The Planner Who Refused to Fight

I hadn't known.

Only after I started in business did I learn that I was greedy for people. I don't chase money. I only keep beside me the talented ones who will bring the money in. That was why I meant to send my brother's friends to Harvard.

Put it bluntly: for them, aiming at a global stage of seven billion had to be a hundred times better than wringing dry a domestic market of fifty million. They'd catch less abuse for it, too. Ahem.

"With a portfolio like yours, getting in shouldn't be any trouble."

"Portfolio?"

"That helps?"

"Sure. In America, especially."

At that, my brother's eyes changed.

"My friends have made a fair amount of stuff themselves. If we actually put it out, would that help too?"

"A hundred times better than having nothing."

"Then I'd better get moving."

"Hm?"

"There isn't much time."

A place at Seoul National was already as good as his, and so my brother had been spending his exam years rather loosely. But now that he had found a new goal, there was, for once, a look on him of passion coming to a boil.

"I'm getting up first."

He snatched a towel and hurried off toward the showers.

Hm. Watching him rush about, I did wonder whether I ought to be doing something myself. But me? Well.

The staff(?) will scurry around just fine on their own.

I only let the corner of my mouth lift, quietly.

Ralph got through to the developer of Tetris on the fiftieth try exactly.

Fifty phone calls: call it five hours, to be generous. Finding a Soviet citizen who had gone to ground, and doing it inside half a day, was little short of a miracle. What made that miracle possible was, without a doubt, the Grosvenor network.

Right. And what did I even do.

In that humble frame of mind, Ralph lifted the receiver.

Ralph explained his business as briefly as he could. The rights, he said, were tangled into such a knot that putting them right would be difficult, so wasn't this the moment for the original creator to step in and sort the traffic?

The trouble was that the company which had contracted the PC edition was claiming the console rights as well.

"The solution is simple. You sign a new contract with us, sir. Then, on the strength of that contract, we eliminate the fraudulent outfit..."

Ah—!

Eliminate?!

He was trying to live decently, and still the dark words kept leaping out of him.

"I don't mean we're going to intimidate anyone. The modern world has such a fine instrument called the law, doesn't it?"

He still had more to say. A fidget, a hesitation. Embarrassment, and the look of a man who couldn't quite make himself go on. Ralph didn't miss it.

"The advance is one million dollars. Would that be acceptable?"

The call ended.

"Did it go well?"

At Tennessee's question, Ralph let out a long breath instead of an answer.

Through the whole call he had talked like a man possessed. He could barely remember what he had said. Still, one thing was certain: it had been fun enough to stand every hair on his body on end. That pleasure, when the answer he wanted came out of someone little by little!

Maybe this work... actually suits me?

Before he knew it, a bright smile had caught on Ralph's face.

A proper license was his. Now came the knotted mess of the rights themselves.

The company holding the PC rights... Hungary, wasn't it?

Ralph left for Budapest at once.

A communist country, and therefore a society under tight control.

"Here they are."

Only after he produced a whole sheaf of papers, proof that the business was tied to the Soviet Union, did the word come down.

"Pass."

Permission to enter, at last.

Even getting in isn't easy.

People said the outfit had made a bit of money playing games with licenses, yet the company building was shabby beyond belief. Tch. A man with plenty at least takes care of his own hide. One look, and these might be the sort who had nothing left to lose. What else was there for it? He would have to walk into them and see.

At the end of a worn corridor stood a glass door.

And locked, of all things?

He pulled the handle anyway, just in case, and the bell hung on the door shook with a pitiful little sound.

"Is nobody in?"

By this point a person usually turns around and comes back later. But—

If it were Professor Jo Sudeok, he would have held this spot for hours, at the very least.

Ralph went on shaking the door. Jingle, jingle. Jingle, jingle. Some twenty minutes of that, and—

"Damn it, who is it!"

An irritated voice burst from beyond the glass.

Well, now.

From a place the corridor couldn't see, a man came shoving out from behind a partition. He advanced on the door with his face knotted into a scowl.

"If nobody answers, you leave like a normal person. What kind of bastard keeps—"

He got that far.

"...!"

Seeing the bulk of Ralph reflected in the glass, he quietly swallowed the rest. A physique to rival Coach Devon: the sort of body that sends a curse crawling back down the throat it came from. The man suddenly found somewhere else to look.

"Wh-what is it you want?"

"I've come about the Tetris rights."

"Ah. You here to buy the license?"

His expression brightened, visibly. Ralph offered no reply until the man undid the lock.

Instead—

The bolt snapped open.

The instant the door came free:

"I'm not here to buy."

"...?"

"I've come to recover an illegal license."

Ralph hauled on the door as if he meant to tear it off its hinges.

