I'll Even Empty My Own Pockets
“Those rights? They’re mine.”
“What are you saying…….”
“Just what I said. The secondary rights belong to me.”
Mr. Tezuka’s eyes went perfectly round. Everything in his face asked for more than that.
The editor, quick to read a room, stepped in at once.
“When the publisher took on the investment—I’ll spare you the middle of it—we only transferred the publisher’s authority. Your rights as the author are guaranteed exactly as before, so there isn’t the slightest need to worry…….”
Tezuka looked badly shaken. A fourteen-year-old doing business, he could bend his mind toward, somehow. Five billion yen of investment was another matter. That part, it seemed, had not yet become real to him.
“May I ask just one thing?”
“……?”
“Why would someone with that much money bother with a market like this…….”
As if any further explanation were required. I went on, taking my time, and by the time I finished Tezuka had no choice but to grant that I meant it.
“Well… if you were watching Background Man closely enough to turn around and offer to serialize it, this is hardly ordinary affection.”
So that was where it paid off. His opinion of me ought to have climbed a fair way on the strength of that alone, and while I had the momentum I meant to drive the wedge home.
“I believe you understand, more or less, why I want your drawings. So now I’d like to tell you what you stand to gain.”
Tezuka was a star author with hit after hit behind him. He lived modestly, that was all. Money, he already had far more than enough of. Perhaps that was why. Set the word gain in front of him, and his face went perfectly blank.
I’d known he would. Hadn’t I come with a gift cut to fit?
I didn’t shrink an inch. I went straight on.
“Reading your work, I’ve had the sense you take a particular interest in machines. Am I right?”
“Machines?”
“Yes. Early in Dragon Planet, especially, all sorts of mechanical devices appear. Even the parts you could have spared yourself by slapping a cover over them—you drew every wire, down to the last line…….”
“Ah. If that’s what you mean, then yes. My interest is considerable.”
His voice climbed a full tone. The listless look was gone before I could blink.
“Imagining the machines of the future, and designing them ahead of their time—that is one of my great pleasures.”
“So that’s why you drew them with such care?”
“Yes. You could say that. My childhood dream was to be an engineer… but mathematics caught me by the ankle, and I had no choice but to give it up. I set about preparing to be an industrial designer instead, a second-best…….”
“And so I drifted from the dream… and became a man chased by a deadline every week.”
But the warmth of it lasted only a moment.
“A welcome subject, I suppose. I did go on.”
Tezuka scratched the back of his head, looking sheepish.
“Wait. Why did this come up?”
“I was about to explain what you’d stand to gain…….”
“Ah. Of course. But what connection is there between my liking for machines and any gain of mine?”
Maybe it was the talk of machines. His face was nothing like the one he’d worn at the start, and that let me speak even more boldly.
“The University of Tokyo… mechanical engineering?”
Tezuka would be the one drawing, and the benefit would fall to students at the University of Tokyo. Terms nobody but me would ever think to put on the table.
And yet.
He leaned sharply in toward me and asked.
“A portion of the revenue… could that actually come to a meaningful sum?”
“If it doesn’t, I’ll empty my own pockets.”
“Ha!”
Tezuka stared at me as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.
“All this trouble, just to have a single card with my drawing on it. Why?”
Because if a scholarship was enough to tie my name to his—for me, it was a deal that only paid. And the scholarship itself, even that—I could use it as a bridgehead to draw the University of Tokyo’s talent into Hyeon-gang. I held a stake on the semiconductor side. In the most literal sense, it was a transaction I could not lose.
Not that Tezuka had any way of knowing. He only went on marveling.
“Since the University of Tokyo has come up… when I was young, my ambitions, at least, were grand. I was too ashamed to say so. I’d dodge it—a national university is the goal, my family was poor, I had no choice—that sort of thing…….”
“…….”
“Even so, my scores came out well enough. But I told you, didn’t I? Mathematics caught me. Mm. If I’d had a head for mathematics, by now…….”
