Call It Fate All You Want
Call it fate all you wanted.
I had already died once, after a life of nothing but hardship. And now I was supposed to spend this one doing nothing but management, and then go?
Absolutely not.
It didn't have to come out clean and logical. I only needed to get my meaning across, and I was just about to try when Grandfather spoke.
"You'll have to make up your mind by the middle-school entrance ceremony, won't you?"
"Sorry?"
"Once you're a middle schooler, you're not some child grown-ups can drag around and decide for. You're of an age to say for yourself what you mean to do if this company comes into your hands. That's all I'm telling you."
"And if I make a decision that goes against what you expect, Grandfather?"
"Then you'll have to persuade me."
Persuade Grandfather?
The only way would be to prove that Hyeon-gang was better off with my brother holding the management rights.
"What, your head already starting to split, just from thinking you might have to run a company you don't want to run?"
"Oh, come on. There's still two whole years before I start middle school."
"So you've got time to spare yet?"
"Whichever way it goes, I ought to think it over carefully."
That was what I said.
I let out a long, slow breath. Inside, though, I already felt as if I were racing toward the day two years from now.
That night, in Park Jihoon's room.
I closed my eyes, and sleep refused to come. Nothing filled my head but thoughts chasing their own tails.
Should I just act crazy and wreck the whole thing? Spend money like water, score nothing but fifties on my exams, try living as a complete write-off?
I groaned. Do that, and they'd only ask if I was rebelling. It would backfire.
So there really is no way except for Hyung to rack up results on my level.
But Park Yugeon was only thirteen.
Stifling.
Even so, what else was there? I would do my best from where I stood, and my brother would do his from where he stood.
The authentication's finished, so... maybe I should talk to Martin. Ask him to be Hyung's tutor.
He was wildly overqualified to teach a sixth grader. That much was true. Even so—
Is this really the moment to be picky about that?
More than anything, in math and science the man might as well have lived in the heavens. If I meant to settle this inside two years, I would need a teacher of exactly that caliber. And as a bonus, Hyung will pick up English too.
Korean was another matter. I could choose the books he absolutely had to read and hold a reading discussion with him now and then. That would be plenty. Then Hyung will catch up in no time.
This was a man who came out of Seoul National University and went all the way to Harvard for graduate school!
Hyung... they say you don't study for somebody else's sake... so do it in my place... ahem!
I yanked the blanket up over my head.
Sleep first. Then tomorrow I could draw up a more detailed plan. And so I courted a sleep that would not come, and courted it again.
The next day, in Jo Sudeok's office.
"Mr. President! You didn't even call ahead. How could you—"
"There's something I need to discuss. Urgently."
Jo Sudeok hurried to read my face. He was plainly dying to know just how urgent it was, but he did not speak first.
Thirty minutes later.
Only after I had finished explaining did he open his mouth, and carefully.
"In a situation like this... I think a precise goal is what matters. The point you ultimately dream of reaching, Mr. President..."
"Ah, our president indeed... Your ambition stands apart from other men's!"
Perhaps because he had never heard a plan like it in his life. The voice was full of admiration, but Jo Sudeok scratched the back of his head and went on.
"But, Mr. President. You've made so much money at such a young age... whether that goal is actually possible, well, that remains to be seen..."
"I have a Plan B."
"Ooh!"
"If I can't escape management, then I only do the work I want."
"You mean that instead of inheriting a Hyeon-gang affiliate, you would run only your own company?"
"Yes. Just as I do now. A publishing house, intellectual-property management, a writers' agency, and the rest. I want to focus on spending money rather than making it."
Jo Sudeok was the sort who usually produced a solution the moment he heard you out. This time, though, he propped his chin on his hand and gave himself over to listening in silence.
"The goal is to give a presentation in front of Grandfather around the middle-school entrance ceremony, two years from now."
"A presentation of what sort..."
"I'll have to explain why I must not be the one to inherit the business."
"Ordinarily, people give presentations in order to win the business..."
"I'm the exact opposite."
"Hmm. This isn't something we can farm out to consultants. Live or die, we'll have to wring the wisdom out of ourselves."
Even so, the window was generous enough. If we prepared steadily from here, there would surely be a way.
"...?"
"I mean to show him I'm a man better suited to art than to business. I'll have to write at least two books a year."
"Fortunately, all of your income so far has been concentrated in the arts. If we use that well, I think we can make the case that you are specialized for art rather than management."
Planning of that kind was Jo Sudeok's field. My own strength, by contrast, was obvious.
