The Man Who Collects Time
The man who introduced himself as Dazai was old — old enough to look a good twenty years senior even to my grandfather. Even so, he appeared in the reception room in a full suit and tie, and this only to receive a guest of fourteen.
The menu was sushi. They said it was the work of one of Japan's foremost artisans, and the taste bore them out: clean, without a single stray note.
"I had a fine sake prepared. A pity."
I was underage. Jo Sudeok was driving. Mr. Tezuka was in the middle of a serialization and off alcohol. Thanks to all of that, a supreme sake — ten bottles a year, and no more — sat forlorn on the table.
I had eaten about five pieces when the old man looked at me and spoke.
"If it is no imposition, I should like to ask you one thing."
"...?"
"How does one so young come to possess so much money?"
"I was born into a rich family."
"Even granting that..."
"An extremely rich family."
I had meant to slide past it with a joke. He still wore the look of a man who wanted the answer. Tsk. Well, it was no great secret. I gave him the very short version, from the story of finding a da Vinci to the course of launching Dream Quest.
Had he already heard the rumors about me?
"Ah. So you were that gentleman."
A broad smile settled at the corners of the old man's mouth.
"I had heard you were very young. Even so, I never imagined it would be to this degree."
"Likewise."
"...?"
"I was told you collected old cars, but a collection on this scale..."
When I turned his own words back on him, the old man broke into a hearty laugh.
"You are indeed a man of ample ease. Not the least bit cowed, even in conversation with an old man."
"Maybe it's from living with my grandfather."
"Or perhaps, rather..."
"...?"
"Might it not be because you want nothing from this old man?"
Want nothing.
"Meeting people who need money day after day, I have come to know something. However proudly they try to set their faces, they cannot hide the servility underneath."
The old man lifted his teacup, wet his lips, and went on.
"But in you I cannot find a trace of that air. With nothing you want, you can only be truly unbowed."
"Is that so?"
He carried the subject one step further.
"Do you know who makes an investor yearn the most?"
"..."
"Those who have no need of investment. If the work is certain and the capital is already in hand, why borrow another man's money? Success stands right before them. There is no cause to split the pie."
He seemed to take me for that sort. Which only made his hunger to invest burn hotter.
Sorry, but I've got more money than I know what to do with, too.
Perhaps he read my face. He drew back a step, as if yielding ground, and changed the subject.
"I hear you have just come from the garage."
"Yes. It was an incredible collection."
"I am little better than a patient."
"It was magnificent."
For a moment the old man let a pause fall, and then he went on.
"Have you considered why I collect old cars so obsessively?"
"Hard to say."
"Because of a very childish fancy."
"A childish fancy?"
"The vague hope that I might preserve, like a specimen, a different span of time inside each different body."
Was he talking about model years? A '31, a '48, a '59, that sort of thing.
"Even the greatest of rich men cannot buy the years, can he? Time that is difficult to reckon in money."
In short, he meant that he was not so much collecting cars as collecting the years that dwelt in them.
"As one lives, one is bound now and then to meet people who have no need of money."
"..."
Hoh.
"What do you say? I should like to give you the cars you chose."
"At that scale, isn't it an investment wearing a gift's mask?"
"Call it whatever you like. Only, you will find my offer difficult to refuse."
"Why?"
"Because I, too, want next to nothing from you."
He was not investing in pursuit of the profit in front of him. For now he meant only to open the channel of a relationship. He could keep those eyes so calm because he wanted nothing beyond that. If Grandfather was a manager of overwhelming charisma, then this old man called Dazai was the sort who advanced one quiet step at a time on the strength of a discerning eye.
Anyway. I had clearly come here to spend money.
Why did the mood suddenly turn into this?
A moment ago I had been begging Mr. Tezuka to accept a gift, and now I was stuck wrangling over whether to take one from an old man!
Not something a man who came from the future ought to say, but.
A person can't see an inch ahead in life... ahem! I made my refusal perfectly plain, of course. I had money to spare, didn't I? I told him I wanted to buy them with my own money, but he was just as firm.
"I will not speak of the rest, but the 1931 Alfa Romeo is not a model one can possess merely by having money. It is the same principle as being unable to buy a relic in a museum."
"So it can only be a gift?"
"That is correct."
Leaving after a refusal was one way. But if they won't sell it for money, you only want it more!
