"I hear President Jeong-eun Lee was here."

"My sister-in-law? Here?"

Seong-ho, sorting documents at his desk, looked up at Byeong-jin's words.

"Did you get a call or anything?"

"No. Nothing like that."

Byeong-jin nodded, incredulity written across his face.

"Then again, if she had, she'd have come to your office."

"Where is she now?"

"She met Vice President Song and left already."

At the news that she'd seen Yeong-bae Song and gone, Seong-ho laughed, thoroughly amused, and closed the document he'd been reading.

He leaned back in his chair.

"Didn't I tell you someone would come, invitation or not?"

"Your in-laws really are something. The more I see, the more astonishing they get."

Byeong-jin clicked his tongue and sat down on the sofa.

Not long ago, he had proposed inviting senior group figures — Vice-Chairman Mun-jong, or Restructuring HQ head Gyeong-deuk Lee — to the Goliath crane's trial run.

But on hearing that Yeong-bae Song intended to pull something at the trial run, he had withdrawn the proposal at once.

Better, he'd thought, that no one be there at all.

And when Byeong-jin withdrew it, Seong-ho had said this to him:

Leave it alone and someone will come of their own accord — so let's put on a proper show.

Byeong-jin had found the idea absurd — that they would turn up uninvited.

The picture of a senior group executive attending an affiliate's event of their own accord, and not even a formal event but a trial run, was beyond his imagination.

And yet, exactly as Seong-ho had said, Jeong-eun had come.

"What in the world did you do to make mortal enemies of that lot?"

"What could I possibly have done?"

"Then what?"

Seong-ho recalled the Ilhyeon family, from the life before through to now.

"In their eyes I'm a trifling thing. To put it harshly, the gap between me and a stray dog wandering the neighborhood is smaller than the gap between me and them — that's how different a creature I am. And a creature like that is now distinguishing himself among them. What do you suppose…