The lead at today’s Pyeongchang-dong meal was Sang-jong.

“Father.”

“Call him Chairman.”

Mun-jong put in a sharp word for Sang-jong to sort out his form of address.

“What does it matter what I call him?”

Ordinarily Sang-jong would have hastily corrected himself, but today was different. Shooting Mun-jong a look that asked why he’d nitpick such a thing, he turned to Tak-hyeon and spoke again. “Father. Would you believe Dubo Steel is cutting the unit price on the rebar it supplies to Ilhyeon Construction by a full 20%?”

Wearing a triumphant expression, Sang-jong glanced over at Mun-jong. Confirming the look on Mun-jong’s face — seething, about to boil over — Sang-jong laughed as if amused and went on. “And next year they say they’ll consider a 30% cut.”

“20% this year, 30% next?”

Tak-hyeon, spooning up his soup, put the question.

Forgetting even to eat, Sang-jong nodded and answered. “Yes. And that’s the minimum. The minimum.” He gave a shrug of his shoulders and said, “What did I tell you? I said investing in Dubo Steel was a sure profit, didn’t I?”

As Sang-jong dressed up his own achievement, his wife, Min-yeong Oh, chimed in from beside him. “Father. Mother. Please give this man plenty of praise. He really worked so hard.” Taking Sang-jong’s arm, she went on praising him to her parents-in-law. “He agonized over it, night after night, barely sleeping properly. Kept saying that with such big money going in, it mustn’t go wrong.”

Watching quietly, Mun-jong’s wife — Hyeon-ju Bang, the eldest daughter-in-law of the Ilhyeon house — threw in a remark. “Why are you talking up something he was simply supposed to do as if it were some grand feat?”

At Hyeon-ju dismissing it as nothing, Sang-jong smiled and said, “Sister-in-law. I’ll have a good word with Dubo Steel and get them to review a price cut on the steel plate for heavy industry and automobiles next year too. So don’t worry too much. When an elder brother’s in a tight spot, shouldn’t the younger help?”

“You…”

Angered, Mun-jong made to snap back, but with Tak-hyeon present he pressed the anger down hard into his chest and swallowed it.

At the sight, Sang-jong grew all the more elated, threw his chest wide open, and said to Tak-hyeon, “Father. Since it’s come to this, shall I buy up some Dubo Steel stock on the over-the-counter market? Do that and take it to a vote showdown, and acquiring Dubo Steel doesn’t look so out of reach after all.”

“Acquire Dubo Steel?”

“Yes.” Sang-jong leaned slightly toward Tak-hyeon. “The profit our Ilhyeon Construction stands to see from this rebar price cut is a full 30 billion in one year alone. If it carries through to steel plate, by my reckoning it’d comfortably top 100 billion a year.” Curling the corner of his mouth up, he glanced once more at Mun-jong before finishing the rest to Tak-hyeon. “So why not just acquire it? We’ve already got 300 billion in, so put in only about 200 billion more and we could take Dubo Steel’s management rights too.”

“Why? Did Chairman Jeong put you up to it?”

“Sorry?”

Tak-hyeon, who’d been spooning his soup, set his spoon down with a clack and gazed quietly at Sang-jong.

“F-Father…”

Sang-jong called to him in a trembling voice, feeling fear at Tak-hyeon’s indifferent gaze.

The family, mid-meal, set down their spoons and chopsticks carefully with tense faces, and, hands gathered beneath the table, waited for Tak-hyeon’s next words.

Tak-hyeon looked around at his seated children a moment as if he had something to say, then turned his gaze to Seong-ho. He stared at him a while, then rose from his seat.

“I’ve finished, so eat as you please and go.”

Without waiting for his children’s reply, he turned. Half-risen from their seats to follow, they looked at the retreating figure of Tak-hyeon — who’d gone quickly back to his study — with puzzlement.

“What’s gotten into him? Is there something not to his liking?”

Jeong-eun, who unlike the others hadn’t risen, looked up at Sang-jong. “Isn’t it obvious? Second brother soured Father’s mood.”

“What did I do!”

At Sang-jong’s aggrieved protest, his wife Min-yeong again backed him up. “My. Sister-in-law talks strangely, doesn’t she? What could this man possibly have done to sour Father’s mood?”

“How would I know that?” Jeong-eun shrugged as if to ask why it was being put to her. “I don’t know what, but it’ll be because of second brother. The moment he heard second brother’s talk, he put his spoon down and left as if displeased.”

“My talk, what?”

“What else? The talk of acquiring Dubo Steel.”

At that, Sang-jong shut his mouth. It weighed on him too, that Tak-hyeon had left the moment the Dubo Steel acquisition came up. But no one there, Sang-jong included, knew why that talk had soured Tak-hyeon’s mood.

Only Seong-ho — seated at the very end of the table, eating alone, apart from the others — knew the reason.

“How long do you mean to stay in this house?”

Before leaving Pyeongchang-dong, Sang-jong and Min-yeong Oh spoke to Seong-ho, who’d come out to see them off, as if displeased.

“Kim. Aren’t you living in Pyeongchang-dong an awfully long time? It’s about time you cleared out, isn’t it?”

“So you’ll move in and live here, then, sister-in-law?”

Mun-jong, appearing from behind Seong-ho, asked Min-yeong — who’d told Seong-ho to leave Pyeongchang-dong in a roundabout way.

