The week that followed was a state of controlled siege. Ha-ru and Jin-woo retreated into a private war room—Ha-ru's penthouse, with its view of the city they were about to shake to its foundations. The formal, spacious living room became a mess of whiteboards, legal pads, and discarded coffee cups. They were not preparing a defense. They were crafting a manifesto.
Ms. Choi, Ha-ru's unflappable assistant, became their chief of staff. She filtered all non-essential LX business, handled the panicked calls from skittish board members, and secured a small, trusted team: a razor-sharp communications consultant named Ji-hyun, and a former prosecutor, now a white-collar defense attorney, named Sang-cheol. Both were discreet, brilliant, and understood they were not there to mitigate a scandal, but to launch a revolution.
