The Fateful Poll
December 7th on the road to the presidency. Only two days remained until the promised sprint to the 9th. Following Yoo Jae-won’s plan, the campaign had proceeded normally through the 5th. From the 6th onward, Jeon Myeong-heon and the other national assembly members had converged on Busan for concentrated rallies. Yoo Jae-won himself, however, remained in Yeouido. True to the promise he had made to reporters when he accepted the chairmanship of the emergency committee, he stayed out of the public eye. Jeon Myeong-heon had shown his disappointment openly, and the disappointment among his inner circle and the Tongil National Party lawmakers ran even deeper. In an emergency like this, they believed, Yoo Jae-won should have been out on the trail himself. Instead he sat comfortably in his Yeouido office, issuing orders. No one dared voice the complaint aloud. Jeon Myeong-heon’s retainers and the assemblymen alike were the sort who grew infinitely meek before the truly powerful, and Yoo Jae-won already commanded more presence than Jeon Myeong-heon himself.
Yet Yoo Jae-won was under far greater stress than any of them imagined. “Sprint” was a pleasant word for what felt like a daily hemorrhage of blood and nerves. Even if the Tongil National Party and its outside support organizations moved exactly as he intended, the outcome remained uncertain—because far too many people insisted on acting on their own. It was like trying to raid a dungeon with units that charged in the opposite direction the moment you gave an order. One such unit was calling him right now to air its grievances. Jeon Jae-jun.
His father had gone down to Busan, so why shouldn’t he go as well and help with the rallies? The explanation was polite enough, but the tone was anything but. The only advantage Jeon Jae-jun held over Yoo Jae-won was age, yet he used that single fact to drop all honorifics and lace every sentence with thorns.
“Agh, this troll bastard!”
Yoo Jae-won covered the mouthpiece, vented the insult, then drew a deep breath. The stale Seoul air inside the sealed office did nothing to improve his mood, but at least the worst of his irritation subsided enough for him to continue.
“The candidate already told you he won’t stay in Busan the whole time. From the 10th he’ll begin moving north again and will stop in Ulsan as well. Please just hold on a little longer.”
—Hmph. Fine. But I won’t wait long!
Won’t wait long? Was he planning to run off to Jeon Myeong-heon on his own and insert himself into the rallies? The same man who couldn’t string two words together in front of Jeon Myeong-heon was remarkably good at issuing threats from a distance.
“Understood. I’ll be sure to tell the candidate how hard his son has been working.”
—Good. I’m counting on you.
With that, Jeon Jae-jun hung up first. Yoo Jae-won nearly slammed the receiver down.
“He’d have to spit on his lies before I’d believe them.”
Jeon Jae-jun’s textbook chaebol-second-son behavior stirred memories from Yoo Jae-won’s previous life. People like that always took credit when things went well and blamed everyone else when they didn’t. He knew the type all too well.
“Good grief. Even they’re resources. I’ll have to keep them on a string somehow.”
If this had been ID Group, he would have fired the man on the spot. But the title “Jeon Myeong-heon’s son” made that impossible. Besides, this was the Tongil National Party. While Jeon Myeong-heon’s deep pockets kept the party from being completely destitute, it had existed for less than a year; its regional organizations were still paper-thin. In Ulsan and South Gyeongsang, Jeon Jae-jun’s own network was the strongest. He had no choice but to soothe the man and keep the campaign moving.
After venting, Yoo Jae-won walked to his computer and logged into the Tongil National Party’s internal forum—the bulletin board and real-time chat rooms that linked the regional organizations through the internet. At first everyone had found the system strange, but now they used it enthusiastically, fully convinced of its usefulness. Entering the Busan-Ulsan-Gyeongnam sub-forum, he posted a short message: the emergency committee and the candidate drew great courage from Assemblyman Jeon Jae-jun and the local party members in Ulsan and would remember their efforts. Immediately afterward he sent a private note to the special team, ordering them to raise surveillance on Jeon Jae-jun and his private organization to the maximum. He could not predict what the increasingly impatient man might do next.
December 9th. Jeon Myeong-heon, who had gone down to Busan on the 5th, returned to Seoul. The concentrated rallies in Busan had been a resounding success. Even the media could not distort the fact that Jeon Myeong-heon had drawn enormous crowds. Nampo-dong and Seomyeon were the busiest districts in the city; both had been packed with people who came to hear him speak. His pledges, which directly addressed the daily concerns of Busan citizens, had struck home. He had also hinted that the Mirae Group’s roots lay in the Busan-Ulsan-Gyeongnam region and promised that, should he become president, he would turn Busan into the undisputed second capital of the nation. The message resonated powerfully. Although Jeon Myeong-heon had resigned all his positions at the Mirae Group, everyone understood that a President Jeon would naturally favor policies friendly to the conglomerate—and that Busan-Ulsan-Gyeongnam would be the primary beneficiaries. Separate polling suggested that references to the Mirae Group had actually been more effective than explicit promises of high-speed rail, subways, or an international airport.
