The out-of-wedlock story spread among people even faster than the Doa Motors bidding had.

“Come on, wouldn’t a chaebol have a lover or two on the side?”

“Well, that’s true. With that much money, he’d have plenty of women too.”

“Right. It’s not some wild, far-fetched tale.”

“But the problem is he got caught.”

The two men seated at the drinking table were passing the time with talk about Mun-jong.

“Whether he meets a woman outside or a man, what’s it matter? If no one knows, it’s no matter at all. But this time he got caught. And with a child, no less.”

“Well, that is the problem. The child’s the problem, all right.”

Nodding as if in agreement with his friend, the man tipped his glass, threw back a shot of soju, and asked,

“But is this story even true?”

“If every outlet is blaring it, isn’t it true? Would they blare it with no evidence at all?”

“That’s true too. Blaring it without evidence, they’d have all of Ilhyeon Group’s ads yanked. But it’s strange. Usually a chaebol blocks stories like this, no? How’d they leave it alone until it got this far?”

“That’s a mystery to me too. Even if it isn’t true, a bad story like this is a pure minus once it spreads, so they should’ve blocked it before it got out—what on earth were they thinking, just leaving it?”

Tipping their glasses, the two expressed their puzzlement with faces that didn’t understand. And this puzzlement wasn’t felt by those two alone. It was the feeling of everyone who’d heard of the Ilhyeon Group scandal. And because of that feeling, the scandal spread among people more and more as if it were the truth.

The members of Tak-hyeon’s family gathered at Pyeongchang-dong showed their dismay at the scandal.

“Now it’s not just the broadcasts—my friends have started calling to ask too. Whether I really got a new niece or nephew. I’m so embarrassed I can’t even answer.”

Recalling the moment a friend had phoned, Jeong-eun felt the shame again, flushed, and turned to Chang-jong.

“What are you going to do?”

“What do you mean, what am I going to do?”

“It’s a mess you made. So you should be the one to fix it.”

“What can I do when it’s already spread?”

“My. Would you look at how brazen he is?”

As if she found Chang-jong’s attitude absurd, Jeong-eun turned to the other family members and pointed a finger at him.

“You all saw, didn’t you? This is the kind of man he is. Sires a child outside, comes home, and sits there brazenly with his head held high—look at him. Does anyone understand what he thinks he did so right, carrying on like this?”

Jeong-eun spat abuse at Chang-jong as if this were her chance. Her manner drew furrowed brows, but at any rate the root of this whole affair was indeed Chang-jong, so everyone looked at him with resentful eyes.

“It seems I raised my child wrong.”

“Mother. Why are you like this?”

“Why? You brat!”

Suk-ja gathered up the skirt of her hanbok, rose from her seat, and came at Chang-jong. And bringing her palm down on his back, she cried out,

“To watch a son who came out of my own belly not content with whoring but scattering his seed besides—my insides burn with it. I raised my child wrong. I’m a mad old woman.”

“Mother. Agh! Mom, stop it already.”

Chang-jong blocked Suk-ja’s hand coming down on his back, turned to the siblings present, and said,

“No—when it first came up you weren’t like this, so why do you all turn on me now, all of a sudden? Did everyone’s minds change just because the press is blaring it? It doesn’t add up.”

Chang-jong looked around at his siblings with a face that didn’t understand why the family—who’d first treated it as no great matter—now treated him like a man to be put to death. Jeong-eun and the rest could say nothing at his words.

Tak-hyeon broke the silence that had briefly settled.

“That’s enough from all of you. Now let’s talk about a countermeasure. Head Kim.”

“Yes.”

“The countermeasure you put forward last time. How did it go?”

Sang-jong, Jeong-eun, and the other family members, who hadn’t heard the talk in the study, looked at Seong-ho with curious eyes.

Seong-ho answered Tak-hyeon, wearing a troubled expression.

“That… it seems it won’t be easy.”

“The reason?”

At the question, Seong-ho glanced at Chang-jong. Chang-jong answered in his stead.

“Se-a’s mother is raising hell.”

“Raising hell?”

