Having stared at Seong-ho for a while like a man whose wits had left him, Chung-seop barely got his trembling lips apart.

"How could we…"

Chung-seop lifted his coffee cup with hands as unsteady as his voice. Finding some calm by blowing on the hot coffee, he took a sip or two and opened his mouth again.

"Head. We're a place that only just set up an advisory. How could a company like ours acquire a securities firm?"

The trembling had subsided considerably from a moment ago, but it still clung to his voice.

Seong-ho looked quietly at him and said,

"Ordinarily, of course, it would be out of the question. And the securities association wouldn't want to accept it either. But right now is a special situation, isn't it? At a time like this, even the securities association won't be able to block Future Advisory from entering."

At his words, Chung-seop swallowed dryly. To become a securities firm meant entering the institutional fold. It meant no longer standing on the industry's fringe, matching your steps to the industry's movements, but taking part in those movements directly, making the current yourself. And so those already inside the institutional fold thoroughly shut out any new competitor. Because it was all the more to their advantage for the privilege to belong to only a select few. On top of that, people who'd started from the bottom of a place like Future Advisory and climbed up in a short span could never, not if they died and were reborn, stand shoulder to shoulder with them.

So Chung-seop had never once imagined becoming a securities firm. Something like a private-fund asset-management company was the largest goal he held, and anything beyond that he'd never expected even in his dreams. Yet the thing he hadn't dared expect even in dreams was what Seong-ho was speaking of.

"There are seven securities firms up for sale on the market right now, Goguryeo Securities included. And the places set to collapse from here on will only grow more numerous. In this situation, the association won't be able to…