South Gyeongsang and Ulsan had been much the same. On the morning of the 8th he had toured the outskirts of Busan, then moved on to the other two regions, drawing strong responses there as well. Jeon Jae-jun had stayed glued to his father’s side that day, helping with the rallies. Whatever he had been told, he wore a beaming smile Yoo Jae-won had never seen before and enthusiastically chanted Jeon Myeong-heon’s name on camera.
Thanks to the concentrated effort, Jeon Myeong-heon’s campaign had been a triumph both subjectively and objectively. The scale of his rallies even appeared larger than those of Kim Young-sam, the candidate from Geoje, just south of Busan. With the visual evidence so clear, the media could no longer look away. Television news and newspapers alike carried photographs of Jeon Myeong-heon smiling broadly amid vast crowds.
“Well? At this rate Busan must be ours, right?”
By evening, when Jeon Myeong-heon arrived at the Yeouido party headquarters, he radiated the energy of a man in his late twenties. He had even picked up the slang “divided” somewhere and delivered the question with unmistakable confidence.
“I saw it on television myself. I didn’t expect you to do quite so well. And the response from Busan citizens exceeded expectations.”
Yoo Jae-won praised him while carefully avoiding a direct answer to whether Busan had been “divided.” A candidate could lose himself in the excitement of the rally grounds, but Yoo Jae-won, who saw the entire election map, could not afford that luxury. Any candidate polling above twenty percent nationwide could draw cheering crowds wherever he went. Inside that bubble it was easy to believe the whole world revolved around you and that victory was inevitable. Yet the voters who actually attended rallies were only a fraction of the electorate—and mostly supporters or the curious. Far more people stayed home and did not support him. There was no need to pour cold water on Jeon Myeong-heon’s rare good mood.
“Have you eaten?”
“Of course! I had a bowl of garaetteok-guk at a rest stop.”
“Come on, that hardly counts as a meal. You need a proper dinner.”
“No, no. Today’s the day, isn’t it? With the poll results coming, my stomach’s too nervous for real food.”
Jeon Myeong-heon waved the suggestion away. He had not forgotten that today, the 9th, was D-Day. Of course he hadn’t. Before the campaign even began, Yoo Jae-won had made it clear that the December 9th poll would determine whether they continued on the current path or changed strategy. For Jeon Myeong-heon this was the single most important event of his life; he could not possibly have forgotten.
“So? Have the results come in?”
His throat dry from tension, Jeon Myeong-heon swallowed and asked.
“Um… not yet.”
Yoo Jae-won’s apologetic expression was genuine. He had only now realized his own explanation had been incomplete. Because the December 9th poll was so critical, they were running both the regular daily survey and an additional reinforced survey with a much larger sample size. The reinforced poll had dramatically increased the number of respondents—five thousand in total across five days, a thousand per day. Yoo Jae-won had not expected the two results to match exactly; he had only hoped the margin of error would be small enough to trust when making a bold decision.
“What? So the results won’t be out today after all?”
Jeon Myeong-heon looked utterly deflated. All the way from Busan he had been tormented by uncertainty, his emotions swinging wildly as he imagined both good and bad outcomes. He had felt as though he finally understood what manic depression must be like. Only after entering Seoul had he calmed down, and the sight of Yoo Jae-won’s oily hair and face—evidence of days without proper rest—had made him feel ready to accept whatever the numbers said. Now he was told the results would come tomorrow. The disappointment drained the strength from his limbs. The backlash from pouring every ounce of passion into Busan was finally hitting him.
If the polling company had been under his influence, he would have called at once and demanded the numbers. But ID Human Research belonged to ID Group, and he did not even have the phone number. Contact was possible only through the still-unfamiliar internet, leaving him powerless to complain.
“Then why were you still here?”
“This is where I belong until the election is over. Besides, you said you were coming.”
In his previous life, once Yoo Jae-won had come to his senses, late nights and all-nighters had been routine during AI development. When deadlines loomed he had sometimes gone an entire week—or even a month—without going home. A few nights of overtime or arriving at dawn had been nothing.
“Ah… I’ve put you through so much because of me.”
Jeon Myeong-heon’s voice was heavy with self-reproach. The words “take it easy” rose to his throat but never left his mouth. They were so close to the position he had always wanted; in this decisive moment he could not bring himself to tell the young man to rest.
“It’s not just me. Everyone is doing their best for your victory. You’ve worked harder than any of us. Compared to that, I’ve only been sitting in a warm office giving orders. I’m the one who should feel sorry.”
