Not long after Seong-ho left the study, Chief Secretary Do-beom Hwang came in.

Catching sight of the drawing paper on the table and the matched gates, matched homes written on it, Do-beom came up before Tak-hyeon.

Tak-hyeon drew out another cigarette, put it to his lips, and asked, “Have the children all gone?”

“Yes. I confirmed even Mun-jong’s departure before coming.”

Do-beom took a lighter from his pocket and lit the cigarette for him. Then, carefully, he asked the smoking Tak-hyeon, “Chairman. Shall we try to block the insolvency first?”

“How would you block it?”

Leaning back against the chair with an indifferent look, Tak-hyeon regarded him.

Do-beom reported the plan the secretariat had prepared. “It led to bankruptcy because the note coming due at Muan Bank went unsettled, didn’t it? Muan Bank can’t be helped, but the problem is the rest of the creditors’ debt all bursting at once — so I thought we might gather the creditors and propose holding off on fund recovery for the time being.”

“Because they’ll listen if we say it?”

“Yes.” Do-beom nodded, studied Tak-hyeon’s expression, and asked, “I sounded out a few banks on the idea and heard positive things from all of them. What shall we do?”

“Leave it.”

Tak-hyeon blew out a long stream of smoke. “There’s no need for us to step up and save those fellows. There’ll be a world of others willing to save them, us or no.”

“Then the 300 billion…”

“Let it sit. Let it sit and there’ll come a use for it someday.”

Do-beom nodded. Unlike the Dubo Group, Ilhyeon Group wasn’t going to collapse straightaway for want of 300 billion. If anything, Tak-hyeon was thinking of using that tied-up 300 billion to make something bigger later.

Do-beom glanced back toward the drawing paper and said, “Then haven’t you cornered Mun-jong and Sang-jong too hard? There’s no way they’ll find a solution in just one day.”

“Cornered is where a man learns caution in what he does. Because it’s not money they earned, they treat 100 billion, 200 billion far too lightly.”

Wearing a displeased expression, Tak-hyeon glanced back toward the paper Do-beom had seen a moment ago. Then, laughing softly, he said, “And that fellow will come to his senses a bit, too.”

“Do you think he understood?”

Tak-hyeon smiled lightly. “From what I’ve watched so far, he’ll have understood and then some… The question is where he’s set the line he permits himself to cross. If that line is drawn farther out than I suppose…”

“…Then what do you mean to do?”

Do-beom swallowed dryly and waited for the next words.

Gazing at the paper — the ink dry now, the characters clear — Tak-hyeon answered, “Gyeong-eun would grieve.”

Do-beom’s mouth fell open a moment and he could say nothing. Shutting his eyes tight, he prayed inwardly that Seong-ho would please not cross the line Tak-hyeon had drawn.

Their faces gone half to nothing in a single day, Mun-jong and Sang-jong returned and laid out before Tak-hyeon the methods they’d thought up.

“Dubo Construction has an apartment complex nearing completion. Swapping this for the money we provided would be the best method, I think. This place is…”

Sang-jong reported what he’d worked out through the night with Ilhyeon Construction’s executives, heads together.

Tak-hyeon listened with an indifferent expression, nodding. When Sang-jong finished, he gestured toward Mun-jong. “You speak too.”

With a face that couldn’t tell whether Tak-hyeon was pleased or not, Sang-jong shuffled back hesitantly to his original seat. In the spot where Sang-jong had stood, Mun-jong now stood and began to lay out the plan he’d devised.

“I think we should begin seizing assets before the other creditors move. With dozens of known creditors, even the slightest delay could cost us all the money, so moving swiftly—”

Listening quietly, Tak-hyeon let out a dry laugh, and Sang-jong clenched both fists. He couldn’t tell whether his own opinion had pleased Tak-hyeon, but he could tell for certain that Tak-hyeon was not pleased with Mun-jong’s.

I just have to do better than my brother.

