A Plan Too Good to Share
"It smells like money? What kind of talk is that?"
"Mm... how do I put it. If the artist is stuffed to the brim with greed, I figured he'd only do better."
"So you invested with an eye on the future. That what you're saying?"
"Yes. If I'm spending the money anyway, it's better when there's something worth investing in."
Pretty impudent talk, coming out of an eleven-year-old's mouth. Park Yonghak, though, looked glad to hear it.
"Investment, is it. Let me ask you one thing."
"Yes, Grandpa."
"This painting. Didn't you say you were hanging it in your room?"
I nodded.
"Then it doesn't add up, does it?"
"......?"
"Leave money in an account and it at least draws interest. This is no better than pulling out bills and sticking them in a frame."
Unlike cash, a painting can rise in value just by hanging on a wall. The Chairman wasn't saying it because he didn't know that. He wanted to take his grandson's measure. In that case—
"True. If that painting were hanging in a museum, you could at least charge admission."
For an eleven-year-old, even that answer would have been impressive. I went one step further.
"Grandpa, since we're on the subject anyway, how about we change where it hangs?"
"Change where it hangs?"
"Yes. Instead of my room, we move it in with your collection. On the condition, of course, that the owner changes too."
"You're telling me to buy this painting. That it?"
"Wouldn't it be better in your collection than sitting with me?"
"And what's that supposed to mean?"
"Paintings are strange things. Change nothing but the owner, and the price changes with it."
"......!"
"The moment it becomes part of your collection, the price will jump several times over. Wouldn't that be far more economical?"
Park Yonghak had always looked down at me from above. But in this moment, for the first time, he bent at the waist and met my eyes. Too much he wanted to say, and no idea which piece to pick up first—that was the look on his face. Fine. I'd go first.
"Grandpa, you do like the painting, don't you?"
"Why? Honey dripping out of my eyes, was it?"
"Not exactly."
"......?"
"You studied it for twenty minutes. If you'd thought it was nothing, you would have turned your head at once."
"My money's in it. Course I look close."
"Even so, twenty minutes is a long time, isn't it?"
"What?"
"Once a man climbs as high as chairman, he usually buys time with money. Better to spend the cash and keep your hours than get tangled in tedious busywork. And yet a man like that invested a full twenty minutes..."
Chairman Park neither confirmed it nor denied it. He only lifted one corner of his mouth.
"Grandson's opened his eyes to investment, so this old man ought to let him win. Fine. What'd you pay for this painting?"
"A thousand dollars."
"Hmm. Twice that about do it?"
I scratched my head.
"Why, you don't like it?"
I nodded.
"Then what—you want five times?"
I shook my head.
"Say it like a man."
No more, and no less. I named the figure exactly.
Fifty thousand dollars.
For an instant the Chairman's brow crumpled. The reaction didn't last.
"Ha ha ha!"
He laughed from the chest, loud enough to fill the room.
"Debut in a contest, pocket a little prize money, and look how big the boy's nerve has gotten."
"......"
"A painting you haven't even had a few hours, and you want me to pay fifty times for it?"
"Even if you'd just bought it at an antique shop for ten dollars... if it were a real treasure, you could ask a thousand times that, couldn't you? Ten thousand?"
"So... you're saying this thing might be a treasure?"
"It's a work you invested twenty minutes in. Doesn't that at least put it on the short list?"
"Ha!"
Chairman Park let out a baffled bark of a laugh. He didn't throw me out. He put the magnifying glass back on and moved toward Yoo Seonho's work instead.
He had already seen this piece well enough. Perhaps that was why. His gaze traveled on to the drawings heaped in a thick stack. Unlike the oil, the sheets turned fast—until the last page. Before the sketch of a man holding a bouquet in place of a Molotov, even the great Chairman Park was caught, and held.
"......"
I let out a breath. I'd needed forty thousand at the minimum, so I'd gone in figuring the worst I could do was break even, and I'd named fifty. Named it hard.
And would you look at that. Chairman Park was staring down at the drawing with a grave face.
I swallowed. He couldn't actually be considering it, could he? Fifty thousand, for something I'd bought for one?
I hadn't wanted it to show. Too late. Thump, bang, thump, bang—my heart took off however it pleased.
How long passed like that? At last the Chairman turned his head my way.
"Let me ask you one thing. Why do you need all that money?"
"......"
"You're not just angling for pocket money, I reckon... Speak. What are you aiming to do with it?"
"......"
"Without a clear purpose, you wouldn't push this far, would you? What—your old grandpa wrong?"
Did he think that at this point I'd confess the whole of it? Chairman Park's eyes gleamed, quiet and bright.
But I am not an eleven-year-old child.
"I'm truly sorry."
"Grandpa."
"......?"
"I was taught that when something's truly certain, you eat it alone."
"What?"
"The plan is too good... I don't think I can share this one with you."
