A Good Deal for Everyone
It had been a day since the reunion ended.
……Ring! ……Ring! ……Ring!
The telephone in the living room rang out shrilly.
I got up from the sofa and picked up the receiver.
“Hello?”
[Sanha oppa! It’s me, Vivian!]
Vivian, Victor’s younger sister, burst through the receiver.
[Oppa, Victor oppa told me everything. You came to our house last week, didn’t you? Why didn’t you call me and just hang out with the guys? That’s so, so unfair!]
“Sorry. I only stopped by for a bit—I was having dinner with Uncle Wolfman.”
[I’d been waiting since the last time you came over, oppa! This time, I wanted to play that new board game with you!]
“All right, all right. I’ll come by again soon with some delicious cake. I promise, so don’t stay mad.”
[Really? You promised? No take-backs! Oh, and the cake you left was delicious! Next time, you have to play with me, okay?]
I talked with Vivian a little longer, then hung up.
Then—
……Ring! ……Ring! …Ring!
The phone rang again almost immediately.
I picked it up at once.
“Hello?”
[Hello? Sanha, it’s Robert. You free to talk right now?]
It was Robert, the guy I’d met at the reunion.
That didn’t sound bad at all.
“Yeah, I’m free. What’s up?”
[You remember those people you were interested in before, the Black Bog employees who quit? The New Guard guys? They’re at my dad’s place right now!]
“……!”
I thought back to the I’d already gathered.
“The New Guard’s leader was Ethan Locke, right?”
[That’s right. Him and the others just came in and are ordering now.]
Ethan Locke.
He was the man I’d asked Vito to look into.
Black Bog’s former SVP of Strategy, Ethan Locke.
He’d graduated from Harvard Business School and was a McKinsey alum, a genuine heavyweight.
He’d been the leader of the so-called New Guard that had driven Black Bog’s modernization, and he’d also been the biggest casualty of last year’s shareholders’ coup.
I told Robert, “I’m heading to your father’s place right now. Keep them there until I arrive.”
[Got it! I’ll keep the free appetizers coming!]
Robert had become a loyal informant for the local community.
Looks like being nice to him at the reunion was worth it.
I threw on my jacket at once.
I also called Caroline, who was staying at the hotel, and told her to grab a taxi and come over.
I’d tossed out the bait at the reunion, and I never imagined the fish would bite this fast.
* * *
Red Bulldog Saloon.
I pushed open the door to the place, where the old neon sign flickered overhead.
A faint smell of cigar smoke and the bitter tang of beer hung in the air.
The bar was quiet overall.
A few laborers were sitting around, picking at fried fish with vodka.
“……!”
I focused on the corner booth all the way in the back.
Four men sat there in a pocket of heavy silence.
Unlike the working-class patrons around them, they wore suits made from expensive fabric.
Several bottles of cognac that I’d previously asked Bill to keep stocked there were lined up on the table.
……At a glance, those have to be the guys.
It didn’t feel like they’d chosen this shabby bar because they were short on money. More like they’d picked it because they didn’t want to be noticed.
I studied the face of the man sitting in the innermost seat.
Silver hair slicked back, black-rimmed glasses, and reddish-brown eyes—a handsome middle-aged man.
That was Ethan Locke.
He had a sharp, intelligent look to him, but now he seemed almost soaked in defeat.
I guess it makes sense. Ivy League corporate elites getting crushed and driven out by a pack of decrepit old fools who’d rotted in place inside a local power structure for decades… the shock would be brutal.
I took a seat far from them.
Before long, Ethan stood and headed to the register.
“I’ll pay the bill.”
Robert’s father, who was standing behind the counter, scratched his head.
“Uh, sir. The bill’s already been paid.”
“Hmm? I haven’t paid anything yet. There must be some mistake.”
“No, sir. That gentleman already took care of it.”
“That can’t be right. We didn’t come here with anyone else.”
Ethan turned toward me.
Moments later, he and his companions walked over to me.
“Excuse me, young man. There appears to have been a mistake with the bill. We drank a fair bit of expensive liquor, so we can’t really let it slide.”
Ethan spoke with a mild, polite smile.
I smiled back just as pleasantly.
“It wasn’t a mistake, Vice President Ethan Locke.”
“……!”
Instantly, Ethan’s expression stiffened.
