In the car on the way back to the company, Manager Byeong-ju Jeong shook his head as if worn out and said,

“Ugh. I thought I’d die from the awkwardness. Going to all that trouble, honestly…”

“To them, we’re as good as their saviors, after all.”

“Saviors?”

At Seong-ho Kim’s words, Byeong-ju Jeong shot him a sidelong glance, as if to ask what he meant.

Then, spotting the diary Seong-ho Kim was staring intently at, he asked,

“What are you gawking at a blank diary for, Assistant Manager Kim?”

“Gyeong-eun drew a little cat here at the edge of the page. The shape’s a bit different on every page, and when I look at it, it settles my mind and puts me at ease. So I’m just looking at it.”

“When you say Gyeong-eun… you mean the young miss?”

“Yes.”

Manager Byeong-ju Jeong nodded without much suspicion and turned to face forward.

“Nice time in your life. My newlywed days were like that too — how pretty my wife looked back then… But now… Ugh. There’s no lioness like her — one roar and heaven and earth shake, I’m telling you. Why, just the other day…”

At the mention that Seong-ho Kim was looking at a drawing Gyeong-eun Lee had done, Byeong-ju Jeong lost all further interest in the diary.

Watching Byeong-ju Jeong drop the subject and get lost in tales of his own newlywed days, Seong-ho Kim smiled and turned his gaze back to the diary.

The spot that looked like a blank page to Byeong-ju Jeong’s eyes was, to Seong-ho Kim’s, filled to the brim with writing.

[19XX, month X. The Jisan Group vanished from the world, leaving behind the largest damages ever recorded — 800 billion won. We, who had pushed to acquire Jisan Cement, could not escape the fallout either. The 50 billion won we’d put up as a down payment evaporated into thin air, and—]

Seong-ho Kim looked over the Jisan Group material and closed the diary.

‘Jisan Group is certain to collapse, so if we acquire it, our side is bound to take losses too…’

Seong-ho Kim knew that Chairman Tak-hyeon Lee had tossed the Jisan Cement matter to Strategic Planning Team 2 in order to test him.

Which was why he also knew perfectly well that if he pulled off the acquisition in a way favorable to the Ilhyeon Group, he’d clear this first test he faced as a son-in-law without a hitch.

The experience of years spent watching at Tak-hyeon Lee’s side was stacked up neatly in Seong-ho Kim’s head.

But Seong-ho Kim wasn’t content merely to pass the test.

Given that he knew the Jisan Group was going to fail, he was confident he could accomplish more than just passing — not merely clearing it by knocking 10 or 20 billion won off the price.

To that end, Seong-ho Kim intended, first of all, to stall the acquisition negotiations.

And in the car on the way back to the company, he turned over in his mind what move he ought to make after stalling.

When Seong-ho Kim and Byeong-ju Jeong arrived at the company, Team Leader Ki-seok Yun called all of Team 2’s members into the conference room.

Then, wearing a curious face, he put a question to Byeong-ju Jeong.

“So how was it, going out there in person?”

At Team Leader Ki-seok Yun’s question, Manager Byeong-ju Jeong answered with a weary face.

“Nothing much out of the ordinary. The plant and the employees all looked perfectly fine.”

“The people’s faces? They seemed okay?”

“Yes. They were fine. There was no sense of hastily rounded-up actors.”

“Really? So it was all fine, you’re saying?”

Ki-seok Yun nodded, turned to the team members, and said,

“We went out and checked in person and found nothing wrong, so let’s proceed with the acquisition right away.”

At Ki-seok Yun’s decision, the team members all showed their agreement.

Watching them, Seong-ho Kim realized a fact he’d momentarily forgotten.

‘Right. This is… not the twenty-first century.’

In the era Seong-ho Kim had lived in before coming here, conducting acquisition negotiations required going through extremely complex procedures.

It was standard for both seller and buyer to put forward representatives and conduct the negotiations through them.

Law firms were brought in for legal review, of course, and hundreds of staff — from financial firms like securities companies to handle valuation, to accounting-firm personnel to take charge of the accounting side — would swarm in to carry out the acquisition talks.

The acquisition process, too, took a few months at the fastest, and in the case of large projects, negotiations would proceed with round after round of behind-the-scenes coordination stretching over more than a year.

But the present was not an era in which such complex procedures took place.

It was an era in which the acquiring side proposed a price directly, or the selling side counter-proposed a price, and the acquisition talks came together that way.

And due diligence, too, tended to be conducted in the rough-and-ready manner it was now.

While Seong-ho Kim was realizing that the present era was not the twenty-first century, Ki-seok Yun spoke to the team members.

“Word from upstairs is to run the down payment at under 100 billion won, so let’s follow the acquisition procedures at that level. And the total acquisition amount is 180 billion won — for every 10 billion you shave off, a bonus of 5 million won will be paid out, so let’s all work hard and make it a warm winter.”

At the mention of a 5-million-won bonus, the faces of those present broke wide open.

In an era where the annual-salary system was only just taking hold, a bonus of 5 million won couldn’t help but land as something enormous to them.

Realizing once again that it wasn’t the twenty-first century, Seong-ho Kim raised his hand, thinking he could stall the acquisition negotiations by a simple method.

Ki-seok Yun spotted Seong-ho Kim’s raised hand, turned his head, and asked,

“Yes, Assistant Manager Kim. Something you’d like to say?”

“The way I see it, I wonder if it might be better to hold off on the contract a bit.”

“Hold off on the contract? Why?”

Seong-ho Kim recalled that the present era was one in which an emotional approach worked better than a rational one.

So he lent his words persuasive force with a simple reason.

