"Did you ask her?"

Dae-hwang Jin was there early the next morning, and Seong-ho Kim asked him that with a smile.

Dae-hwang Jin nodded and answered.

"I understand now what it is you're trying to do, Vice-Chairman."

"I'm glad you worked it out. It saves me explaining any further. Hahaha."

Seong-ho Kim burst out laughing and offered Dae-hwang Jin a coffee.

"President Jin told me he would be in early, so I bought two — one of them for President Jin. Try it. It's a new launch from our star-logo coffee shop. Sweet, and worth drinking."

Seong-ho Kim drew his coffee up through the straw, cream and all.

Dae-hwang Jin looked at the coffee a moment longer than he needed to, then lifted his head.

"About that, Vice-Chairman. Will the Japanese sell us equipment cheaply?"

There was worry in his voice. Seong-ho Kim still had his mouth at the straw.

"The Japanese equipment companies have an unspoken rule that their own country's semiconductor makers are supplied first. The Japanese government actually lays down guidelines to that effect and plays flagman. So can we get equipment in ahead of them?"

"We can't."

"But with the downcycle barely under way, the Japanese semiconductor makers won't be placing equipment orders. Couldn't we work into that gap and get ours?"

Seong-ho Kim shook his head.

"If we put in an order, the first thing they'll do is suspect us. Why have these people ordered? And then they'll ask their own government. Ilhyeon has placed an order, what should we do? And the government will tell them not to take it, to begin with. Then they'll lean on us to take delivery later, behind the Japanese semiconductor makers, whenever those place their orders. Hasn't it always been that way?"

Seong-ho Kim made it sound like nothing. The men who dealt with it had boiled over more than once or twice.

Every time, Ilhyeon was nothing more than second in line at the equipment companies.

The equipment came late every time. Once it came secondhand: a machine already handed to a Japanese semiconductor maker and passed…