Investing in the Man
Maybe seven to three had knocked the sense out of him.
Hideo only sat there with a blank look on his face, unable to manage a reply. Not that the man had any authority to begin with. The single decision left to him was whether to report this deal to headquarters, or to keep his mouth shut.
"Busy punching a calculator, aren't you?"
The question startled him.
"You're running the numbers in your head, trying to work out which side comes out ahead."
"Ah. That's—"
"How to drag the split back to fifty-fifty. Six to four, even, if that's the best you can get. You're hunting for anything left to negotiate. I can see it."
Realizing he'd been read that cleanly, he shut his mouth. The silence was answer enough for me.
He knows how to design a character and nothing else. Negotiation? Not a scrap of it.
He was fresh out into the world. Of course he was. I, on the other hand—how many deals like this had I already sat through? I'd crammed a whole missed lifetime of experience into this one, and I was turning into something of a master at the table.
"Right now, taking my hand is the profitable move."
"Y-yes. There's a limit to how far you get pounding the pavement yourself. If you'll take distribution and promotion, the sales will be enormous."
"Even so, over the long run, it's a loss."
"Pardon?"
"It's only North American revenue, I'll grant you. But you'd be handing over seventy percent of every dollar this thing ever makes. At that point, what's the point of being in business?"
Hideo tilted his head, eyes unfocused, wearing the face of a man who didn't trust his own ears.
"Absurd, isn't it? I'm standing here confessing that the terms crush you."
He said nothing.
"But remember this much. When someone slaps a lopsided card down in the open, it means your business is already a mess."
The words must have landed. Hideo let out a small sigh, and I pressed on.
"Do you have any alternative besides me? I'm asking whether there's anyone else I'd have to compete with for this investment."
"There isn't."
"So even if I come back with worse terms, you have no way to refuse. And I know it."
Then why demand seven to three? He couldn't get the question out, but his eyes asked it for him.
"S-so you left us a little room to breathe."
I nodded.
"The choice is yours."
Take seven to three, or keep stumbling through sales the way they were now. I didn't even leave them that small choice for long.
"Before you decide, I'd like to look around your office."
"Pardon?"
"If this investment goes through, I'll be pouring in at least a few million dollars. I ought to check a few things, don't you think?"
"Ch-check?"
"You didn't think I'd wire the money on a handful of sentences, did you? How many boards you've got stacked up. What condition they're in. Whether headquarters will actually tune the difficulty once they hear your feedback. I need to look at all of it."
"When you put it that way... yes."
In the space of a moment, Hideo went from the man who decided to the man waiting to be chosen.
"I'm sorry, but there isn't really an office to speak of. Th-there is a warehouse. Would that be all right?"
"Let's see it."
"It's a fair distance..."
"We're not walking, are we?"
At that, Hideo hurried to his feet.
The outskirts of Boston. By Korean standards, it was a warehouse slapped together out of shipping containers. The space wasn't large, and boxes of arcade boards shipped over from Japan were stacked in neat rows from wall to wall.
"There's quite a lot of stock. They kept sending more and telling us to sell."
"So how many have you sold?"
"Only one, so far..."
"Today's was the first?"
Embarrassed, Hideo scratched the back of his head.
"At this rate, can you even cover the rent?"
"For about three months, somehow..."
For heaven's sake.
"Is there a desk?"
"Yes, well. We've got what we need."
He pointed at his own spot: a folding table about five feet across, the kind of camp table you eat off outdoors. The top must once have been white. It had worn down to gray, which meant even that had been bought secondhand.
He must have read my face. Almost by way of excuse, he added, "Most of the time we're out selling, so the office is only here for appearances. There's no reason to sit at a desk... heh."
Contrary to the explanation, the desk was crowded with papers. Handwritten documents. And a scatter of sketches, as if he'd been working characters out again. Following my gaze, Hideo hurriedly gathered them up as he talked. There really were quite a few illustrations on that desk, and one character among them caught the eye.
"What's this?"
"Ah... just something I doodled for fun."
He said it lightly, but seriousness settled over his face almost at once. "I tried mixing a dinosaur with a turtle. It's a boss, so I put horns on the shell to show how powerful it is. It isn't finished yet."
"It's cool. The mouth's wide open. Looks like it breathes fire, too."
"Yes, exactly. It handles fire."
A laugh almost escaped me.
"Not a Western dragon's breath. A cuter version. More like it spits a little flame."
"Have you named it?"
