"Dad. What do you mean by that right now?"

"Give it up."

"Why should I?"

Jeong-eun whipped her head around to look at Seong-ho.

"It's you, isn't it? You did this, didn't you? Because I took your seat, you're taking your revenge on me now?"

"Don't take your anger out on the wrong person!"

Tak-hyeon's roar rang thunderously through the office.

Jeong-eun knelt before Tak-hyeon and pleaded.

"Dad. What did I do wrong, that you're like this? Hm?"

Tak-hyeon straightened his posture and, looking directly at the kneeling Jeong-eun, said,

"How about you try saying all that in a courtroom, too?"

"What?"

"I mean it might be better to say it to a prosecutor or a judge than to me. Unlike me, they might believe your words. And then you might even be found innocent. How about it?"

"What are you…"

Just then Tak-hyeon slapped his knee as if something had come to him and said,

"Ah, that's right. I didn't tell you this."

"…Yes?"

"Word is someone at the Blue House said that somebody ought to take responsibility."

"Responsibility…? Who says the Blue House said such a thing?"

As Jeong-eun's eyes widened in disbelief, Seong-ho, who had been quietly listening, said to her in a cold tone,

"The government side said it to me, formally."

"So it is you. You're the root of—"

Smack!

Tak-hyeon struck the cheek of Jeong-eun as she glared at Seong-ho and made to scream at him.

"The root of it is you."

"Dad…?"

Never once, whatever she had done, had Tak-hyeon raised a hand to Jeong-eun.

With his sons — Mun-jong and the rest — he'd often thrown things, but toward his daughters he had never once shown violence.

And that Tak-hyeon had, for the first time, raised his hand to Jeong-eun.

So the shock Jeong-eun received was great enough that she couldn't even feel the pain.

"The root of the trouble for our house, and for the company, is you."

Tak-hyeon drove at Jeong-eun with words just as fierce.

"Because of you, the relationship we've built up with the government all this time…