"Chairman, you won't regret this?"
"Regret?"
"What if I take the gift and then up and retire? Wouldn't you feel cheated?"
"Could the world possibly be so soft that a person like you would simply retire and vanish?"
Ugh. Talk for a hundred days and this was still not a man you could reach.
"I'll accept the gift. On one condition."
"...?"
"I insist on paying for the cars I chose."
In other words: I would buy the Alfa Romeo, the Porsche, the Mini, and the Mustang, so if he absolutely had to give a gift, let it be an entirely different car.
Right. Pick something reasonably cheap, and that'll do.
Had he seen clean through me? A sly smile was playing at the old man's mouth.
There were quite a few cheap cars in the garage, too. I had planned to pick any one of them.
But!
The old man led us not to the garage but down into the basement of the building, a place you could enter only after passing through several thick iron doors.
Hm.
A soft light began at the head of the stairs. From the handrail of fine ebony onward, something felt ominous...
"This space was designed by Richard Meier."
Richard Meier — a Pritzker laureate, the finest of architects. To commission a man like that?
The real treasure is down here!
Ugh.
At the bottom of the stairs the first section opened: a blue car set against a pure white wall, a cobra emblem at its center.
"A car built by Carroll Shelby."
The old man went on, a small smile with the explanation.
"Ah — I ought to begin by telling you who Carroll Shelby was. A racer who entered the 24 Hours of Le Mans and took the victory for Aston Martin. After he retired on account of a chronic illness, he founded the tuning firm Shelby American."
Shelby American! The war between Ford and Ferrari that Ford v Ferrari had put under the spotlight. It would hardly be an overstatement to say that America first managed to beat Ferrari thanks to Shelby American's engineering.
"Because it was built solely for racing, it cannot even wear a license plate. A car designed to run only on the track."
"This one is a 1938 Bugatti."
A 1938 — of all things?
"A car joined by hand, from the first piece to the last. A model that never contemplated mass production at all, you might say."
Aerodynamics tossed to the dogs, and everything poured into beauty alone. That villain the Penguin — his car had been exactly like this, hadn't it?
"Only five were ever delivered in all the world. Even of those, one was lost in the Second World War, so only four remain."
History? Rarity? All very well. But this one had a pull that drew a person in on design alone. You know the old saying — look a nine-tailed fox in the eye, and you're bewitched before you can blink. This car was exactly that.
And it wasn't only me. Author Tezuka was half out of his mind, staring. Slack-jawed. Even Jo Sudeok, who had no particular interest in cars, was drooling!
After that a procession of 24 Hours of Le Mans winners was introduced one after another, but as if I cared! In my heart there was room for only one car: the 1938 Bugatti.
If I had to pick one more, Shelby's King Cobra would tempt me, but...
If it had to be exactly one, no bargaining? I would take the Bugatti without a second thought. Perhaps that heart of mine was written all over my face.
"I don't think I even need to ask."
The old man only offered a quiet smile.
On the way out of the mansion, buying four cars had cost me eight billion won. The problem was that I had received, as a gift, a car more expensive than all four put together!
Is this all right?
Nothing in the world is free. Sooner or later it would all come due as a debt. But the worry did not last long — not against those words about collecting the years, and the look in his eyes when he urged the gift on me, saying he wanted nothing.
He was certainly no ordinary man.
Less a simple craving for the automobile than a conviction that keeping a bond with this person would never be a loss...
Of course the Bugatti was gorgeous, too.
Ahem. Anyway. On the way to take Mr. Tezuka home, the engine roared, and out on the long straight road I sank quietly into thought. Had the old man called Dazai left that strong an impression on me? The things we had said kept drifting through my head.
He had wanted to invest in me. Without asking after any particular venture, he had simply wanted to invest in me as a person. In other words:
To the old man, investment means gaining a person.
Today and tomorrow, countless portfolios would still land on his desk. More than the extravagant plans written on paper, though —
he'll concentrate on grasping the other person's inner self, whole.
I had come to spend money, and I was leaving with something you couldn't learn even by paying for it. No, wait.
What's a guy about to retire going to do with learning that?
Ahem! I shook off the stray thoughts and quickly set my eyes on the window. Out on the long road — vroom, vroooom — cars, each carrying its own span of years, were racing hard in a single direction.