Sang-jong Lee's face twisted as he looked at Jeong-eun Lee.

"Say it with your own mouth. Are there really one trillion won worth of card bonds that can't even pay the interest?"

"One trillion, at minimum, to start."

But the answer came not from Jeong-eun Lee's mouth, but from Seong-ho Kim's.

"If one trillion is where it starts, then just how much are we talking about?"

Sang-jong Lee shouted, his voice thick with frustration.

Seong-ho Kim delivered to Sang-jong Lee and the rest of the family a piece of news sharp enough to jolt them to their senses.

"There's talk that the combined debt of Ilhyeon Card and Mirae Card exceeds five trillion won."

"Five trillion...?"

Mun-jong Lee pressed a hand to his forehead, and Sang-jong Lee could only repeat the words "five trillion" over and over.

Tak-hyeon Lee squeezed his eyes shut.

For a while, only silence hung over the living room.

None of those present had the composure to think about what to say, where, or how.

It was into this hovering silence that Min-yeong Oh quietly parted her lips and broke it.

"Seeing that our young lady here can't say a word, I suppose it must be true...."

Ordinarily the daughter-in-law, who took no part in company affairs, held no right to speak.

Reading the room and quietly listening to the talk was all a daughter-in-law was meant to do.

But today no one reproached Min-yeong Oh for speaking.

Everyone was too stunned by the figure of five trillion to come to their senses.

Even after Min-yeong Oh had spoken up, the silence went on.

Setting aside any solution, the only person who properly grasped what kind of situation this was, right now, was Seong-ho Kim.

And so, in the Pyeongchang-dong living room where the silence lingered, Sang-jong Lee's mouth opened once again.

"Why didn't you say anything? No—why, when things were this bad, did you run the business even more aggressively?"

Sang-jong Lee turned to Mun-jong Lee, seated beside him, and spoke.

"Brother. Isn't that right? When everyone else was struggling, we thought Ilhyeon Card was…