The Mayor Comes Unannounced
Had I enjoyed it?
Not at all.
I had wanted to, desperately, and never once gotten the chance. If anything, that only pulled me in harder.
But a Super Family was almost impossible to find. To my lasting regret, I never really got to play one.
It was a neighborhood-bus ride away, and yet I remember just walking, sweat beading and running, with no plan beyond putting one foot in front of the other.
Through the shop's full-length window, on a small cathode-ray set, Super Orlando stood in his cape.
Huh?
Had Orlando ever looked that sharp? That vivid?
I didn't even know what sixteen-bit meant back then. The blaze of color overwhelmed me, and the words went right out of my head.
Whoa.
And I'd walked all that way.
It didn't have to be me playing. I just wanted to see a real game—not the demo that started looping the moment someone left the machine on.
Looking back, I wish I'd asked the owner. Told him I'd come from the next neighborhood over because I wanted to see Super Orlando World. I didn't have the money to buy a thing, but I still needed to see it. If a kid had said it that honestly, pity alone might have let him touch a controller once.
Having no money pressed down on my small shoulders like some enormous sin.
Looking back on it, I must have been terribly shrunk in on myself.
Tennessee's voice arrived with perfect timing and hauled me back to the present.
Whew. A little later, and I might have sunk into a gloom I didn't need.
I smiled and turned to him.
"Want to make a donation with me sometime soon?"
"A donation?"
"Super Family, Super Orlando World, Capsulemon. We give them to low-income kids."
"Out of nowhere?"
"You don't want to?"
Tennessee, in the middle of setting hamburgers on the table, only blinked, plainly wondering what had gotten into me.
"If you don't want to, I'll just do it alo—"
"We'll do it together. Sure. It's not like it's hard."
That earned him a pleased smile.
An hour later.
"Is it really that fun?"
I nodded without a word. Fun wasn't going to hold everything I was feeling. It was the sensation of having gone back to that time. If I was smiling now, then I was wearing, in the present, the smile that kid should have worn back then.
I'm getting choked up.
I held the controller out to Tennessee.
"You take a turn."
"Why?"
"I'm hungry."
"We just ate hamburgers. How long ago was that..."
"You ate almost all of them. The fries."
"Wh-when did I."
He took the pad with an awkward look, and only then did I add, "I'm going to make ramen. You want some?"
"What's that?"
"Kind of like spaghetti. It's got broth in it."
"No. No. Absolutely not."
So I boiled exactly one packet.
The smell—Korea's own, more or less—seemed to put a spell on him. Like a cat that had spotted a squeeze treat, Tennessee crept toward me.
"Why'd you lie?"
"About what?"
"Since when is this soup spaghetti?"
Don't tell me he wanted a bite. The portion looked small even at a glance, so he only smacked his lips and couldn't quite bring himself to ask.
I snorted.
"Want me to give you some?"
"Well."
Well, my foot.
I fetched a bowl and a ladle. Chopsticks would lose; a fork would do. Once we were both at the table, nobility asserted itself: there was no slurping. He twirled the noodles up on the fork and munched.
"Well?"
"Mm... it's a little spicy."
"You don't like it?"
"It's strange. It's hot, but... it feels like it's hitting the nerves. Like the stress is coming off."
So he liked it. Fine.
"Got any pickles?"
I could forgive twirling ramen on a fork. Pickles in ramen was a line.
"We've got Korean food. Want to try some?"
"Korean food?"
Curiosity lit in his eyes.
"Let me see."
Grandfather had packed aged kimchi and white kimchi for me. One look at the aged stuff and Tennessee flinched. Fair enough. Jumping straight to that was a bit much, even to me. White kimchi would do for today. I set pale napa leaves on a side plate.
"It's pretty."
Fortunately, white kimchi seemed to be something he could eat without recoiling.
Crunch.
And then—
"...Oh!"
A short gasp escaped him. Cool and sweet. It suited a Western palate after all.
This is Mom's cooking.
I was watching him with no small amount of pride when he pointed at the aged kimchi.
"Give me the red one too."
He was trying to skip ahead far too fast.
"Save that for next time."
"Why? It looks good."
All right, then.
Squish.
The texture, at least, was different.
"Mm."
I had a word ready in my head, but he seemed to want one last confirmation.
"Did your mother make this?"
"Yeah."
"It's... good."
I told him to save the challenge for next time. Sure enough, he concentrated his assault on the white kimchi. Then, as if he himself had grown embarrassed, he changed the subject.
"Anyway..."
"Where are you going for university?"
"University?"
"Oxford, right? Or America?"
I hadn't really thought about it. If I succeeded at retiring, there would be no need to go at all. And if I was still on the run even then, an ordinary four-year university would beat Oxford's three. To stay out of Grandfather's sight, faraway America was better.
He must have read it in my face.
"If you're going to America anyway, what about Harvard?"
"Hm?"
"Harvard, I could actually take a run at. I could come up with this reason and that."
