Seated in the chairman's office, Mun-jong looked at Seong-ho with a dumbfounded face and asked,

"Say it one more time. You went and said what?"

"I went and said we wouldn't participate in the Doa Motors bidding."

"Have you lost your mind?"

Mun-jong was at the point where words wouldn't come out from sheer disbelief.

So he turned to Tak-hyeon, and Tak-hyeon, who'd been sitting with an expressionless face, opened his mouth toward Seong-ho.

"The reason you said that?"

"Yes. Just what reason did you have to say you wouldn't participate in the bidding?"

Seong-ho looked back and forth between Tak-hyeon and Mun-jong and answered,

"First of all, the union's backlash."

"Hmm."

Tak-hyeon nodded as if he found that reason acceptable.

Watching him, Seong-ho continued laying out the reasons.

"It's true the union's backlash is far more severe than expected, but I cited that if we acquire Doa Motors, the future is uncertain—given the way they oppose it unconditionally without even hearing what future we could show them."

"The union… right. Then next?"

"The second is the expected bidding price."

"Hm…"

Tak-hyeon let out a short murmur, but Seong-ho went on with the second reason.

"The expected bidding price the creditors currently anticipate for Doa Motors is between 5 and 6 trillion won."

"That'd be so. There's talk that the money tied up in it exceeds 10 trillion, so even that would be a big concession from the creditors' standpoint."

Mun-jong spoke to the effect that the creditors' demand wasn't excessive.

But Seong-ho was the opposite of Mun-jong's thinking.

"You mustn't think in terms of recouping the principal. It's right for the bidding price to be set on the company's intrinsic value alone."

Seong-ho turned his head toward Tak-hyeon.

"Doa Motors' current value is zero."

"Zero?"

"Yes. That it has no value is the Restructuring Headquarters' judgment."

At Seong-ho's words, Mun-jong asked with a dumbfounded expression,

"If it's zero, does that mean it's right to take it for free?"

"Even free isn't enough."

Seong-ho spoke in a confident voice.

"If anything, it's at a level where money would have to…