“Have they all gone?”

Sitting alone on the living room sofa, Tak-hyeon asked Do-beom, who’d just returned from seeing off the Kim couple and Gyeong-eun.

Do-beom took a step closer to Tak-hyeon and answered.

“Yes. I’ve just come in, having confirmed Gyeong-eun’s car pulling away.”

“Right.”

Tak-hyeon gave a short answer that he understood and gazed absently at the yard visible through the living room window. Do-beom gave him a moment so he could think.

After a good while had passed, Tak-hyeon’s gaze left the yard and turned to Do-beom.

“Curious?”

“Yes.”

Though neither said what he was curious about, the one who asked and the one who answered were thinking the same thing.

Seeing Do-beom’s curious expression, Tak-hyeon spoke with a smile.

“Right. You’d be curious—why, when I’ve never invited a single in-law to Pyeongchang-dong, I called only Head Kim’s parents.”

“Not merely calling them, but you personally receiving them… and on top of that, having them watch the press conference with you… I don’t understand it, Chairman.”

“You’ve no need to understand.”

“Sorry?”

“Only Head Kim needs to understand.”

“Only Head Kim needs to understand?”

Tak-hyeon looked at the wide-eyed Do-beom and nodded.

“That’s right. As long as my intent is conveyed to Head Kim properly, that’s enough.”

“And what intent might that be…”

Unable to grasp what on earth his intent was, Do-beom looked at Tak-hyeon and asked carefully.

Tak-hyeon raised the corner of his mouth at the question and answered.

“I mean to entrust Head Kim with Ilhyeon’s vault, so make your preparations.”

“You’ve made up your mind?”

“Yes. I’ve seen Head Kim’s ability, and I’ve seen his sense of responsibility, so it seems it’s about time to hand over the key. That’s why I called the in-laws to Pyeongchang-dong. To let Head Kim know that I think of the in-laws as family.”

Not long ago, Tak-hyeon had asked how it would look to entrust Ilhyeon’s vault to Seong-ho.

“Chairman. Do you really… mean to entrust the vault to Head Kim?”

“I can’t hand over the whole of it.”

Tak-hyeon sat with his legs crossed, a hand resting on his knee, gazing at empty air as he spoke.

“To entrust everything from the start… he’s still lacking for that.”

Inside Ilhyeon’s vault was not simply money. From the money not entered in any ledger—what people called slush funds—to documents on the political and government figures entangled with Ilhyeon, to the secrets of the companies Ilhyeon had competed against, all of it was gathered inside that vault. That was why Do-beom had been startled when told the vault would be entrusted to Seong-ho. A thing not easily believed and handed over even to family—that was Ilhyeon’s vault.

Tak-hyeon nodded slowly and said,

“So I called the in-laws as a way of tipping Head Kim off first. To signal that I recognize him and mean to use him preciously. And to signal, too, that if he works harder, I’ll entrust him with more.”

Tak-hyeon paused and unclasped the hand he’d rested on his knee. Then he laid it on the armrest and tapped it with his fingers.

“He seems to have a good nose for money, so first entrust him with the investment-related items among what’s in the vault. And let’s watch, and think about what and how much to entrust from here on.”

Do-beom said he understood the instruction.

“Chairman.”

And in a careful voice, bowing at the waist, he asked Tak-hyeon,

“Will Head Kim have caught your meaning?”

It was a question that carried the sense of asking whether, if he hadn’t caught it, Do-beom ought to tell him. Tak-hyeon looked up at Do-beom quietly and let out a snort of a laugh.

“If he didn’t catch that, he isn’t qualified to hold the vault.”

Finishing, Tak-hyeon drew his gaze from Do-beom to the yard, brimming full of green, and muttered to himself.

“Given what that fellow has shown up to now, he’d have caught it and more.”

Do-beom’s worry had never been in Tak-hyeon’s thoughts to begin with. If anything, all he held was the deliberation over what, and how much, to entrust.

Just as Tak-hyeon thought, Seong-ho had caught his intent in a single stroke.

“Why do you suppose Father invited Father-in-law and Mother-in-law?”

Seated before the bedroom vanity, applying cream to her face, Gyeong-eun asked Seong-ho—sitting in a chair—through the vanity mirror.

Seong-ho answered as he leafed through the leather diary.

“The Chairman probably means to put me to more important work.”

“More important work?”

Without stopping applying the cream to her face, Gyeong-eun turned in her seat.

“If it’s more important work, what kind of work?”