Since this was relative grading, not absolute, there was no need to score 100 here. Figuring he only had to come even a single point above Mun-jong, Sang-jong let out a sigh of relief at the feeling he’d beaten his brother this time.

There was no way Tak-hyeon didn’t know what Sang-jong was thinking.

A question will come to me as well.

Reading Sang-jong’s mind just as Tak-hyeon had, Seong-ho got an intuitive sense that Tak-hyeon would throw a question at him too. The moment the feeling struck, he quickly arranged his thoughts, and just as he finished, Tak-hyeon’s question flew at him as expected.

“Does Kim happen to have a method in mind too?”

Before Mun-jong, his report finished, had even returned to his seat, Tak-hyeon threw the question at Seong-ho — a roundabout way of expressing just how little Mun-jong’s plan had pleased him.

Seong-ho rose and walked to the spot where Mun-jong and Sang-jong had stood, then opened his mouth. “I haven’t prepared anything separately.”

“You weren’t told to prepare a plan, so I understand. But your stepping up means that, though you’d prepared nothing beforehand, something has come to you here and now — doesn’t it?”

Tak-hyeon had read that thought from Seong-ho’s action alone.

Inwardly clicking his tongue at the man, Seong-ho answered, “Yes. Something occurred to me while listening to my brothers, so I stepped up to share it.”

“Speak, then.”

At Tak-hyeon’s gesture, Seong-ho opened his mouth. “I think it’s best to wait, first of all.”

“Wait? You mean wait until all 300 billion is lost?”

Sneers rose on the faces of both Sang-jong — who’d tensed at Seong-ho’s stepping up — and the displeased Mun-jong. Because Seong-ho had spat out the answer Tak-hyeon would hate most. And just as the two of them expected, Tak-hyeon’s expression had hardened.

But Seong-ho knew, through that former life, what choice Tak-hyeon had made.

The amount changing wouldn’t change his choice.

Unlike that former life, when 100 billion had gone into Dubo Steel, they now bore a greater risk with 300 billion invested — but Seong-ho didn’t think that would make Tak-hyeon choose differently. So he began, in a calm voice, to lay out the choice Tak-hyeon had made in that former life.

“The moment this goes public through the press, it’ll draw enormous attention. The scope of the bankruptcy is the largest since the founding of the Republic of Korea, and the number of creditors entangled is unprecedented. In a situation like that, rushing in rashly is poor judgment, I think.”

“So what you’re saying is to throw away the 300 billion?”

“I don’t mean to throw it away.”

“Then?”

Tak-hyeon’s posture was unlike during Mun-jong’s or Sang-jong’s reports, which he’d listened to quietly without a question. Keeping his hardened expression, he was throwing questions at Seong-ho. One might well have been flustered by it, but Seong-ho showed nothing of the sort and answered calmly.

“First, stepping back a pace and watching how the situation unfolds is the best we can do, I think.”

“And if you lose all the money that way?”

“Then it can’t be helped, I think.”

“Can’t be helped?”

At Tak-hyeon’s echo, Sang-jong nearly burst out laughing, forgetting he’d been thoroughly cowed just moments ago. Because Seong-ho was picking out only the answers Tak-hyeon would hate most.

But in Mun-jong’s eyes, Tak-hyeon’s expression was shifting curiously.

Isn’t he angry?

By rights the ashtray or the water glass should be flying, yet Tak-hyeon only echoed the words and stared hard at Seong-ho. Whether he was enduring it because Seong-ho wasn’t his child, or whether Seong-ho’s answer had left him too dumbstruck for words, Mun-jong couldn’t tell.

Unlike Mun-jong and Sang-jong, Seong-ho could tell at a glance, from Tak-hyeon’s expression, exactly what he was thinking.

You want it scratched good and clean, is that it? Understood. I’ll say what you want to say, in your place.

