun, who'd gone ahead, found it strange that Seong-ho wasn't following and looked back — and, spotting him caught in Mun-jong's grip, cried out in shock. "Brother! What are you doing right now!"

She wedged her body between the two of them, trying to pry them apart. "Let go! Let go of him! If you don't, I'll tell Dad this instant!"

At Gyeong-eun's threat to run into the meeting room and tell Tak-hyeon if he didn't release his grip, Mun-jong finally loosened his hand.

Seong-ho rubbed his throbbing throat once and said, "As it happens, the chairman told me separately to support you well, Brother."

"And yet you don't listen?"

Gesturing to the heartbroken Gyeong-eun — pained at the mark on his neck — that he…