Cambridge Comes Calling
While Park Jihoon threw himself into rugby, Peter sat in front of a computer every single day.
Hard circumstances had left him crushed under the weight of his scholarship. Peter had lived with that pressure for a long time.
But.
On Tennessee's recommendation he had been elected fair and square, and the prize was staggering: a full year of tuition waived.
There was nothing for it but infinite loyalty to the boss!
Looks, athletics, money—his friend had all of it.
What could I do that would actually help?
Hmm.
He had thrown plenty of things together as a joke. Sitting down in earnest and producing something good enough to actually ship, though...
As if I've ever done that!
Ugh.
And yet maybe he had aimed at the wrong target.
D-don't tell me all I ever do is get surprised.
A simple sport. Carry the ball and run, and that's offense. Put your body in the way, and that's defense.
I could make this with my eyes closed.
That was where the trouble started.
Plain rugby got dull after a while.
Bodies crash together, and of course a fight breaks out, right?
Ah, whatever.
If he was going to do it, he might as well do it properly. Every character learned a special move—headlocks, flying knee kicks, cobra twists, and the rest.
Scratch, scratch.
If it weren't fun, he would have thrown the whole thing out.
The annoying part is, it's actually kind of addictive.
Would Jihoon even be able to release something like this through the company?
He had his doubts. What else could he do? If he wanted it finished before the rugby match, the only option was to build like a madman.
Clack-clack-clack.
Peter hammered the keyboard without pause, his eyes bloodshot.
Harris Department Store. Carl Bernstein's shop.
Carl almost never showed his face on the floor. Which made sense—he hadn't built the brand out of any passion for business. He had simply heard that Park Jihoon had succeeded in business in his early teens.
Why? You think I couldn't?
And so, somewhat emotionally, he had opened a store.
Carl Bernstein had no expertise worth mentioning, and no particular passion either. So, well. Neglecting the shop was inevitable.
Today, he couldn't.
In the VIP room at the back of the store, he was receiving a report that bordered on absurd.
"What are you saying?"
"I-it's just as I told you. The vicuña wool has run out..."
"You said it was locked down!"
"We gave them a clear warning. Step out of line with the chairman, and they could forget about a place in the department store—they'd have a hard time doing business anywhere in Europe."
"What, they asked you to let them retire? Or did the ranch catch fire?"
The report that followed was even more shocking.
"Well... Young Master Tennessee came in person and bought up every last bolt of the remaining cloth..."
Why was Tennessee's name turning up here again?
The employee drew a volume from a document envelope and held it out.
"Th-the latest issue of Queensman. If you look at the marked section, there's... an explanation of the vicuña... fabric."
It was true. Around the middle of the magazine they had given the so-called jewel of fibers a generous spread, as if it were a feature.
As if snatching his share of the cloth weren't enough, they had the gall to splash an article about it in the magazine?
Is this a coincidence?
At this point, even a rock for a brain ought to catch on.
Queensman... was Tennessee's work!
He had dismissed the possibility outright. Why would a noble make something like that? And then the scenes that had only puzzled him began, one by one, to make sense. Why someone would buy perfectly good clothes in perfect condition and then go out of their way to stuff them in a trash can. Even running for student-council president and pushing a rugby match between the years!
So it was all to check a rival?
Sneaky bastard. Chin high and aloof to your face, shelling pumpkin seeds the moment your back was turned?
But the anger passed quickly, and a private satisfaction welled up in him. The great Grosvenor had been thinking of him this much.
He grinned.
Oh? Then I ought to keep time with him.
Carl's destination was his mother—Leona Harris's office.
"What brings you all the way here?"
Leona sat at the executive desk with her back to the floor-to-ceiling window. Carl, facing the sun head-on, could barely keep his eyes open. To report to her, he had to duck his head out of the glare. Every piece of furniture had been placed that way on purpose, of course. So this was the sort of detail you had to calculate if you meant to sit in a sovereign's chair.
Carl opened his mouth, impressed.
"Mother, I came because I have a favor to ask."
"..."
"I want to put real weight behind a magazine."
Distribution to bookstores across the country, of course, and the goal was to outsell Queensman. That was how he would knock the smug look off Tennessee's face. Carl didn't bother saying the part he was keeping inside.
"If you want to sell books, you go to a specialist. Why come to me?"
"Because I need your help."
"My help?"
Carl's plan was this. To make the public aware of their magazine, they needed two large promotions. First, a special discount, if only for a while. Even if they lost money on every copy sold, the thing had to be widely read. So he wanted his mother to cover the deficit.
"That's not the end of it?"
"No. Lowering the price alone won't do it."
Carl wanted a gift for every purchaser. Put bluntly: try giving away a fifty-pound luxury lipstick with a five-pound magazine. People would come running to buy it. The question was who would supply the lipstick.
The brands with counters in the department store only have to sacrifice for a single month.
