The White Knight
“I'm sorry. I should have come to see you first, and instead I made you come to me.”
A few days later, in the chairman's office at Sunjin Aluminum headquarters.
Kim Ja-young, representative of Sunjin Group and Seon-woo's mother, sat facing Kang Byung-chul, chairman of Sunjin Aluminum.
Byung-chul offered her tea, his face betraying not the slightest trace of apology.
“I take it you saw the press release we put out?”
“I did. It would have been nicer, though, if you had reached out to us first.”
At the edge in her words, Byung-chul affected an air of unhurried magnanimity and lifted his teacup.
“I did consider it, but the people under me talked me out of it. They insisted there was no way you could possibly have the whole Group under your control, Chairwoman Kim.”
Kim Ja-young's expression froze over, cold and hard.
It was a brazen jab at her grip on the Group.
“If we had contacted you first, everything about our position would have leaked out from inside Sunjin Group, wouldn't it? Your company is full of holes, after all.”
Byung-chul braced both arms on the sofa's armrest and spoke down to her like a schoolmaster delivering a lecture.
“This is a matter for the family elder—me—to handle. It's beyond anything you can control. If it were me, I'd have nipped this in the bud before it ever got here. You're too late.”
“If you are truly the family elder.”
Kim Ja-young cut in quietly. Her voice was low, but it carried steel.
“Then you would have consulted us at least once. All the more so, if you judged the situation beyond control.”
Byung-chul's eyes wavered for an instant.
A short silence passed between them. Polite honorifics flowed back and forth, but beneath them ran the glint of a sharpened blade.
Byung-chul clicked his tongue and shook his head.
“The one who ought to be uncomfortable here isn't me. Someone is quietly accumulating more than ten percent of the shares—and you should be uncomfortable with your own incompetence, sitting there blissfully unaware.”
“……So you do know who it is, Chairman?”
Another brief silence. Byung-chul stared at her, as if the words had caught in his throat.
“Now that I'm sitting here, something feels rather clearer to me. I wonder why that is.”
“You're in a position where suspicion only breeds more suspicion. So be patient. I'll sweep away all these little complications for you, one and all.”
“Sunjin Group—no, Sunjin Sangsa—I will handle myself.”
At her flat refusal, Byung-chul let out a scornful snort.
“Do you really think you can? Look at the state you're in and you still say that?”
“If I needed help, I'd have gotten down on my knees right here in this office. But I haven't yet found a reason to need it.”
A crooked smile curled across Byung-chul's lips.
“You do insist on twisting everything into a mess, don't you. All you have to do is admit it and accept your family's help.”
“It seems the help you have in mind and the help I have in mind are different things, Chairman. A notification without consultation doesn't strike me as help.”
“I told you already. Your grip on the company—”
Kim Ja-young rose from her seat, as if the rest wasn't worth hearing.
“Why is it that right now, Chairman, it feels as though you're the one trying to take control of the company?”
“Hah, and there you go twisting it all sideways—”
“There will be no reason for me to call on you again. And I won't be needing your help, either.”
Kim Ja-young looked straight down at Kang Byung-chul and made her declaration.
“Within the week, either send us your proxy, or sell your stake and be on your way. If you do neither, I will consider you an enemy.”
Byung-chul's face hardened into stone.
How dare his nephew's widow—a mere daughter-in-law—threaten him, warning that she'd count him an enemy.
“Then I'll take my leave.”
Kim Ja-young gave a slight bow and walked out without so much as a backward glance.
The moment the door closed, Byung-chul clicked his tongue in disgust.
“Insolent little—. That one's exactly like Tae-jin.”
His dead nephew's face rose before his eyes. The same unbending stubbornness, that same refusal to bow.
Byung-chul's eyes gleamed, dark and murderous.
“Fine. Let's see just how long you can keep that stiff neck after I've taken the whole company out from under you.”
“How did it go…… with him?”
The moment she returned to her office, Choi Dong-soo asked cautiously. Kim Ja-young answered evenly as she shrugged off her jacket.
“It's clear he has plans of his own.”
Choi Dong-soo's face stiffened at her words. The worst-case scenario they had feared—a family power struggle—had just become reality.
And yet Kim Ja-young looked, if anything, unburdened.
“In a way, this is for the best. Everything is clear now, isn't it? Who the enemy is, and who our allies are.”
“Madam Chairwoman……”
“I think we're ready to activate the countermeasures the task force prepared.”
Byung-chul had sneered that they were being beaten down helplessly, with no countermeasures whatsoever—but he couldn't have been more wrong.
Ever since the day Seon-woo had dropped her a hint, Kim Ja-young had quietly assembled a task force with Choi Dong-soo and run defensive simulations from every conceivable angle.
“Understood. Then we'll begin with the new share issuance.”
“Good. Just as we planned, run a full-scale public campaign—position it as a people's stock offering.”
A new share issuance.
The strategy of minting fresh stock and circulating it on the market. As the number of shares grew, existing shareholders' stakes would be proportionally diluted.
A classic but highly effective defensive tool for driving down the aggressor's ownership percentage.
“And cap the public subscription at thirty shares per person.”
It wasn't simply about diluting stakes.
