Flowers Instead of Fire
Once the talk had more or less run its course, I took out a résumé and handed it to Henri Vuitton.
"The designer who was going to bring in all those enormous sales... this is him?"
"Yes."
Henri Vuitton looked the papers over.
Luke Jacobs.
If Tom Hood was the man who had rebuilt Guccio, then Luke Jacobs was the one who would let Luy Vuitton sweep the Asian market. You know the bag—the monogram people had taken to calling the three-second bag, because the moment you stepped outside you saw one every three seconds. That was Luke Jacobs's work.
"A graduate of Parsons School of Design, I see."
"That's right."
"Tom Hood, who just took up his post at Guccio, came out of Parsons as well."
The Parsons duo who would lead the luxury trade for the next ten years. That was why I had sent Jo Sudeok to America.
"If you look further down, the bag's design and even the materials are already worked out."
"So we only have to manufacture it as it stands?"
"Give it a month, and the world will look different."
After Park Jihoon had gone, Henri Vuitton sat for a long while, lost in thought.
Make the shareholders money. Control of the company will follow of its own accord.
He had never quite brought himself to attempt a thing so obvious. Did that, by itself, already disqualify him as a man fit to run a company?
He was smiling bitterly when a voice broke in.
"Chairman, shall we contact Dion as planned?"
"Look at this first."
At the director's question, Henri held out the résumé.
"President Park Jihoon left it behind."
"Ha! A PVC bag? Using imitation leather at a luxury house—does that even bear saying?"
"You're opposed, Director?"
"Of course I am. For the sake of the brand, it absolutely cannot be done."
It was not only the director. The company's whole leadership was crying out, at the top of its voice, that the refined image had to be defended no matter what. And yet exactly one person was saying the opposite. Park Jihoon alone.
Imitation leather. Was this not an open declaration that luxury would be handed to the public?
"Chairman, we are a luxury brand. From our pricing on down, the ordinary public must not be able to approach us lightly..."
If President Park Jihoon had heard that, what would he have answered? He would have smiled, cool as you please, and tossed off a single line. Something like:
"Luy Vuitton began by taking commissions for aristocrats' traveling trunks, didn't it?"
Which was only another way of asking since when they had held their noses so high. And he would have been right. Selling goods to nobles does not make you a noble. But the director? He looked down on ordinary people and played the aristocrat himself.
Henri let out a long breath. Perhaps the crisis facing Luy Vuitton today had been born of exactly that vanity. He squeezed his eyes shut against the regret welling up, and spoke.
"Do as President Park Jihoon says."
"Sir? Ch-Chairman..."
At the chairman's bark, the director ducked his head.
Aboard the Grosvenor private jet.
"How was it?"
"The chairman looked pretty decent to me."
I answered Tennessee with a smile. I'd been given two choices: force the issue and swallow Luy Vuitton here and now, or take a fairly large stake without spending a cent. I had chosen the latter.
Spend the money here, and Harris gets to breathe that much longer. How was I supposed to stand by and watch that? First, get on good terms with Luy Vuitton. The acquisition can be discussed in its own time.
I was still sorting it out when Tennessee stuck his head in.
"So if the chairman accepts, you take the shares empty-handed. That's the idea?"
I nodded.
"Is that even possible?"
"The shareholders will want me inside Luy Vuitton."
"If it sells like mad the way you say, then I suppose there's no reason it couldn't."
The concession lasted only a moment. Tennessee shook his head.
"Business is insanely hard."
"Which part?"
"From the fine calculations all the way to a stomach full of nerve. It asks for too many talents at once."
I let out a short laugh. I can do this because I know what's coming. Still, I ought to wrap it in something presentable.
"I learned it from the time I was very small."
"From your grandfather?"
"Yeah."
"Oh—right. When are you going to let me cash in that wish?"
Grandfather and Tennessee, out to dinner. A date, if you could call it that.
"Yeah... he's in Italy at the moment."
"At this rate, am I the one who's going to Korea?"
"What?"
"Break's coming. It might be faster if I go see him myself."
And then a tour of the Hyeon-gang cars... and he'd introduce him to the executives—this rascal here, my grandson's friend... Ah. No. That would not do at all.
"Th-there'll be a chance."
Which was why I had to change the subject at once.
"Anyway. That leaves exactly one thing."
"...?"
"The street you lent me. All I have to do is fill it."
"And once that's finished... the Harris flagship comes down?"
At Tennessee's question, I let him see my smile.
In the heart of London, a Korean student was living in an upscale flat in a wealthy neighborhood. The rent alone ran to about what a senior manager at a major corporation made in a month. There was only one reason a poor student abroad could live in a place like that. The Hyeon-gang Cultural Foundation had supported him without stinting.
Yoo Seonho, out of Seoul National University's college of fine arts, had a particular tie to Hyeon-gang. Because Park Jihoon had bought up so many of his drawings, Park Yonghak came to know the work, and when the foundation was established Yoo Seonho was named its first sponsored artist. They had spared nothing, neither money nor care.
By all rights he ought to have been living very comfortably abroad. And yet he looked worn thin. For one reason only: every bit of the support he received from Hyeon-gang was being spent on someone else.
Yoo Seonho had never been an ordinary man. His dream had been large enough that he resolved, back in the eighties, to study in Britain, and his drive strong enough that he actually went. When he arrived he was full of the confidence that he would conquer the art world, and the results were good. His paintings were several times finer than anything from the softly raised minds of Oxford.
But a child he happened to meet on a visit to the Bristol Museum turned his life inside out.
