The Rights I Already Hold
I spoke before the hopeful light in Grandfather's eyes could fade.
"I'll remember every flaw you pointed out. Clearly."
First: if you couldn't show a collection off to anyone else, half the satisfaction of collecting it withered away. Second: spending a tactic you'd wrung out of yourself on nothing but a computer was a miserably empty pastime. Unless I fixed those two faults, he had told me, I wasn't even to dream of a hundred billion won in sales.
"You were right, Grandfather. If the limits of the technology mean those flaws can't be mended, then the project was wrong in itself."
"Even so, fifty billion sold is a kind of success, isn't it?"
"And what would that get me? By your standard, it's hopelessly short."
Now came the moment for the real point. Sure enough, a small smile touched the corner of Grandfather's mouth—the look of a man quite ready to hear whatever remedy I had brought him. He waited.
"I mean to correct the flaws you named and put it on sale within the month."
"This month?"
I nodded.
"Yugeon's idea, is it?"
"No."
"I'll be making it with my brother's IP. Even if I'm the one producing it, it's only right that I pay a royalty to my brother. He's the original creator."
"And you'll count that royalty toward the sales?"
"Yes."
"So you mean to pull a trick."
"An air purifier's been developed, so I'm only asking you to count the filter sales as well. Nothing more."
"Yugeon built the purifier, and you want to take the filters on subcontract?"
"Would that not be allowed?"
I wasn't asking because I didn't know. I only wanted the answer said aloud. Grandfather, it seemed, was just as curious about what I actually meant to do.
"I doubt I can credit you with a royalty any higher than five percent of the sale price."
"That will be more than enough."
"And where on earth does that confidence come from?"
"Then I have your permission. Don't I?"
Instead of answering, Grandfather broke into a hollow laugh.
Japan. Nagoya.
I put the weekend to use and flew there at once. Because I had called ahead, Editor-in-Chief Kazuhiro was waiting at the airport. Over the past few months I had studied Japanese in whatever scraps of time I could find, and Kazuhiro had "acquired" English with an eye on the American market, so the two of us could muddle through a conversation without an interpreter.
The car left the airport, and as it swung onto the ring road I asked, "You've changed cars?"
"Ah... yes. This. Dragon Planet has been doing so well that the bonus came out rather thick."
An AE86, out of Toyota. The car the hero of Initial D drove. Out on the long straight stretch it held a steady hundred and ten kilometers an hour.
"The moment I heard from you, President, I telephoned the author. He's so buried in the serialization that he wouldn't agree, no matter how I asked."
"So what did you do?"
"I leaned on it. Told him you were the one who discovered Suzuki."
"And?"
"He asked me whether Suzuki wasn't someone I had discovered. So I told him the truth. I'd thought of myself as nothing but a man in the background. It was you, President, who ordered me to go to the house and bring him in."
So that was what finally won the yes. Curiosity, maybe, about the first-year middle schooler who was supposed to have discovered Suzuki.
"Well handled."
"It was nothing. I didn't invent a word of it... I only passed the facts along."
"That is the skill. You can deliver the truth only if you're close enough to him for the truth to be deliverable."
At that, Kazuhiro laughed, a little abashed.
Were we nearly there? The needle on the dash dropped into the sixties. Sure enough, Kazuhiro began to glance about.
"There."
With that short word he pointed to a yellow detached house.
"That is Author Tezuka's home."
Tezuka Akira, the man who drew Dragon Planet. The author who had given me dreams and hope when I was young. However hard things got, the moment I opened Dragon Planet I could sink into that story and nothing else. And the ache as the pages ran thin—once I finished this, how many months would I have to wait? I had come to meet the man who lit up that childhood.
I'm nervous.
The place Kazuhiro brought us to was a tidy detached house, ordinary for a writer with a megahit to his name. The yellow paint on the outer walls was the only odd note. If I had to name one more peculiarity, it was the yellow Porsche parked in the drive.
Not a recent model. It looked like something out of the sixties. A nuisance to keep running, unless you were a devotee of old cars.
I was still taking the place in, unhurried, when the bell rang bright and sharp. Kazuhiro held it down.
"Author, are you home?"
A moment later, as if in answer, the door opened a shy crack. The face in the gap belonged to an ordinary middle-aged man in black horn-rimmed glasses.
"You've come a long way."
"Not so long."
So this was Mr. Tezuka. He turned to me.
"Is this the person you mentioned on the phone?"
