Educating the Ungrateful Daughter (3)
It felt as if something heavy had been lifted from her heart. Yu Ju-yeon's hand slowly slipped off the handle. She turned toward the rearview mirror and forced out a resigned request in a strained voice. “Could you turn off the dashcam? I don't want what I'm about to say recorded.”
Well, well. Even a reporter knows how to cover her tracks. “Fine.”
After I switched off the dashcam and showed her the memory card, Yu Ju-yeon began her confession. “It's true that I argued with my father, but I didn't approach Kwon Il-gyun from the start with the intention of exploiting his will. I only went to cover the One Two Chicken KOSDAQ listing story.”
I'd seen this pattern countless times back at the prosecutor's office. Unless the person was a shameless monster whose crimes had already made the news, most began by claiming their original intentions weren't bad before spilling everything. After watching it happen repeatedly, I'd come to realize that even guilty people instinctively try to rationalize their actions, at least a little.
The fact that Yu Ju-yeon had entered this phase of honest disclosure was a good sign, but what exactly had she just said? “One Two Chicken is going public? Where did you hear that?”
A KOSDAQ listing wasn't the kind of thing that could be kept secret. If a company classified as a QS Group affiliate was preparing for one, the head of the Central Management Division's audit team—me—should have heard about it. Yet here I was, learning the news from Yu Ju-yeon.
Several possibilities came to mind. First, the tip itself might have been bait to lure her in. Second, the listing might only have reached the internal decision stage without any actual preparation work. If the second was true, I needed to know how she'd obtained information that shouldn't have left the company yet.
Yu Ju-yeon stared straight at me, as if wondering why I was asking her. “One Two Chicken contacted Geoseong Ilbo directly. My editor told me to go check it out, so I did. I wasn't given any details about how the tip reached the paper.”
Right. That told me everything. Even though Yu Ju-yeon had shown up looking sharp and fierce, she was apparently the obedient type. No matter how much a company demanded blind obedience from below, basic protocol still applied. When assigning a reporter to a story, you handed over every piece of relevant information the company possessed. Yet they'd sent her out with only a vague mention of the source? Kwon Il-gyun and the higher-ups at Geoseong Ilbo had deliberately kept something from her. And that something was the instruction to send Yu Ju-yeon specifically—because she was the daughter of Yu Hwan-il, the former head of QS Group's legal team.
The details would come out once she started talking, but the picture was clear: Yu Ju-yeon had swallowed Kwon Il-gyun's carefully dangled bait whole.
“So you met Kwon Il-gyun for the story. What happened after that?”
“I know a reporter shouldn't do this, but after meeting him several times, I got quite close to President Kwon Il-gyun. We had meals and drinks together outside of work. Eventually the conversation turned to my father, then naturally to the QS Life Insurance shares, and that's when President Kwon made his proposal.”
“What kind of proposal?”
“He said if I included the content you mentioned in my father's autobiography and published it, he'd compensate me financially—cash, plus stock options in One Two Chicken once it went public.”
Disgusting. She'd turned on her own father for money?
“How much did you receive?”
“Combined, if One Two Chicken's listing succeeds, it comes to roughly the amount my father donated. I know what I did was wrong, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't lecture me further here.”
“This isn't directly related to the case I'm handling, but I'm personally curious. Did you really have to write the part Kwon Il-gyun specifically requested in such an aggressive tone? Reporters adjust their tone all the time.”
“President Kwon asked me to make it as impactful and plausible as possible. That's why I adjusted the tone that way.”
I let out a long breath. The more I listened to this woman, the more my energy drained away. It was time to wrap this up.
“Understood. But are you really saying you know nothing about the money Lawyer Yu Hwan-il donated?”
“What? I heard he donated to an orphanage. Why would he give it to a place like that when his own daughter is perfectly fine—”
Enough. I couldn't listen to another word of her tantrum. I cut her off. “Listen to this.”
I took out my phone and played the final part of the recording Jegal Hyeon had taken from Lawyer Yu Hwan-il. This was what had tormented Jegal Hyeon and shocked Oh Il-mu. As someone who'd grown up in an orphanage, I felt my hair stand on end with rage.
—I’m leaving this as a postscript because I fear my daughter might hear this recording during the trial. Ju-yeon is not our biological child. After struggling with severe infertility, my wife and I decided to adopt, and that’s how Ju-yeon came to us. She was less than a hundred days old at the time and still doesn’t know the truth.
When the recording reached that point, tears welled in Yu Ju-yeon's eyes, melting the thick mascara around them.
—Half of the fortune I accumulated was donated to the adoption agency that gave me Ju-yeon. She was far more precious to me than half my life, so I made the donation pledge long ago. It seems that hurt her. I’m sorry, my daughter.