“Says she absolutely can’t do it…”

When Chang-jong trailed off, Jeong-eun, with a curious face, looked back and forth between Tak-hyeon, Chang-jong, and Seong-ho and asked,

“What did you put her up to that she’s ‘absolutely can’t’ about? Head Kim. What is it she’s raising hell over?”

Jeong-eun put the question to Seong-ho, who seemed the most approachable of the three. Seong-ho turned to Tak-hyeon to ask whether it was all right to say, and Tak-hyeon answered his look.

“Just tell them. Now that it’s come to this, there’s nothing to hide or not hide.”

At Tak-hyeon’s instruction, Seong-ho told those present the substance of the conversation they’d had in the study.

“What?”

Having heard it all, Jeong-eun turned to Chang-jong with a dumbfounded expression and asked,

“Is what Head Kim just said true?”

“Yes…”

Once she had Chang-jong’s confirmation too, Jeong-eun turned to Tak-hyeon with an incredulous face and said,

“Father. What crazy woman holds a press conference to admit a child her husband fathered outside is her own?”

She turned back to Chang-jong and shouted,

“You really are shameless. Making your own wife stand up and say your outside child is hers—have you no conscience at all?”

“Does a conscience put food on the table? And I’ve no affection left for that woman, so whatever I put her up to, I feel no pang of conscience.”

“You…”

Realizing there was no use scolding Chang-jong, Jeong-eun shook her head. Following her, the daughters-in-law Hyeon-ju Bang and Min-yeong Oh, and even Gyeong-eun, stepped up to reproach him. But Chang-jong seemed to take no hit at all; he received the family’s reproaches without so much as a twitch of an eyebrow.

Once the storm of a situation had swept through, Tak-hyeon asked Seong-ho,

“Then what do you mean to do now? Is there another alternative?”

At the question Tak-hyeon put to Seong-ho, all his family members present wore startled expressions. Because in the way Tak-hyeon immediately asked Seong-ho for a new plan, it seemed to show just how deeply he trusted him.

Seong-ho looked around for a moment at the family staring at him in surprise, then answered Tak-hyeon.

“There is no other alternative.”

“None?”

“No. We must put the sister-in-law on the press-conference stage, no matter what. That is the only way for our Ilhyeon to break through the present situation.”

Finishing, Seong-ho looked at Tak-hyeon with his back straight. At the sight of him, the corner of Tak-hyeon’s mouth twitched upward. Because that was precisely the attitude he had wanted from Mun-jong and the others.

Visiting Future Advisory for the first time in a while, Seong-ho let out an admiring remark at how utterly changed it was from his last visit, and looked the company over.

“I can feel it growing day by day.”

“This is all thanks to you, Head.”

Chung-seop Jo offered his thanks.

“If you hadn’t shown me the answer sheet, Head, this is a sight I’d never have dared even to dream of.”

“No. You’d have achieved it in full even without me.”

Knowing the Chung-seop of that former life, Seong-ho spoke it with sincerity. But Chung-seop, truly believing that without Seong-ho there would be no present self, guided him inside.

Seeing that the office—once a single floor—had now grown to three, Seong-ho went into Chung-seop’s office.

“A little more time and the building will start to feel cramped.”

Seong-ho said to Chung-seop as he sat on the sofa. Chung-seop told his secretary to bring two cups of coffee and, sitting across from Seong-ho, said,

“As it happens, there’s a favor I’ve been meaning to ask of you, Head.”

“A favor, of me?”

When Seong-ho looked at him, asking what it was, Chung-seop wore an awkward smile and answered,

“That building you bought recently—we’d like to use it.”

“That building, you mean?”

Seong-ho pointed a finger at the building visible beyond the window.

Seong-ho had been steadily buying up buildings. Korea had escaped the crisis that had seemed about to sink it overnight, but firms and capitalists still in urgent need of money didn’t stop putting buildings on the market. Seong-ho went on steadily acquiring the distress-sale properties, and Chung-seop had said he wanted to use one of them.

Chung-seop followed Seong-ho’s finger, looked out the window, and nodded.

