Chapter 8
Chapter 8
After thinking it over, Hyuncheol decided to register the product first.
He did not know whether Earth had a similar system, but in this world, all products within the country had to be registered so their production and sales volumes could be recorded for taxation purposes.
It did not guarantee exclusive intellectual property rights like a patent would, but because the system preserved the product’s details along with samples or blueprints for a certain period of time, it would at least serve as proof that Hyuncheol had created the game first.
No, considering lawsuits could also be filed using it as evidence, it would be inaccurate to say it offered no protection at all.
Normally, this kind of thing was handled by the distributor.
But in Hyuncheol’s eyes, Tetris was an extraordinary product whose success was guaranteed, while he himself was a minor with no backing and an unknown developer.
That naturally left him feeling uneasy.
So he decided to put at least a minimal safety measure in place.
It’s way too far.
At first, Hyuncheol had planned to visit the Product Registration Office personally, but the building was located in the capital city, Ranchelt, requiring a six-hour train ride.
That was difficult for someone with a full-time job.
So after looking into it more carefully, he learned that most people simply submitted registrations by mail.
Hyuncheol decided to place a copied floppy disk of the game into a padded box together with the manual and mail it.
He worried it might become damaged during shipping, but merely writing a product description did not seem sufficient as evidence, so he had no choice.
“That’ll be 10 Del.”
A dry voice spoke from behind the glass window.
Looking at him was a postal worker with a parrot’s head.
Honestly, Hyuncheol could not tell whether she was a young woman or middle-aged. He only assumed she was female based on her voice and clothing.
Hyuncheol took the requested amount from his wallet and placed it onto the payment tray.
Expensive!
Now that he was actually living on a clerk’s salary and carefully budgeting every expense, he had begun to develop a much more realistic sense of money.
As a result, spending this much on something that was not even food felt painfully wasteful.
Of course, he understood intellectually that it was a necessary investment, but emotionally it still hurt.
The post office itself resembled those in Korea.
The difference was that it offered no financial services, so it lacked the atmosphere of a bank entirely. Both customers and employees were numerous and appeared extremely busy.
It looked exactly like an era before the internet became widespread.
Even though he had no connection to the postal system whatsoever, Hyuncheol felt strangely proud seeing the institution functioning properly.
After finishing his business at the post office, he headed to work and carried on as usual while studying programming whenever he found spare moments.
He had definitely learned something important while creating Tetris: practical experience was worth far more than repeating exercises a hundred times.
Simply reflecting on what he had learned gave him countless ideas for how to approach coding in the future.
“Good work. You can head home.”
The owner had begun suspecting that Hyuncheol was using the computer for unrelated activities.
Still, he had become rather fond of the electronic accounting ledger, and just as Hyuncheol had promised, they had sold several computers and additional software, causing store revenue to rise noticeably.
As a result, the owner did not bother questioning him too closely.
After returning home, Hyuncheol showered and immediately sat down in front of the telephone.
In his hand was Kandel’s contact information.
Since product registrations were rarely rejected anyway, there was no reason to wait an entire month.
And since hesitating further would only waste valuable time, he intended to contact a distributor immediately.
There’s no way they’d reject this, right?
He was nervous, but he trusted Tetris, one of the legendary computer games of Earth.
Glancing at the clock hanging on the wall, Hyuncheol checked the time.
Since this world lacked mobile phones, he had to carefully time his call if he wanted to reach Kandel, who worked as a salesman.
It was probably after work hours already, though he worried slightly that Kandel might still be eating dinner.
Even so, once he made up his mind to call, simply waiting around doing nothing felt unbearable.
Although he had lived in this room for more than two months now, he had rarely used the telephone, so the whole process felt strangely awkward.
His fingers even trembled slightly.
Still, the beauty of machines was that no matter how clumsy the user was, they functioned as long as they were operated correctly.
After dialing all the numbers, Hyuncheol listened to the ringing tone and felt his heartbeat gradually quicken.
He exhaled shallow breaths, trying to calm his excitement.
Then came the sound of the receiver being lifted.
“Hello?”
“Yes. My name is Epek Ras. Is this Mr. Kandel?”
There was a brief silence as Kandel tried to remember who Epek Ras was.
Fortunately, he soon figured it out.
“Ah! The kid from James’s store?”
Hyuncheol unconsciously gave a bitter smile as he recalled the gnome’s small stature, which did not even reach his chest despite Hyuncheol himself being over 180 centimeters tall.
Still, he remembered reading that shorter races often coped with inferiority complexes in ways like this, so he chose not to react.
“Yes, that’s me.”
“Oh, right. So what’s up?”
Suppressing his excitement, Hyuncheol explained that he had created a fairly good game and wanted Kandel’s company to distribute it.
After speaking, he waited for the response while breathing heavily, feeling as though he had finally taken the plunge.
“Oh, impressive. You made a game? Should I come take a look tomorrow?”
“Yes! Yes!”
Kandel’s response was positive.
Which, honestly, was only natural.
If this had been a famous major company, they might have arrogantly chosen only select games to distribute. But that level of prestige belonged to the future.
Right now, software distribution itself was still a newly emerging business.
In the first place, there was such a shortage of software that companies were desperate for products. As long as Hyuncheol’s game was decent, there was no reason not to sell it.
The next day, Kandel thoughtfully arrived at the shop shortly before lunchtime, when the owner was absent and customer traffic was light.
At the sound of the door opening, Hyuncheol reflexively stood up, but upon seeing the grinning face of the small gnome, his own expression brightened instinctively.
