“Mother. What do we do?”

The second daughter-in-law, Min-yeong Oh, grasped Suk-ja’s arm and pleaded. “Jun-myeong’s father does nothing but drink these days, every single day.”

But at her words, Suk-ja only quietly closed her eyes. Because she knew well enough why Sang-jong drank every day and why the second daughter-in-law had come to her like this.

Min-yeong shook the closed-eyed Suk-ja’s arm harder. “Mother, please help him. In this family, only you can.”

“And how am I supposed to help?” Suk-ja opened her eyes and looked at her. “Do you want me to have Sang-jong put back at the company?”

“Yes.”

At the question, Min-yeong answered as if she’d been waiting for it. “Please call him back to the company. At this rate, several of us are going to die…”

Trailing off at the end, Min-yeong bowed her head. The truth was, Min-yeong felt she’d die before Sang-jong did. With him coming home drunk every day and turning violent, she found herself thinking the days when he only grumbled about work were better. So, though Sang-jong hadn’t asked her to, she’d come to Pyeongchang-dong herself to plead his case to Suk-ja.

“Mother. Please… put in a good word with Father for us.”

“He got himself thrown out of his seat by his own mistake — what am I supposed to do about it?”

“Mother, he ended up that way trying to make everything work out. You think he did it hoping the company would fail? You know well enough it wasn’t like that.”

“What good does my knowing do? When he doesn’t think so.”

Even at Min-yeong’s pleading, Suk-ja only shook her head. At the sight, Min-yeong decided pleading with her was useless. So she rose to go meet Tak-hyeon directly.

“Father’s home, isn’t he?”

“Don’t tell me you mean to speak to him yourself? Don’t. Talk to him and you’ll only make it worse — scratching at it till it festers.”

“How much worse could it possibly get from here?”

Startled at the sight of Min-yeong setting off toward the study, Suk-ja caught her arm. “Don’t go.”

“Don’t stop me!” Min-yeong looked at the restraining Suk-ja. “I have to see Father myself and speak to him. I truly… can’t live like this.”

At her words, the strength went out of Suk-ja’s hand. Because the bruises on Min-yeong’s arms and legs, and the faces of her grandchildren — said to have fought each other — flashed quickly through her mind. Wearing a troubled expression, she said, “It’s no use going.”

“I told you not to stop me! I’ll tell Father—”

“I mean it’s no use going to the study. Because he isn’t there.”

“Father’s not home…?”

Suk-ja let out a short sigh, turned her head to look at the door, and said, “He’s home. He’s home, but… he’s not in the study — he’s in the basement.”

“The basement… you mean the chamber?”

Min-yeong asked with a startled look.

“He went down not long ago, so I don’t know when he’ll come up. So go home for today and come again another time. Or ask me first before you come.”

Feeling something odd in Suk-ja’s words, Min-yeong asked, “You mean he might go down to the chamber tomorrow too?”

“He’s been going down every day lately.”

“Every day?”

Min-yeong looked at her, startled. She knew the chamber existed and that it was used only a few times a year. So hearing that Tak-hyeon was using it every day these days surprised her. But at the words that followed, she was startled enough to forget all the reasons that had come before.

“Lately he goes down to the chamber with Kim every day. What on earth they talk about down there…”

Home again, Min-yeong looked at Sang-jong sitting in the living room drinking, as if he were pathetic, and said, “Are you really going to do nothing but drink every day? Do you even know what’s happening in Pyeongchang-dong right now?”

“In Pyeongchang-dong, what?”

Tipsy, Sang-jong knit his brows deeply, irked by her words. And he looked at her, thinking that if she said something pointless he’d have to teach her a lesson with the golf club again.

Min-yeong sensed Sang-jong looked dangerous, but she didn’t back down. Because she felt she had to relay what she’d heard in Pyeongchang-dong. “They say Father goes down to the underground chamber every day.”

“So what? Things are pretty bad right now, so he goes down, I suppose. What’s that got to do with me?”

“Do you know who he goes there with?”

“Who? Don’t tell me…”

Holding a glass of whiskey, Sang-jong looked up at her.

Min-yeong glanced at his glass and answered. “That’s right. While you’re drinking like that, Kim goes down to the underground chamber with Father every day.”

“Who says? Who’s spouting such nonsense!”

“Who else? Mother.”

“Mother? Mother really said that?”

At the word that it was Suk-ja who’d said it, Sang-jong could doubt no longer. Because it didn’t occur to him that his mother would fabricate something to provoke him.

Seeing that Sang-jong was finally willing to listen, Min-yeong took courage and pushed harder. “So pull yourself together. Are you going to just sit on your hands and lose everything? Even if you get cast out like this, what about our children? What crime have those poor children committed, to be cast out of the Ilhyeon house?”

“Who says anyone’s been cast out!”

No sooner had Min-yeong finished than Sang-jong shouted, and the glass in his hand flew at her.

Crash!

The glass, passing beside Min-yeong’s face, struck the display cabinet behind her, and the cabinet’s glass and the things piled inside came spilling down. In terror at not knowing when another glass might fly at her, she shut her eyes tight and hunched her shoulders. But the thought that she couldn’t retreat now, having come this far, made her hunched shoulders spread wide open.

“Then do something!” Min-yeong opened her shut eyes and shouted at him. “Are you going to sit here helpless like this until it’s all taken, and then beat the ground in regret?”

“Taken? Who’s getting anything taken? Me? Don’t talk rubbish!”

When Sang-jong shouted again, Min-yeong squeezed her eyes shut in fear that a glass might fly. But when no sound came even after a good while, she gently opened them. Sang-jong, steadying his swaying body, was walking slowly toward her.

