I Want to Bring Down Harris
The moment we stepped out of the tailor's shop, Olivia let go of the breath she had been holding.
"Whew."
"Hard. This is hard."
"Why?"
"Because nothing, not one thing, seems to come easy."
Call it a workroom for making clothes if you liked; what we had asked for was still a slice of their sales floor. If they had handed it over without a fight, that would have been the stranger thing.
"So. Did he agree?"
"On conditions."
"Hmm."
She was quiet for a moment, thinking, and then she turned to me.
"You want to use me as director. That's it, isn't it?"
I nodded.
"Then if you look at it straight, this is a partnership. Right?"
I nodded again.
"But listen."
"...?"
"I don't think I've heard the answer to the most fundamental question."
"Fundamental question?"
"This secret hideout that's also supposed to be an edit shop. Why are you doing it?"
"It's a long explanation."
"I want to hear it even if it is."
A hundred tellings would never match one look. Instead of answering, I took her to Harris Department Store. I had been meaning to go someday; now that the subject was on the table, we caught a cab and went straight there.
Largest in Europe, wasn't it?
Maybe that was why it felt like coming face to face with a castle. We were in the middle of London, so the crowds went without saying, and this was the richest pocket of an already rich city—buying power at its peak. No wonder they ran a luxury hall of their own, on a scale to match the grandeur. The jammed road was nothing but Bentleys and Rolls-Royces. It might as well have been interview day at the Royal School.
"Let's go in."
"Why here?"
"You'll know when you see it."
Most of the men wore bespoke suits. Most of the women wore dresses cut low enough to bare the throat, a jacket slipped over the shoulders. So the instant a customer showed even a flicker of interest, a clerk had no choice but to come out into the corridor and attend them.
"There's nothing I particularly need."
And then the customer went in anyway, as if only giving in.
Displays and installations made it hard, from the corridor, to see into the shops at all.
To guard the customers' privacy, I suppose.
It was plainly floor-to-ceiling glass, and still the interior refused to be looked into. Even so there was no feeling of being shut in—only a clean, total focus on the goods—and that was possible because every inch had been set on purpose. A temple of consumption, calculated to the last detail and raised course by course. Was I standing in front of this enormous fortress like Don Quixote?
The thought didn't last.
A craftsman's work isn't displayed in some department store.
Tennessee's words kept circling at my ear. I let out a short breath of a laugh. Right. It was only a room that arranged expensive things so they would look magnificent. There was no story in this place at all.
While I turned all of that over, Olivia walked on as if none of it touched her. Maybe it was the striking looks. Maybe it was the Royal School uniform. The moment a clerk's eyes met hers, he came toward her, and every time she had to duck her head, awkward and at a loss.
Only after we had made the full circuit of the luxury hall did I ask.
"Well?"
"A department store is a department store."
She already looked bored of it. I said, to that Olivia,
"I want to beat it."
"What?"
"This place. Harris Department Store. I want to bring it down."
"What are you talking about?"
She stared at my face, and a moment later her expression changed. She had caught what lay under the words.
"Don't tell me that's why you're opening the edit shop."
I nodded.
"Does that even make sense? How is that little space supposed to take on a department store this huge..."
"A new age is going to open."
And Hyeon-gang would be the master of it.
That's the only way I get to be free.
I swallowed the rest of the sentence before it could leave my mouth. What I offered instead was short.
"Let's go."
"Where?"
"We should eat dinner before we head back."
Fortunately there was a two-Michelin-star restaurant nearby. A place of that grade usually wanted a reservation a week ahead, but in a situation like this, what choice was there? We opened the door and went in, and a server asked us with a bright face,
"May I have the name?"
"We don't have a reservation."
At my answer he bowed, perfectly polite. He was about to tell us they couldn't seat us.
"One moment, please."
A serious restaurant often keeps a table or two empty against the chance of some important guest.
"I haven't been in Britain long, so..."
"...?"
"I keep forgetting the tip. Would it be all right if I gave it to you now?"
From my side of it, I was only paying early a tip I would have owed anyway. The money I took out happened to be about twice a day's wages, and maybe that was why. The server looked quietly into the dining room.
"Ah. That party got up earlier than they were meant to."
It was an old-fashioned restaurant—the kind where paintings are worked not only over the walls but across the ceiling, the whole room steeped in age. Even the plates were Hermès. A dinner course started around a hundred and fifty pounds. Order wine and seven hundred a head was nothing; you cleared it without noticing.
"This is a bit much, isn't it?"
She was a rich man's daughter, but Olivia didn't seem to enjoy meals like this.
"I like hamburgers and fries."
"McDonald's?"
"Yeah."
"Want to move?"
She shook her head hard.
"If my partner's treating, I can be glad to eat it."
I grinned. Fine. If I was spending the money anyway, I would rather she enjoyed it.
From the appetizer through the first main and the second, she cleared every plate. The portions were small, true, but there was something good about watching her eat without a performance. In a stretch where the next course was slow to arrive, she wiped her mouth and spoke.
"Can I ask you something?"
I nodded.
"I asked why you're making the edit shop, and you answered that you were going to beat the department store."
I nodded again.
"So why do you want to compete with a department store at all?"
