Her Bicycle Entered My Heart
The twenty-first century technopia sped by like an arrow. Before he knew it, the air had turned crisp. It felt as though he had barely tasted autumn, yet winter's chill now rode the wind. With Thanksgiving, America's greatest holiday, only a week away, winter was already at the doorstep. Perhaps that was why Yoo Jae-won felt restless. It had been this way for some time. If Remington or Choi Kang-wook had known, they would have been shocked. After all, ID Group's performance had reached an all-time high.
Android ME was selling briskly, silencing market doubts. Intel and AMD advertised it alongside their new CPUs as the true 64-bit operating system paired with genuine 64-bit processors. Thanks to flawless backward compatibility with 32-bit applications, the kernel upgrade caused almost no confusion. The only regret was that fewer than ten percent of ordinary users fully utilized the 64-bit features. Corporate adoption, however, was excellent. The 4-gigabyte memory limitation had never been a major issue for individuals, but it had been a pressing problem for enterprises and large internet server operators. Major internet companies had proliferated, and it was now commonplace for hundreds of thousands of users to converge on their servers. Naturally, this demanded vast amounts of memory. The 64-bit Android operating system settled in rapidly. ID Office ME followed suit, incorporating a 64-bit version that enabled swift handling of massive datasets. Continuous innovation added the cutting-edge technologies enterprises demanded, further boosting productivity.
Newegg 3 and the iWorks 2nd Gen also enjoyed scorching demand. The Newegg series had cemented its reputation as the premium home computer. Though it cost a million won more than standard corporate machines, its peerless design had cultivated a devoted following. The same held true for iWorks, which delivered every performance metric digital content creators required. Starting at nearly five million won for the base unit alone, the ability to freely customize components meant prices could easily exceed ten million won. To the average person, the value proposition seemed absurd. Yet in the professional world, true value lay in time. How many revisions could one complete before a deadline? Could one render even a single extra frame? These questions directly determined income. The iWorks 2nd Gen offered the highest productivity among personal workstations. Moreover, unlike machines that degraded under sustained load, compromising stability—a fatal flaw for professionals—iWorks maintained reliability. A crash during complex video editing could derail an entire project. Recognition from experts had made iWorks so sought-after that orders required reservations. ID Electronics' production lines ran around the clock, yet demand still outstripped supply.
ID Group's smooth sailing stemmed not only from the new products unveiled at IDDC 99. Time Warner Nextcom's cable subscribers were approaching fifteen million. Viewers had grown too sophisticated for the monotony of broadcast television alone. Access to high-quality dramas, variety shows, and other premium content now required cable. Timeflix subscriptions rose in tandem. Unlimited viewing of all registered content for just nine dollars was an irresistible advantage. A clear indicator of Timeflix's penetration was the surge in home projector sales, which had more than doubled compared to the pre-Timeflix era. With a Timeflix-enabled set-top box connected to a projector, viewers could enjoy a cinematic experience rivaling any theater.
The T-Touch Phone continued flying off shelves, and Livepod's cumulative sales had reached impressive figures. Companies acquired in Korea through the White Tiger Fund were delivering results as the Korean economy improved, and the same was true for the New Japan Investment Bank. ID Group was performing at a level that drew universal envy. Naturally, Yoo Jae-won's restlessness did not stem from business pressures but from a deeply personal matter: his marriage to Tiffany.
He felt no reluctance about marriage itself. Having become engaged to Tiffany, their eventual wedding was a foregone conclusion. The issue was that they had never set a date when they got engaged, so the timing required mutual discussion. Had his circumstances remained as ordinary as in his previous life, he would undoubtedly have been scrambling to secure a newlywed home. Fortunately, his post-regression plans had succeeded spectacularly, eliminating any housing concerns. On a scenic coastal cliff near the Gold Gate Resort north of San Francisco, the house he had sketched was under construction. Shaped like a disc-shaped UFO half-perched on the cliff, it featured an elevator descending the sheer rock face to the shore and a docking facility by the water, all proceeding on schedule. While administrative permits and construction presented numerous challenges, this was America, where money could resolve almost anything. The U.S. branch of Daeho Construction had broken ground immediately, and the structure was now taking clear shape. By next spring, the building itself would be complete, with interior finishing likely finished by early summer.
Once the house was ready, moving in would naturally follow. Yet before that, a wedding was essential. This was precisely where his anxiety originated. Proposing to Tiffany was no small undertaking. With so many pressing matters, he had repeatedly postponed personal affairs like a proposal, only to realize Thanksgiving was now just a week away—the deadline he had set for himself. Thanksgiving, America's premier holiday, was when families gathered, much like Korea's Chuseok. He had thought it would be fitting to announce their engagement then. Moreover, Tiffany's family and maternal relatives were no ordinary households. While his father-in-law's Pink family was formidable, her maternal grandfather Frederick Taylor's lineage was even more distinguished. Naturally, Yoo Jae-won's greatest concern was how to execute a successful proposal.