The moment Carl finished—
"...!"
Leona's expression twisted in a peculiar way. If he hadn't been the precious son she had borne late in life, she would have scolded him on the spot and sent him packing. Contrary to that private thought, she said something unexpected.
"Suppose, somehow, it climbs onto the bestseller list. But when the promotion ends? Can you hold the sales?"
"They'll drop, of course. Even so, I have a strategy to drag them along as far as I can."
She knew the right answer was to stop him. She did. She knew exactly what the right answer was, and still—
"..."
For a long time, Leona kept her eyes on the wrong one.
Meanwhile, in Park Jihoon's room.
I had never once thought of making money off a magazine.
Is it easy, making money by selling books?
Even in Korea, publishing had been practically a hobby. It certainly had been, back there. But something was off here. Britain's population was only about fifty-five million. The domestic market wasn't small, exactly, but it wasn't a terribly large one either.
And yet—what was this? Perhaps because the neighboring countries were comfortable with English, Queensman's sales had far exceeded expectations.
Scratch, scratch.
I had only meant to do a little publicity. And it was making money?
I was muttering to myself when, as if it had been waiting, a call came in.
"Sir, have you been taking good care of that precious health of yours?"
A playful voice. It was Jo Sudeok.
"Thanks to you, I'm doing well. How about you, Professor?"
"Every morning I step out to Central Park and start the day with a doughnut and coffee."
"You've become a full New Yorker?"
"Thanks to you, I'm living in luxury."
I laughed a little at that.
"Still serious about the training these days?"
"Of course. Practice, then matches. Over and over."
"Have you taken your hands off the business entirely?"
Come on. As if I could.
"I check in a little, in whatever time I have left."
"Aigoo. And you get results like these when you're barely even checking."
"Sorry?"
"The magazine you published, sir. They're clamoring for us to publish it in America, too."
His voice had gone oilier than usual. Ask, and he answers—he was about to get to the point.
"Which is why I'm calling. How about we lay it out in America as well? We won't even need a translation. All we have to do on this side is print."
A decent idea. Our magazine reflected aristocratic taste quite a bit. In the American East, the Ivy League and all the rest, there ought to be real demand.
The West, though...
I was deep in a one-man analysis of the market when Jo Sudeok—ask, and he answers—seemed to catch my worry and pressed on. I got there first.
"Who's handling the editing?"
"I made the proposal, so of course I should take responsibility."
"Nobody asked you to. Why would you..."
"If I'd only meant to do what I was told, I'd still be comfortably teaching back in Korea."
Fair point.
"Having come all the way to the land of the free, shouldn't I freely show what I can do?"
The old saying was that people are wealth. Had the people close to me stepped forward and grown the fortune for me in the past, too?
Anyway.
"Sir, may I proceed at once?"
"You're not exactly idle these days, are you?"
"...Pardon?"
"Seeing you drum up work on your own, I thought you might have some room. Should I be giving you more to do..."
"Aigoo, what's wrong with this thing? I-is it because it's an international call? Suddenly there's interference. Sir? Siiiir?"
I snorted.
"Please put your back into the American market, Professor."
"Ah, now I can hear you. Yes, of course. I'll do my very best."
Beep. Beep. Beep.
It had been a while since we'd talked. It would have been nice to catch up on everything we'd missed.
There's something wrong with me.
Talk to Jo Sudeok and I just had to tease him.
Heh heh heh.
Right. Grow up fast, and go ahead and retire while you're at it. I'd buy an enormous cruise ship and drink expensive wine with Jo Sudeok every day.
Yes—waiting for that day!
Today: rugby (...).
And so I walked out toward the field.
Huge cameras crowded the stands. Besides Queensman, there was a fair number of outside press. They swung their lenses toward Tennessee.
At Tennessee's cold voice, they all gave up and turned their cameras elsewhere.
Hmm.
Sometimes I had wondered if Tennessee was a bit prickly with me. Watching how he treated everyone else... he treated me almost like an angel.
Anyway. Up to now, our so-called matches had amounted to civil wars among the first-years. Today, for some reason, there were quite a few unfamiliar faces.
They're all huge.
Not our age. Plenty of them had beards, and more than a few had hair tortured into tight perms.
What?
While everyone was puzzling over it—step, step—Devon came toward us. Maybe it was the unusually thick thighs. He was stuck, always, walking with his toes turned out.
"You can't keep sipping honey off matches between the first and second strings forever, can you? So I brought special guests."
"...?"
Cambridge—a prestigious university that ranked among the top ten in the world. Naturally, their rugby side had to be strong.
Then Devon turned toward me.
"Go at them."
"What?"
"You've been playing your own year the whole time, so you never went full power."
"..."
"Today you're up against the older guys, so hit them like you mean it. How about it?"
Hit them like I meant it.
"I'm curious how it'll go, too. Hey."
Devon gave me a strange smile.