Rika! One Million Volts
On the way back to the hotel, the same poster stood in a line down the street.
I looked to see what it was. Two grim-faced Black men stared each other down, and beneath them ran a single line of copy.
Only then did the face on the poster begin to register. He looked so young I hadn't known him.
That's Tyson.
Anyone my age would be more familiar with the Tyson who wore a tattoo beside his eye. In this era, though, his hair was still thick, and there was something else—the gaze of a tiger. If a beast ever took human shape, it would give off exactly this kind of killing air.
This could be fun.
I checked the date at once. Two days away. I bolted for a pay phone and asked, and of course the answer came back that every seat was gone. Ordinarily that is where you nod, say so it goes, and give up.
This is Tyson in his prime.
The thought that I might never get another chance put the receiver back in my hand.
The reply had thorns in it. They must have been hearing the same question hundreds of times a day.
Ten thousand dollars would come to a little over ten million won. The price was fine. What was the fuss?
No. Baker might be on his way back.
Tyson's fight was every bit as fierce as I'd hoped. Like a well-fed tiger he did nothing but hold the center of the ring, prowling at his leisure—and then his feet stuttered into a step. A one-two straight snapped out, and a right hook crashed home against the other man's jaw.
In that instant his opponent dropped like a tree cut off at the base. The referee didn't bother with a count. He waved it off at once.
The most primal contest there is: strength against strength. Maybe that was why the roar pouring down from every side was more fevered than any I had ever heard.
"Wooooooah—!"
In my previous life I had respected people armed with intellect. There was even a time I believed that was the only noble value. Living this second life, though, the thought had begun to change.
What could be more honest than sweating to train the body?
Then again, with the purchase of Manchester United as my goal, maybe a change like this was only natural.
Still. In two days I had to fly to Japan.
I wonder if Mr. Tajiri is getting anywhere.
Tajiri was tearing at his hair.
The battle system, the raising, the collecting—those he could cobble together somehow. The problem was the characters.
A hundred of them?
Even if a second-stage evolution and a third each counted as one, how was he supposed to manage it in a single week?
Get a grip. It's a billion yen. That's ten million yen a character!
Damn it. Sitting at home wasn't going to produce an answer, so Tajiri set off through the neighborhood with no destination at all. Walk long enough, he told himself, and something was bound to surface. Hours later all he had were aching legs. No decent solution had appeared.
Did he simply have no talent? The moment the thought rose, he saw a billion yen lift gently into the air—money lashed to an enormous hot-air balloon, drifting farther and farther away.
No!
Unable to stand it, Tajiri decided to gamble. If he was going to collapse anyway...
Then I'll at least nail the insects!
Yes. No more poking at animals and plants and dinosaurs all at once. Insects, and nothing but insects.
Maybe there was no law that said he had to fail. The moment he thought of nothing except insects, ideas began to arrive, one and then another.
Just adding to the count won't do. He had to push each trait as far as it would go, so the new creatures would strike sparks off the ones he already had. Over two days he poured out some fifty Capsulemon.
And then—this wouldn't do. He had barely reached the halfway mark, and the knowledge made him scowl.
Other people might have said fifty still meant five hundred million yen. Nonsense. With a billion yen sitting there, he was supposed to be satisfied with half? Quit now, and the balloon with five hundred million yen tied to it would sail off into the distance...
No!
So Tajiri began tearing the house apart. A picture diary had come back to him, the one he had kept while collecting insects in kindergarten. Insects drawn through a child's eyes—if that wasn't a treasure house of characters, what was?
Right. Whatever's there, I'm checking all of it.
He opened the wardrobe, heaved up the mattress, pulled every desk drawer free and felt into the back of each.
It's here. It's here!
Sure enough, it had been jammed in the back of a drawer. A faded diary. Yes. This was the one. Tajiri flipped through it in a rush: earwigs, beetles, stag beetles, rhinoceros beetles, insects crowding every page. But something else held his eye.
What is this?
A huge drawing fills the page. Some kind of rodent: a detective's hat, a trench coat, an oversized magnifying glass in its paws. Both cheeks are stuffed absurdly round, like a squirrel with its mouth crammed full of food.