Tiffany had never pressured him to create an elaborate event. Still, having died in his previous life without ever experiencing such companionship, he harbored a strong desire to do this properly. He had begun pondering it since summer, but urgent projects—the Xbox initiative reaching full momentum, HxT's return under Dream Entertainment—had pushed it aside, leading to this predicament.
"What would be good?"
Accessing his Memory Palace after a long absence, Yoo Jae-won searched the Archive for proposal ideas. Ironically, the meticulously crafted master plan contained not a single entry regarding his own marriage. When he had devised the plan, simply finding a compatible soulmate had seemed fortunate enough. He had assumed that if everything proceeded according to schedule, his circumstances would improve dramatically, making marriage feasible without issue. Only now did he recognize how naïve that assumption had been.
Yoo Jae-won and Tiffany were genuinely in love. Their union was rooted in mutual affection, yet it also carried immense business significance. His father-in-law's Blackstone had grown into a financial powerhouse with over a hundred billion dollars in operating capital, holding substantial stakes in Android Corporation and Time Warner Nextcom. Her maternal family, Chevron, could not be overlooked either. While Tiffany stood lower in Chevron's formal succession line, she ranked among Frederick Taylor's top priorities. So much so that those who had aligned with Jacob now regarded her with considerable wariness. Even these parties viewed Yoo Jae-won and Tiffany's marriage favorably, believing it could generate synergies comparable to those achieved by Time Warner Nextcom's cross-industry merger.
For all these reasons, Yoo Jae-won felt he could not afford to treat the proposal lightly. Fortunately, the Archive within his Memory Palace contained ample data on proposals.
"Rent out a movie theater? That's far too cliché. Borrowing a film festival stage feels excessive."
The first idea that caught his eye involved movie theaters—screening a prepared video during the interval between films. Though commonly used even by ordinary people, it failed to appeal to him. Similarly, stories of industry titans proposing at awards ceremonies struck him as overdone. The former felt mundane; the latter, ostentatious. Yoo Jae-won held considerable standing in the film industry as a major investor whose every project became a hit. As the largest shareholder of the colossal distributor Time Warner, he could have secured time even during the Academy Awards if he wished. Yet this too was dismissed. Given Tiffany's personality, she would undoubtedly find such a grand public spectacle burdensome.
"Hmm? Oh? This one's not bad."
While browsing the Archive, one entry stood out. An indie game developer had asked his girlfriend to test what he claimed was a newly completed game. Unaware of his intentions, she played—and was moved to tears when an unexpected marriage event unfolded at the end of a stage. This was not from an article but a post on an anonymous community board, preserved alongside a screenshot.
Games were a domain where Yoo Jae-won felt confident, and they were something Tiffany also enjoyed. She followed e-sports tournaments held in Korea so closely that this approach seemed unlikely to fail. Resolved, he immediately set to work. Game selection was instantaneous. He already had a project in development: Keyboard Warrior 2. Keyboard Warrior and Yoo Jae-won were inseparable. He had been building its sequel in spare moments, planning a 2000 release. The genre remained FPS, with typing replacing gunfire just as in the original. Enemies were defeated by typing practice-friendly sentences rather than depleting health bars. Even at that level, it would have served admirably as a typing trainer suited to the 3D era. Yet Yoo Jae-won had no intention of treating the sequel to something so personally significant as a mere typing tool.
As with the first game, he infused it with a story worth reflection. Player choices would branch the narrative, and meaningful interactions were designed throughout. It incorporated the modern FPS systems pioneered by Doom and perfected by Half-Life. Multiplayer, widely praised in the original, was retained, and several cooperative missions were prepared even within single-player. He could repurpose one entire cooperative mission to create an event that would move Tiffany. The setting would feature locations like Stanford University and ID Technology headquarters, with characters modeled after Yoo Jae-won and Tiffany themselves. Since the base game was Keyboard Warrior, substantial text was required, but their shared memories were rich enough to fill a book, so he harbored no concerns.
Moreover, the circumstances of their first meeting were particularly memorable. It had begun with an embarrassing misunderstanding that made him want to crawl into a hole—he had mistaken Tiffany for a bicycle thief, and their fateful encounter started when he chased after her. The memory sparked an immediate tagline.
—Her bicycle entered my heart.
It was a clothing advertisement slogan familiar to every Korean. Yoo Jae-won launched ID Word Processor and began transcribing their story, starting with that phrase. It would serve as the script for the special event. His typing speed quickly reached its peak. He had created countless games and world-changing programs, yet this was the first time he was crafting something that told his own story for just one person. The focus he brought to the task surpassed anything he had experienced before.
Several days passed. His extraordinary concentration worked a miracle. On the day before Thanksgiving, the event stage built upon Keyboard Warrior 2 was complete.