That Tezuka had dreamed of the University of Tokyo’s Department of Mechanical Engineering would come out later, in an interview. So would the rest of it: that he had established a scholarship foundation for the dream he never reached.
“Which is why I say this. Putting a portion of the revenue into a scholarship strikes me as a rather interesting idea. One I hadn’t thought of myself…….”
A grin broke across his face.
“If you don’t mind, I don’t want to stop at drawing the illustrations. I’d like to put in some money of my own.”
“Do you mean that?”
“Of course. Money like that… it isn’t as if I’ll be taking it with me when I die…….”
No. Not the money. The part about drawing the illustration. Was he serious about that?
Whether he had read what I meant or not, Tezuka went on with an easy confidence.
“You’re not asking me to design an original character… You say I may use Dragon Planet as it stands. Then of course I ought to do it.”
Okay!
“Is there someone in particular you’d like included in the illustration?”
I gave him my answer without a moment’s hesitation.
That night, at a hotel in the Gotanda area of Tokyo, I took a room and called my brother before I did anything else. Maybe because he already knew I was in Japan on a business trip—if you could call it that—he picked up at once.
“Jihun? You’re in Japan?”
I laid the situation out as simply as I could. We were going to produce physical cards, and Tezuka had agreed to draw the Joker card. Before my brother even had time to be surprised, I went on.
“I want an expansion pack out soon.”
“An expansion pack?”
“We produce additional cards.”
“Think you can do it?”
“I’ll get it done.”
Too unruffled by half. He could say it like that, but the work was anything but easy. Compatibility with the existing card packs had to be accounted for, and new interactions on top of that.
“When do you need it by?”
“A month at the outside.”
“Then I’ll finish it in three weeks.”
“What?”
“That way the artist will have room to draw the illustrations without being rushed, won’t he?”
Was it Grandfather’s recognition? Or the simple joy of doing work he loved? On the strength of this one job, my brother had become an entirely different person.
Ha!
Looked at squarely, he had done better than anyone had a right to expect. His debut had people calling him a genius developer, and the critics had praised him for it; on top of that he had sold more than a million copies and carried off a popular success as well. All of it at only sixteen. And now, with no time to grow drunk on the achievement, he was taking another job onto his back.
“…….”
Maybe he read what sat in the lengthening silence.
“Anyone watching would think I was the only one working hard.”
He said it as if it were nothing, and he didn’t stop there.
“Besides, an expansion pack means more sales, doesn’t it? We’re doing this so everyone comes out ahead… If I’m the only one groaning, that’s not a good look. Right?”
“It is a good look. But thanks to it, you’re going to be half dead for a solid month, aren’t you?”
“Looking cool always… comes with a price…….”
We burst out laughing, neither of us waiting on the other.
Right. To hell with it. We’d see this through to the end.
Getting clear of the succession at Hyeon-gang. The long campaign had, before I knew it, climbed past the ninth ridge, and the summit was no longer far.
Three weeks later, in Chairman Park Yonghak’s office, Park Yonghak looked down at the single package set on the desk before him. So they were selling it for ten thousand won… and the quality was nothing to dismiss. They had made this in three weeks?
That they had finished production in fifteen days and then, through that distribution network of theirs, strewn it clear across North America—that much he could force himself to understand.
This, though.
“They’re sellin’ this in stationery shops?”
“Yes, sir.”
At the chairman’s question, the chief secretary offered his answer with the utmost care.
“Ah, that… I’m told the young master gave the order himself.”
“Jihun did?”
“He wants it, so they can just put the whole lot on the shelves?”
Stationery shops and bookstores were another problem entirely. There was bound to be turf staked out on that side. And they had carpeted the place with product, this fast?
“Then what’s with the stationery shops?”
“Don’t tell me even makin’ one toy needs that rascal’s say-so.”
“Yes. The young master holds the secondary rights, after all. Things being what they are, bookstores, stationery shops, and toy shops alike have no reason to cross him…….”
“So how many they sold?”