"Vice-Chairman. If it goes on like this, isn't there a chance Vice-Chairman Mun-jong Lee slips out of it?"

"Have you forgotten what I told you? Vice-Chairman Mun-jong Lee is going to slip out of it."

Jeong-cheol Choi hadn't asked because he had forgotten.

What he meant was that having come this far, one more push might sweep Mun-jong Lee away in a single stroke.

But Seong-ho Kim had never expected Mun-jong Lee to be finished in a single stroke.

"As long as he has Ilhyeon's shadow over him, nothing you do sweeps him away all at once. If anything, it's remarkable his crime is out in the open like this."

Seong-ho Kim finished speaking and tapped the desk with his fingers.

Tap, tap.

Then, with a smile at the corner of his mouth, he said,

"Getting this far is impressive enough on its own. So don't get greedy for more. Once Mun-jong Lee is out from under Ilhyeon's shadow, we'll get far more chances at him."

"You're saying it's enough to have wounded him?"

"That's right."

Seong-ho Kim lifted the hand that had been tapping the desk, pointed it at Jeong-cheol Choi, and said,

"First you open the wound, and then you drive the knife in deep."

There was no knife in Seong-ho Kim's hand, and still Jeong-cheol Choi felt a cold go through his chest.

Because that was how strongly the man's single-mindedness came across, with no shape to it at all.

I must never, ever make an enemy of the Vice-Chairman.

Jeong-cheol Choi knew there was no chance of it ever happening, and even so he thought that on the one-in-a-million, one-in-ten-million chance, it must never come about.

"Don't step out too far in front."

Seong-ho Kim let out a laugh at the look of a man making himself a promise, and said,

"What I mean is, there's no need to block what Chief Hwang is doing."

"Yes. I understand."

"But—"

Jeong-cheol Choi had said he understood, and then something came to Seong-ho Kim, and he spoke slowly.

"Even if the story can't spread outside, making it swell…