His eyes swept over me from top to bottom.
“What?”
There was clear bafflement in his gaze that a young Asian man knew his name and title so precisely.
I didn’t bother circling around it.
“I’m the chairman of Lee Energy. The actual owner.”
“……!”
I pulled out a business card and set it on the table, and Ethan looked down at it.
“Lee Energy… the company that owns the oil field discovered in Garden Queens.”
“That’s right. The very oil field Black Bog is trying to snatch away using lawsuits, lobbying, and public opinion warfare. We’re preparing to begin development there soon.”
“Hmm.”
Ethan shrugged with both hands still in his pockets.
“That won’t be easy. Black Bog is greedy and tenacious. Still, I wish you luck… but why did you pay for us? We’re no longer with Black Bog.”
“Precisely because of that. If you were still with Black Bog, I wouldn’t have come here in the first place.”
“…….”
Something in Ethan’s eyes deepened.
“It sounds like Lee Energy’s young chairman has something to say to us. Am I right?”
“Yes. If you don’t mind, would you sit down for a moment so we can talk?”
“…….”
Ethan glanced back.
The three men with him nodded.
Soon, we all gathered in the corner booth together.
Ethan spoke first.
“I’d heard rumors that Lee Energy’s owner was a young Asian man, but I never imagined you’d be this young. So you’re saying you’re not just an heir—you’re the actual owner?”
“That’s correct. I’m studying at Harvard.”
“I’m a Harvard man myself. What year are you?”
“Freshman.”
“That’s even more astonishing. At your age, I think I was still holed up in the library, scribbling through school assignments. Ha-ha.”
His gaze swept over my face once more.
I cut straight to the point.
“Vice President. I know roughly what happened at last month’s shareholders’ meeting.”
“……!”
Ethan and everyone else went rigid.
I combined what I’d investigated on my own with what I knew from before my regression, then added a bit of educated suspicion on top and spoke.
“I heard that strategy experts from McKinsey tried to tear out Black Bog’s creaky old practices—the ones that were actually harming shareholders—and got hit with a counterattack from the owner’s family. I’m told everyone above department head was fired, and even the ones who stayed neutral were purged in retaliation.”
“……Where did you hear that?”
“There’s more. Like the explosion at Refinery Unit Three last year, or the massive oil spill from the Gulf of Mexico offshore drilling platform three years ago, or the tax books hidden by shell companies in the Cayman Islands.”
“!?”
Ethan’s jaw dropped.
“K-keep your voice down! How can you just go around saying things like that…!”
He raised his voice before catching himself and forcing it back down.
Then Ethan said, very quietly, but with each word pressed hard into place, “Who the hell are you? How do you know all that? That’s top-secret Black Bog information.”
“I have my ways. Lee Energy has its own information network, too.”
It was, of course, a suitably sized lie.
Before my regression, I’d worked in compliance at Black Diamond.
Black Diamond had been Black Bog’s de facto parent company, and internal audit reports were shared as part of subsidiary risk management.
“So… what do you want from us? Why are you telling us all this?”
I answered Ethan’s question briefly.
“It’s simple. I’m bringing you all over to Lee Energy. And I’m going to send Black Bog straight to hell.”
“……!”
“More precisely, I’m going to push it into hell, haul it back out, and make it mine. After that, I want you to run Black Bog for me. Exactly according to the reforms you were originally trying to implement.”
“You’re asking us to side with you and blow the whistle on them?”
“Strictly speaking, it’s not whistleblowing anymore. You’re outsiders now.”
“There are confidentiality clauses. Non-compete clauses, too.”
“You won’t be hired as regular employees. It’ll be as outside advisors and consultants. If it comes to that, you can even work under someone else’s name. A family member’s, for instance. And in the first place, the Black Bog that might sue you will soon belong to me.”
“How can you be that certain? Black Bog is a large mid-tier company. Most of its stock is held by Black Diamond. There’s no way you could own it.”
“And why not? I have a plan, step by step.”
I raised one finger.
“Step one. I’ll use evidence of the company’s internal tax crimes to bring in the IRS and freeze its cash flow.”
“…….”
“Step two. I’ll leak the refinery explosion case, where they buried the victims without compensation, and the Gulf oil spill they quietly covered up, to the press and the EPA to send the stock price crashing.”