Min-yeong looked at Mun-jong coming up over Seong-ho’s shoulder and answered, “Of course. I could move in.”

“As if you would.”

“Brother-in-law. Aren’t your words a bit harsh?”

“Sister-in-law, harsh how? Isn’t the truth of it that you didn’t want to live here either, and that’s why you moved out the moment you married?”

“Brother.”

“For all that, I married in and lived here a year, serving my parents-in-law. And you? You fled out within a week, and now you’ll move in and live here? I’d love it if you could say that in front of Mother, too. Because I’m curious what she’d have to say.”

“Sister-in-law, why must you as well?”

In front of the Pyeongchang-dong house, the departing Mun-jong couple and Sang-jong couple, mixed together with Seong-ho in the middle, hurled sharp words at one another.

At this level, they’re still on relatively good terms.

To anyone’s eye it was a relationship that looked extremely bad, but to Seong-ho’s ears, knowing every circumstance, the tone still granted each other a measure of face. Because he knew well that, given time, even that would vanish, and they’d grind their teeth to tear at one another. And it was to make that situation arrive faster than it had in that former life that Seong-ho was wedging himself into the middle, tuning things along.

“We’re off.”

Deciding that staying longer would only sour his mood, Sang-jong got in the car with Min-yeong and left Pyeongchang-dong.

Watching their car pull away, Mun-jong came up to Seong-ho. “Don’t forget. If second brother profits from this business…”

He raised a finger and brought it right before Seong-ho’s eyes. “You — and the youngest too — are finished.”

“Brother.”

Even so, without so much as a twitch of an eyebrow, Seong-ho carefully took Mun-jong’s hand and drew it down. “Think about why the chairman got angry today.”

“Are you saying you know why Father was angry?”

“If you wait, there’ll be a good result. Only…”

Mun-jong looked at the trailing-off Seong-ho strangely and asked, “Only what? Why stop halfway?”

Seong-ho, who’d seemed about to say something, shook his head. “It’s nothing. It may be getting too far ahead of things, so you needn’t mind it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean now? Out with it. Don’t just leave a man hanging.”

Mun-jong brought his face right up to Seong-ho’s and bore down on him. Yet even at this, Seong-ho didn’t retreat, and with a look of regret said, “If a shock bigger than expected is dealt… I worry the storm might sweep you up in it too, Brother. Why on earth did you raise the investment all the way to 300 billion?”

At Seong-ho’s words that raising the figure to 300 billion worried him, Mun-jong waved a hand as if he didn’t care to hear it. “I thought you were going to say something. Enough. Save that worry for when the thing actually goes wrong.”

“Brother. Still…”

“I ought to be going too.”

As if there were nothing more to hear, Mun-jong opened the car door. Looking at Seong-ho standing before it, he said, “In any case, if this goes wrong, it’ll all be your responsibility, so be ready for it.”

Having declared he’d pin every crime on Seong-ho, Mun-jong left Pyeongchang-dong quickly once Hyeon-ju had gotten in.

“Kim. You’ll want to pick your side well.”

After Mun-jong left, Jeong-eun, coming out of the house next, said to Seong-ho, “If you’re not going to line up behind someone, then keep a clear neutrality and stay back.” She looked him up and down with a displeased expression. “If I may offer one word of advice — don’t get too greedy.” Looking him over again, she opened the door of the car that had pulled up before her and said, “End it at Ilhyeon Hotel. That’s the path that’s best for you, and best for the youngest.”

She finished and got into the car.

Jeong-eun’s husband, Yeong-su Cha, gave Seong-ho a look that asked him to understand.

“Are you getting in or not?”

Jeong-eun, already in the car, barked at Cha for not getting in right away. Cha frowned at her voice and answered, “I’m getting in, I’m getting in.”

He patted Seong-ho’s shoulder and climbed into the car where Jeong-eun already sat.

On the road where everyone, Jeong-eun included, had now left, Seong-ho recalled what she’d just said and murmured with a smile.

“Don’t get greedy? Hahaha. The ones getting greedy won’t be me — it’ll be all of you.”

At the sight of Mun-jong and Sang-jong bleeding, not only Jeong-eun but even Chang-jong, absent today, would start to bare their greed in earnest — Seong-ho knew it well. And it was precisely to induce that situation that he’d designed this whole affair.

“Go on, squabble like beasts over the scraps. That’s the thing that suits you best.”

Mun-jong stood furthest ahead in the succession. And unlike Sang-jong, who chased at his heels, Chang-jong and Jeong-eun stood in positions from which they couldn’t reach for much. So Jeong-eun’s needling was no more than a tantrum, a look at me, I’ve fallen behind — and the others took it, too, as a child’s fit of pique.

But before long, an upheaval was coming that would change all of this. Jeong-eun’s tantrum would become a sharp dagger, and Chang-jong would edge in closer still. Such was the board Seong-ho had laid out.

Turning, Seong-ho recalled Tak-hyeon, who’d shown his anger at the meal a little earlier, and a smile came to his lips.

“Father-in-law seems to have a rough idea. Of course — how could the chairman of the mighty Ilhyeon Group not know? But it’s too late.”

Recalling that the date written in the leather diary had drawn to within a few days, Seong-ho stepped over the threshold and went inside.

(End of Chapter 63)