Are You Planning to Buy the Whole District?

The reason I had chosen Neovision over Atlas and Core came down, as always, to my Intuition.

While it occasionally nudged me in bizarre directions through cryptic sensations, there was no denying that the information it provided was almost ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠invariably dependable. And the moment Neovision—or more accurately, the name Jason Jang—came up, my Intuition had surged with unprecedented violence.

It was a sensation unlike anything I had ever felt before. It wasn't merely hinting that Jason Jang was a solid option; it was screaming that I had to partner with him, no matter what...

Indescribable as it was, it was the most intense signal I'd received since the night Director Kim tried to kidnap me.

Regardless, the moment the meeting adjourned, I turned to Choi Yuna with a request: pull together everything she could on Jason Jang as fast as humanly possible. Not just on Neovision as a corporate behemoth, but on the man who had dragged that empire to where it stood today.

And true to form, Yuna didn't keep me waiting.

"Here is the dossier you requested, Chairman."

She reappeared in barely thirty minutes holding a meticulously organized brief.

...She really is terrifyingly good at her job.

I accepted the folder without a word.

Plastered across the cover page was a prominent photograph of Jason Jang. He wore his trademark black leather jacket, gazing out with sharp eyes and a grin that somehow radiated equal parts playfulness and madness.

How should I put it?

He looks less like a tech titan and more like a friendly neighborhood foreigner.

Naturally, that impression didn't survive the first few pages.

A friendly guy next door? What a joke. In more ways than one, this man was completely insane.

Founder and current CEO of Neovision. The company began by manufacturing graphics processing units for gaming—in plain terms, graphics cards...

I read through the dossier line by line.

Neovision. Today, it was revered as one of the undisputed titans shaping the global AI landscape, but it hadn't started out as anything grand. In fact, according to the records, the company had stood on the brink of bankruptcy multiple times during its infancy.

Its first product had flopped without making a ripple in the market. The second was savaged by critics for performance defects and compatibility issues, burning through its venture funding at an alarming rate. Plagued by chronic cash crunches, the company teetered perpetually on the lip of a cliff. It wouldn't have surprised anyone if it had shuttered its doors overnight.

Yet Jason Jang refused to fold. Instead, he doubled down, staking everything on the gaming sector.

Back then, mainstream corporations dismissed video games as trivial playthings for children. But Jason saw what others couldn't. He firmly believed gaming would evolve into one of the largest technology markets on the planet. Dazzling visuals. Blazing-fast computation. Virtual worlds indistinguishable from reality. And the linchpin making all of it possible was a single component: the graphics processing unit.

Damn, that's genuinely incredible.

Was this what people called true foresight?

And in the end, he had been proven right. The gaming industry exploded over the years. What had once been brushed off as idle entertainment matured into a colossal global powerhouse. And as people spent more and more of their lives immersed in virtual worlds, the appetite for raw, powerful graphics hardware surged exponentially.

Neovision hadn't just caught the wave; it had anticipated the tide years before the water ever rose. With supernatural Intuition at my disposal, predicting trends might feel trivial to me, but to pull off something like that through sheer vision alone? I genuinely wanted to ask the man how he'd pulled it off.

I turned the page, only for my gaze to catch on a series of bullet points.

"Jason Jang sold graphics cards in Yongsan twenty years ago?"

"Yes. Neovision was far from the global powerhouse it is today, and official records confirm that Jason Jang personally visited the Korean Empire to conduct market research and host sales demonstrations. Naturally, it generated little public attention at the time."

The man standing at the epicenter of the global AI boom had peddled graphics cards on the floors of Yongsan two decades ago... Did he simply possess zero corporate pretensions, or was he a founder who insisted on pounding the pavement himself? Perhaps both.

"An interview from that trip is on record as well," Yuna continued smoothly. "Jason Jang referred to the Korean Empire as a 'gaming powerhouse.' He viewed it not merely as a country that played a lot of games, but as a uniquely fertile testbed where consumers embraced cutting-edge tech and virtual experiences at unprecedented speeds."

In other words, he held the Korean Empire in exceptionally high regard.

Still, only one fundamental question mattered here. I knew Neovision was a formidable enterprise. And I knew Jason Jang was a founder blessed with insane foresight. The real puzzle was...

Why Seonghwa Electronics?

Every tech company under the sun would kill to join hands with Neovision. They were a force of nature tearing through the AI sector. Better yet, they hadn't claimed the undisputed crown just yet; they were sprinting toward the throne with terrifying momentum. There was no way we were the only firm angling for a partnership. Line up their suitors, and the queue would stretch around the globe.

Furthermore, Jason Jang had spent the past several months practically living out of an airplane, jetting across continents. For the chief executive of the company driving the AI revolution to be personally traveling on such a punishing itinerary meant one thing: Neovision was searching for something. Urgent, vital, and indispensable.

