The Bill That Followed Me Home
We were on our way to the airport, the American schedule finally behind us.
I had just begun to savor the Rolls-Royce's particular, weighty ride when Dmitri, seated beside me, drew a can from his bag.
"Fortunately, the sample was ready before you left the country, sir."
It was Mad Bull. A Chicago-only edition. In place of the usual logo sat the bull of the Chicago Bulls, and on the back was MJ's jersey, number 23 printed across it.
"I put my heart into it, though I'm not sure it will please you..."
"It's terrific."
At that, Dmitri quietly pressed a hand to his chest. A little confidence seemed to creep back in, and he ventured a suggestion.
"While we're at it, what would you say to a more aggressive campaign?"
"...?"
"I've been in America so long I've taken an interest in football. If we're going to do it, I was thinking we might shoot an ad using NFL players..."
American football. Say what you like, it was the most popular sport in the country. As advertising material, of course it was excellent. Still.
"Do you have an idea?"
"Ah, yes. We lean hard on computer graphics."
Computer graphics.
"NFL players already have a famous reputation for their physiques, don't they? We use that to throw the viewers off. For instance... a man sprints and pulls down a ball a machine has fired into the sky. Or he smashes through a timber wall and still comes up with the catch..."
"And why make an ad like that?"
"It's composite footage, obviously. But because they're NFL players, it plants a little what if. People start arguing over whether it's real or fake, and..."
"The argument itself becomes the promotion?"
"Exactly."
"With the workload already crushing you, how are you still dreaming up more work?"
"It's a little embarrassing to put it this way, but these days I'm the sort of man who's mad for the job twenty-four hours a day."
I almost laughed. Good. A little self-promotion. That was how a man earned his reward.
"How's the documentary? You said you'd started shooting."
"The feeling's good. I think it'll cut together nicely."
"When you finish filming in America, fly to Germany and shoot Max Schumacher as well. He's our first-choice driver, so give him special care."
"Just leave it to me."
With that, the work in America was finished. Perhaps that was why, on the road to the airport, I felt lighter than I had in a long while.
London Heathrow Airport. Jo Sudeok was waiting in front of the gate. I had expected that much. What I had not expected was the man beside him: Yang Eokgwan.
He was managing my assets for now, but one day people would call him Japan's Buffett. If he had flown all the way to London himself, the results must have been decent. Good.
I came through the gate in fine spirits.
"How does it feel to be back in Britain after so long?"
"Mostly that the hour for work has come around again?"
"Shouldn't a normal person be worrying about the start of term?"
"You'd think so."
Jo Sudeok and I traded easy greetings. When I turned my eyes on Yang Eokgwan, he bowed.
"I heard you were preparing a new project. I came to deliver an investment report as well."
The document case in his hand looked unusually stuffed.
"Shall we hear the report first, then?"
"Right now... here?"
"I can't bear not knowing."
As if he had expected exactly that, Jo Sudeok leaned in.
"I'll show you to the VIP lounge."
Airports are never without a sizable room where business can be done. Yang Eokgwan had the papers out at once.
"Compared with last year, the results have been substantial."
He tried to sound calm, but a faint satisfaction clung to the corner of his mouth.
"Returns jumped so sharply because a company we invested in last year delivered."
"Which one?"
"A semiconductor foundry in Taiwan. It's state-owned, so the government put up most of the capital. We did, however, have information that a minority stake had gone to Philips in the Netherlands."
"And?"
"On the condition that we invest in Philips, we received a transfer of the Taiwanese state firm's shares, and..."
"And that Taiwanese company performed?"
"Yes."
A state-owned semiconductor company in Taiwan, in this era. Only one name came to mind.
"It is an extremely promising firm. A wave of privatization will break before long, and if you want a larger stake when it does, I believe you should begin preparing now."
"You're saying it definitely takes off."
"I am certain."
This man. I had told him to go make money, and he had come back with another way to spend it. It was a venture with success guaranteed at a hundred percent, so I could not even complain.
"How much ought we to put in?"
"At a minimum, a trillion won..."
"Let's talk that through slowly."
"Yes. It isn't urgent this very moment."
The way he said it, he had brought something that was urgent. Sure enough, Yang Eokgwan drew out a heavy sheaf.
"I have heard that promising engineers out of AND, the American CPU maker, are striking out on their own."
"...?"
"Perhaps because one of them was born in Taiwan, they seem to have made a proposal to Taiwan's investment authority."
"The answer wasn't good, I take it."
"No. They came from a CPU company, and when they said they meant to develop graphics chipsets, the authority was thoroughly unimpressed. They even went so far as to suggest the men would do better to join the Taiwanese state firm."
A graphics-chipset developer out of Taiwan. I was beginning to get a feeling about this one, too.
"May I see the profiles?"
"Here."
Of the three cofounders, there was exactly one face I knew. The Taiwanese fellow who turned up to every so-called product briefing in a leather jacket and sold with pure nerve: This good, and you still won't buy? Too expensive? Then go buy AND.
There he is.
Johnson Huang. Born in Taiwan. A graduate of Stanford, electrical engineering. I looked at the résumé and let out a hollow laugh. Since we were already riding the Taiwan connection, such as it was, why not bring in Sister Lisa Su and sketch the really big picture?
The thought had barely formed.
"So how much do those three need?"
"It is a hardware business in the end. To recruit specialists and put the equipment in place..."
I could hear my money softly melting. Oh, I could hear it.
"I suspect we will need a hundred billion won in initial capital alone."
