A Shackle Paid in Cash
First. The development tools must be purchased from Daisho.
Second. An agreement must be made to return a portion of the revenue as a royalty.
Third. Consent must be given to the internal rule that a work may not be released until headquarters has signed off.
Demanding terms. Let your capital run short and you were stopped at the very first gate—the purchase of the tools. Well. And why, even so, did they keep a compact like this in force?
Sure enough, the contract was exacting.
"This is our standard form, but..."
Hideo stole a glance at me, reading my face.
"Since it's a contract the president himself is signing, we could make a special—"
"No. Draw it up the same as always."
"I thought you might say that."
"In exchange, we add exactly one line."
"...?"
"I—pardon?"
"You built the whole card battle genre for us."
"Even so... thirty percent, for coming up with a single idea..."
Sorry, but this was a shackle filled with money. It amounted to splitting the stake. Even if Hideo were folded into the next project, it would be the same. However busy he became, once he held a share he would have no choice but to keep helping.
"President, what sort of initial run did you have in mind?"
"About two million units."
"Ah, that... headquarters usually, for a new developer..."
"I don't need any help from headquarters."
"You don't?"
"Development, production, distribution, promotion—I'll oversee every bit of it myself."
"That will cost an enormous amount of money..."
"It's fine. I have more money than I know what to do with."
"Right... of course you do. There I go again, sticking my nose in."
Hideo laughed, awkward, and then went on.
"The thirty percent split you mentioned, and an initial run of two million. If I add just those two items and draw up the contract, will that do?"
"Yes."
"Ah. One last thing."
"...?"
I'd been meaning to sign and go hunt a writer on the spot. Had he read my mind?
"You already have someone in mind, I take it."
"I do."
"Quick as ever."
At my answer, Hideo smiled.
The signature was my brother's to give. I had churned out one contract after another, but for a brother only just stepping up into his last year of middle school, the whole business might still feel strange.
And yet.
The pen whispered across the page. He set his name down with perfect composure—the look of someone who had only just taken his first step and saw no reason to make a fuss of it.
The look, of course, did not last.
"I'll transfer the signing payment to young Mr. Yugeon's account right now."
"...A signing payment?"
"Yes. The contract is concluded, so of course it has to be paid. Please wait just a moment."
Hideo took the papers and disappeared. Ten minutes later he was back.
"Five hundred thousand yen. It's been deposited."
I saw it plainly: my brother's throat jumped, a hard swallow. It had to be the most money he had ever made in his life. He was doing his best to stay calm.
"..."
It simply wasn't going the way he had willed it. Even so, he really has changed. And it wasn't my imagination. In the space of a few days my brother had become an entirely different person. He must have been grinding himself to the bone, trying to fit the world he'd been dropped into.
While I was still admiring the change, Hideo gathered up the contract and rose. He offered my brother his hand.
"We've gained a very promising third party. I'll be counting on you."
The grip went tight.
"No—I'll be counting on you."
"Good!"
Hideo turned to me at once.
"You'll be coming along too, won't you, President?"
"I'm sorry. I think I have to slip out."
"Don't tell me... this is about finding a scenario writer?"
"There are a few things I can take care of while I'm at it."
"Aren't you running awfully hard, from the very first day?"
"You know how I am. I've always been impatient..."
He knew, all right.
While Hideo was still murmuring his agreement, I was already ducking out of the room.
"Could I borrow a phone?"
At the question, a Daisho employee nodded readily. Japanese courtesy had something to do with it, but asking in English had probably hurried the permission along.
"It's an international call. Is that all right?"
"International?"
"It won't be long."
"Well... if that's the case..."
I dialed a number I knew by heart. I'd wondered what I would do if he didn't pick up. Needless worry, as usual.
"Professor, it's me. Park Jihoon."
"Ohhh! Mister Presideeent!"
That overblown voice, pure Jo Sudeok. Hard to get used to, at first. Give it time, and now and then you miss it. That's the thing.
"Are you busy?"
"How could I possibly be? If you call, President, I would leap out of the barber's chair halfway through the cut."
Maybe it was the picture of Jo Sudeok with his sideburns trimmed unevenly. A laugh escaped me.
"Professor, could I see you?"
"Of course. I ought to come at once. Where are you? I'll leave right away."
"You would?"
"Aigoo, I keep telling you. You have only to say the word..."
"Kyoto."
"...?"
"I'm in Kyoto. Japan."
"Ah. I see. So you're in Kyoto... right now..."
"If it's a burden—"
"A burden? Please! No wonder I haven't been hungry all day. I must have been saving myself for udon in Japan. Heh heh."
I'd meant, originally, to handle this alone, without Professor Jo. Then the genre had swung hard into a TCG, and my plans had swung with it.
"When you arrive, find me one person."
"The moment I step off the plane?"
"If you're desperate to sightsee, you could look around first..."