"A lot of things are tangled up together."
"A minute ago it was long. Now it's complicated?"
She was a partner, and we had the time. I might as well tell her. From what Peter had been put through because of me, all the way to facing a law firm and finding the Harris family standing behind it, I laid the path out as simply as I could.
A little later, having heard me out, she offered a one-line verdict.
"I should stay on good terms with you."
"Huh?"
"Not just you. Your people, too. Pick a grudge with you for no reason and life gets tiring in all sorts of ways."
"If it ends at tiring, that'd be lucky."
She shook her head at the joke, as if there was no talking to me.
"Still. You've got loyalty."
"It isn't only loyalty."
"It's tied to your future, at least a little?"
"Of course."
"You'll fight for your own people, but you'll keep a running count of profit and loss while you do it. That it? Because you're a man of business?"
The phrase snagged on me a little. Take that out, and she was mostly right.
"Do you have a plan?"
"Beating the department store's sales right away is hard."
"Of course it is."
"But I'm confident I can knock their profits straight down."
"And long term?"
"Long term, I press them flat."
"By what means, exactly?"
Right then a server wheeled the cheese cart over. A shade of regret crossed Olivia's face, of course. I almost laughed, and both of us turned to the cart: one cheese the size of a millstone, two as long as baguettes, five or so no bigger than a slice of cake, and about ten flat rounds the size of a hotteok, those sweet filled pancakes.
"Which would you like?"
At the question Olivia looked at me, the look of someone telling me to choose first.
"The only cheese I know is mozzarella."
She sat up a little straighter.
"It isn't hard."
"...?"
"You start by choosing how strong you want the flavor."
She seemed easygoing, but she was a tycoon's daughter. She loved McDonald's, and she had still seen plenty of rooms like this. That was Olivia's edge. I waited quietly for the next part.
"Strong or mild. Which do you like?"
"Mild."
"Next is texture. Hard, soft, creamy."
"Soft."
"Something aged a long time all right?"
"Yeah."
She turned her head, and the server chose a suitable cheese and set it on my plate.
"And for the lady?"
"Roquefort, please."
"An excellent choice."
The cart rolled away. When the particular smell of cheese had filled the table, Olivia spoke.
"About where we got cut off."
"...?"
"You said there was a long-term plan. I was wondering if you could tell me."
The plan in my head was detailed enough. The edit shop was only the start. The real aim was to buy, one after another, the brands that still had a root but were shaking under slack management, and modernize them—to raise a kind of fashion empire and meet Harris with that.
So why did any of it need an edit shop?
Because fans never fall in love with the buying. They fall in love with the thing set in front of them. What I needed now was exactly one thing: a result in fashion as unmatched as D-Que.
A hard road. Even so.
For someone who knew the future, it was hardly impossible. But how was I supposed to say all of that? So I let the refusal show, lightly.
"How long have we known each other?"
"Why that, all of a sudden?"
The question lasted only a second.
"Ah. We can be partners without being close enough for me to empty out the grand plan."
The only person I could empty myself to, wholly, was Jo Sudeok. Had she read it on my face?
"You're sharp as a knife."
"..."
"You remind me of my dad."
"That's the highest praise there is."
"It is praise."
"...?"
"Dad keeps a lot of secrets too. When I was little, all of that was nothing but resentment. Not anymore."
"Why?"
"That's what a leader is."
Worry settled across both shoulders, and still you sit at the desk as if nothing is wrong. Right. My father, Vice Chairman Park Jongin, had been like that too.
We ate the cheese for a while without speaking, and then the last dessert came out: sorbet. Olivia was looking down at the dainty plate when I said,
"The edit shop. I want you to take that place. All of it, just you."
Ordinarily a person would grumble—you won't even tell me the plan, so why are you handing me the work? Olivia only nodded, quiet, her face serious.
"I can start this weekend?"
"Yeah."
"The budget?"
"It doesn't matter. Just concentrate on making the best space there is."
"You mean that?"
"I mean it."
"Then can I buy a vintage Rolex from the nineteen-thirties?"
"If you need it, as many as you want."
"Do you know what that costs?"
"Not really."
Old or not, a watch was a watch.
"You're not even going to ask why I need it?"
"If I were going to dig all the way into your reasons, I wouldn't have given you full authority."
"Generous, when you feel like it."
I lifted one corner of my mouth, and while I did she added the explanation.
"A department store only ever displays what's new. We're going to do the opposite and lead with what's old."
"You'll lay out only the things Harris can't get?"
"Yeah."
Now that was a concept.
See? Worth giving her the keys.
Which brought me to the point.
"If we're going vintage anyway, the nineteen-hundreds feel a little timid, don't they?"
"What?"
"If we're going to push, I think we'd do better aiming at the eighteen-hundreds. Patek Philippe."
She shook her head.
"I told you before. If my dad sees something old, he buys it first and asks questions later. So I know that side of things a little."
"...?"
"There is no inventory from the eighteen-hundreds. And a major house like Patek Philippe, even less so..."
"Then I'll get you one."
"I'm telling you, you can't buy them even with money."
That was fine. I had no intention of going out and buying one with money.
Maybe it was the confidence on my face. A huge question mark rose over her head.