Steering the Situation Our Way
Once the dollars from the IMF began to flow in, the Republic of Korea seemed to catch its breath at last.
The won-dollar exchange rate, which had once soared close to two thousand won, settled into a downward stabilization, and a nation that had looked ready to declare a moratorium at any moment announced that it was still alive.
Being alive, however, was not the same as having recovered.
It was merely clinging to life, enduring a grueling stretch of time. The employment freeze cut even those who still had jobs, and households collapsed so thoroughly that people had to worry about simple survival. Market interest rates vaulted past fifteen percent, and even at those rates there was nowhere left to borrow. The private loan markets of Myeong-dong had long since shut their doors, and the dollar dealers of Namdaemun were just as empty-handed. Corporations found it nearly impossible to secure loans, let alone issue bonds, while ordinary citizens were reduced to selling the rice bowls in their cupboards just to buy a day's worth of grain. The impact on daily life only grew more savage with every passing hour.
Even in the midst of all this, the Ilhyeon Group alone stood its ground and propped up the Korean economy.
While the entire country drowned in grim headlines, only the Ilhyeon Group delivered hopeful news. In an atmosphere too bleak even to call the end of the year, people waited for stories about Ilhyeon alone and began to look toward the next year with a flicker of expectation.
Inside the Ilhyeon family, however, someone was waiting for a very different kind of news.
“It can’t be. No. There’s no way.”
Lee Mun-jong could not sit still. He paced his anxiety around the office in tight circles, muttering to himself. Kim Seong-ho sat on the sofa, quietly sipping the coffee in front of him and watching his brother-in-law with calm interest.
The office phone rang.
Lee Mun-jong lunged for the receiver at the first ring. Then he remembered this was not his office but Seong-ho’s, and he pulled his hand back. He turned a silent, urgent stare on Seong-ho that said, Answer it. Now.
Seong-ho gave a small nod of acknowledgment, lifted the receiver, and spoke.
“Kim Seong-ho speaking.”
He listened for a moment to the voice on the other end.
“You’re certain? All right. Understood. Get the confirmation document and bring it with you. Hand Jeong Su-yeon the money we promised and the plane ticket. Make sure you personally see her board the flight. Got it? Good. Well done.”
Lee Mun-jong swallowed dryly and stared at Seong-ho. The words alone told him nothing of the call’s content, and his heart felt as if it were blackening and burning away.
Seong-ho issued a few more brief instructions, then set the receiver down. He turned to the man whose face was already scorched with dread.
“Hyung-nim.”
“What did they say? That it’s not my child, right? Right? It isn’t, is it?”
In his own mind Lee Mun-jong had already decided it could not be true, yet the worry still clawed at him. His voice cracked as he pressed Seong-ho for the denial he needed to hear.
The answer that left Seong-ho’s mouth was not the one he wanted.
“The genetic test results put the probability that the child is yours at 99.99 percent.”
Lee Mun-jong’s fist slammed down on the table.
“That’s impossible!”
He shouted, face contorted.
“My child? There’s no way.”
“Those are the results.”
Lee Mun-jong closed the distance, seized Seong-ho’s arm, and clung to it.
“You said 99.99 percent. That means there’s still a 0.01 percent chance it isn’t, doesn’t it? There’s a possibility it isn’t mine. That it isn’t my child.”
He kept muttering, clinging to any sliver of hope that the child was not his.
“Right. Something went wrong. A mistake. Let’s retest. Okay? If we retest, it’ll come back that it isn’t mine. So…”
“Hyung-nim.”
Seong-ho looked steadily at the man gripping his arm. His expression hardened.
“This is not the time to quibble over that.”
“What do you mean?”
Seong-ho pointed a finger upward.
“There isn’t much time left before this reaches upstairs.”
Lee Mun-jong followed the gesture with his eyes, realized exactly what Seong-ho was pointing at, and broke into a cold sweat.
“Does Father… already know?”
“Were you seriously planning to handle this without the Chairman’s knowledge?”
Seong-ho regarded him with something close to pity.
“One way or another, the Chairman will find out. What we have to decide is the manner in which the news reaches his ears.”
“What are you saying?”
Still holding Seong-ho’s arm, Lee Mun-jong sank onto the sofa. Standing no longer felt possible; sitting and listening seemed wiser. Seong-ho looked at the man now seated beside him and laid out what had to be considered.
“If the story reaches the Chairman just like this, what do you think will happen? There will be no way back.”
“My child…”
“Hyung-nim!”
Seong-ho’s voice cracked like a whip.
“The results are already out. What good does it do to keep insisting it isn’t your child? Accept the findings and start thinking about how we steer the situation in the direction we want.”
“The direction we want…?”
“As I just said—if this reaches the Chairman as it stands, you are finished.”
The repeated warning made Lee Mun-jong’s grip on Seong-ho’s arm go slack. Looking at the pathetic figure before him, Seong-ho briefly considered simply letting events take their course. Letting the matter reach Lee Tak-hyeon’s ears and watching Lee Mun-jong get destroyed was not without its appeal.
He crushed the temptation at once.
That would only end up doing Lee Mun-jong a favor. I can never allow that.
Seong-ho had no intention of letting Lee Mun-jong’s secret simply be exposed. He meant to repay every torment he had once suffered tenfold, a hundredfold, and for that this affair could not remain Lee Mun-jong’s alone. He wanted to throw a spark that would ignite the entire Ilhyeon family.
He gripped both of Lee Mun-jong’s shoulders hard.
“Hyung-nim. Pull yourself together. We truly have almost no time left.”
“Almost no time?”
“The Chairman will know by the day after tomorrow at the latest—possibly tomorrow. Before then we have to shape the situation the way we want it.”
“So how exactly do we shape that direction?”
“We make the child someone else’s. Not yours.”