“You came.”
“Yeah. Show me this game called Tetris.”
Unlike usual, Kandel got straight to business.
The idea that this young human had created a game left him feeling a mix of curiosity and anticipation.
Meanwhile, Hyuncheol felt slightly disappointed inside when he noticed no company staff accompanied Kandel for contract negotiations.
Of course, he did not show it outwardly.
After all, there was no rule saying contracts required multiple people present.
“Yes. Here it is.”
Hyuncheol quickly swapped the floppy disks, launched Tetris, and stepped aside.
“You move the blocks left and right like this, rotate them here, and drop them downward. If a row fills completely without gaps, it disappears.”
Tetris possessed extremely simple and intuitive rules, so lengthy explanations were unnecessary.
And as expected of a software company employee, Kandel had no difficulty operating the computer and immediately began playing.
Beep. Beep.
Hyuncheol waited silently.
Then, seeing Kandel staring at the screen with his mouth slightly open and total concentration written across his face, he understood exactly what the man thought of the game.
A triumphant feeling swelled in his chest.
After clearing blocks for quite some time, Kandel eventually failed to keep up with the increasing difficulty, and the blocks finally stacked to the ceiling, ending the game.
He looked disappointed and instinctively searched for a way to restart.
Then, sensing Hyuncheol’s gaze beside him, he suddenly remembered why he had come and hurriedly composed his expression before turning around.
“This is incredible! It’s seriously fun.”
Kandel did not bother hiding his reaction.
A number of complicated thoughts had flashed through his mind during those few moments.
Still, even if he tried pulling tricks, there was little personal gain for an ordinary employee like him.
Simply discovering a good game and increasing company profits would already earn him favorable evaluations.
More importantly, though he had not lived particularly long, he had learned enough to know that other people were not fools so easily deceived.
“Right? So you’ll distribute it?”
Even if he was not the original creator, recreating the game had still been a significant challenge, so Hyuncheol found it difficult to hide how delighted he felt at the praise.
It seemed that even after living thirty years on Earth, humans could never completely escape the influence of the body they inhabited.
“Yeah. Let’s draw up a contract.”
“Yes. But I already registered the product, so you won’t need to handle that.”
Kandel nodded at Hyuncheol’s words while simultaneously realizing that this little brat had apparently prepared safety measures of his own.
If he had actually tried swallowing the game for himself somehow, things could have become troublesome.
The contract itself was not especially complicated, but Hyuncheol examined every single word carefully to ensure he missed nothing.
He did not know what counted as normal conditions in this industry, but from his perspective, the terms seemed reasonably fair.
“You work in a store too, so you know this already, but retailers take twenty-five percent margins. It’s not like we distributors are taking huge cuts either. We have to manufacture packaging, handle transportation, and do all the sales work ourselves.”
Seeing Hyuncheol silently reading the contract, Kandel spoke in a slightly defensive tone.
Apparently he assumed Hyuncheol was hesitating because the conditions seemed unfavorable.
“Is that so?”
Hyuncheol nodded calmly.
Unlike what Kandel feared, he had already roughly anticipated the commission percentages.
Back on Earth, he had heard app stores took around twenty to thirty percent commissions, so although the circumstances here were different, simply seeing the numbers still stirred instinctive dissatisfaction.
Still, he understood there was no helping it, so he chose to behave rationally.
After confirming once more that his own share amounted to forty percent, Hyuncheol signed the contract.
“Good. The retail price will probably be around 60 Del, just so you know. External developers’ games are usually sold a little more expensively. So when can you deliver the completed version?”
The contract specified that the completed version had to be delivered to Barbal Soft within one month.
But they had already confirmed the game functioned properly, so there was no reason to wait an entire month.
“I’ve already finished all the testing. You can take it immediately.”
Hyuncheol also wanted to start earning money as quickly as possible, so he handed over the copy he had prepared in advance.
Since the world lacked commercial internet infrastructure, there was no way to patch problems later, so naturally he still felt uneasy.
But as he had said, he himself had already thoroughly tested the game while enjoying it.
He could not endlessly test it forever.
“Well, just keep checking it in case. We’ll run additional tests on our side too.”
Now that the floppy disk was actually in his hands, Kandel seemed to grow nervous as well.
There was good reason for that.
A previous disaster at company headquarters still haunted him.
It had involved a racing game called Hill Down. A bug had caused the game to become impossible to progress midway through.
Fortunately, expectations for the product had been low, so the initial production run had been small and the losses were limited.
Even so, the company had nearly collapsed from the financial damage alone.
Kandel himself had spent that period anxiously fearing for his job.
In any case, the contract had been finalized, and Kandel left the store.
Now all that remained was to wait.
Strangely enough, while he had been working toward this moment, anticipation for the reward ahead had kept his heart racing.
But now that everything was finished, the floppy disk handed over, and Kandel gone from sight, Hyuncheol instead felt empty and detached from reality.
As a result, rather than becoming overly excited, he calmly continued managing the store, studying programming, and planning his next game.
I said I was going to read novels too.
That evening after work, Hyuncheol visited the library.
While searching for books related to graphics and sound design for his next game, his thoughts naturally drifted toward novels as well.
Even if he did not end up creating a role-playing game, he still needed to understand this world’s culture.
So he headed to the fiction section and began selecting books.
And honestly, it was not only for practical reasons.
He had spent all this time obsessively focused on creating games, and even after finishing one, he had immediately returned to studying programming again.
It was beginning to feel as though he was becoming far too single-minded.
He felt he needed a bit of rest.