Sixteen Percent Apiece
The moment my brother got home, he went straight to Grandfather. He must have been bracing for a proper scolding. What the old man said instead caught him flat.
"Have Jihoon come in too."
And that was how the two of us came to stand side by side in Grandfather's study. My brother had drawn his head in like a turtle, waiting to be skinned. Grandfather did not scold us.
"You both worked hard."
Of course he didn't. He was the chairman of Hyeon-gang. Was he really going to raise his voice because we'd driven a bargain on price? He would have taken it for what it was, a step on the way to becoming a man of business. The visit to Sonus, though, seemed to have lodged hard in his skull.
"Whose idea was it?"
"Mine."
His eyes settled on me as a matter of course. He'd asked while already knowing the answer, and I saw no reason to dodge it. Perhaps that was why he nodded before he went on.
"If the business with me had gone sour, did you truly tell him to sell to Sonus?"
"That part was my brother's to decide."
Grandfather's look sharpened, and he didn't bother putting the question into words.
"I gave him full authority."
This time the look swung to my brother.
"Yugeon. What were you thinking of doing?"
"...I would have gone by principle."
"Principle?"
"I was there representing the company. Of course the company's interest had to come first. Let yourself be swayed by personal feelings, and you're well on the way to a breach of trust..."
The speech lasted only a moment. My brother startled himself, and the end of the sentence frayed away. He must have heard it too late, the fact that he'd just called his bond with Grandfather a personal feeling. He studied the old man's face in careful quiet. Once again, Grandfather looked entirely unbothered. If anything, his eyes seemed glad of what had been said, and as if to confirm my own reading of him, the corner of his mouth climbed, wide and unhidden.
"Right. This grand company of yours—how do you mean to run it?"
My brother glanced my way, trying to decide whose answer it was supposed to be. I nodded. He opened his mouth slowly, found nothing there for a second, and then began.
"You remember what you said, Grandfather? Sailors taking ships out to trade, and coming home with a profit... that plan never quite left me. Done properly, I think something worthwhile could come of it."
"And you, Jihoon. What are you going to do?"
He was asking, I was sure, whether I meant to keep the partnership with my brother going. Was that the answer he'd wanted? He didn't linger. The next question came at once.
"How's the equity in the company divided?"
"My brother and I. Fifty-fifty."
"Pardon?"
"Sixty billion won of my own money is already in that company, and I mean to buy a stake. What? Something strange about it?"
The offer was so far from anything either of us had expected that we gave him no answer at all. We only looked at each other.
A few days later, in the office of Chairman Jeong at Daebo Group, word had it that a fresh opinion poll had set the public stirring. Well, of course it had. A giant of the business world was crossing into politics, and the image was a good one besides: the workman who would set the nation's economy straight, the right man to break the frozen current between North and South.
He smiled, thin and satisfied. The poll had opened the door. Now it was time for the typhoon.
Sure enough, the press fell over itself in a scramble to report. With things moving that fast, he carved a slice out of a crowded day and sat for an interview with a public broadcaster. He didn't talk politics. He spoke only of the nation's future, and of the foundation industries that held it up. The gossips would call it a move toward the presidency, naturally, and start laying the fire under him.
Will they run it as an in-depth feature? An interview would have a hard time leading the news. Even so, it ought to take at least ten minutes in the middle of the broadcast. He had just sat down in front of the television on the strength of that pleasant expectation when the anchor began.
So it had started. What? The lead item was Hyeon-gang again?
The picture changed, and the reporter carried on in a groomed voice. Ha! One day they were exalting the youngest as a genius, and now they meant to lift up the eldest as well?
The item that followed was more absurd still. Chairman Park had acquired a stake in the company his grandsons had founded.
Well, well. So that was why the old man had been puffing those boys up so shamelessly. He meant to make them an illegal gift, and do it in the open. Sure enough, the broadcast itself pointed at exactly that. But the experts—captured by Hyeon-gang, if one cared to be unkind—lined up and poured out the opposite view.
Fine. Concede the point a hundred times and pretend it wasn't an illegal gift. Even then! For Hyeon-gang's news to come flooding out and snuff the moment, before his own interview had so much as aired—
A coincidence?
Not once. Twice. And he was supposed to believe this wasn't Park Yonghak, reaching in to spoil it?
The one mercy was that it was, unmistakably, the second time. Perhaps that was why the anger didn't detonate the way it had before, back when he had ripped the cord out of the set in a fury.
Let's see how far you go.