— Rika
Pretty cute.
The thought lasted only a moment.
"......!"
His eyes went wide and wild, like a sailor who had just come face to face with Treasure Island. This might actually be something. He looked at the words written beneath the character.
"Rika?"
He had no idea what it meant, but the sound of it sat pleasantly in the mouth.
"Rika... Rika..."
From that moment on, Tajiri began to write.
Two days later we left the pleasures of America behind and returned to Japan.
How far has he gotten?
The meeting was at three in the afternoon, at the café in front of Tajiri's house, same as last time. He would have been up all night, so I expected him to be a little late. Instead he was already there, a full half hour early. He said he had come out ahead to practice. Maybe he meant to present like Steve Jobs.
"Wouldn't the documents be enough on their own?"
"They would, yes. But it's easier to understand if I explain."
Perhaps it was the ten billion won hanging in the balance. His face looked as if its combat power had climbed all the way up, both eyes bright and alive. When people say the mind rules the body, they mean a moment exactly like this.
"I'll begin the briefing."
I could have simply read it, but Tajiri insisted on explaining.
"You see the character on the first page? This is a rodent that uses electricity. You might ask what a squirrel has to do with electricity, but for now..."
"The design's good."
"R-right?"
Maybe the praise, right at the start, loosened him. Tajiri went straight on.
"It shoots electricity with a million volts of power. The line doesn't really mean anything, but—Rika..."
Embarrassed, he ducked his head for a moment. Then, as if the ten billion had just flashed back through him, his voice went sharp.
"Rika! Rika!"
Shame abandoned, he began to perform the character with a plate of steel laid over his face.
The same sort of scene kept repeating after that.
"This is a turtle that uses a water cannon. His name's Turtlet..." He barreled on, and half of it washed past me: a character who did nothing but sleep, a useless carp he had named the Surplus King because the pun was right there. "And this is my specialty. A wasp, shaped into Stinglet..."
In truth, all I really knew were the first-generation Capsulemon, and even then only the popular monsters, more or less. For so many familiar names to turn up today could only mean one thing.
In a single week he cranked out an absurd number of the characters people are going to love.
"This is an ordinary capsule. And this right here is the Master Capsule, which captures a monster with a one hundred percent chance..."
"And the battles?"
"I assigned advantages by monster type. Nature's laws, applied as they are. Plant types are strong against water but weak to fire. Fire types, on the other hand, are weak to water..."
Impressive. If this were a building, last time he had done nothing but dig frantically at the dirt. Now it felt as if he had driven a dense steel frame deep into that hole. The foundation is the hard part. After that, the rest goes up fast. Put a few specialists on it and the building would take shape in no time.
"Shall we write the contract?"
"Pardon? Ah... there are still a few things left..."
"This is plenty."
"...?"
"I'll invest the billion yen, as promised, so let's draw up the contract right now. How does that sound?"
Perhaps he had been running himself ragged for the sake of hearing exactly those words. Instead of answering, he burst into tears.
Tajiri and I headed for Daisho headquarters. Up to here, we hadn't strayed far from the current of history.
Only the investor had changed—from Daisho to JH.
Nothing to worry about. The trust between Daisho and me was already something special. Offer them a share of the revenue and they would be glad enough to help.
"This is good. Genuinely groundbreaking."
Just as I'd expected. The moment Mr. Hideo finished the proposal, his ambition caught fire.
"A billion yen, and that's only the development cost? Wow... we could staff every post with aces and still have money left over."
By then Tajiri was past happiness and halfway out of his body. Heh heh heh.
The actual business was simple.
"This suddenly?"
"Character design matters more than anything on this project. The target age runs from toddlers through thirteen, and the art style..."
Maybe because they had already been through it once with Dream Quest, the editor-in-chief didn't pepper me with questions. He just took it all down.
The details can go by fax.
Now all I have to do is wait.
Perhaps because the tension had finally drained out of me, a hunger I had forgotten completely came charging in late. My stomach growled. I was hungry, and sick to death of both Japanese food and Western food. Missing the soybean-paste stew my mother used to simmer told me everything I needed to know.
Hm.
It was about time I went back to Korea.