"It's a pleasure to meet you. My name is Park Jihoon."
"You speak Japanese, I see."
"A little, yes."
"They told me you were in your first year of middle school, and yet you're taller than I am."
He offered it like a joke, then threw the door wide.
"Please, come in. I finished a deadline yesterday, so the house is a terrible mess. I hope you'll forgive it."
"You don't have to speak so formally..."
"We've only just met. This is more comfortable for me."
Even among Japanese people, Tezuka was unusually courteous. I followed him onto the wooden floor. The boards were old; here and there they let out a thin wooden cry underfoot, a creak, a long complaining squeal.
"May I offer you tea?"
"No. I'm all right."
Contrary to what he'd said, the room was neat. I had seen plenty of artists' houses the day after a deadline, and this one belonged in the top one percent.
"Not much to look at, is it?"
"Not at all."
The furniture had faded with every year it had endured, and that only made it finer—a truly old-fashioned room.
"The house shows your taste."
His eyes said he had never once thought seriously about what his taste even was. That was why I added the rest.
"You seem like someone who loves time as it stacks up, layer on layer."
"Oh my. You put it far too handsomely. I simply can't throw things away, so I live hauling them along on my back."
"For all that, every one of them is handsome."
"Set any of them apart and it's no better than junk..."
"But together they make a singular atmosphere."
"A singular atmosphere?"
"A house, after all, is where a way of living accumulates. It can't help but give off a character of its own."
Tezuka pushed his glasses up and looked at me. He stared long enough to make it uncomfortable, and only then spoke.
"You really are a middle schooler?"
"Yes. Still a first-year."
"Hah."
Scratching his head, he led me into the living room. An old television, four floor cushions, and nothing else.
"Well, then."
"I'm sorry to say this, but I don't take on anything outside the work itself. Least of all while a series is running."
"It shouldn't be anything that needs enough time to interfere with the serialization."
"It isn't the time."
I waited.
"The moment I start some business other than drawing, it always spills into the work."
Put lightly, it was a jinx. Pressed any deeper, it was closer to a creed.
"You came a long way, and it would be rude to refuse you outright. That's why I tried not to meet you at all. But when I heard you were the one who discovered young Suzuki, I got in touch—partly so I could thank you."
I said nothing.
"I may not be able to do it now, but once the serialization ends, I will accept your proposal. I made this meeting so I could give you that promise."
A truly courteous refusal.
"Once the Alien Battle arc is finished, I intend to bring the series to a close, so it shouldn't be so very long..."
I'm sorry, sir. After the Alien Battle arc, you keep serializing for a long, long time. A vice minister from the Ministry of Culture even comes in person to beg and beg you not to end it.
Anyway.
"I understand exactly what you're saying."
"You must have had hopes. I'm sorry to give you an answer like this."
"But, Mr. Tezuka."
He tipped his head.
"As you said, I've come a long way. Could you at least hear what I meant to ask of you?"
I wasn't asking him to accept. Only to listen. Who in the world would refuse that? Sure enough, Tezuka gave a careful nod.
"I haven't tried it myself, but I know what it is. It's being serialized separately, after all."
"And if it were physical?"
"I intend to make actual cards."
"Exactly."
"Battles... against people?"
And once the cards existed as real objects, the collector's hunger Grandfather had pointed out would be filled as a matter of course.
"But why are you telling me? What could I possibly do to help..."
"Please draw the pictures that will go on the cards."
"If you mean the illustrations, I believe young Suzuki has already drawn them beautifully."
"Yes, that's right. Every card will bear Suzuki's art. What I want to ask for is the illustration on the joker card that goes in as a bonus."
In my previous life, they called this a first-press limited edition. Anyone who bought from the early stock received a bonus card as a privilege. Not an extra charge. Not a random pull. Only a reward for buying early.
"Why go to that trouble at all?"
Because Grandfather told me to sell a hundred billion won before the year was out. How was I supposed to say that? All I could do was plead some private circumstance and leave it there. Fortunately, Tezuka took no interest in other people's personal affairs.
"I see."
"But as I said... aside from the work I'm serializing, I try not to draw anything else if I can help it. If my concentration were to break..."
"I wouldn't mind if you drew the characters from Dragon Planet."
It was not a proposal he had seen coming. For a long while Tezuka hesitated, and only then did he speak.
"The use of Dragon Planet's characters... isn't something I can permit on my own. We would need the publisher's consent for any use of the secondary rights..."
"You don't have to worry about that."
He didn't follow.