The Last Night in Seoul
"If a dog isn't enough, how about a monster?"
"Then it'd be too much like Capsulemon."
"Capsulemon is built around collecting. Mine is just raising them... no. It's practically parenting."
Right. That was a Tamagotchi. It never lasted forever, but it had been a hit in its day.
Interesting.
Even at a glance, TJ and Song Junkyung were polar opposites. One was a hard-liner, bent on driving the pleasure of combat to its absolute limit. The other was a moderate, perfectly content with the small joys of something healing. Put people that different together and have them found a company, and they either strike an extraordinary synergy, or they are so unlike that one of them is bound to be flung clear.
Reality had been both. They had looked ready to become splendid partners on the back of an overwhelming success, only to fail at closing the gap and part ways in the end. It was no different now.
Leave them like this and they'll do nothing but fight.
Right then—
"Jihoon."
TJ turned my way.
"What do you think? You're the expert. Your judgment..."
"Why not just make both?"
"Huh?"
"There's no need to fight. I was thinking you could simply make all of it."
"We don't have the time for..."
"Then stay up all night."
"...?"
"Other students cut their sleep to study for exams. Couldn't the two of you do the same?"
TJ scratched his head, plainly at a loss, and Song Junkyung made a show of looking somewhere else. And that was why they had asked me. Asked me...
Well, I had already opened my mouth. In went the additional solution.
Song Junkyung nodded in spite of himself.
"Say that one gets made in two weeks."
"T-two weeks?"
"Then... it won't hold up for admissions, will it?"
True enough. But admissions were hardly the whole of a life.
I drew a document from my bag. I had brought it just in case, and of course I was going to use it.
"Huh?"
Gulp.
Song Junkyung's Adam's apple bobbed, huge.
Why pin the sales figure down like that? Because of Song Junkyung's niche tastes. With a creator of that type, it mattered that he keep one eye on the numbers and keep finding the place where he met the public. TJ was the exact opposite.
"You want me to... do it too?"
"Yes. For PC, no limit on the size. Make it however you please."
"And the sales?"
"You aren't doing this to make money. Don't come at it for the profit. Come at it determined to make a masterpiece."
"You told Junkyung to sell three million copies..."
That was because your gift for making money had been proven long ago... ahem. But I could hardly say I had watched it happen in a previous life.
"An expert is telling you. Best to do as he says."
Surprisingly, TJ did not dig his heels in.
"Then you're signing a contract too, hyung?"
"Aigo. I'm honored, Investor!"
But still.
The two of you are fated to become the second Tennessee. And the third...
I swallowed the laugh with an effort and looked at my hyungs with the blankest eyes I could manage.
Time passed absurdly fast. Today made exactly two weeks since I had arrived in Korea, and tomorrow I was already meant to go back to England? I was sorry to part from the family. Hm. England, in truth, was not so bad.
Even here, I had been at my work every day, getting ready for the return, if that was the word for it. What had taken the most care was, as ever, preparing to acquire Ferrari. Even the mere "preparation" seemed to have cost a fair sum. Still, what was I supposed to do? I was making a team with that long a history my own.
Of course I have to put the work in.
I had taken a good number of reports along the way. The one that startled me most was a call from Martin.
"Sir, you said we needed talent, didn't you?"
An MIT man. A doctoral-level engineer. A salary on the order of two million dollars.
"I don't know quite how word reached you... My old professor got in touch."
"MIT?"
"Yes. He's a professor of mechanical engineering. I told him we were building an F1 car, and he said he wanted to join the project..."
I had told him to recruit a Ph.D., and he was bringing me the man who handed the doctorates out?
"But he's terribly distinguished in the field. The salary would have to be a little higher..."
"Of course."
A doctoral engineer ran two million dollars. For a professor at MIT, I would have to offer three times that.
There goes my money, nice and easy!
What else was there to do? I would simply have to earn that much more. But that was only my plan. At a time when even bringing money in would not have been enough, I had to go and do work that did not earn a single cent.
"You want me to give a special lecture at Seoul National University?"
A high school freshman, and Seoul National had come offering him a talk? For a moment I wondered whether Grandfather had cooked up some scheme with the university president. From what I heard, though, the students in the business department had chosen the speaker by vote themselves. No wonder the student council had called to recruit me directly.
Tsk.
If the students picked me with their own hands... I can hardly refuse.
Once I was actually standing at the lectern, I gave the talk with every ounce of sincerity I had. Thanks to that, it was not only the lecture. There was something very like an autograph session, and a group photograph, and only then could I go home.
At any rate, after that packed little stretch of days, if one could call it packed, today itself had arrived: my last night in Seoul, a dinner that would double as a farewell.