"...Ha!"
"You'll understand, won't you?"
A dangerous gamble. I had done my best, that much was certain. The cards were on the table. All that remained was the result.
In that moment Chairman Park, instead of answering, only offered a strange smile.
Thirty minutes later, in Chairman Park Yonghak's study.
The Chairman sat behind an enormous desk, and across from him stood his daughter-in-law, Song Suhee.
"Father, you called for me?"
Instead of answering, he looked at the painting set against the wall. It was Yoo Seonho's Spiral.
The stifling silence had gone on for about five minutes when he slowly opened his mouth.
"You seen that painting."
"Yes. I saw it at the art college exhibition."
"And? What did you think?"
"I felt it was a truly unrestrained work. The use of color was excellent as well."
"That all?"
"Pardon?"
"Nothing else you felt?"
"......"
"Meaning you thought it was decent enough."
"Yes. For a first-year work, it was very good."
"Then why'd you leave it?"
"Ah, well... Lee Yoonki's fourth-year piece was simply far superior in finish, so..."
"Pathetic!"
At the sharp rebuke, Song Suhee's shoulders flinched.
"Graduated from Seoul National University's art college, and your eye's worse than an eleven-year-old's!"
"......"
"The boy looked at that painting and came down with a fever—debuted in the New Spring Literary Contest, he did! Said he'd take the prize money and buy the picture!"
Song Suhee had seen the same painting on the same day. The question hanging in the air was what, exactly, she had done.
"Who told you to go digging for hidden treasure! A chance laid right under your nose is the one you don't let slip!"
"I—I'm sorry, Father."
"And thanks to you, I'm set to watch money I bled for walk out the door."
"......?"
Park Yonghak waved a hand, as if he'd heard enough.
"Starting tomorrow, go back over every place you've already been. Turn them inside out. See if you passed over anything else the way you passed over that painting."
"Yes, sir."
"Go on."
She bowed.
Even after Song Suhee left the study, Park Yonghak kept his gaze fixed on the painting. Just as his grandson had said.
A painting overflowing with greed.
On drive alone, the potential was real enough. And yet.
His eye moved to the drawing. A man holding a bouquet instead of a Molotov. The moment he saw that sketch, the question mark turned over into an exclamation point.
Talent that could make a name ring out across the world! But more astonishing than the artist's potential was the eye of his eleven-year-old grandson.
And was that all?
I was taught that when something's truly certain, you eat it alone.
Not content with handing the old man's own dinner-table words straight back to him—
The plan is too good... I don't think I can share this one with you.
He was still advertising that a scheme remained, wasn't he? Curious what the plan was? Then buy the painting and call it an investment. What's more, since the boy had put on the mask of a transaction, there would be no splitting the profit either?
"...Ha."
A thief, and no mistake. Live this long, and he was about to make an investment that left him with nothing. The brat's little performance sure didn't come cheap!
He told himself so, and still a smile hooked at the corner of his mouth.
A moment later he reached for the receiver and spoke without a pause.
"You know Jihun's account, don't you? Send some money there."
The next day, the moment school let out, I ran straight to the bank to check the figure stamped in the passbook.
"Oh!"
A full fifty times what I had paid was printed there.
I had no idea what link there might be between Yoo Seonho and Banksy. Even if I bent a hundred times and granted that the two were the same person—even if the work I'd sold yesterday were to soar beyond all reason because of it—I still hadn't made a losing trade. Banksy would need twenty years at the least before his name shook the world. Rather than let a painting sleep through all that time...
Better to cash it out quickly, and let the money multiply.
All the more so with a venture still waiting, one that all but guaranteed a return the moment capital went in. A business, if you could call it that.
Even just to lock down seed money, selling was the only right move.
Hold on. Now that I'd come this far, I had to admit it. If this wasn't a businessman, nothing was. Heh.
Of course, the boast only held inside the world of art. At any rate, what I had on hand came to about sixty thousand dollars. How many people I sent to Boston, and how long I kept them there, would decide the cost.
If a decent firm existed, I'd at least like to see a quote.
But of course no such firm existed! That didn't mean I could sit here with my hands folded.
It wasn't as if I had no way forward at all.
I climbed into the car waiting in the lot.
"Driver, take me to Seoul National University."
Thirty minutes later, the office of the chair of the Department of Western Painting at Seoul National University.
"Jihun, what brings you here?"
The department chair welcomed me with that same amiable smile of his—the business face he put on when there was something worth picking clean. Good. I didn't care to lean on goodwill either. Strip out everything human, and what remained was a transaction, thorough from the first point to the last. That was easier for me, in every way that mattered.
"Have you sent your regards to my grandfather?"
"I have."
"No. I'm here because I have something to propose. A business partnership."
"Hm? Did I hear that wrong?"
"You heard me right."
"......?"
"A business partner. Not interested?"