Hyeon-ju Bang clutched Mun-jong Lee's arm and wailed.

"So what are you going to do now? Well? What are you going to do?"

A newspaper lay in front of Hyeon-ju Bang, spread open and left where it had fallen.

[Chairman Tak-hyeon Lee and Vice-Chairman Mun-jong Lee Step Down Without Warning]

[Believed to Stem from the Ongoing Investigation into Vice-Chairman Mun-jong Lee]

[Chairman Tak-hyeon Lee Takes the Bold Step of Moving to Honorary Chairman and Withdrawing from the Front Line of Management]

[Vice-Chairman Mun-jong Lee Steps Down from Every Post in the Group — Proceeding as an Expulsion]

[Ilhyeon Group Switches to Vice-Chairman Seong-ho Kim's Emergency System]

It was not only the newspapers.

On the news it was Ilhyeon Group and nothing else, plastered over every bulletin that went out.

The news and the papers read Tak-hyeon Lee's withdrawal as tied to Mun-jong Lee's case.

Their reading was that Mun-jong Lee had made a mess and Tak-hyeon Lee was going in order to take moral responsibility for it.

It had gone that way with Sang-jong Lee before, and with Chang-jong Lee. So this announcement was taken to mean that Ilhyeon had drawn a line between itself and Mun-jong Lee and thrown him out, to press the point that the affair had nothing to do with Ilhyeon.

"Are we really being thrown out?"

"Why are you starting on this now?"

Mun-jong Lee shook her hand off his arm.

"You sat in that room and heard it with me, so why the different tune now?"

"Even so… even so, I didn't know we'd really be thrown out like this."

"It's already done."

Mun-jong Lee waved a hand.

And he frowned a little.

"Asking now for leniency, asking to be forgiven, it's no use to anybody."

"So we just fold our hands and get thrown out? With nothing?"

"Who said anything about going out empty-handed?"

Mun-jong Lee bridled and said no such thing would ever happen.

"Sang-jong and Chang-jong, and Jeong-eun at the very least, they all came out holding something. They went so far as to build a group of their own, and…