“Still, hearing you say that makes me grateful.”
Jeon Myeong-heon looked genuinely moved. Watching him, Yoo Jae-won’s thoughts turned to the poll results due tomorrow and the storm they might bring. If the numbers were bad, would that kindly expression still be there? His mind also drifted to the Chowon Bokguk House incident in Busan. In the original timeline it had broken on the 11th, giving them two extra days. But Yoo Jae-won’s full participation in the campaign had raised the ruling party’s anxiety to its peak. No one any longer dismissed Jeon Myeong-heon as an also-ran. Their own internal polls confirmed that his presence was now comparable to the two Kims. He was even beginning to close the gap with Kim Young-sam of the Democratic Liberal Party while leaving Kim Dae-jung of the Democratic Party behind. The chased had become the chaser, and the Minja Party’s impatience had grown accordingly. The incident might erupt earlier than expected—or perhaps internal chaos within the ruling party, as some tried to reach out to Jeon Myeong-heon, might prevent it altogether. That uncertainty was why Yoo Jae-won had left himself a comfortable buffer around D-Day. After visiting the actual site, he had made his decision: if the scandal broke, he would exploit it if possible; if not, he would bury it before the ruling party could use it to shift the frame.
“Let’s go!”
Jeon Myeong-heon suddenly shouted.
“Sir? Where to?”
“To get a hot meal. We’re all doing this to put food on the table—why eat like beggars? Call the staff too.”
Jeon Myeong-heon was Jeon Myeong-heon. Most people standing at such a critical juncture in an election would have been too anxious to think of anyone else, let alone themselves. Yet here he was, insisting they all go eat—and including not only Yoo Jae-won but the entire headquarters staff. Refusing was impossible.
“Yes, sir.”
Yoo Jae-won set aside his tangled thoughts for the moment, answered briefly, and followed Jeon Myeong-heon out.
The next day arrived—the day of destiny, heavy with countless variables and possibilities. Meticulous as ever, Yoo Jae-won reached the office first and checked whether anything unusual had occurred overnight. He had placed pencil leads on doorknobs, cabinet corners, and other spots that would fall at the slightest disturbance—an elementary but effective precaution. Fortunately, every lead remained exactly where he had left it. Normally he would have relaxed and begun work, but today was special, so he conducted an even more thorough inspection. He had his two most trusted bodyguards, Ken and Greg, sweep the office with the latest anti-surveillance equipment, imported at great expense from the United States and not yet supplied even to the Agency for National Security Planning. The device detected electronic emissions from listening devices and had an impressively high detection rate; it had once found a bug hidden inside an orchid that had been delivered as a gift early in the campaign.
“Nothing unusual.”
Only after hearing that report did Yoo Jae-won finally sit down and begin his work. The first thing he did, as always, was turn on his computer. From his cushioned chair he pressed the power button on the tower beneath the desk with his toe—a habit he had developed. In the early days he had used a shell book because the monitor was small and the afterimage severe, but he had since returned to a desktop. Moments later the large CRT displayed the Android operating system. It looked markedly different from the released version. The text was far smoother, the input fields had depth, and the color palette was vivid and striking. The system running on Yoo Jae-won’s machine was the beta of the upcoming 2.0 release. Packed with new technologies, version 2.0 was designed to extract one hundred percent of a Pentium-class PC’s performance. More than half the core source code had been completely rewritten, and the interface had been overhauled with generous use of the 3D effects that were currently in vogue. While it might still feel heavy on a 486, any Pentium-class CPU would deliver an entirely new computing experience.
Yoo Jae-won entered his ID and password and pressed Enter. The screen folded away and a clean desktop appeared. The programs set to launch at startup—ID Web Browser and ID Talk—opened automatically. The moment they finished loading, alerts began chiming. Dozens of posts and emails had accumulated overnight, many marked “urgent” or “important,” but Yoo Jae-won clicked ID Talk first. He had instructed everyone to use those prefixes only for matters truly urgent enough to require central-party action, and so far nothing had met his standard. His hand moved the mouse without hesitation.
Inside ID Talk he saw two IDS files sent from ID Human Research. One contained the regular daily poll; the other held the results of the reinforced survey with its vastly increased sample size and extended collection period. He downloaded both and opened them simultaneously. As expected, they did not open instantly. ID Office’s top-tier encryption prompted him for the correct password.
“The numbers had better be good…”
Yoo Jae-won entered the password carefully, hesitated for a moment, then pressed Enter. The password was correct. A loading bar appeared and filled rapidly.
“It’s here!”
In the past he would have had to scroll a long way to reach the results. Now, because he had ordered the summary placed on the first page, he did not need to scroll at all. His eyes raced across the large numbers. Several seconds passed.
“Ah.”
A small sigh escaped him before he could stop it.