Seong-ho Kim pointed at the chair Hwi-mun Song had been sitting in a moment before and spoke.

"Let's sit down and talk."

Having told him to sit, Seong-ho Kim sat down first.

"You sit too, Vice-President."

When Seong-ho Kim moved over slightly to make room, Jang-yun Hwang sat down beside him.

Hwi-mun Song watched Seong-ho Kim and Jang-yun Hwang for a cue and then carefully lowered himself back into the chair.

Seong-ho Kim watched him without a word, and once he was settled, spoke first.

"You were going to hand design drawings to a Japanese company, I'm told?"

"Vice-Chairman. I'm sorry. I'll never—"

Seong-ho Kim raised a hand to stop Hwi-mun Song apologizing again.

"I didn't come here for that sort of apology, so let's leave it there."

At that, Hwi-mun Song's shoulders sank.

Because he felt that the one strand of hope left to him had been pulled out by the root.

Seong-ho Kim put a question to him as he sat with his head down.

"What was your reason for trying to hand design drawings to a Japanese company?"

"…It was money."

With every hope gone, Hwi-mun Song lifted his head and looked at Seong-ho Kim with eyes that had lost their focus.

"Between the master's and the doctorate I got to my mid-thirties without savings worth the name, living on my parents' help. And then, just when I was finally starting to earn… they both came down with cancer. My father lung cancer, my mother stomach cancer. On my salary the hospital bills for the two of them were more than I could manage. So I couldn't turn down the money the Japanese offered."

Hwi-mun Song gave his short explanation and put his head down again.

He could have dressed his situation up somehow, telling how he had held out this far, but he didn't.

Because doing so wouldn't undo the fact that he had tried to take design drawings out and hand them to a Japanese competitor.

Seong-ho Kim looked for a moment at Hwi-mun Song, who said nothing more once he had finished, and spoke.