The Price of a Memory
Meanwhile, Dazai sat in a floor chair. He was well past eighty, yet his back remained perfectly straight. He stared straight ahead, turning the meeting over in his mind.
Park Jihoon, was it? A boy of barely fourteen, looking him dead in the eye. A truly unfamiliar sight. Those bright eyes had been full of questions. Boil every one of them down to a single line, and it came to this.
You've already achieved everything. Why go on investing just to get more?
The answer was simple.
I'm not trying to get more.
Investment returns were nothing but a few digits shifting in an account balance. Money he would die before he could finish spending—what meaning was there in earning any more of it?
And still he kept investing. Why?
For the sport of it.
Pure fun. That was all Dazai wanted. The fierce pleasure success delivered—only then did the brain dump dopamine as if something inside it had burst.
Drink, gambling, drugs. Could trifles like those ever stand in for the overwhelming thrill of achievement?
Don't be absurd.
The other magnates were probably no different. They were not mad for money. Past a certain point, money was only a side matter. Every one of them was addicted to success.
Was that why?
What if I just take the gift and retire? Wouldn't that eat at you?
Park Jihoon's question felt impossibly far away.
You asked the question, and still you'll walk the same road in the end.
Like so many great fortunes before him, he would be caught by the sweetness of success and never be able to leave this business for good.
What could anyone do? Human beings were simply made that way.
With a bitter little smile, Dazai quietly lifted his teacup.
Day two of the trip to Japan.
I had spent a staggering six million dollars the day before, and still my heart felt empty.
Of course it did.
Buy all the famous cars I liked—I had no license, so I couldn't drive a single one. And that wasn't the end of it. The cars had gone straight into delivery, which left me with nothing but a vague sense that money had left my hands. It didn't feel real.
In that case—
I'll just spend more.
Meals at several hundred dollars a plate. Luxury goods running into the thousands. Watches past eight thousand. And yet none of it gave me the kick I had felt standing in front of the Bugatti.
What is this?
Wasn't I the sort of person who could be happy just reading at home? Now, whatever I bought, I felt nothing at all.
I used to wonder why rich people love antiques with dust on them.
The more money you had, the less ordinary spending could stir you. Just as Chairman Dazai had said.
Because time is the one thing money can't buy...
Maybe the years an antique had endured were what made it look so sweet. And if that really was the truth—
I did have something in mind.
I turned to Jo Sudeok.
"Turn the car around."
"Where shall I take you, sir?"
"Meiyo."
"...?"
"Y-you're telling me to sell the company?"
Show up unannounced and announce that you mean to buy more than half the shares, and of course the man in charge would be struck dumb. Even so, he soon sank into serious thought.
Of course, that would be after PC Tactical Three Kingdoms became a hit.
Right now they had only just crawled out of the red. An offer to buy was bound to sound sweet. Sweeter still, perhaps, because of my record in making Dream Quest a hit.
"It's an opportunity I'd hate to miss, but..."
"But?"
"If I hand over more than half the shares, I don't know how I'm supposed to run the company..."
Yoshiki was a man who was still coding, an active developer, into his seventies. A man like that would fear exactly one thing.
"I won't interfere in the management. Not in the slightest."
"Oh!"
"There is one thing I'd like to ask."
His face said it all: of course. Nobody buys half a company and then leaves it alone. That was the look in his eyes.
"So long as it's based on history... that would be all right?"
"Yes. Three Kingdoms material would be even better."
For a history obsessive like Yoshiki, those were terms to welcome with both arms thrown wide. Maybe that was why his face lit up.
"You've come to the right man. If it's the Three Kingdoms, I can truly say I'm confident..."
"While you're at it, please put out an SRPG version of Three Kingdoms as well."
"Ah... we were already planning that. Three titles, no less..."
"Three isn't enough."
"Pardon?"
He was the one who had released exactly three and then stopped, leaving me starving for more.
"...!"
"Well? Do you feel like signing?"
The words were barely out of my mouth before Yoshiki snatched up his fountain pen.
In the moving car—
"You seem to be in a fine mood, sir."
"Do I?"
At Jo Sudeok's question I turned my head and asked him in return.
"When you were eating something delicious earlier, you hardly reacted. And now you're grinning?"
I looked at my face in the window.
He's right.
A much brighter expression than before.
Honestly, I am a little proud.
Even now, just calling up Heroes, Sleeping Dragon, and Mengde was enough to put a smile on my mouth.