Knowing the future.
They had never lived through the time I had already experienced. Yes. There was no need to rush. For the next two years, I would go back over the past, calmly and with care.
I was just settling on that when he spoke.
"It seems as though something has occurred to you?"
I didn't answer Jo Sudeok. I only lifted the corner of my mouth, just a little.
Time passed quickly.
First, Jo Sudeok set his name, fair and square, on the opening exhibition of the Hyeon-gang Art Museum he had dreamed of. Raves from the Korean critics were a given. In America—and in New York above all—the radical schools poured out praise extravagant even for them. The public reaction was explosive. Perhaps riding the effect of the museum's opening, visitors poured in day after day.
And so the press's love calls toward Jo Sudeok came flooding in. He was the media-friendly type to begin with, and he never once declined an interview. Then, every time he appeared on television—
As if he had accepted the interview for the sake of saying exactly this.
He went on, never tiring of the same words.
Fortunately, the press fixed on Grandfather instead of me. He was too great a figure to name outright; they must only have been offering thanks. That was the conclusion they leapt to.
In any case, thanks to Jo Sudeok's exploits—if you could call them that—the Hyeon-gang Art Museum opened its doors in splendor. My mother, installed as museum director in the bargain, grew busy along with it. Preparing a second exhibition and a third, she spent every day in a rush, running herself ragged.
More good news followed on the art side. Because five universities all certified Martin's authentication results, Oxford's footing shrank in an instant. Riding that momentum, Martin published his official paper.
It was not a long paper, but the shock it delivered was tremendous. Appraisal unsupported by science, methods that leaned on a scholar's reputation—those, the verdicts ran one after another, deserved to be driven out. And of course, in that process, da Vinci's unpublished work was recognized as genuine.
Praise poured in from around the world, and the press of every country strained to hear when the Portrait of Duke Ludovico would be restored. The day the work was revealed, tourists would come flooding to see a da Vinci. That was as plain as fire.
Was it thanks to Korea drawing the eyes of the entire world like this? The long-cherished work of translating the foundational disciplines went forward at a lively pace as well. A bold investment was made, aimed at one hundred volumes in the first two years and a thousand over the ten years to come. Things being what they were, the admissions cutoffs for the language-and-literature faculties of the famous universities leapt several rungs at once.
While achievements poured out of the fine arts, dazzling results followed in the popular arts as well. And not only there. Miyamoto Hideo's masterpiece of a lifetime, Super Orlando, posted record-breaking sales, and I—handling North American distribution—came away with an enormous success.
While our first writer, Hideo, was riding high, our second writer, Bong Junoh, left a clear mark on Korean film. Directed by Bong Junoh and starring Choi Minseok, the short Paradise advanced into the short-film competition at the Berlin Film Festival. Could a debut be any more brilliant? The film world sent up fervent cheers for the name Bong Junoh.
Lastly, there were outstanding results across the publishing business as well. Writer Lee Munhyeok's Romance of the Three Kingdoms exploded in popularity the moment it began serialization in a daily paper, and within a month of the first volume's release it had sold no fewer than five hundred thousand copies. A portion of those earnings went to the writers coming up behind him.
Among the junior writers who received support, the one who produced standout results was, without question, Im Youngha. Perhaps because each work, the moment it appeared, was translated into English and laid out in American bookstores. The New Yorker went so far as to name Im Youngha a writer to watch. In the 2020s, Korean works would even reach the Booker Prize shortlist, but this was the 1980s—a time when interest in Korean literature was nonexistent. It really was an astonishing result.
Anyway.
Merely listing two years of results had already taken this much space. And what had I been doing in the meantime?
Living hard, that's what!
First, I concentrated on English. Thanks to that, I raised my ability to the point where I could converse with Martin without an interpreter. There was literary achievement, too. Because I used a pen name, I was able to publish, and somehow they found out in France—enough that a publishing offer arrived.
The letter I received then was genuinely amusing. In a word, it meant that even if I wasn't popular now, the readers of the future would love me.
There wasn't much of a response even in the 2020s, you know?
Not that it was French readers who had read me. Still.
Looking back, a great many things had happened over those two years. All of it prepared so I could persuade Grandfather. The achievements listed above would surely lend weight to my argument.
But.
Apart from all of that, the thing I had poured the most effort into was something else. The privilege of the one who knows the future. A vision only I could present. Because he had said we would talk again around the time I entered middle school...
Less than a month left now.
Fourteen years old, I waited for spring.