He knew, through his experience of that former life, that the decision had already been made. The order had already gone out through the secretariat; today was simply Tak-hyeon’s occasion to gauge his children’s thinking. In this situation, it would have galled Tak-hyeon that not one of his children thought as he did.

That’s why, in that former life, he explained his own choice out loud, with a long-winded account of it attached.

But this time was different.

Having traded gazes with Tak-hyeon a moment in the air, Seong-ho opened his mouth. “The insolvency can’t be avoided, and the scale of the money entangled won’t change. Everything to do with the Dubo Group is about to turn into all manner of muddy water that will roil the whole country — and in a situation where there’s no one who doesn’t know we’re Dubo Group’s creditor, there’s no need to go out of our way to leap into that mud, I think.”

Tak-hyeon slapped his knee. “Well done.”

Mun-jong, Sang-jong, and all the other family members who’d only been watching quietly looked at Tak-hyeon with startled eyes.

Sang-jong pointed at Seong-ho and asked, “Chairman. Did you just tell Kim he did well?”

“Yes. It was exactly the answer I wanted.”

“But us… you told us to find a way to recover the 300 billion, didn’t you? And how is sitting on our hands and watching all 300 billion vanish a good answer…”

“You dull-witted fool.” Tak-hyeon cut him off and looked at him as if he were pathetic. “Has it never occurred to you that if losing the 300 billion is better than moving to recover it, I’d choose to lose it? And where do you see him saying to throw away the 300 billion?”

“Then…”

“Thanks to the racket you kicked up, there’s no one who doesn’t know we’re Dubo Steel’s creditor. In that situation, how does watching to see how the other creditors come out amount to throwing it away!”

“Just watching… how is that a solution?”

Ignoring Sang-jong, still speaking with an aggrieved expression, Tak-hyeon’s gaze returned to Seong-ho. He sent, with his eyes, the meaning to go on, and Seong-ho, catching the signal, spoke. “Dubo Steel won’t go under.”

“What?”

“What did you say?”

Mun-jong and Sang-jong turned to Seong-ho at the same moment.

Seong-ho explained. “It’ll go insolvent, but it won’t go under. Meaning the company won’t disappear.”

“What does that mean? Insolvent but not going under?”

Sang-jong leapt up, calling it nonsense. Seong-ho understood the reaction. It was still an era when insolvency passed for the same thing as a company going under. But Seong-ho, having lived through that former life, knew that insolvency didn’t necessarily lead straight to bankruptcy. And he began to tell Sang-jong so.

“Its impact on the Korean economy is too great for it to be allowed to go under. And there’s the fact that many interests got tangled together in the lending process. With core players in politics, officialdom, and finance knotted up like thread in Dubo Group’s loans, it won’t end with just the company cleanly going under.”

“Then what happens?”

“If the company goes under, even the stakeholders get strung together like a line of dried fish. But strip out the bad assets, package it up well, and sell it elsewhere, and only the managers get punished. Those who made the bad loans become people who were taken in by a swindler.”

“You mean…”

Sang-jong looked at him, dumbfounded.

Seong-ho looked around at the seated family and said, “So they’ll try, one way or another, to normalize whatever can be turned into money and sell it off. The court will block the bankruptcy, the government will provide support, and the creditors will band together to keep it from being blown apart into thin air. Because that’s how they minimize their losses. Until then, we simply stay back in our creditor’s position and wait a while. And as we do…”

Seong-ho turned his gaze to Tak-hyeon. Looking straight at him, he spoke the last words the man wanted. “An opportunity will come. The opportunity to acquire Dubo Steel.”

Tak-hyeon clapped his hands. Watching Seong-ho lay out, clean and clear, exactly what he’d wanted to say himself, he was genuinely delighted.

Seong-ho bowed his head under Tak-hyeon’s applause.

But Seong-ho’s eyes were not the least bit pleased.

What Seong-ho had said was only what Tak-hyeon wanted to say.

Because Seong-ho knew it wasn’t the best move in the present situation.

(End of Chapter 66)