Ah. Most British nobles went to Oxford, or so I'd heard. Harvard, at least, was a name you could bring up.
"Harvard's hard too, of course."
Hm. Now that he mentioned it, unless it was somewhere impressive, Grandfather might just tell me to go to Seoul National.
Wait a second.
Had I even left an acceptance letter with anyone? You didn't get in just because you felt like going. That was the thing.
Tennessee seemed to see it differently.
"Any university in the world would line up to have you, wouldn't they?"
"...?"
"Just look at the career. You're several times past a professor already. Wouldn't they be embarrassed to reject you?"
Well. If I turned everything I'd done in business into a portfolio... ahem.
Enough of that.
I was about to say there was no point worrying over something still so far off when the bell rang in the distance.
Ding-dong.
Who would come to our house besides Jo Sudeok? And that man had a key. Why go to the trouble of ringing?
I pressed the button to open the gate. A moment later, someone knocked at the front door.
Not Jo Sudeok, then.
Which meant I had to walk the whole way from the kitchen to the entrance. If I'd known, I would have taken a smaller house.
"Who is it?"
"Am I speaking with President Park Jihoon?"
Up to that moment I assumed a reporter had come about the department-store acquisition. I was on the verge of turning them away politely when an unexpected voice came through the firmly shut door.
"Charles Emerson, mayor of Manchester. Might I have a moment of your time?"
"I'm terribly sorry to call without an appointment."
"..."
"If you would take that as a measure of how desperate I am, I would be grateful."
We faced each other across the sofa table.
"You have an unexpected guest, I see."
The mayor had recognized Tennessee. That would make the conversation easier.
"If you've come to talk business, I think Tennessee ought to sit in."
"Yes. Whatever is comfortable for you, President Park."
And then Tennessee said something I hadn't expected.
"You two go ahead and talk."
"Mad Bull alone is enough to split my head..."
"Sorry?"
"If President Park Jihoon is at the level of a student, I'm still at the babbling stage."
As if merely not crying, and managing to eat, was already a miracle.
"So I'll be going."
He fled for the entrance.
And you think that lets you dodge the work?
Nobody who gets tangled up with me gets to live easy.
When the time came and the ability was there, I fully intended to put him to use. Ahem.
Anyway.
I had just been thinking I might rest for once, and the mayor of Manchester turned up.
"Can I get you something to drink?"
"No, I'm fine."
He threw himself into breaking the ice—what a fine house, how he'd been following my story in the press. Sorry, but I don't much care about that sort of thing.
"What brings you here?"
"Ah, yes. Well... you've more or less guessed, I imagine... Ahem. There was that proposal you made to the city of Manchester."
"Was there?"
I shrugged, all innocence, as if I'd forgotten every bit of it. The mayor's face burned from the inside out, and he opened his mouth with care.
"Yes. Well... putting stores into dead factories... that great project of reviving the whole surrounding district..."
"Ah. I remember."
"It wasn't because of pressure from the Harris family, was it?"
"That is what one usually lumps together and calls political reasons... yes."
Having said that much, the mayor dropped his head as if he couldn't face me.
"As it happens, there's been an enormous amount of talk because of it."
"...?"
"A small piece ran in the local paper. President Park Jihoon had meant to start a business in Manchester, and the mayor's opposition forced him, unavoidably, to London..."
Aigoo. He'd practically been branded a traitor.
"I could explain that there was pressure from Harris, but then it becomes a politician bowing to money... exactly the sort of thing that gets you cursed. So I haven't responded at all, and yet..."
"With an election coming, the other party will attack."
"Th-that's right."
Manchester was a city with a very definite political color. The end of his political life was as obvious as fire.
So that's why he came running.
Trying, somehow, to restore the business he'd driven off because of Harris?
"I'm afraid there's a problem."
"Yes?"
"I have no interest whatsoever in political matters."
"P-politics? This is absolutely a matter of people's livelihoods. The jobs alone—how many are we talking? It's about eating and living. It is. Th-that's exactly what it is."
"I'm sorry, but that project has already been decided for London."
"You... you mean Oxford Street?"
"No. We acquired the Harris flagship. A dead factory became a department store. Only the place changed."
Gulp.
His Adam's apple bobbed hard. The mayor looked dizzy. But if he had meant to retreat, he wouldn't have come all this way. He spoke with grim resolve.
"Does it really have to be only in London? If the project is that good, perhaps you might make one more in Manchester..."
"I wasn't planning to stop at one."
Rapture bloomed across the mayor's face. It didn't last.
"But why does it have to be Manchester?"
At the counterquestion, his eyes wavered wide.
"There's Newcastle, and Birmingham, and Liverpool, so why insist..."
Not that any of the others were fine either!
"L-Liverpool?"
His face said that place, of all places, must never happen.
Hm. Which only made me want to go there more.
He must have read exactly what I was thinking.
President—!
His eyes burned with a desperation sharper than anything I'd seen from him yet.