“That I don’t know either. But I do get the feeling he means to use me a bit more preciously.”

“Is that so?”

A smile bloomed across the face of Gyeong-eun, patting her cheeks with her hands. At Seong-ho’s standing—now utterly changed from their dating days and their wedding—Gyeong-eun felt even happier than if she herself had been recognized. In her heart she wanted to throw a feast, and she beamed broadly at Seong-ho.

Seong-ho smiled back at her and thought.

It seems he means to entrust me with Ilhyeon’s vault.

He’d told Gyeong-eun he didn’t know the reason, but in truth Seong-ho had seen straight through not only the reason but exactly what task would follow. Across the years past and now, the time he’d spent at Tak-hyeon’s side was no small amount, so he could tell what Tak-hyeon was thinking.

Seong-ho briefly considered how he ought to handle the vault if it were entrusted to him, then hurriedly wiped the thought away.

That’s not what matters right now.

Coming to hold the vault was no problem at all. Seong-ho had done greater things for nearly twenty years, so he was confident that something like managing money would be easy. Rather, now was the time to handle the matter bearing down right before his eyes.

[June 30. Gyeong-eun had an accident. When I first took the call, I thought it was a simple traffic accident. When I heard she’d rear-ended the car ahead on her commute and been rushed to the hospital, I worried she was badly hurt. But when I arrived at the hospital…]

Seong-ho looked down at the leather diary.

June 30.

Written there was the account of when Gyeong-eun had her accident from the cerebral hemorrhage. Seong-ho looked at the calendar hanging on the wall.

Ten days left, is it.

That event had now come to within ten days.

“But won’t Father-in-law and Mother-in-law be uncomfortable?”

Applying cream at the vanity again, Gyeong-eun gave her face a final pat and rose from her seat.

“It really won’t do. I’ll go check on them and see how they are.”

Saying she’d stop by the room where Pan-seok and Myeong-ja were resting, Gyeong-eun opened the door and went out.

Having left Pyeongchang-dong, Pan-seok and Myeong-ja had come to see the new home Seong-ho and Gyeong-eun had taken. And after the dinner Gyeong-eun laid out, they’d tried to leave to sleep elsewhere. It was because of Myeong-ja’s insistence that, however much they were the parents-in-law come up to Seoul, staying at the home of their newlywed son and his wife was uncomfortable. Seong-ho was about to book them a hotel room, telling them to do as they wished. But Gyeong-eun sprang up and stopped all three, saying it absolutely could not be. She caught hold of the two, saying she could never commit the unfilial act of sending her parents-in-law, come up from the countryside, out to sleep elsewhere.

The tug-of-war between the three and Gyeong-eun went on for a while. In the end, unable to break Gyeong-eun’s insistence that she could not become an utterly unfilial daughter-in-law, the three decided to spend a night at the Apgujeong home.

Watching the back of Gyeong-eun as she went to check whether the room where his parents were staying wanted for anything, Seong-ho bit his lower lip.

“I can’t lose Gyeong-eun again.”

Seong-ho looked down at the leather diary.

Ten days left.

The time that had turned his life upside down in that former life was drawing near. Thinking that he could not go through the same thing this time, Seong-ho looked down at the leather diary without a word.

After Eun-a Jang’s press conference, the voices directed at Ilhyeon softened a great deal. Of course, there were still people who looked at Ilhyeon with eyes that couldn’t believe it. But most looked at Ilhyeon with an apologetic heart, saying they’d misunderstood. In particular, some even came to pity Eun-a Jang, who—it being her own child, yet seen by people as another’s, as an out-of-wedlock child—had cried out that it was unjust and burst into tears at the press conference.

“They’re saying that showing the child at the very end was the decisive move.”

Byeong-jin Jo, who’d directed Eun-a Jang’s press conference on-site, said to Seong-ho with a wide grin.

“The mood’s flipped completely—now it’s the attacking media and reporters who are the ones getting beaten. A few outlets came to the press-conference venue themselves to apologize, and some even submitted written apologies.”

“Any among them that keep holding out anyway?”

“Wouldn’t there be? Sidae Ilbo, which butts heads with us sharply over the union issue, keeps tearing us down. It goes on writing that the press conference was one they volunteered to hold in order to hide the out-of-wedlock child, and that it can’t be believed.”

“Sidae Ilbo…”

Seong-ho sank into thought for a moment, arms folded. Then, stopping his thinking, he looked at Byeong-jin and opened his mouth.