When the file ended, black tears streamed down Yu Ju-yeon's face and soaked my car seat.
* * *
I'd heard everything I needed from Yu Ju-yeon, and I'd said everything I needed to say. Now I had to extract the practical cooperation required, but the woman showed no sign of stopping her crying. Was she some kind of reverse filial piety frog, sobbing only after her mother's grave had been washed away in the monsoon?
Should I comfort her by saying Lawyer Yu Hwan-il was still alive and there was still time to be a good daughter?
Ring ring.
Staying in the car with a crying woman underground wasn't exactly pleasant, so I started the engine and drove out. After driving a short distance, I spotted a café, pulled over, and asked, “What would you like to drink?”
Yu Ju-yeon stared at me with wide, blackened eyes. “Excuse me?”
“I asked what kind of coffee you like. I'll buy it. You can't go in looking like that, can you?”
“Does my face look that bad?”
“Yes. If a baby panda saw you, it'd think you were its mother.”
“Oh… A latte, then. I'll give you my card.”
“It's fine. I'm rich. Get it hot. If you drink something cold right now, you might pass out in my car.”
“……Understood.”
Only after I handed her the latte did Yu Ju-yeon seem composed enough to continue the conversation. “Let's clean up the mess you made. I won't need to tell you to go home and apologize to Lawyer Yu Hwan-il. But do you really need the money you received from Kwon Il-gyun?”
Yu Ju-yeon stared at the lid of her cup and slowly shook her head. “No. Having it only makes my heart heavier.”
“Then I'll hold on to that money for now. Don't exercise the stock options.”
“Understood. Thank you.”
“And extract the transaction records of the money Kwon Il-gyun sent you and give them to me. I'll need them when handling the QS Life Insurance share lawsuit.”
“Understood. Is that all? Is there anything else I can help with?”
Kwon Il-gyun was someone I could deal with myself. As for what Yu Ju-yeon could do… Ah, there was something.
“Lawyer Yu Hwan-il commissioned our firm to file a lawsuit to block the autobiography's publication. The recording I just played was evidence he provided.”
“Ah, yes.”
“Instead of going through with the lawsuit, talk to the publisher and get the book pulled from sale as quickly as possible. Recover as many copies as you can from the ones already distributed. We checked in advance, and fortunately not many have sold yet. If you need funds to handle this, I can cover the costs.”
“No. This is something I should take care of myself. I'll accept the offer in spirit only. Thank you for telling me what I can do.”
Now that the sharp, fierce makeup around her eyes had been washed away by tears, she seemed strangely docile.
* * *
A few days later, Kwon Il-gyun, president of One Two Chicken headquarters, found himself in a rather difficult position.
“How did things get this twisted?”
As he thought, the plan to seize QS Life Insurance had been proceeding smoothly until recently. The reporter Yu Ju-yeon, whom he'd hooked on a whim, had thrashed about inside his net. Thanks to her, even the difficult retrial application had been accepted by the court. If things continued this way, the best-case scenario was acquiring a large portion of QS Life Insurance shares. Even in the worst case, he could corner Kwon Byung-do and snatch at least one minor affiliate.
He could never forget the humiliation he'd suffered the last time he'd gone to Kwon Byung-do asking to convert QS Electronics preferred shares into common shares. He was the eldest grandson of the QS Group, and his name even contained “Il” to signify it, yet that third son Kwon Byung-do had treated him like a distant relative.
—I won't stand by and watch someone who's not even the direct line try to get involved in management. If you want to be treated like a nephew, live quietly.
Those words had made his blood boil. If the QS Life Insurance retrial succeeded, he could finally land a proper blow on that arrogant Kwon Byung-do.
But yesterday, out of nowhere, Lawyer Yu Hwan-il's autobiography had vanished from bookstores nationwide. When he'd called the publisher pretending to be a customer, they said sales had been halted for undisclosed reasons. If his father, Kwon Gap-do, who spoke with a southeastern dialect, had been there, he would have said it himself.
—What in the world is this?
He'd just spoken with the retrial lawyer, who said the suspension of the autobiography's sales would work heavily against Kwon Il-gyun's side. They needed to keep gathering additional evidence based on the autobiography's contents to build their argument, but now the very foundation of their claims was shaking.
To make matters worse, Yu Ju-yeon, who had been the biggest contributor to publishing that autobiography, had completely stopped answering his calls. He'd bought her meals and drinks, and thought they'd moved beyond reporter and source into something more romantic, yet she'd suddenly gone silent. She hadn't even given a reason, and when he checked, she'd blocked all his contact information—messages didn't even show as read.
Fear that things might go wrong, mixed with anxiety that he knew nothing, crept over Kwon Il-gyun.
Buzz.
At that moment, his phone—which he'd flipped over on his desk in despair after the call with the lawyer—began to ring.