“Yes. It seems it’ll be hard to expand any further where we are now… we need a new place, and the building you bought this time seems just right. Would it be all right?”

Chung-seop asked and then cautiously read his face.

“Of course. Of course it’s all right. It’s far better than the office sitting empty. How many floors do you need?”

At Seong-ho’s ready assent, Chung-seop said with a broad smile what he’d had in mind.

“It’s much bigger than here, so I think even two floors would do.”

“Two floors?”

Seong-ho folded his arms and sank into thought for a moment. Then, having finished the calculation in his head, he opened his mouth.

“Then use two floors for now, and add one at a time as you need them. I’ll keep six floors empty for you. That way, there’ll be no having to move again when you grow, and it’ll be more convenient—won’t it?”

“You’ll keep six whole floors empty?”

In a fifteen-story building, Seong-ho had just said he’d keep six floors empty. Among the buildings standing on Gangnam-daero, few companies used even eight floors on their own. Companies that used a whole building alone could be counted on one hand, and even ones that used half were uncommon. Yet Seong-ho had said he’d keep six floors empty, as if he believed Future Advisory’s future was so bright it would expand explosively before long.

Chung-seop, with a face both glad at Seong-ho’s decision and burdened by it, tried to hold him back.

“Head. There’s really no need to go that far. How much rent do you lose by keeping six floors empty? I understand your fondness for us, Head, but you needn’t do quite this much.”

“A loss? Future Advisory taking up a place in my building will raise the building’s value all on its own—so it’s a gain if anything, not a loss.”

Having said his decision wasn’t mistaken, Seong-ho instead put forward a new proposal.

“And I think now is exactly the time to pursue outward expansion.”

“Outward expansion?”

It was a word that had settled in one corner of Chung-seop’s heart. But astonishing as their growth had been so far, the thought had held him back—was it right to push the pace still higher from here? And now Seong-ho was proposing it first, as if he’d known.

Chung-seop looked at Seong-ho like a man whose secret had been found out, and Seong-ho, recalling Chung-seop’s course in that former life, said,

“I don’t think there’s a better environment for growing than right now. With Goguryeo Securities and other leading securities firms shutting their doors, a great deal of talent has flowed out.”

“You’re quite right. There may never be a time when talent is as easy to come by as now.”

“Sweep up all that talent.”

“As it happens, I was thinking of bringing on about twenty more.”

“Not twenty—set no ceiling and keep recruiting. Even if the number passes a hundred.”

“That many?”

Chung-seop looked at Seong-ho with a startled face. When Chung-seop had first met Seong-ho, he’d been nothing more than an assistant manager at a securities firm’s branch. And the time it had taken that man to establish an investment advisory and come to command a hundred employees was a mere two years. Now, told to recruit hundreds more on top of that, Chung-seop felt surprise and an anxious feeling well up within his chest.

Seong-ho set the anxious Chung-seop at ease.

“You needn’t worry. Right now it’s better, if anything, to run the business aggressively and strike at the empty spaces left by the collapsed securities firms.”

“Strike at the empty spaces… I see. Since it’s the best time to strike at those spaces, you’re saying to recruit the talent first. I understand.”

Chung-seop grasped Seong-ho’s intent and swept the anxiety away. As Seong-ho said, the thought that now was the chance had bloomed up out of the anxiety.

To the Chung-seop who understood his words and was gradually finding his footing, Seong-ho offered one more startling thing.

“And since you’re recruiting talent anyway, I think it’d be good to go bolder still.”

“When you say bolder, what do you mean?”

Chung-seop tilted his head and asked. Seong-ho looked at him, drew up the corner of his mouth, and told him the meaning packed into that word “bolder.”

“Acquire a securities firm.”

“A securities firm?”

“Yes. Right now is the best time to recruit talent, and at the same time the best time to leap up into a securities firm. Companies clutching securities licenses and going under are strewn everywhere just now.”

Chung-seop, his body gone stiff, let his mouth fall open and couldn’t take his eyes off Seong-ho.

(End of Chapter 138)