At the sight, Min-yeong backed away without realizing it and cried out, “If you lay a hand on the children again, I’ll kill myself. This time I really won’t stand for it.”

Thinking he was walking toward her, Min-yeong spread her arms to block his way to the children.

At her voice, Sang-jong knit his brows deeply and shouted, “Quiet!” Having shouted, he turned his body not toward the children’s room but toward the entrance.

Thinking it a relief, Min-yeong followed him to the entrance. “Wh-where are you going?”

She asked, not knowing where the thoroughly drunk Sang-jong was headed.

Without even turning his head to the following Min-yeong, he answered, “You told me not to let my things get taken, didn’t you?”

“Are you going to Pyeongchang-dong?”

“Pyeongchang-dong?”

Standing before the entrance door, Sang-jong turned his head to Min-yeong, who’d followed. And with a face flushed red from drink, he sneered. “You think I’ll find what’s mine by going to Pyeongchang-dong?”

“Then…?”

“I’ll find it with my own hands.”

“Do you have some plan?”

“Stop your useless worrying and set the table for the kids. It’s about time for them to eat.”

“And you?”

Min-yeong asked, in a roundabout way, when he’d be back if he went out now.

Without even answering, Sang-jong opened the door and went outside.

Min-yeong only gazed quietly at the closed door, with a face that couldn’t tell where the thoroughly drunk Sang-jong was going.

In the chamber, Tak-hyeon kept smoking one cigarette after another. Behind him, as he sat with a face full of deliberation, Chief Secretary Do-beom Hwang quietly kept his place at his side.

How many years since I’ve seen the chairman like this…

Visiting the chamber this often was itself something that hadn’t happened in decades. And the sight of him wrapped in deliberation this long in the chamber was one that even Do-beom, who’d been with him all along, was seeing for the first time. That was how deep Tak-hyeon’s deliberation ran, how carefully he had to weigh his thoughts.

Having smoked three cigarettes in a row, Tak-hyeon gathered his hands a moment and spoke. “Chief Hwang. What do you think?”

At the question, Do-beom bowed his head slightly and answered. “I think Seong-ho’s argument has merit.”

“Oh?”

Tak-hyeon turned his head and looked up at him, as if surprised.

Under his gaze, Do-beom recalled what Seong-ho had said a little earlier and began. “It’s true that with Dubo and the Bumi Group collapsing now, the exchange rate and bond markets have turned murky. And Seong-ho’s point is right — that a government hit by a lame-duck period has no capacity to handle the present situation.”

“Right. As a parent with children, I understand President Kim’s heart. Where would he have the capacity to mind anything else?”

“Exactly. In a situation like this… I think, as Seong-ho says, even a small external shock could bring a great wave crashing down.”

“So to prepare for that, carry out a group-wide restructuring, is it. Tsk…”

Tak-hyeon repeated Seong-ho’s words and cocked his head. To his mind too, Seong-ho’s argument had merit. And knowing well that it would only get harder if the timing slipped, he agreed with Seong-ho’s point that if it were to be done, it was now or never.

But there was a reason he couldn’t decide easily even knowing all this. “The one who takes charge and directs the restructuring has to end up being Kim, doesn’t it?”

Do-beom knew what Tak-hyeon was worried about. So in a careful voice, he offered his thoughts. “No one could take issue with Kim being the one best suited to it.”

“Right. He has the track record and the results. But… this time is a little different, isn’t it.”

Tak-hyeon brought his hand to the cigarette pack before him. Do-beom drew out a cigarette, put it to Tak-hyeon’s lips, lit it, and said, “As you worry, it is different. Because he’d have to take sole charge of restructuring not a single company like Ilhyeon Watch or Ilhyeon Hotel, but the entire group. It may be that another power, seated above the existing body of presidents, gets concentrated in Seong-ho’s hands.”

“Hoo… That’s what I worry about too.” Tak-hyeon blew out a long stream of smoke and said with a face full of worry. “I know this is exactly the right time. But… power concentrating in Seong-ho’s hands can’t be allowed. Hoo… I can’t move one way or the other — this is a real bind…”

He put the cigarette to his lips once more and drew the smoke in deep. Blowing it out long, he quietly watched it vanish at the ceiling. Having watched it disappear a while, Tak-hyeon gave Do-beom an instruction in a low voice. “Rather than just deliberating like this, I ought to check. Tell Kim to come down. And…”

He paused a moment and smoked two or three more puffs. Then, stubbing the ash out in the ashtray, he said, “Dig deeper into Kim’s background. Not just now, but before the marriage and his school days, all of it.”

Do-beom couldn’t give an immediate answer of assent, and asked with a puzzled look, “Didn’t you already check all of that before he married Gyeong-eun?”

“No. Back then I only checked things like whether he was clean on women, whether his mental state was sound.”

“Then what is it you want looked into this time?”

Do-beom looked at Tak-hyeon and asked, with a gaze that couldn’t understand what there was to look into now that he’d already become family.

“What I want looked into now means looking for something that could serve as a weak point.”

“A weak point…?”

As if it were a wholly unexpected answer, Do-beom’s voice trembled slightly. Because fear came over him at Tak-hyeon’s instruction to find a weakness in the very son-in-law he meant to entrust a great task to.

Whether or not he knew Do-beom’s heart, Tak-hyeon’s face hardened coldly. And in a voice colder still than his face, he said, “One has to prepare for the worst case. A son-in-law is a son-in-law — not my child.”

(End of Chapter 72)