I could scrape together a trillion this minute and it still would not feel like enough, and he wanted a hundred billion on top of that!
"It is not an investment you must make. Only if you wish..."
"I wish."
How could I not? A monster of a company that would one day swell toward a market value of nearly three thousand trillion won. A hundred billion was a steal. A steal.
"By when should I have it ready?"
"At the latest, it will need to be paid within three months..."
And with that, the money I had to earn swelled from one trillion won to one trillion one hundred billion.
Excuse me, sir. Was this not supposed to be the meeting where you explained how much we had made this year? Why was it nothing but talk of how much more capital you needed?
As if he had read my look, Yang Eokgwan cleared his throat.
"Because you, sir, earn money without end. Waking or sleeping, all I think about is how to roll it up like a snowball."
"Thanks to you, I'm the one who's going to make a fortune."
"Then I shall keep looking for many good places to invest..."
Not for a while!
But I was a fiercely greedy creature myself.
"...I'll be counting on you."
And just like that, I gave an answer I had no hope of sustaining.
In the car on the way home, the long flight had barely ended before I was hearing that we needed still more money. I want to rest. My stomach growled. I was hungry, yes, but food could wait. All I wanted was to lie down.
Even so, talking with Jo Sudeok was always a pleasure. I spoke to him where he sat at the wheel.
"This vacation was quite the spectacle."
"Well, for a start... I imagine you had a drink with the Chairman."
"How did you know?"
"I attended the Chairman on his European trip, didn't I? Even then, he looked like a man who wanted a glass with you."
I told him what had happened at Grandfather's favorite old bar. My brother Yugeon, who had gone down after two and a half glasses. Grandfather holding forth on soju, the drink of ordinary people. What caught Jo Sudeok's interest was, of course, the latter.
"He started from a land in ruins after the war. He would know the hearts of ordinary people better than anyone."
"I learned about cars as well as drink."
I even gave him my impressions of driving a Ferrari on the circuit.
"Hearing that, part of me wants to hand you the wheel this instant... but I shouldn't, should I?"
At Jo Sudeok's bit of nonsense, I laughed, thoroughly pleased. About then a familiar road came into view. We're here. I wanted nothing more than to get inside and collapse, and it was in that very moment—
Huh?
A truck parked in front of the house caught my eye. The other vehicle would have to move before we could get into the garage. Jo Sudeok was lowering the window to speak to the driver when I got the words out first.
"T-Teacher?"
"Well, well! Park Jihoon!"
Of all people, Devon was in the truck's driver's seat.
"While you were gone, I nearly died racking my brain all by myself."
"Sorry?"
"You hungry? I'll make pizza. We'll eat and talk."
In roughly fifteen minutes Devon came into the house with a warm pizza.
"You live in a ridiculously nice place."
"I was looking near school. There was nothing but nice houses."
We sat across from each other at the table.
"You should have some too, Teacher."
"If I meant to eat as well, would I have brought only one pie?"
"Fair enough."
He had the look of a man who had eaten pizza until he was sick of it. So even the teacher turned pizza down, sometimes.
"As it happens, I had pizza in America. You popped into my head right then."
I tore off an enormous bite.
"Well? Stack it up against the taste from the old country."
I chewed.
"This is better a hundred times over?"
"Right?"
Proud of himself, Devon flexed a biceps.
"But it was already excellent to begin with."
"Yeah. The problem was the price."
"How... did you decide?"
"I did decide."
He hesitated, then threw his mouth wide, as if to say to hell with it.
"I'm just going to sell it cheap!"
"How cheap?"
"Rock bottom!"
"Sorry?"
"No shop needed. We go with a food truck. What? Not allowed?"
It wasn't that it wasn't allowed. There were only the two of us here. Why was he bellowing?
"Ahem. I got a little excited."
Devon composed his face and went on.
"No shop. No interior. Buy a used truck, slap some paint on it, hang a sign, and sell pizza."
"Will it make money?"
"I tried selling for a few days. If you're thinking of making big money off food, you shouldn't."
"...?"
"It's a food truck. By and large, the people who come are the ones having a hard time of it."
Hm.
"Prices are already filthy expensive. Try charging a fortune for food on top of that. It felt like I was committing a sin for no reason."
Look at the face alone, and he seemed like a man who really had committed one. In this moment, though, Devon had the eyes of a deer.
"Say you're on the phone with the kids on the way home from work. 'Dad, we want pizza.' Then I sell it cheap and make a family of four happy. Wouldn't that be doing your part for world peace?"
If he had stopped there, it would have been perfect. But the pizza is so good the beer goes down easy, your mood lifts for no reason, the old spark of love flares for the first time in ages, and one pie solves the birth-rate crisis, or something of the sort. An ambition as vast as Devon's forearm.
Anyway.
"So in the end, you'll sell at the lowest price."
"Yeah. Sell from a food truck, and there's the advantage that the price gap is smaller, whether it's London or Scotland."
Not a bad idea. I had no desire whatsoever to make a killing in the restaurant business. Which was why I said it.
"Since it's come to this, why not dream a little bigger?"
"A big dream?"
"While I acquire Ferrari, Italy's pride, you conquer the homeland of pizza—Italy—with American pizza."
"What do you think?"
"Why would I?"
"Because your investor requires it."
"You and I are strictly teacher and student... master and pupil..."
"But after hours, we turn into investor and businessman."
"..."
His face said it plainly enough: get tangled up with you, and doesn't everyone end up working like a slave?
"You have to work for what you've been given. Don't want to?"
At my question, Devon offered no answer. Only an awkward laugh.