The Invisible Person I Wanted to Find - 1
The office was dark and cramped.
A middle-aged man wearing glasses sat tapping at a laptop. On the desk, stacks of coffee cups had piled up in layers, and cigarette butts stood upright on top of them like gravestones.
The cheap bookshelf was crammed full of papers stuffed in without any real order. Newspapers and magazines from every possible outlet were piled high like a tower.
There was a business card on the desk.
Nam Jinwook, President, Polar Press
But since he only had two employees to his name, he thought of himself less as a president and more as a reporter.
The sort of man who called himself “Reporter Nam.”
Nam Jinwook scratched at his stubbly chin for a moment in the bargain-bin office. It was a relief that he’d been divorced long enough not to have a wife around to lecture him about the mess he was in.
He shuddered at the memory that rose up in him.
“...Honestly. Her face is getting blurry now.”
The nagging was still vivid, like PTSD.
After a sigh,
he began typing,
and wrote out the article.
“...”
Tap tap
Tap tap
What’s behind the gaming tournament with VTubers?
“...”
He didn’t like the title.
The Coexistence of Reality and Virtual Industry, and the Future of the Metaverse
“...”
That sounded like something written to flatter government policy.
He decided to start with the body instead.
Tap tap
Tap tap
The tournament had lasted six days.
It was only a matter of days, but the influence it spread in real time was impossible to ignore. It was the kind of cheerful capital event you rarely saw these days.
More than anything, the fact that a VTuber had hosted the tournament became a story in itself.
The moment a subculture began to enter the mainstream.
Many people felt an instinctive refusal toward that kind of thing. There simply wasn’t enough time in one person’s life to understand some tiny little “world of their own” off in the distance that you had no interest in to begin with.
And besides, there weren’t many ways for a subculture to break into the mainstream. Most of the time, it entered through someone’s patronage or connections.
That was why subcultures, and VTubers in particular, were often the least welcome guests of all.
But this time was different.
The VTuber who hosted the tournament had opened it with their own budget. Not in some space revealed only to fans, but in a venue open to anyone.
And with the easy-to-understand content of a “gaming tournament” placed front and center, they had poured out prizes at a jaw-dropping level. The method was very easy to grasp, and something anyone could enjoy.
Still, there were plenty of people who rejected it simply because they wanted to reject it. Even so, this D/FENCE gaming tournament could be called a place of cultural integration.
A proud VTuber on the screen.
Exchange born from the meeting of virtual and real worlds.
And yet, united through games as they competed...
“...Virtual?”
Nam Jinwook tilted his head and paused.
Something about the phrasing felt awkward. If enough of those little things piled up, the whole article would be distorted.
“...”
Is a VTuber even virtual? There’s a person inside, same as a costume or puppet. But if you think of them as a character tied to a company, like an educational-broadcast mascot, then I guess virtual is right.
Well.
He didn’t know.
The stuff kids like these days is getting harder and harder to keep up with.
He had once been a young man who loved games, but there were times when he simply couldn’t understand the way “kids these days” played.
Had his brain just gone stiff without him noticing?
“...”
In the end, he closed the laptop.
Then he tapped the table quietly and thought.
In fact,
the article had originally been about something else entirely.
High Fence Stadium: Was It Truly a “High Wall”? - The Government’s Hollow Promise to Young Gamers
“...”
The e-sports talent development industry that had ended as nothing but a hollow promise.
An investigation into a dying stadium, plus a probe into another district... it had been an article that dug into the back side of the government’s industrial projects.
He had already finished gathering the materials over the last few days.
He had just been debating whether to start the first draft when the most important Seoul Guro branch had been completely transformed.
So he felt absurdly deflated.
Nam Jinwook rubbed his head and sighed.
“Hoo...”
No, what kind of insane company buys up a stadium in a week, finishes the renovation, and then throws a tournament on top of it...?
This was a level of capital movement measured in the billions.
It was the scale of another company’s full year of projects.
And there were lunatics out there who pulled it off in a single week.
The investment corporation Big Plan D.
They had appeared like a comet a month ago and started throwing money into the subculture industry like maniacs. They were more like ecosystem builders than investors, with no thought at all toward recouping the budget.
And that name was already fairly famous in the securities world.
Nam Jinwook muttered, “Big Man...”
Then he remembered the conversation he’d had with Ma Yuhyeok, the only male employee at this little bottom-tier paper. Yuhyeok had been digging into some scandal involving a male idol group, then came back all of a sudden and said this:
-Boss, there’s a rumor going around among financial reporters. A few months ago, this so-called “god of investing” appeared out of nowhere, with no major background or credentials at all.
-What? A god of investing? Did he hit the jackpot on crypto or something?
-Yeah, well... he did crypto too. But it sounded like he was also into stocks, futures, commodities, and real estate.
-Tsk. Sounds like a fraud to me. Plenty of guys ruin themselves by betting on just one thing, and he’s supposed to do all of that? He probably just got lucky and guessed a few right.
Ma Yuhyeok shook his head.
-Apparently he succeeded at all of it.
-All of it... ? Crypto, futures, commodities, stocks, real estate, all of it?
-Every deal he’s made in the last few months has worked out, so they say he’s made almost several hundred billion won on his own over the past half-year... Securities firms have been desperate to invite him as a special market-analysis consultant. Financial reporters are lined up trying to get even one interview with him.
-S-several hundred billion in just a few months-!?
A walking mid-sized corporation.
A capitalist player enough to knock Adam Smith flat.
At that level, he deserved to be called a god of investing.
-What, is he some elite from a securities firm?
-I’m not sure about that... but apparently he’s also been handling money for major overseas investors and doing consulting. He won’t respond to any interview requests or invitations, though.