And that wasn't all.
PC Tactical Three Kingdoms had been a real joy, too. I had played it drifting from the school computer lab to a friend's house to a friend's computer academy, so I had to raise a new file every time. Even so, the moment my hand closed on the mouse, I had been truly happy.
And I had acquired that company for a mere five million dollars. Mere, with a question mark.
At that price, it's a steal. A steal.
Maybe that was why the me in the window was grinning wide.
"Sir, I really do think money is a fine thing."
"Mm. Chairman Dazai said there are things even money can't buy."
"Give a man an enormous amount of money, and he can work those out somehow..."
I let out a short scoff.
There were certainly things money could not solve. Not even Elon had a way to acquire the early Meiyo. Not even Mansour could turn back time and sign the Zidane and Ronaldo of the nineties.
But I could.
Because I really did come back through time.
Most of my memories are piled up in the future.
The things I had been wild for as a child—I could lay hands on all of them at the right price. Anything my memories clung to, whatever it was.
The moment I thought that—
"...!"
Something in my chest went hot.
"You were right, Professor."
"...About what?"
"Money is pretty good."
"Ah. Isn't it?"
"I don't know about anyone else. For me, though, it seems especially useful."
Jo Sudeok, who had no way of knowing what I meant, answered as if it were a joke.
"Money is quite useful to me as well, mind you..."
I grinned.
Instead of answering, I sank quietly into thought. Among the things my memories clung to, there were a few I absolutely wanted. Maybe that was why.
I grinned again, and quietly lifted the corner of my mouth.
Back at the hotel, I called the baseball club—the Boston Red Sox.
"I'd like to speak with Mr. Baker, the Asia-Pacific scout. I'll leave my number, so would you pass the word along?"
About thirty minutes later, the hotel phone rang.
"Mr. Park, what's going on? Weren't you terribly busy?"
"Busy? Hardly."
We traded a light greeting. When I asked whether he knew what the painting I had bought from him had sold for, he waved it off with a joke—don't tell him, it would only hurt. But Baker didn't make an issue of that part. He seemed content simply to be living a life tied to baseball rather than to money.
"Sun's numbers are excellent. He struggled only for a little while as a rookie. Since then he's been overpowering them with pure stuff."
"His ERA's good too?"
"It's in the threes, so yes. Excellent."
"And the Big Unit?"
"They call him a strikeout machine. The moment they take a swing, it's a whiff."
That was after we had cheerfully asked after each other.
"So what's this about?"
"I called because there's something I want to ask."
"Me?"
"It's to do with sports."
"...?"
"How much would it take to buy the Chicago Bulls?"
Maybe because I had asked it the way you'd ask the price of jelly at the supermarket, the other end of the line gave no reaction for several seconds.
"Are you serious?"
"Of course."
Jordan had not yet reached his peak. If there was a cheap moment, this was it. When he heard that I was asking in earnest, his manner began, little by little, to change.
"I'd have to look into the details, but... I'd guess somewhere around eight hundred million dollars?"
Eight hundred million dollars. About a trillion won. It had been a deeply unpopular club, he explained, but the price had jumped quite a bit after the Jordan draft.
"If this is because of Jordan, what about starting a player agency instead of buying the club?"
"An agency?"
"The truth is, if the capital isn't American, buying a club isn't easy. Closed, you might say. Agencies are different. There's quite a bit of Mexican and South American money in them already."
They would hand over a player, but they would not sell the club. Something like that.
Well. Nothing to regret.
The Bulls had been simple curiosity. The years I had actually watched basketball hard were around the time Kobe and Iverson were going at each other.
Now it was time to ask what I really wanted to know.
"Do you know much about how things stand in Britain?"
"I'd like to know what it would cost to buy Manchester United."
"Manchester United."
An unfamiliar name, perhaps. A busy rustle came through the receiver.
"Let's see... their most recent title was the '66–'67 season?"
"That sounds right."
"A manager out of Scotland took over recently, and other than that there's nothing unusual?"
"That's right."
"Why would you want to buy a club like this..."
"Who knows."
"If you're going to buy one, wouldn't Liverpool be better? Seven titles in the last ten years..."
But that magnificent history would end there, with no more titles until 2020.
Perhaps he felt that my reaction was less than warm.
"True enough. On price, Manchester would be the better one."
Then came the sound of a calculator. After several rounds of figuring—
"However high it runs, four hundred million dollars ought to do it."