Nothing Goes According to Plan
"A life that never goes according to plan."
For a moment I doubted my own ears. Nothing in the drift of the conversation had called for the word plan at all. So why now?
My heart dropped the way a thief's foot goes numb of its own accord. An ugly thought had risen: had he seen clean through the scheme I'd meant to milk for all it was worth—the simple luck of being born a second son?
Just how much do you know?
I wanted to read his face. But the face of a giant who had taken every storm of the age full on was a sealed helm. It offered no gap.
If I couldn't see inside him, the least he might have done was explain. Chairman Park kept his mouth shut and let only the faintest smile escape.
Some stretch of time passed that way.
"Let's go."
"Sorry?"
"What—you planning to keep sitting at the airport?"
"...No."
Chairman Park stood, and I hurried out of the room after him.
In the moving car, the Maybach's rear seat was past spacious and well into vast, and on an eleven-year-old's body it felt vaster still. I looked around the cabin the way a child would, then, for no good reason, started pressing at this and that with curious fingers.
Yes. I was acting the child.
If Chairman Park had already looked through me, the whole performance was worthless. But it was still only a guess. Until I knew something for certain, I had to live as an eleven-year-old.
I was still poking around when he spoke.
"You went all the way to America and didn't bring your grandfather a gift?"
"A gift?"
"From what I saw, your brother's already arrived."
"My brother's?"
"The speaker."
"It's here already? They said international shipping would take ages..."
Jo Sudeok's face flashed through my mind. If the student handling the interpreting had so much as mentioned buying a speaker, Jo Sudeok would have hauled on that enormous web of connections and arranged a direct shipment all the way to Korea. Ask him later and he would only laugh, awkward and pleased, as if it were nothing.
"A gift tastes best the moment it arrives. Heh heh heh."
"The speaker... I think Professor Jo Sudeok put his weight behind it."
"Professor Jo?"
"Yes. He helped me enormously in America."
Since the subject had come up, I slipped in another quiet credit for him. Everything that had happened over there? That hadn't all been me. It had only been possible because a solid ally stood at my back. I wanted Jo Sudeok's presence emphasized. The aggro locked onto me needed somewhere else to go.
Chairman Park showed no particular interest.
"So the gift was only for your brother. That what you're saying?"
"I'm sorry."
"Then how'd you spend all that money you made?"
"I bought designer suits for the guys who'd worked hard."
Empty-handed for the family, luxury tailoring for the staff! I'd offered it up expecting an earful. Strangely enough, Chairman Park only nodded.
"That all?"
"After that I met a Japanese businessman."
I launched into a long account of Hideo, then, excitement getting the better of me, told him just how cute the character the man had made really was.
"I wanted it so badly I invested."
"Wanted what?"
"The character."
The eighties were an age when it went without saying that a creator owned the rights to a character. Buying and selling those rights for money? Even Chairman Park would find the notion foreign.
"How much did you spend?"
"About ten billion won."
Sure enough, his eyes went wide.
"What's so expensive about it?"
"I took the rights on the condition that I'd handle distribution."
"Do you even know what distribution is?"
The first time his voice had climbed.
"Distribution is what they call it when the work snarls and they tell you to put money in first. You decide in that head of yours to spend ten billion won, and you think that's the end of it?"
Had I finally earned a scolding?
I deliberately gave no answer. I only blinked, wearing the blankest, most exasperating face I could manage.
But.
"Hold on."
Chairman Park narrowed his eyes.
"The startup cost was ten billion won?"
"Yes."
"No chance you founded a distributor yourself... You outsourced the work and only put up the money. Isn't that it?"
"That's right."
"Then why did it cost so much?"
"Ah. Well."
For a moment I hesitated. It was exactly the size of answer that gets you chewed out. Lay the honest truth down here, and... hmm. Even so, I couldn't lie to Chairman Park.
"I bought a building."
"A building? Where?"
"Out west..."
"West where?"
"San Francisco."
"You mean Silicon Valley?"
I had to bite my lower lip at that. I had caught the pleasure in Chairman Park's eyes.
"Yes."
"How did you know that ground would be the prize parcel for years to come?"
Of course I knew. I'd come from the future. But how did Grandfather know?
I forced the question back down my throat.
"I haven't bought it yet. I only asked someone to look into it."
"Where in Silicon Valley? You know the exact spot?"
"Toward Santa Clara. I said the closer to Stanford, the better..."