“With this contract, it wasn’t us who jumped in first saying we’d acquire Jisan Cement — it was their side that approached us asking whether we wouldn’t buy. In that case, we ought to play hard to get once or twice, so their side gets anxious and lowers the price. Just like when you buy something at the market.”

At his words, the team members present nodded.

Seong-ho Kim put it to them in still plainer terms.

“Jisan Cement is the heart of the Jisan Group. And the fact that they’ve stepped forward to sell a place like that means there’s a high chance something’s wrong with the Jisan Group — wrong enough that they have to sell off the group’s very core.”

“That’s right. Otherwise, there’s no way the Jisan Group would be the first to bring up whether we’d buy the company.”

“So let’s take a little time and hold out. Until their side gets anxious and lowers the price on their own.”

“So you’re saying — rather than our side lowering the price, let’s make their side lower the price first and come to us?”

“Exactly. That way, even if they come in at a low price, we’ll still be holding a chance to knock the price down one more time — isn’t that all the better for us?”

At his words, Ki-seok Yun nodded and turned to look at the team members.

“Seems like a pretty good method to me — how about the rest of you? If we lower the price first and Jisan accepts it, we only get to cut once, but if their side cuts first and comes to us, we get to cut one more time on top of that.”

“You mean, make their side show their hand first?”

“That’s it.”

Having grasped Seong-ho Kim’s meaning, Ki-seok Yun looked at him with a gaze that said the man wasn’t half bad, seemingly taken with the idea.

And as much as Ki-seok Yun, the other team members too were apparently taken with Seong-ho Kim’s idea, all nodding in agreement.

“I think it’s good.”

“Jisan bent and came to us, so let’s wait and see.”

“Right. That seems like the better play.”

When everyone agreed, Ki-seok Yun turned his gaze back to Seong-ho Kim.

“But, Assistant Manager Kim.”

Ki-seok Yun thought it a good idea, but he recalled there was one part that nagged at him.

“Won’t upstairs have something to say about it?”

Seong-ho Kim recalled where this “upstairs” Ki-seok Yun spoke of referred to, and said with a smile,

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll handle upstairs myself.”

Seong-ho Kim spoke confidently and put on a smile for Ki-seok Yun.

Looking at Seong-ho Kim’s expression, Team Leader Ki-seok Yun couldn’t bring himself to say anything like can you really?

Something about that confidence-brimming expression made it impossible to raise the question.

Though he had his doubts, Ki-seok Yun nodded to signal his assent, and instructed Manager Byeong-ju Jeong to send Jisan’s side a document conveying that the acquisition posed difficulties.

At Ki-seok Yun’s instruction, Seong-ho Kim let a faint smile settle on his lips and pictured in his mind the scene that would unfold shortly in Pyeongchang-dong.

“Hey, you. Have you lost your mind?”

Toward Seong-ho Kim, eating his dinner after work, came Sang-jong Lee — Chairman Tak-hyeon Lee’s second son and president of Ilhyeon Construction.

Then, jabbing a finger at Seong-ho Kim, he shouted,

“What do you mean the Jisan Cement acquisition poses difficulties?”

Mid-meal, Seong-ho Kim turned his head to look up at Sang-jong Lee.

“You’ve arrived?”

“Brother. What’s it about this time?”

Gyeong-eun Lee, who’d been eating with Seong-ho Kim, set down her spoon and rose from her seat at the sight of Sang-jong Lee flying into a blind rage.

At the sight of Gyeong-eun Lee, Sang-jong Lee crumpled his face and waved a hand.

“I’ve got nothing to discuss with you, so don’t butt in.”

“No. Talk to me. What in the world is it about?”

“Hey!”

Sang-jong Lee, startled by his own shout, turned his head toward the study.

Because he was worried his voice might have carried all the way to Tak-hyeon Lee’s ears in the study.

Having glanced toward the study for a moment, Sang-jong Lee lowered the voice he’d raised and said,

“I’ve got nothing to discuss with you, so stay out of it.”

When Sang-jong Lee said this with a snarling face, Seong-ho Kim set down the spoon he was holding and rose from his seat.

Then he took Gyeong-eun Lee by the shoulder and smiled.

“It’s fine, Gyeong-eun, so you go on and finish eating. I’ll talk with your brother a bit and come back to eat in a little while.”

“I’ll come too. I need to hear why my brother’s acting like this.”

Thinking that if she left the two of them alone, Seong-ho Kim might come to grief at Sang-jong Lee’s hands, Gyeong-eun Lee stepped up, insisting she’d go too.

Just then, Chief Secretary Do-beom Hwang came over to where Seong-ho Kim and Sang-jong Lee were.

“The chairman asks what’s going on and says to come in.”

Sang-jong Lee, who ordinarily would have said it was nothing, jabbed a finger at Seong-ho Kim with a this-works-out-nicely expression.

“Fine. Since it’s come to this, let’s talk in front of Father about just how big a blunder you’ve made this time. Let’s go.”

When Sang-jong Lee took the lead and walked off, Do-beom Hwang gestured with his eyes for Seong-ho Kim to hurry and follow, and went after Sang-jong Lee.

“Seong-ho. What’s going on?”

When even Chairman Tak-hyeon Lee had summoned him, Gyeong-eun Lee looked at Seong-ho Kim with worried eyes.

Seong-ho Kim smiled brightly at her.

“Nothing bad’s going to happen to me, so don’t worry. If eating alone feels lonely, just wait a bit until I come out. I’ll be out soon.”

Having reassured Gyeong-eun Lee, Seong-ho Kim walked toward Tak-hyeon Lee’s study.

Gyeong-eun Lee bowed her head in greeting at the study door and quietly watched Seong-ho Kim go inside.

(End of Chapter 9)