“……. …….”
“Step three. I’ll shake Black Diamond itself with those scandals, until the shareholders start demanding a sale.”
“……. ……. …….”
“And when Black Diamond’s shareholders are screaming for Black Bog to be sold, I’ll have the capital to acquire it.”
“……. ……. ……. …….”
It was a plan that could only be executed if you had overwhelming money and information in hand.
I leaned forward.
“I’ll put up the money. You provide the information. In return, all of you get reinstated as Black Bog’s management team.”
“You’re… insane. There’s no way something like that could happen.”
“I hear that a lot. People told me the same thing when I said I’d go to Harvard from a tiny public high school in the countryside, and they said it again when I founded Lee Energy Holdings as soon as I became an adult. But I drilled oil out of a wasteland, and I pulled gold out of an abandoned mine. Insane? Impossible? Those words are just the chirping of crickets. I don’t care.”
I leaned back against the booth and met Ethan’s eyes head-on.
“Former Black Bog Vice President Ethan Locke.”
“?”
“I did a little personal digging into your accomplishments. There were some very interesting things in there.”
I began ticking them off on my fingers.
“A system for automating deep-sea drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico, a catalytic cracking process that can refine crude oil even in low temperatures, and the 3D seismic analysis algorithm you designed yourself… all projects that the old fossilized management ultimately rejected, correct?”
“……That’s right. They proposed them, and I approved them.”
Ethan looked around the room.
The three men with him were all engineers, each of them an expert in drilling in his own right.
I said, “I’ll personally make sure you become the people who decide Black Bog’s future. And when that happens, I’ll back all of these new technologies with full force.”
“……!”
Ethan and the other four men all flinched.
I drove the nail in deeper.
“Lee Energy is different. We support innovation, and we back risk. I understand the value of technology. Even if it doesn’t make money right away, if it’s an investment that builds long-term competitiveness, I’m willing to push it through without hesitation.”
“Let’s confirm one thing.”
Ethan set down his glass and looked me straight in the eye.
“Why us? There must be plenty of capable engineers and managers in the market. Why come looking for washed-up losers who were kicked out of Black Bog?”
“For two reasons.”
I answered honestly.
“First, you know Black Bog inside and out. Their strengths, their weaknesses, their decision-making structure, their hidden rot. There’s no more valuable information when it comes to fighting a competitor.”
“……And the second?”
“You want revenge.”
I looked over all of them, Ethan included.
“Let’s be honest. Don’t you want to make those Black Bog bastards suffer?”
“Hahaha—of course we do… ngh!”
The bearded man sitting beside Ethan burst out laughing before clapping a hand over his mouth and glancing around nervously.
I continued, “There are plenty of capable people in the world, and plenty of people who want revenge. But there aren’t many who have both.”
“And if you fail?”
“I won’t fail. And even if I did, what would you lose? I’m the one taking on the risk, not you.”
“…….”
Silence stretched out.
Ethan looked at his companions.
An unspoken conversation passed between them.
One man nodded. Another bit his lip. A third clenched his fist.
At last, Ethan turned back to me.
“I’ll be honest.”
“…….”
“We want revenge, too. We want the world to know what those greedy pigs did. But….”
He paused.
“We need trust. We need to know you’re not just going to use us and throw us away.”
“What kind of assurance do you want?”
“A contract.”
Ethan said it firmly.
I nodded.
“Of course. I’ll provide clauses for whistleblower protection, full legal fees in the event of a lawsuit, a high salary, excellent benefits, and everything else.”
“No, we don’t need those things. That’s not what we want.”
“?”
His answer surprised me a little, so I quietly waited for him to continue.
Then Ethan bit his lip and said, “Please rescue the workers who supported our reforms and got demoted or fired in retaliation. If you guarantee 100% employment transfer for them… then I’ll work with you, Chairman.”
As it turned out, Ethan Locke was a far better leader than I’d expected.
And, in truth, this was exactly the kind of condition I’d been planning to propose first myself.
“That’s a reasonable condition. I’ll have my lawyer send over a formal draft of the contract.”
“Thank you!”
Ethan and the others all shot to their feet and bowed.
Oil field development, clearing out the obstacles, and even settling the bad blood from before my regression.
The moment the key people who could make all three of those things happen at once stepped into my arms.
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