"The company is in a crisis and this is the moment to grin and be pleased? And are you so glad your brother has come to grief?"

"Then what would you have me do?"

Mun-jong Lee shouted back at Tak-hyeon Lee.

"Tell me. Tell me and I shall do exactly that!"

"You can't work out even that much for yourself!"

"I can't. Since I can't, just tell me, Father."

Whether it was the ashtray that had roused him, Mun-jong Lee was not as he usually was.

His face flushed red, staunching the wound, he shouted at Tak-hyeon Lee.

"What would you like done with Sang-jong? Only say it. Are you going to abuse me for being a fellow with no thought in his head? Does it ease you that I am, as you say, a fellow with no thought in him?"

"You—"

"Sang-jong has done a mad thing, so shall I drag him here and beat him with an ashtray as you did me? Is that what you want?"

"You—"

"So just say it, I tell you. Instead of playing games, sounding a man out this way and that."

At that moment Do-beom Hwang came over and held out ice wrapped in a towel.

"Mun-jong, give me the tissue and put this to your head."

Taking the ice and towel from Do-beom Hwang, Mun-jong Lee went on speaking to the Tak-hyeon Lee who was glaring at him without a word.

"Do you feel wronged that Sang-jong caused this? You've no cause to feel wronged. Because all of it is a thing you made."

"What was that?"

"I say you made him what he is."

Out of Mun-jong Lee's mouth poured, without a pause, everything he had wanted to say all this while.

"He caused this because you drove him to it. Testing him without cease, setting him on your palm and watching him — could he have held out in his right mind?"

"So you're saying it was I who drove him mad?"

"You know it inwardly yourself. Can you truly say you did not?"

At Mun-jong Lee's words Tak-hyeon…