Before the sentence could even finish—
Clap!
Chairman Park brought his hands together, loud and hard. The reaction was so sudden that even the chauffeur startled and flicked his eyes to the rearview mirror.
"Good. That settles it."
"...?"
"I said I haven't bought it yet..."
"You told Jo Sudeok to find you a building, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"Then of course he'll come back with a fine one!"
A building was hardly pocket change. Wasn't the normal thing to scold me for spending the money on something I hadn't even seen?
I swallowed the disappointment and asked.
"You're certain Silicon Valley is going to boom?"
"Of course."
"Then why aren't you buying the land?"
He snorted.
"A company that stands for Korea ought to sell products. You think we should get rich selling dirt?"
"Because of ethics?"
"Ethics, my ass. Let the men who run companies make their money and buy land first, and watch what happens. People will jab a finger at them—look how little technology they've got, pulling a stunt like that."
"So it's about brand value."
Chairman Park didn't answer. His face said there was no need to reply to the obvious.
After that, a brief silence opened between us.
What was he thinking now? Surely he wasn't hanging some grand meaning on the antics of an eleven-year-old. A slippery brat wriggling because he refused to become the heir. A giant who saw straight through him and meant to make him pay for it properly. The ominous thought drifted through my head, but I said nothing, and I tried not to rush. I had never seen a thing turn out well because someone moved in haste. If I hadn't squandered the life before this one, then I had to know how to endure even an ominous silence.
Once I had settled my mind, I was turning a heavy gaze out the window.
"The painting."
Chairman Park spoke while staring straight ahead.
"Even after you sold off the Dürer, there's a work left over?"
"Yes."
"I hear an Oxford appraisal team came by. What did they say?"
"They granted the quality of the piece, but they said it wasn't a da Vinci."
"Then why don't you look disappointed?"
"We've decided to have it appraised again."
"A second appraisal? Hmm. Weren't those fellows supposed to be the best there is, where da Vinci is concerned?"
"They are. That's part of why I called them."
"Then it's finished, isn't it?"
"There might be several hundred billion won riding on it. I didn't want to fold over a few words from someone else."
"The new team?"
"I put it together."
"These days you'll try just about anything."
He said it that way, but his expression wasn't bad at all.
"And the painting?"
"I brought it on the plane. Professor Jo Sudeok is probably keeping it at Seoul National University."
"Why Seoul National?"
"That's where the appraisal equipment is."
The words had barely left my mouth.
"Turn the car around."
Chairman Park spoke toward the driver's seat. The chauffeur slid into the fast lane as he asked.
"Where shall I take you, sir?"
"Seoul National University."
What was this, all of a sudden? Whatever I felt about it—
Vroooom!
The Maybach flagship opened its twelve-cylinder engine all the way.
We had stormed the campus with no appointment. I'd half feared Jo Sudeok might already have gone home.
"Mr. President, what brings you—ghk! Ch-Chairman?"
Fortunately, he was in the lab. While I had been talking with Chairman Park in the airport lounge, Jo Sudeok had apparently made straight for the school, and quickly.
"Th-this is the first time we've met, Chairman. It's an honor."
Jo Sudeok was always composed, but in this one moment even he looked thrown. No wonder. Chairman Park was raking the man who attended his grandson—attended, if that was the word—with a piercing stare. It was a presence that would set an ordinary person's legs shaking. He was still standing only because he was Jo Sudeok.
Fortunately, it didn't last. Chairman Park's interest moved at once to the painting.
"We'll skip the greetings."
Quick to read a room, Jo Sudeok moved at once.
"The moment I reached the lab, I checked the condition of the work. With the specialists on it, you may consider the damage from transport nearly nonexistent."
"The piece?"
"This way..."
He led us to his own studio, on the same floor. Familiar faces filled the room: the veteran warriors of the doctoral course—if one could call them that—who had been with me in Boston. The instant they saw Chairman Park, they froze stiff, as if they had agreed on it beforehand.
Should they greet him? And if they did, what were they supposed to say? No proper answer seemed to come. Not one of them stepped forward. They only held themselves in awkward, half-finished postures.
As if long used to that kind of reaction, he walked. Step. Step. Chairman Park passed straight through the stares pouring over him, then fixed his gaze on the painting set atop the square table at the center of the room.
He didn't ask whether this was the piece. The aura pouring off the portrait was enough.
...!
His face was already the face of a man who had guessed everything.