"Ahem. S-sightseeing, at my age? That is for the young. People like me prefer work. Idling about—we cannot stand it. Heh heh heh."
"Can you write this down?"
"Could you wait just a moment?"
I heard him hunting for a slip of paper, and presently the answer came back, telling me to go ahead. On the last trip to America, the errand I'd handed him had been on the order of finding one Mr. Wang in all of Beijing. This time I had a good deal more to go on. Perhaps that was why.
"With this much, I give it one hour. Exactly."
Jo Sudeok let a considerable confidence show.
"By the way... do you speak Japanese?"
"Come now. If a man means to earn his rice at a university, Japanese is required."
Fair enough. In this era, most scholarly books were in English or Japanese anyway.
"Then I won't need to hire an interpreter on the side?"
"Mm... well, yes. I read it quite well, mind you..."
"The flight is only about two hours. A little practice on the way ought to be enough, shouldn't it?"
"Just—just leave it to me..."
That was the end of the call.
Preparations, more or less, are finished.
I gave the employee a short bow and strolled out of the building.
Quite a stretch of empty time before the professor gets here.
I got into a taxi at once and headed downtown. One purpose, and one only: to see how people in Japan actually lived.
If I meant to aim at a hundred billion won in sales, I would need a very respectable result in Japan as well.
Which makes market research mandatory.
Perhaps because this was the most brilliant stretch in Japanese history, the very crest of the bubble. Everywhere I looked, the streets were packed, and everyone seemed to be spilling over with life. The feeling, if you thought in web portals, of being pinned to the front page?
This is a prime spot.
Distribution and publicity, in the end, meant seizing a corner like this one.
North America I've already opened clean through. Japan, though—what do I do with Japan...
The worry didn't last. Put in about six months and there would be a response, at least.
Right. Distribution can be worried over in its turn.
True to a temperament that moved the moment it decided, I walked straight up to the man who owned the place. I groped my Japanese together and got the words out, and perhaps because of that he answered me as distinctly as he could manage.
"Never heard of it in my life. Family won't have anything like that."
He went through the motions of looking, then shook his head.
"That's a shame."
"Then how about Super Orlando? Hottest thing going these days."
"Let me think it over and come back."
I turned and walked off, my own steps following me. On the assumption that the man had told the truth—
This really is all or nothing.
No middle ground meant shouldering a risk that large. From where a business stood, the most dangerous condition there is. But what else was there to do? Nothing but draw the strategy tight and drag the odds of success as high as they would go.
Which brought me back to it.
Professor... when are you coming?
There was a man who needed finding, and when, exactly, did he intend to arrive? I had only just hung up, and already I was missing Jo Sudeok's private-detective talents with a terrible intensity.
A few hours later, Jo Sudeok arrived in Tokyo with nothing in hand but one small slip of paper.
Find the university student who worked part-time as a background artist at the publisher called Mideumsa.
At this level? Please. This was being spoon-fed—a great heaping mouthful lifted straight to his lips.
"Heh heh heh."
He had so much time to spare that, on the way, he had even looked carefully into what sort of house Mideumsa was.
One of the foremost publishers in the world, they say? Out of it had come Legend of the Holy Warriors, Fly, Wings, Liu Bei's Wondrous Adventure, and the like.
I don't know a single one of them.
What did the track record matter? Find the man, get back to the hotel in Kyoto where the president was waiting, and that would be that. Jo Sudeok hurriedly flagged a taxi.
"Mideumsa, please."
He was a man who had lived for some while having forgotten his Japanese. For the next several days he would have to sit still and pour himself into the interpreting. Raising his Japanese while he was at it, he tried a casual word with the driver.
"Is the Japanese economy all right these days?"
"It's on the good side. There's still hope, after all."
"Hope?"
"The feeling that tomorrow will be better than today. That's all."
"Oh-ho."
The engine roared. The driver took the car hard—the sort who, the moment the car ahead touched the brakes, changed lanes and blew straight past.
"But why ask about the economy?"
His words ran as fast as his temper.
"You wouldn't happen to be an economic official out of Korea... something of that sort?"
Fortunately, Jo could follow most of it even when the pronunciation was tossed off. Confidence kindled, he smiled thinly and asked.
"Do I look like a man who lives off the state?"
"Ah, no... it's only that you're wearing an expensive suit."
If a conversation could go this far, there would be no particular trouble wherever he went. Cheered, Jo Sudeok drew out again the memo he had looked at earlier.
A background artist, hadn't it said? Presently he read the line written apart along the bottom of the slip.
Estimated to be a university student in his early twenties.
Real name: Suzuki Yoshihiro.
Hm.
Awkward as it was to say aloud.
A name that already sounds like it's going to weasel out of the work.
It was just as Jo Sudeok turned his eyes to the window.
"Sir, mind if I give it a little more gas?"
"Whatever suits you."
The engine roared again. Overhead the sky was unusually high—an afternoon that seemed to invite a man to expect something good.