“Issue a statement that we’ll sue any place that keeps spreading rumors, and pull every one of our companies’ ads from Sidae Ilbo.”

“All of them?”

“Yes. Tell every company that bears the Ilhyeon name never to place an ad until Sidae Ilbo’s president comes and apologizes.”

“Will that be all right?”

Byeong-jin asked with a worried face.

“However you look at it, making an enemy of the press isn’t a good thing… Of course, Sidae Ilbo isn’t a place with power on the level of the four major dailies. But still… among the left-leaning outlets, it’s a place with a fair degree of name recognition.”

“Our line until now has been not to fight the press. When there was friction with the press we tried to take as conciliatory a posture as we could, and when actual disputes broke out, we bowed first ourselves. But this time is different.”

Seong-ho shook his head slowly and said,

“We need to show our teeth once. Only by showing that things are different now from when Chief Hwang led it will our work become easier down the line.”

Understanding Seong-ho’s intent, Byeong-jin nodded and said,

“Well, if the person’s changed, it’s right for the line to change too. There’s no need for us to keep coming out soft just because the secretariat under Chief Hwang did.”

“And Sidae Ilbo happens to be just the right size to get our message across, so let’s hit them properly.”

“Put out the statement and pull the ads, and they’ll grovel on their own. Do reporters dig up dirt to live on? They have to take in ad money to pay salaries and keep the presses turning.”

Seong-ho raised the corner of his mouth at Byeong-jin’s words and said,

“Since we’re hitting them, let’s hit hard.”

“Hard, how?”

“Tell the companies tied to us as well. Not to place ads in Sidae Ilbo.”

“That… you’re really sure that’s all right?”

“Now is exactly the moment to tame the press.”

Seong-ho looked down at the newspapers laid on the desk. Alongside the story of the press conference a few days ago, the papers carried talk of the still-difficult economy. An article was written large: that firms and individuals alike were tightening their belts, just as in the days of the Saemaul Movement in the seventies.

“It’s a time when they tremble over a single ad. If not a time like this, when would we ever properly show them our teeth?”

Seong-ho pressed the newspaper with his palm and rose from his seat.

“Let’s show them plainly what happens when you cross us.”

Byeong-jin looked at Sidae Ilbo among the several newspapers laid on Seong-ho’s desk.

[Really Not Vice-Chairman Mun-jong Lee’s Son?]

[The Many Faces of an Unbelievable Press Conference: Digging Behind It]

[Eun-a Jang’s Tears?! What’s the Reason?]

Sidae Ilbo had a full page filled with articles saying it couldn’t believe Eun-a Jang’s press conference.

They really should have kept it in moderation.

Byeong-jin thought that Sidae Ilbo, having failed to properly grasp what kind of man Seong-ho was and throwing up obstacles as it had in the days when Do-beom led things, was about to get well and truly hammered. Picturing the Sidae Ilbo that would soon be reeling, Byeong-jin shook his head.

Taking clothes from the wardrobe set at one side of the office and putting them on, Seong-ho said,

“It’s all handled now, so don’t come looking for me for the next three days.”

Byeong-jin, who’d been looking at the newspaper, raised his head to look at Seong-ho.

“Ah, right. Is something going on? Why did you suddenly clear three whole days? A fellow who’s run without a single day off until now.”

Jacket on, Seong-ho laid a hand on Byeong-jin’s shoulder.

“Running nonstop like that, my body seems to have broken down a bit. I’m going to get a health checkup and rest, so don’t come looking for me—get on with the work on your own.”

“A health checkup? Where do you mean to get a checkup?”

Byeong-jin asked, chasing him out of the office.

“Where else would it be? Ilhyeon Hospital, of course.”

“Will you be all right on your own? If you like, shall I come along with you for the checkup?”

Seong-ho stopped his steps, turned his head to look at Byeong-jin, and said,

“As a properly married man, I’ll naturally be going with my wife, won’t I?”

“Yes, yes. I forgot for a moment you’re a married man.”

Byeong-jin let out a snorted laugh. He was about to say that Gyeong-eun, running both Ilhyeon Hotel and Ilhyeon Department Store at once, must be busy—but seeing Seong-ho’s already-distant back, he shook his head.

But the real reason Seong-ho was getting a health checkup was not for his own sake. It was the method Seong-ho had devised to prevent what would happen to Gyeong-eun on June 30.

Recalling that day, now drawn to within two days, Seong-ho headed home.

(End of Chapter 143)