Itaewon, Seoul. The mansion of Honorary Chairman Go Junhui of the Sindo Group. It was the evening of the first weekend of the new year.

Old pine trees stood gracefully inside the high walls, and warm light spilled from every window of the main house.

Four people sat at a wide dining table, eating a late dinner.

Go Junhui sat at the head.

To her right sat her son Jang Yongguk and his wife, Yun Sea.

Jang Jiyu sat on her grandmother's left, across from Jang Yongguk.

The couple had come on the pretext of paying their New Year's respects, but the dinner hadn't been comfortable from the start.

"So what were you doing in Switzerland?"

Jang Yongguk asked as he cut into his steak.

"Partying. Meeting people."

"What people?"

"People you don't know, Dad."

He stopped cutting.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Exactly what it sounds like."

Jang Jiyu took a sip of water and answered evenly.

"I went out there, and there was this big world I'd never seen before."

"Are you looking down on your father right now?"

"You asked. I answered."

His face twisted. He had inherited the Sindo Group, run a whole range of its businesses, and been treated with respect wherever he went in Korea.

And now his young daughter was talking to him as if he didn't know anything about the world.

"Jiyu-ya, what kind of way is that to talk to your father?"

Yun Sea jumped in on Jang Yongguk's side as if she'd been waiting for the chance.

She didn't bother hiding the thorns in her voice.

"Your father asks because he worries about you. Do you have to answer like that?"

"He was curious, so I told him honestly~"

"That tone of yours! You're practically sneering at your father."

"Am I? Not at all. If someone felt sneered at, maybe that's their problem?"

"You!"

Just as Yun Sea was about to raise her voice, Go Junhui, who had been eating a Korean meal, set her spoon and chopsticks down with a tak.

"She isn't wrong. What's all the fuss?"

"Mother……"