Eat at home, and Mom will only wear herself out again!
I knew her heart. Before I left, she wanted to set out one enormous meal. I've already eaten plenty, you know? And so we gathered at the Hyeon-gang Hotel. Grandfather took the head of the table, my parents sat to his side, and across from them were Yugeon-hyung and I.
"Jihoon. You ought to have a drink."
"A drink?"
"Drink only with me and go, and your father will feel left out, won't he?"
Ah. If that was all it was.
"Just the one glass."
A little later they brought soju, and the glasses.
"Yugeon, you leave it be."
"...Yes."
Mom could not drink either, so in the end the glasses were set only before Grandfather, Father, and me. The soju went in with a thin trickle, and once the glasses were full—
"You remember that squid house we went to? Your father had his first drink there."
Had the day come back to him? Color rose in Father's face.
"You remember?"
"O-of course."
"A child who wasn't even a high school sophomore, suddenly telling me to buy him a drink. I stared, not knowing what to make of him. Eyes red as anything."
So he had taken the boy along and sat him down, and the story afterward was that he drank and cried, drank and cried, over and over. The remarkable one was Grandfather. Not once, they said, had he asked why the boy was crying. Empty the glass, and he poured again without a word.
"Why didn't you ask?"
"How many things does a boy have to bawl over?"
Ah.
In an instant Father was red to the ears. He could not meet Mom's eyes... first love, then. Ahem.
Perhaps he wanted the air to change. He got his mouth open with some difficulty.
"Do you remember what you said to me that day?"
"How would I remember a thing like that?"
"I was drunk, staggering to my feet, and you gave me exactly one line."
"...?"
Advice passed, almost carelessly, to a son who would become a businessman.
Rather fine, that.
Father looked from hyung to me and back again.
"I made a resolution that day. Ah... I am never again asking Grandfather to buy me a drink."
The joke did the mood real good. Glass met glass with a bright clink, and Mom and Yugeon-hyung joined the toast with juice.
"Yugeon. What's had you fidgeting all this while?"
"Yes?"
At Grandfather's question, hyung only blinked.
"Well? Something to say?"
"What? No... no, no, yes. I do have something to say."
In that short space, his mind seemed to have changed more than once.
"I wondered if it was right, bringing up my own business at Jihoon's farewell... But if not today, I don't think another chance will come..."
"...?"
"I want to study abroad. I want to study abroad!"
He forced it out with his eyes squeezed shut, and his jaw trembled, fine as a hair, like a man who had broken a taboo. And yet, for all that tremendous resolve, Grandfather's face stayed perfectly calm.
"Where are you trying to go?"
"H-Harvard."
"Picked it special, did you, because you were sure I'd allow it."
It was not unreasonable of him. Hyung had Harvard. I had Ferrari. Both were nothing short of cheat codes.
"And why do you want to go abroad to study?"
"If I'm to grow Hyeon-gang into a global company... I have to put my head together with the world's talent..."
"This a job interview?"
Not the answer off a script. The honest thing underneath.
"Your brother went, so why can't you? Is that it?"
"No, nothing like..."
"Then what?"
"I-if they cost the same, of course you want the luxury one."
"What was that?"
"Put a Ferrari beside a Daebo car and ask me which I'd take... obviously the Ferrari..."
Could any comparison have landed sweeter with Grandfather? Hyung really had improved. Heh heh heh.
"Your major?"
"Business, and computer engineering. I mean to double-major."
At that point even Grandfather had no choice but to surrender. I slipped in, quick to the moment.
"Shall we toast?"
"...?"
"You've given him the study abroad. We ought to drink to it."
"You're that glad your brother's going?"
"He says he's getting a Ferrari. Of course I am."
The glasses drew together again, and a bright clink broke loose. Ah, and since we were already on the subject of luxury goods—
"Grandfather, I prepared gifts for the family while I was in England."
"Gifts?"
"The custom work took some time. They told me everything arrived today."
Every gaze in the family, Grandfather's among them, fixed on me.
"It's nothing so grand. I did become an executive at Luy Vuitton, after all."
As gifts for the family, I had asked them to make clothes of which only a single set existed in all the world. Chairman Henri Vuitton had agreed without a moment's hesitation, and today those clothes had been delivered to Korea.
A moment later, right on time, there came a knock.
They're here!
I had put some care into it. Whether the family would like any of it, I could not say. The door creaked. Whoever was coming in, I assumed, of course, that it would be one of the hotel staff. Footsteps. And then—what was this?
Huh?
What was that man doing here?
I did not even have time to be surprised. A wink. He winked at me.
"A pleasure to meet you. I am Henri Vuitton, business partner to CEO Park Jihoon."