"A lawsuit? File it. Go on, file it. I've got nothing to be scared of."

He was certain he had explained it politely, and this was the answer that came back.

"Dead this way or dead that way, it's all the same. So go ahead. Gut me."

"..."

"You think somebody's going to be scared because you glare? What's the matter with you? I'm a man more at home in a correctional facility than in society!"

Ah. So it was to be the utterly shameless strategy. Well, you probably needed a character about this fine before you could play games with someone else's rights.

"International law? Please. Soft talk like that only works in liberal countries. This is a people's republic. You think anyone here is going to take your side?"

Say what he liked.

Ralph stood up and lifted the receiver from the desk.

"I'll use the phone. Just once."

"I may, yes?"

"Sure. Knock yourself out."

Ralph dialed the number written on the paper.

A moment later the man snorted, a pfft that said there wasn't a chance in the world. Only then did Ralph open his mouth, in a voice gone perfectly hard.

"Huh?"

"W-wait a second!"

If the other side had belonged to the free world, a government might have looked the other way, up to a point. But if the victim was Soviet—and not merely Soviet, but a man attached to an organ of the state?

The fellow came running in a panic and latched onto Ralph's arm, just to see if clinging would help.

"Have you no love for humanity? I said gut me—what am I supposed to do if they actually show up with a knife? Well? Huh?"

Hannam-dong.

Tennessee was working hard at sounding unruffled. The excitement in his voice was obvious all the same.

Then, as promised, half the North American rights come to me...

I had just secured the finest IP on the Sega Drive and was feeling very pleased with myself, and now Tetris on top of that. A double blessing, if ever there was one.

Seemed to me he was doing rather well. Heh heh.

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Saying it, I had to admit we did rather seem to be students. Ahem.

But perhaps because I had said it so brazenly, Tennessee missed his moment to object.

Obviously!

Yeah. No. I was out there grinding on the front line of management every single day, and he wanted to slip off alone and play the immortal.

At that point even Tennessee had no choice but to raise the white flag.

The line went dead: beep, beep, beep.

Sorry, pal. You've still got a long way to go.

As always, I had every intention of raising Tennessee up strong(?), too.

An hour later, I headed for the Hannam-dong Office.

My brother had gone out first thing in the morning, so by now he would have raised the subject of studying abroad with his friends. I took the stairs at a stride, partly for the pleasure of seeing how they had reacted.

Sure enough, he and his friends were gathered in the conference room. Sparkling eyes turned on me the moment I appeared, which told me the talk had gone well.

And yes: my brother Yugeon said it with a smile.

"Harvard. We've all decided to give it a try."

TJ, the brightest of them, added his piece.

"Anyway, it's not as if we have anything to lose. It doesn't even overlap with the entrance exams here."

Fortunately, the other boys wore much the same look. But... huh.

There was a face I had never seen.

He must have felt my eyes on him.

"Shinil High. Song Junkyung. I couldn't come last time. The flu."

Once again, it was TJ who supplied the explanation.

"The only planning genius Yugeon actually acknowledges."

"What are you even saying..."

Embarrassed, Song Junkyung waved it off. The oversized glasses and the head buzzed down to the scalp had made him a stranger; but the moment someone called him a planner my brother acknowledged, I understood well enough.

Song Junkyung, maker of Land of the Sun and Blood Oath. The father of the Korean MMORPG.

No wonder I had been dying to see him.

TJ and Song Junkyung, in the same room?

Heh heh.

From what I gathered, they were in the middle of a planning meeting, arguing over what would be good to make.

Aigoo. This is getting interesting.

I slipped a step back and asked.

"Mind if I watch?"

"Obviously."

And of course the answer belonged to TJ.

So the planning meeting rolled on.

"Does it really have to have combat? I just want to make something quiet."

As if they had forgotten I existed entirely, the older boys sank into the meeting. The one who stood out was, without question, Song Junkyung.

"It just starts on a little island. Washing ashore would be a perfectly good setup. Or it could simply be someone who lives on that island. Nothing wrong with that, either."

"And what do you do on the island?"

"Fish. Forage. Cut down trees and build a house."

"So... what do you do? After that?"

"That's all."

"You don't fight?"

"No."

"What is this, a camping trip?"

"Close. It feels like camping."

"Play the guitar ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and sing while you're at it, why don't you."

"That'd be nice, too, actually."

"You call that making sense?"

Not yet.

Later, it would. Because Animals of the Forest, the one Daisho would release, was exactly that sort of concept.

Was Song Junkyung that kind of character?

"And after you raise it?"

"Combat? Still none?"

"No—why would you make a dog fight..."

At TJ's question, Song Junkyung only scratched his head.