A boy raised in care without parents, who could not even adapt to that and ran away. His only outlet was painting murals under a bridge, and he had no money for spray cans, so he could only stand there blank-faced, watching other people paint. And yet, astonishingly, the moment Yoo Seonho put a can in his hand—
"...!"
The child made a new world in front of his eyes.
He knew it then. Heaven chooses some talents apart from the rest. There are realms that effort can never cross. In a way it was only obvious. Catching Leonardo by trying harder had been impossible from the start. Was this how the painters born into the Renaissance had felt?
Damn it.
He had come all the way abroad to study, and here he was despairing over a boy still in primary school. How wretched a thing. How pathetic.
"What's your name?"
"I don't know."
"..."
"I've got a name I made up."
"What is it?"
"Jude."
"Jude?"
"Like in Hey Jude. That Jude."
"You came up with it?"
The boy nodded.
"Why?"
"When a Beatles song comes on, you can feel a little better, even if it's only for a minute."
Even the reason for the name was anything but ordinary. That day the two of them became friends, though to anyone else it would of course have looked like a guardian and his charge.
After meeting Jude, Yoo Seonho half set his own painting aside. His work came second. Most of his hours went to looking after Jude's pictures. Was he rebelling against a world that had refused him talent? Or did he hope that Jude himself might become his masterpiece?
"What took you so long?"
"I was out painting."
At the question, Jude shrugged.
"Where were you?"
"A really rich neighborhood."
"And you painted there?"
Another nod.
"I keep telling you, you can't just paint wherever you feel like..."
"It wasn't a house. Just shops. Shops that have been abandoned for months."
"Where in a rich neighborhood is there a place like that?"
"There was, though. A whole street, sitting empty."
"Even so... someone else's property, without so much as asking..."
"They've got plenty of money anyway. What does it matter?"
"...?"
"If you're rich, wiping a painting off is nothing. You tell a few people and it's done."
Yoo Seonho's face tightened.
"Do you know whose kindness is letting you eat and live like this?"
"Yours."
"And who is it that supports me?"
"How should I know."
"The rich people you despise. You'll take that money without a second thought, and now you want to curse them too?"
"Rich people helping poor people is just what they're supposed to do."
"And you?"
"What about me?"
"Have you ever helped anyone who has less than you?"
"I don't have squat, so..."
"Then what about me?"
"...?"
"You think I'm doing this because I have so much?"
Yoo Seonho was splitting most of the stipend to send Jude to school—a famous private school, one of the best regarded in Britain. At that, even Jude had nothing left to say.
"Your work and your life can't be separated. If you want to claim something through painting, you have to live that way yourself first..."
"Even if nobody looks and nobody knows. You have to be able to face yourself. That's how good paintings come."
He had said it so many times that Jude had the whole speech by heart.
"All right. I won't, from now on."
"Just words again?"
"I mean it. I'll do it properly."
He sighed.
"But there's something I should get praised for."
"What?"
"I have a dream now!"
"A dream?"
Hadn't becoming a painter already been the dream? Yoo Seonho was still only blinking when the boy went on.
"Not a job or anything."
"...?"
"I want to live like you. Later, when I make a lot of money..."
He seemed to catch himself.
"No—like you said, starting now, a little at a time... I want to try living by supporting artists who are having a hard time."
"Why all of a sudden?"
"It looks cool."
Cool, my ass.
"Because you're the coolest person I know."
"..."
"I want to be the coolest person to somebody, too."
Yoo Seonho clicked his tongue.
"So I'm going to copy your paintings exactly, too."
"You're what?"
"You said it. If the work and the life come apart, it's no good. I want to be like you, so I'm going to paint the same way."
"And that's the same thing, is it?"
"Then what's different about it?"
Wait. Then the mural he had painted today—
Jude didn't even need to say it. He was nodding, big and sure.
Oxford Street. Britain's answer to Cheongdam-dong, the luxury row in Seoul. Quite a few brands wanted a place on it, but we were still turning the concept over with care. Better that it not be a disorderly jumble—that a little more of my own taste show through.
What's the use of fretting forever? Walking it myself would be a hundred times better.
"Ought to be a restaurant somewhere along here, shouldn't there?"
"What did you have in mind?"
"McDonald's?"
That guy. Half a joke, and half he meant it.
Tennessee and I were just stepping onto the street when I stopped.
Hm?
They had left the place empty for ages, talking about putting a building up, and yet someone had laid a huge painting across a shop wall. A young man holding a bouquet instead of a Molotov.
Wait.
Banksy?
No. The name that felt familiar to me wasn't Banksy so much as Yoo Seonho.
Surely not.
He had said he was studying in Britain. It wasn't impossible.
"..."
Honestly, it didn't sit right. He had a rebellious streak, yes, but he was out of SNU's art college and a thoroughly sensible person. Even granting the block had been marked for redevelopment—Yoo Seonho, scrawling on someone else's building whenever he pleased? It was a hard thing to believe.
Then what was this? Was there a real Banksy out there, separate from Yoo Seonho?
"There's more, not just here."
"What?"
I took a step back and let my eyes travel slowly down the street. Just as Tennessee had said, every empty shop had a painting set squarely into it.
And yet.
Hm. Maybe it was only that pictures of a similar temper ran on and on, but it felt finer than I had expected—like a long Eastern folding screen unrolled the length of the block.
"What do you think?"
"Of what?"
"This street. Doesn't it look like a gallery?"
At that, Tennessee's brow drew in.
"Don't tell me you mean to keep this."
"There's no keeping or not keeping."
"...?"
"The paintings have had a life of their own from the start."