He glared at the screen with his teeth locked, and so Chairman Jeong sat through no fewer than five further items about Hyeon-gang. Maybe that glut was the reason. His in-depth interview, contrary to every expectation, aired for about a minute.
Goddamn it!
If I ever trust those bastards at the networks again, I'm no human being!
The sorry vow was barely finished. With a savage crack, Chairman Jeong tore the cord out of the wall once more.
Time passed, and winter break arrived. Fortunately my brother held first place in the whole school the entire way through, and kept his promise to Grandfather.
And me? Oh, well... passable. I was maintaining a grade so precisely adequate that it neither drew attention nor earned a reprimand. That was how I saw it, anyway. What other people made of it, I couldn't say. In any case, I lived those days with a quiet that bordered on the severe. Perhaps it was because I'd already beaten the mark several times over. Grandfather had nothing particular to say either.
It's not as if I've done anything so impressive. At this rate I was going to live as the man who built my brother's story—a so-called kingmaker—which was only a costume for the unemployed. A rich unemployed man, mind you. Heh.
That aside, I could feel the tension leaving me, the way it does once you're sure a storm has passed. We had been running hard, it was true, and for no good reason one side of my chest felt hollow. Of course it did. I'd made an absurd amount of money and hadn't spent a single coin of it on myself. And while we were on the subject, what was the point of earning it only to stack it forever? Let the balance swell until it split, and all you'd done was a favor for the bank.
Right. Money is money when you spend it. Sit on it, and it's luggage.
So I made up my mind. I'd worked hard. It was time to pay myself. Before long I was on the phone with Jo Sudeok. I explained the situation, and he answered as if he'd been waiting for the call.
A laugh caught in my throat.
We landed in Japan and headed for the home of the author, Tezuka. Jo Sudeok, at the wheel, turned to me.
"Didn't you say he was busy with the serialization?"
"He made yesterday's deadline. I heard he was resting today."
"Ah."
There was still a question left in his eyes. I'd told him I meant to give myself a present, so he must have been wondering why we were suddenly calling on Tezuka. Did he really need an answer? He'd see when we got there.
The car we'd rented was a first-generation Volkswagen Golf. It was counted among the greats, and I'd chosen it because I was curious what the early one felt like. It wasn't only that the body answered the instant he turned the wheel. Under acceleration there was a lightness that belonged to that car alone, and I liked every bit of it. Not bad.
Once we joined the ring road, Mr. Tezuka's house would be on us in no time. Jo Sudeok was just beginning to build speed.
"There. The yellow house."
We parked beside Mr. Tezuka's yellow 911. The old Porsche must have caught his eye. Jo Sudeok gave it a sidelong glance.
"Do you like it?"
"No, I was only..."
He'd meant to leave it there. Then he went on.
"The cars of the sixties didn't spare a thought for aerodynamics. Mileage be damned—if it was pretty, that was enough. There was a kind of ignorant romance to them."
I asked him once more whether he liked it.
"Well... it is certainly handsome. But a thing like this would cost a great deal, wouldn't it?"
"Hard to say. However expensive it gets, it's still only a car, isn't it?"
He clapped, bright and immediate.
"Bravo. As expected of you, Boss."
I answered him with a grin that knew it was a joke, and went up to the front door. The bell gave a short chime.
"Mr. Tezuka, it's Park Jihoon."
A moment later the lock turned, and Tezuka stepped into view in a long coat.
"This is all thanks to the illustration you drew."
"My drawing barely made it in as a single page."
"Then in the next work, a few pages more..."
That was how we asked after each other, each in his own way. Then his eyes moved past me.
"And the gentleman beside you is...?"
"My name is Jo Sudeok. I hold a professorship at an art college."
With the introductions finished, Jo Sudeok clearly expected us to go inside. Instead Mr. Tezuka drew his coat closed and stepped out. A question mark large enough to see from the street rose over Jo Sudeok's head.
"My car only seats two. Wouldn't it be better to use yours, sir?"
"Let's."
None of the exchange meant a thing to him, and the question mark showed no sign of fading. As if to account for it, Mr. Tezuka went on.
"Where we're going isn't a place of business. These are a private collector's pieces, so they may run higher than the market."
"Much higher?"
"They're all old cars, and models counted among the great ones. Paying something like five times the going price is hardly rare. They've been driven less than five thousand kilometers, though. You may take the condition as the very best."
By then even Jo Sudeok could read the situation.
"Boss... you're buying a car?"