Bring Me Results
My brother went one better and told him to try it himself.
Ha.
Even I couldn't have gotten words like that out. He seemed to take the brief silence for a yes—or perhaps, yes or no, he figured that hesitating now, after they'd come this far, wouldn't change a thing.
And then he pressed Enter. A single line rose in the center of the screen.
How many members will you set for the party?
"Jihun, you're playing too, right?"
"Huh? Uh—yeah."
The word was barely out of my mouth before he typed in a three.
You open your eyes in a cave without a single point of light.
Your number is three.
What is your class?
My brother typed in warrior.
Warrior — heir to a great courage.
The moment you face an enemy, you will be the first, and the bravest, to charge.
At last he turned to me.
"Jihun, what do you want to be?"
"Uh, well..."
I'd seen the list in the notebook earlier.
"Can I be a bard?"
"Obviously."
Bard — a minstrel who loves freedom.
You who sing the feats of heroes will become the greatest boon your allies have.
The message hanging before my eyes might as well have been written for the real me. Setting that aside—my brother had made all of this?
"Grandfather, which would you like?"
"What?"
Maybe Grandfather's reaction had been too much for him.
"A cl—a class..."
He stumbled. The courage he'd wrung out of himself seemed to come apart under a single look. This was when I had to step in.
Whether from sheer disbelief or simple exasperation, Grandfather turned from the screen—and his eyes found Martin, perched beside the bed like a borrowed sack of barley. Thinking about it again, it must have looked absurd. Still, what else was there to do?
"In there, which job makes the most money?"
"A merchant, don't you think? From what I saw, a merchant can become a great merchant on the second advancement."
"Then make it that."
The words had hardly landed before my brother was hammering the keys.
Merchant — a collector of desire.
There will be no village beyond the reach of your influence.
And with that, class selection was over.
Inside the pitch-black cave.
Little by little, you begin to adjust to the dark.
But the peace is brief. From far off, footsteps approach.
What do you choose?
Answer a question stored in advance, and the next situation unfolded. Students our age usually wanted graphics, even if they were nothing but pixels, and my brother was probably no exception. For now, though, he'd chosen a question-and-answer form, like a tabletop RPG.
And yet—
You have slain a goblin.
Each of you obtains 1 gold.
We'd been playing only a few minutes.
"What are you doing, handing everyone the same money?"
"...?"
"The merchant takes the lot first and divides it after. Why carve it up to the last coin the moment it comes in?"
Grandfather was immersed already.
Hmm.
A good sign, at any rate.
Maybe thirty minutes passed.
"Since when is making money this easy!"
An answer worthy of the Chairman. And he wasn't finished.
"Fine—I'll grant you a hundred times that you earned it that way. You keep piling the money up, and nothing changes. Why?"
"Ah, we haven't been to a shop yet. If we go to the nearest village and buy something first..."
"Who said a word about spending it?"
"...Sir?"
"Money's like a gaudy flower. The bugs are bound to come swarming."
From where he sat, Grandfather proposed a few rules.
1. The more money piles up, the higher the Charm stat must rise, so that people follow—but the chance of being swindled must rise with it.
2. Through trade, a character must build control over money. Hold a great sum with too little control, and something must go wrong with the character.
3. When the sum being turned over grows large enough to demand a second advancement, it must not end at a simple great merchant. Choose the daylight or the shadow, choose the stage you act upon, and the form of the advancement itself must change.
My brother filled the last page of his college notebook with those words, line after dense line.
"Piling on classes isn't the answer. Even a single one will do, so long as you understand that world to the bone and draw the real pleasure out of it."
Heard one way, it was no different from a scolding.
"Thank you, Grandfather."
My brother's face was bright as anything. Tell someone to fix a thing, and you're telling them they may keep going. Sure enough, Grandfather added one more line.
"Nothing else besides this?"
"Sir?"
"...For now, just this one."
He clicked his tongue, the sound of a man left wanting.
"I've no interest in slaying dragons. The greatest fun in the world is making money. Why tramp off into some mountain hollow to do it..."
"Could you make something like that?"
"The way you said—we wouldn't need to stuff in a bunch of classes. We could make one that's nothing but running a company."