By locking the subscription limit at thirty shares per individual, they would block Kang Byung-chul's faction from sweeping up the new shares with their massive war chest at the source.
And at the same time, they would draw in a flood of small retail shareholders, cementing the image of a company owned by the people.
“Yes, ma'am. I'll convene the board immediately and—”
Knock, knock—
Just as Choi Dong-soo was about to leave, a knock broke the silence.
Kim Ja-young nodded for him to see who it was. When he opened the door, a secretary stepped in.
“Madam Chairwoman, you have a visitor.”
“A visitor? Did I have anyone scheduled today?”
“No, ma'am. They arrived without an appointment, but the person is far too important not to report.”
“Who is it?”
“Former Managing Director Kim Seok-jun, ma'am.”
At the name Kim Seok-jun, Kim Ja-young's eyes went wide with surprise.
Kim Seok-jun.
The founding-statesman who had served her father-in-law, a living witness to Sunjin Group's history.
Even after her husband Kang Tae-jin had become chairman of the Group, she had tried to keep him close at hand—but he had brushed it all away, declaring that his work was done, a straight-as-an-arrow man to the very end.
“Show him in at once.”
Kim Ja-young sprang up from her seat and hurried to the door.
A moment later the door opened, and in walked Kim Seok-jun—hair gone fully white, his bearing still strikingly upright.
“Welcome.”
“Chairwoman, how do you do? I apologize for arriving unannounced, and thank you for making the time for me.”
Kim Seok-jun bowed respectfully at the waist.
Flustered, Kim Ja-young waved her hands.
“Oh, Managing Director Kim, please—don't. That's too much for me.”
“You are the owner of Sunjin Group now. You must grow accustomed to it. Order and precedence must be observed.”
At his words, Kim Ja-young studied his face in silence.
This was no empty formality. It was genuine, heartfelt respect for an owner—and it felt like the very support she needed most right now.
“Welcome. Truly, it's good to see you.”
Kim Ja-young returned his bow with a faint smile and a slight dip of her head.
“Shall we sit?”
At her invitation, Kim Seok-jun took the sofa. Kim Ja-young, too, took the seat across from him—not the seat of honor.
“I saw the news. Sunjin Sangsa appears to be in quite a precarious situation right now.”
He got straight to business the moment they were seated—exactly like him, a man who never circled the point.
“In my judgment, Chairman Kang Byung-chul has his eye on Sangsa.”
Kim Ja-young flinched at his words.
A flicker of confusion crossed her mind. Why would a man who had retired and shut himself away come to her and open with talk this sensitive?
Could it be—was he someone sent by Kang Byung-chul?
“I know it's unsettling, coming straight to the point like this, but the matter is urgent, so allow me to continue.”
“Oh—no, please. I'll listen as an elder's counsel.”
Kim Seok-jun nodded gravely and spoke.
“May I help you?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I will buy up Sunjin Sangsa shares on the market, and I will sign my voting rights over to you.”
Even then, Kim Ja-young's face said she could not fathom it.
He was offering to enter a share war that could cost hundreds of millions of won—for nothing in return.
“How could you……?”
“I own a family company of my own. It's done quite well for itself in the stock market, as it happens. I'll use that company to be your white knight.”
“No, Managing Director Kim. I don't understand why you would help me. Even when my husband…… even when Chairman Kang Tae-jin went to see you, you turned him away……”
Her question was only natural. Kindness without a motive was something to suspect before it was something to trust.
Kim Seok-jun paused for a moment, then answered with a benevolent smile.
“Seon-woo came to see me.”
At the sound of her son's name from Kim Seok-jun's lips, Kim Ja-young's eyes went round.
“He told me that the only person left for him to turn to was me. So I told him I would help.”
“Now then—what do we call a body of law composed of written legal provisions?”
“Statutory law, sir.”
It was school, but I couldn't focus on class to save my life.
The teacher's voice posing questions at the blackboard, the voices of classmates answering—everything felt impossibly far away.
Ugh. Moments like this really make me feel how much of a constraint being a high schooler actually is.
This is when I need to be moving, in person……
How did it go?
Today was the day Managing Director Kim Seok-jun went to see my mother.
However certain I'd made him, from her perspective, accepting help from her father-in-law's most loyal retainer could not have been an easy decision.
This was a time when no one could be trusted.
My head was a tangled mess.
The core of my plan was to put Kim Seok-jun at Mother's side to secure the legitimacy of our claim to the Group's management—and beyond that, to deploy the shares SJ Holdings had already bought up as a defensive stake.
If this fails, everything unravels……
Just as I was deep in that worry, a short vibration hummed from the phone in my pocket.
I tensed instantly and stole a glance at the teacher.
Fortunately, he was absorbed in the blackboard.
I fished the phone out under my desk and opened it.
The sender was Managing Director Kim Seok-jun.
I clapped a hand over my mouth on reflex. I'd nearly shouted out loud.
It worked!
At last, I had planted the most critical ally—a shield for our side—beside my mother. With the backing of a Group elder whom Kang Byung-chul couldn't treat lightly, we would never lose the battle of legitimacy now.
Which meant it was time to counterattack.
The waiting was over.
I immediately opened my phone and sent a message to Director Jung Tae-sung.