"Not yet. It isn't that great a character..."
Not that great. This thing was going to shoulder the role of final boss for the Super Orlando series, generation after generation.
"Did you make the one beside it, too?"
"Ah, that one's too ordinary... there's hardly anything to call making. I just put shoes on a light-green dinosaur."
For something so ordinary, he'd drawn it a great deal: an attack that shot a long tongue out like a frog, the throat swelling huge when it gulped down prey stuck to that tongue, and more besides.
"Somehow it feels like it would go well with Super Orlando."
"Really?"
"Yeah. I could even see Super Orlando riding around on it."
Hideo startled. Then, like a man possessed, he started rifling through the papers until he came up with a single sketch. In it, the two characters stood with their arms around each other's shoulders.
"How did you know?"
"Know what?"
"That the two of them are a team. How did you know?"
Because I used to watch them all the time at a friend's house. They're plenty familiar to me.
But I couldn't tell him the truth.
"They just looked like they belonged together. The colors, the whole image."
A brushed-off answer, and yet it seemed to encourage him.
"You really think so?"
"Yeah. They feel like kindred spirits."
"Whew."
The sigh of relief lasted only a moment.
"Ahem."
Remembering what he was actually there to do, he forced his expression back into place. "Well. I've rambled. As I said, this is my spot, and over there are the employees' desks. It feels like we just dragged a few tables into a warehouse..."
Talking about characters, he couldn't have been brighter. The moment the office came up, shadow fell across his face again.
"You said you wanted to see it, so I've shown you... but it won't have helped the contract, will it?"
"Of course not."
"Nnngh."
He dropped his head, then opened his mouth with difficulty.
"Um. Mr. President."
I waited.
"Isn't there some way?"
His eyes were desperate. "The investment you offered... it's an incredibly precious chance for us. But headquarters is bound to balk the moment revenue sharing comes up..."
He faltered, then pushed on.
"I-isn't there a way?"
"Are you appealing to my sympathy?"
"I don't have a negotiating card. What's the use of scheming? Honestly, laying it out and asking for help is a hundred times better."
He was right. If he'd tried to be clever, I would have met force with force and pinned him flat. But when a man throws himself down like that, what more is there to do?
"So what you're saying is, the split needs adjusting."
"Yes. If we could get to something like fifty-fifty, I think I could persuade headquarters."
Half and half. Even that would still be an overwhelmingly favorable deal for me. I knew it. I knew it, and still—
I was sitting on seven to three, and handing it over all at once stings.
Hm. Stall for a while... and settle somewhere around six to four?
I pretended to think and drifted slowly toward his desk. There was no particular intention in it. He kept sending me that pleading look, so I turned my eyes to the desktop just to look somewhere else, and then, meaning nothing by it, picked up one of his sketches.
That was all.
And then, the instant I saw Super Orlando riding on the dinosaur's back—
"...!"
A possibility struck me out of nowhere.
An investment that doesn't paint a target on my back.
Given the age we were living in, it might look like a fool's bet for now. But as the years passed, wouldn't there be a contract that only grew kinder—a golden goose that kept laying money on its own?
When an idea comes to me, I can't rest until I've put it in motion.
"There is a way."
"R-really?"
"Yes. There is a solution. But I'll need your permission."
"M-my permission?"
I nodded.
"As I've already said, I don't really have any authority..."
"The characters you've made so far."
A question hung in the air.
"And every character you create from here on. Transfer the rights to them to me."
A huge question mark rose in Hideo's eyes. Of course it did. I was asking for a concept that didn't exist in this era at all.
"You mean something like an agent?"
I nodded. Almost at once, though, unease flickered across his face.
"Would that... make money?"
"We'll make it make money."
He only stared.
"Once a character gets famous, the advertising money comes in. You can put them in films, too. In other words, you'd be holding the rights to derivative works."
"Derivative... works?"
I had to lecture him on copyright for a while. The trap was that even after hearing all of it, he still didn't quite understand.
"Doesn't it sound too much like a dream? A world where rights attach to each character... and you make money off that."
"In the distant future, it might be possible."
"But... if it's really such a valuable business... why limit it to characters I made?"
"Because I'm investing in you."
"What?"
"I'm not all that interested in a company called Daisho."
"...Then?"
"What I want to invest in is you, Miyamoto Hideo. Only you."
He hadn't seen that coming. The instant the words left my mouth, he swallowed, and his throat bobbed hard.