“Someone else’s… what do you…”
Lee Mun-jong fell silent for a beat. Then he straightened, eyes widening as he stared at Seong-ho.
“How about making it your child? Yes. That’s perfect. We’ll say it’s yours.”
His face brightened as if he had found the perfect solution.
“A woman you knew before you got married. That’s all we need to say.”
He seized Seong-ho’s arm again.
“I’ll look after you properly. I’ll help you secure your place both at home and in the company. We send the child and its mother abroad, and no one will ever know. How does that sound?”
Seong-ho said nothing. Lee Mun-jong took the silence for deliberation.
“Granted, Gyeong-eun will be upset, but I’ll talk to her. Trust me. We’ll say it was a woman you saw before the marriage, that you drifted apart afterward, and that a single mistake led to this.”
Listening to Lee Mun-jong recycle the exact same pitch he had used in the previous life, Seong-ho felt a vein pulse at his temple.
This time it’s your turn to fall into that pit. You and your brothers with you…
He raised a hand and cut the man’s stream of persuasion short.
“Hyung-nim. Think for a moment. That woman was your secretary. Do you really believe anyone will accept that I knew her before I got married? And the child is an Ilhyeon child—your child. You want to ship a child like that off to a foreign country?”
“Fine, not my child—no, let’s say it is mine. I still feel nothing for it. I don’t care if we send it away. And there’s no law that says you and my secretary couldn’t have fooled around, is there? Persuasiveness depends more on how you say something than on who says it. You know that. If you speak well enough, Father will pretend he never heard a thing.”
“Hyung-nim. Wake up.”
Seong-ho seized both of Lee Mun-jong’s arms and shook him, voice rising.
“The person we have to persuade is the Chairman. Even a story that makes sense might not be enough. Why are you trying to force a story that makes no sense at all?”
Lee Mun-jong’s face crumpled; his head dropped. Seong-ho lowered his voice a fraction.
“I am your wing, hyung-nim. Do you intend to use me as a substitute and break your own wing in the process? If that is truly how you want to use me, I will do it. Is that really what you want?”
At the question Lee Mun-jong’s head sank even lower. Even he could see that claiming the child as Seong-ho’s was the worst of all bad options.
In a thin, defeated voice he asked,
“Then what am I supposed to do? I can’t confess it’s mine, and I can’t pin it on you either. Whose child do we say it is?”
“Hyung-nim. Are you and I the only men in this family?”
Lee Mun-jong’s head rose slowly. His eyebrows climbed as he stared at Seong-ho.
“What are you talking about? The only men in this family being you and me?”
“There are the other brothers. Promise one of them a sufficiently bright future, and someone among them will be willing.”
“Is there… really someone like that?”
Lee Mun-jong’s voice trembled. Seeing that the man was finally listening, Seong-ho’s expression softened into a smile.
“There will be. Trust me.”
“All right… We’ve come this far, so I need you to put even more effort in. I’m counting on you alone.”
Hope returned to Lee Mun-jong’s face; Seong-ho smiled back at the sight of it.
They smiled at each other, yet the reasons for those smiles could not have been more different. One man was dancing on the other’s palm; the other was watching the puppet dance and smiling. Of the two, only one of them knew it.
Contrary to what Kim Seong-ho had told Lee Mun-jong, Lee Tak-hyeon was already receiving a report on everything that was unfolding while the two men were still talking.
Hwang Do-beom delivered the report with a somber face. When he finished, he looked carefully at the Chairman, who still sat with his eyes closed and his arms folded.
“Shall I step in and clean it up?”
“No need.”
Lee Tak-hyeon’s eyes opened slowly. He looked up at Hwang Do-beom.
“Director Kim already handled it, didn’t he?”
“Yes. He paid the woman and bought her a ticket to the United States. He also ordered someone to stand watch outside her hospital room and personally confirm her departure three days from now.”
“The kid’s got talent.”
The corner of Lee Tak-hyeon’s mouth lifted in approval.
“Clean work. And the woman didn’t put up any resistance?”
“No. Whatever Director Kim said to her, she accepted it without a fuss. But Chairman, that isn’t the important part…”
“If not that, then what? Am I supposed to fly into a rage over my son’s little escapade?”
Lee Tak-hyeon kept his arms folded and looked up at Hwang Do-beom. The chief of staff flinched under the gaze and shook his head.
“No, sir. That isn’t what I meant…”
“Then sit back and watch. Let’s see what answer those two bring me.”
“You don’t think Mun-jong will simply admit the child is his?”
Lee Tak-hyeon let out a short, scornful laugh.
“If that bastard were going to do that, he would have come to me and confessed long ago.”
“Then… will Seong-ho take the fall instead?”
“That’s the highest-probability outcome. Take the blame, then extract guarantees of his position in the family and the company. In the present situation that would be the best move available.”
“Then… what do you intend to do, Chairman? The child is still Mun-jong’s, after all.”
“If the father refuses to acknowledge his own child, what is a grandfather supposed to say?”
Hwang Do-beom had no answer. Lee Tak-hyeon’s sneer deepened.
“If Seong-ho comes in claiming the child is his, then he was never more than that. In that case I’ll pull him out of the Restructuring Headquarters director’s seat. There’s a great deal of work still ahead for that headquarters; I can’t leave a man of such limited caliber sitting in the chair.”
Listening, Hwang Do-beom realized this was not a trial of Lee Mun-jong. The Chairman was weighing Kim Seong-ho—the man cleaning up the mess—rather than the man who had created it. A flicker of pity rose in him for Seong-ho, who, even after climbing all the way to the head of Restructuring Headquarters, was still being tested without end.
Seong-ho, however, was thoroughly enjoying the situation. And he was preparing a method Lee Tak-hyeon had not yet imagined.