-Is that so? Does he at least belong to some company?
-Well...
“...Big Plan.”
The moment he heard that name, the face of the man he’d met at High Fence Stadium came back to him. A man in a suit with a blank, cold expression.
He had the atmosphere of someone who lived by numbers.
After he came through,
an event that had been backed by a Big Plan corporation investment was, coincidentally, held. And the market that had been dying suddenly began to breathe impossible life again, also coincidentally.
“...”
That coincidence
somehow felt like revelation.
And this change
somehow felt like a story worth reporting.
Reporter Nam gathered up the laptop and the papers on his desk and shoved them into his bag. In the process, several cigarette butts tumbled to the floor with a soft patter.
“Ah, damn... well, it’s already a pigsty, so I guess I don’t need to clean it.”
Grumbling like that, he put one last file into the bag. Inside were layers upon layers of documents.
For the past twenty years,
they had been the result of pursuing “one case” ever since his days at a major media outlet.
Investigation into the High Fence Stadium Project
Investigation into the Korea-Japan K-pop Idol Talent Exchange Development Project
Investigation into the New York Korean Cultural Support Project
And...
Gate at Wunhyang New Town, Jeju Island
The final file was frayed and ragged like a mop head.
Pieces of truth no one told him about,
pieces of truth no one wanted to dig for.
“...”
Nam Jinwook ran his eyes over the title and put it into his bag. Then he grabbed the bag and headed out. His destination was the newly remade Guro stadium, formerly High Fence Stadium.
“No, wait...”
Now.
Was its new name D/FENCE?
Monday returned.
Seo Eun-hwa arrived at Big House to attend the planning meeting. This time, she hadn’t come by the president’s car but by taxi, so she was on her own.
Click, click.
As she walked past the parking lot in front of Big House, she adjusted her bangs a little. In the middle of it, unsure of herself, she kept checking her reflection on her phone.
“...”
Finally,
Eun-hwa sighed.
“He’s not interested in this side at all.”
Neither personally
nor professionally,
Seo Eun-hwa was not Seonwoo Taek’s priority. Money was surely distributed equally to everyone, but the intuition she had gained from company life whispered otherwise.
It was that man who directly acquired Romantic Drive, but in the end, the ones he kept close and looked after were ABCD...
As a person,
as a VTuber,
he had no interest in her.
Not the slightest bit of interest...
“...”
Seo Eun-hwa gave a bitter smile.
“Well, that’s only natural...”
To Seo Eun-hwa, Seonwoo Taek was like a strange magician who came charging in on a pumpkin carriage like some kind of biker gang, all swagger and impossible motion. One gesture from him, and she had no choice but to be led along like she was under a spell.
Wonderful experiences no large corporation could ever have given her.
So dazzling,
so miraculous,
that he seemed to hand them out as gifts.
“...”
Because...
a person like that, who felt like a dream, didn’t exist anywhere.
Not at the broadcasting station.
Not at the agency.
Not anywhere in reality...
“...”
But.
It seemed his Cinderella was someone else. Eun-hwa was just an extra standing off to the side, praising the magician.
“...”
Seo Eun-hwa sighed again.
Then she tapped her own cheek lightly, trying to shove back the self-loathing creeping up on her. As the eldest member of RD, she had work to do.
What am I, some middle-schooler writing fanfic about myself and an idol? It’s not like the others are thinking anything weird. I should stop with the ridiculous delusions.
Get a grip.
She couldn’t end up like Se-yeon, who was always going “woo-tatata” about everything.
With that resolve.
Eun-hwa entered the large conference room inside Big House. It was already packed with people. They were all employees of Big Plan.
They greeted her when they saw her. No one failed to recognize someone who had already attended more than twice.
“Ah! You’re here from RD too?”
“Is Ms. Eun-hwa going to present the plan again?”
“Last week’s Romantic Drive memorial exhibition was really well done.”
Eun-hwa smiled and answered them. Then she let her eyes roam around, looking for someone.
“?”
But.
He wasn’t there.
The expressionless man in the luxury suit.
“...”
He’s always the first to arrive and sits in the corner...
Eun-hwa carefully asked the people nearby, “Has the director not arrived yet?”
“Oh, we were told to go ahead with the meeting without the director today. He had to rush out with the two presidents from RD and ABCD for something...”
“What? Something?”
That was strange.
There had been no mention of anything like that until yesterday...
The employee who had delivered the news immediately solved the mystery.
“He went off to buy a performance hall, or something like that...”
“What? A performance hall...?”
No.
This was.
What on earth...
Just as Eun-hwa’s mind came to a halt,
the conference room door opened once more.
What stood there was a young woman. She had dyed her hair yellow and was wearing a suit. The moment she stepped inside, the whole room seemed to brighten.
Eun-hwa’s eyes widened slightly when she saw her.
“!”
More precisely,
it was the tie she wore.
Blue background and yellow...
Exactly.
The opposite of that person’s pattern.
“...”
She looked around the room, then hurriedly bent at the waist in a deep ninety-degree bow. Her neatly tied yellow hair swayed with the motion.
“Ah, hello! Nice to meet you! I’m Aki from ABCD! I’m here to give the planning presentation this time! Please take good care of me!”
At that spirited greeting,
everyone inside clapped without even realizing it.
Clap clap clap...!
There were murmurs from around the room.
-Why are we clapping, though?
-If she greets us like that and we don’t clap back, that’d be rude.
-Ahh...
Amid all that,
Seo Eun-hwa stared blankly at Aki’s tie.
“...”
Ah.
So that was her.
No wonder.
She could feel it.