"Who's going to play that?"
"...?"
"You're making it to sell for money in the end, aren't you?"
"...That's right."
"Th-that is true, too."
"If you're going to make one anyway, it ought to sit a long way from real life."
He had an answer almost at once.
"Wouldn't the opening of the new sea routes make a better setting?"
The opening of the new sea routes? In other words, the Age of Discovery!
"Steering a ship from this country to that and turning a profit—that's the fun. Running a company is a bore."
I'd always known he had a feel for making money.
And now he's knocking out a concept without even getting up.
My surprise didn't last. Grandfather turned to my brother.
"Yes. I'll study hard, and now and then, just to let off some stress..."
"You think an answer comes out of doing it that way?"
"Sir?"
"Fumble along at both and drop both rabbits—what will you do then?"
"That's..."
"Meet it head-on. Bring results, and you keep going. If not, give it up clean. How about that?"
"Results?"
His proposal was simple.
"Then your grandfather will think it over."
Not permission. Only a promise to consider it. Even so—
"Thank you, Grandfather!"
My brother bowed, face lit as if the world had opened.
"I will, I really will... I'll work hard."
"You don't have to work hard. Just bring me the results."
"Sir? Ah—yes, yes, Grandfather."
"And."
"...?"
"First in the whole school stays a condition, obviously. Drop in rank and this is scrapped on the spot. Understood?"
"Of course. That won't be a problem."
Huh? Where was that confidence coming from?
Anyway. Grandfather soon turned to me.
"I hear someone said a hundred billion won in sales. Jihun, if you buy the whole of it up yourself, I won't let it stand."
"Ahem."
I nodded, reluctantly, and he added one more thing.
"And that talk you and I had today."
Helping my brother, instead of inheriting the management.
"We'll speak of it again after we see Yugeon's results. Understood?"
"Thank you."
A postponement was as good as half a permission. With that thought, I dipped my head after my brother.
After Grandfather left, Park Yugeon felt heat flood his whole body. His breath caught, and a shiver climbed him until it covered him head to toe. And that wasn't all. Grandfather's words clung to his ears like a ringing that would not fade.
He swallowed.
For a long time, Park Yugeon had envied his little brother. Unfortunately, envy always arrived with misery: a half-formed talent, an ambition that had not yet ripened. Whenever the mockery aimed at him crossed the line, he ran to his desk. Make something. Anything. The notebooks he'd started scribbling in already numbered five—escape into a world of his own making. And to think that very thing might win him Grandfather's recognition.
The joy didn't last. Soon the weight pressed down on both shoulders. He had to meet those expectations.
Could I really?
Even the vague imagining left an ache under his ribs. Then, suddenly, Jihun's face came to him. Had his brother endured this kind of pressure alone for years? And not knowing that—had he only envied Jihun, like a child?
Oh.
Moments of shame and apology he could hardly bear. And the surprising part—
"..."
—was that the greater the guilt became, the colder his head grew.
Apology alone can't change a thing.
Yes. If he was ashamed, then changing came first. He swallowed again.
Until now, Park Yugeon had believed he could yield a great deal to his brother, and he had thought of that yielding as a virtue. But in this moment he revised the thought.
Yielding is nothing but incompetence in a pretty wrapper.
Even if he handed over all of Hyeon-gang, would that truly make his brother happy? However extraordinary Jihun was, bearing this vast kingdom alone was far too heavy. Which meant—if he truly wanted what was best for his brother—
I have to carry my own share, completely.
Not hide behind the name of yielding and dump every burden on him.
Find what I'm good at, and take that field as mine alone.
The instant he made the vow, he knew something inside him was changing—a crack running through the shell that had held him. When the heart that had been pounding with excitement grew still, he turned his eyes to his brother.
"Jihun, can we talk for a minute?"
"Talk?"
He had no intention of unspooling some long account of how he had thought of him all this time. That was nothing but a private feeling. What he wanted to say was something else.
"I want to have a business conversation."
Strangely, the moment the word business appeared, his brother's eyes changed.
"You heard Grandfather. He told me to hit a hundred billion in sales."
Jihun nodded, and nodded again.
"For me, with no capital, that's absolutely impossible. So."
"...?"