They need a partner just as badly as we do.

A partner to bridge whatever glaring deficits they had on the massive chessboard of AI. If so, the hand Seonghwa could lay on the table was already clear.

Massive manufacturing capacity. High-bandwidth, high-performance memory. An ironclad, resilient supply chain.

And while the Korean Empire had its fair share of geopolitical headaches, it wasn't chained under China's direct thumb, nor was it staring down the barrel of an imminent invasion across the Taiwan Strait. At the same time, Seonghwa Electronics was a global memory giant boasting semiconductor fabrication, advanced packaging, and server component supply lines under one roof.

This... actually has a real shot.

I tapped my fingers rhythmically against the desk.

"Secretary Choi."

"Yes, Chairman."

"What's the fastest way to get in touch with them?"

"There is a direct secretariat hotline connected to Neovision's executive office. I will initiate contact through that channel while transmitting an official letter in your name via encrypted mail. That should compel their executive team to review it immediately."

"I'll draft the letter myself."

"...Are you fluent in English, Chairman?"

At her inquiry, I offered a bright, disarming smile. Then came my utterly shameless confession:

"Not in the slightest. Which is why you're going to help me."

Yuna responded without missing a beat, as though she had anticipated this all along.

"Understood. Moving forward, I shall arrange customized English tutoring for you—specifically an intensive curriculum focused on practical business conversation in the shortest timeframe possible."

"Huh? Can't we just use an interpreter? It's cleaner, easier, and painless."

"Unacceptable. There is not a single recorded instance in modern society where fluency in English proved to be a disadvantage. Furthermore, communicating directly allows your counterpart to sense your sincerity."

She drew a line in the sand with icy finality. To think she'd hit me with a golden aphorism like 'not a single instance where fluency proved to be a disadvantage'... The more I chewed on it, the more undeniably right she was, but I couldn't shake the creeping suspicion that I'd just dug my own grave.

Regardless, with her expert assistance, the letter to Jason Jang came together smoothly. Except...

Something's missing.

Looking over the draft, it felt far too conventional. Would a guy like Jason Jang even look twice at something so cookie-cutter? This was an eccentric foreigner who ran around the globe in a leather jacket and personally hawked GPUs in Yongsan twenty years ago.

Doesn't it need a proper hook?

I wracked my brain, but no brilliant corporate pitch materialized. Instead, a spark of pure, unadulterated curiosity flared up inside me.

Come to think of it, twenty years ago, I hadn't even been born yet. Even if I wanted to see Jason Jang running a promo booth at Yongsan back then, I physically couldn't have. But now, things were different.

"Hmm..."

Maybe I'll toss in a line like this.

Once Kang-geon finished finalizing the letter, Choi Yuna spoke up.

"On another note... are you truly determined not to move into the estate previously occupied by the owner family?"

"Absolutely. What if I run into vengeful ghosts wearing their faces? That'd scare the hell out of me."

"..."

Kang-geon had answered in all seriousness, and Yuna found herself unable to offer a counterargument. After all, the direct bloodline had met an end that was anything but peaceful. Looking at it through that lens, even if the estate were put up on the auction block, buyers would hardly be lining up around the block.

"Then where do you intend to reside?"

"Living here hasn't been half bad, you know. Honestly, it feels like the entire top floor belongs to me anyway."

He had a private suite, a personal shower, a bed, and whenever hunger struck, the executive cafeteria served up first-rate meals. For the past few days, Kang-geon had been living in absolute contentment. And best of all—if one could even call walking into the adjacent office a 'commute'—his travel time was zero seconds.

"Besides, didn't the previous chairmen crash up here during peak crunch periods, too? People are actually praising me, saying I'm frugal and that they can't even begin to fathom how deeply I must love the company."

"Be that as it may, maintaining the dignity befitting the Chairman of Seonghwa Group is equally essential. Especially now that you possess considerable personal wealth."

"Come on, it's not like I have enough to go around buying luxury mansions."

Until now, massive sums had been deposited into Kang-geon's account every month under the label of living stipends. He had saved them simply because he had nothing to spend them on, but buying a residence worthy of the head of Seonghwa Group with that alone was a bit of a stretch.

Yet ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠at Kang-geon's response, Yuna tilted her head in subtle confusion. Kang-geon, seeing her reaction, tilted his head right back. They stared at each other in mutual bewilderment, neither comprehending what the other meant.

Finally, Yuna broke the silence.

"Chairman... were you perhaps planning to buy all of Hannam-dong, rather than just a house?"

"...?"

Kang-geon assumed he had simply misheard her. Not buying a house in Hannam-dong, but buying the entire district itself?

In that split second, he realized that in the frantic whirlwind of recent events, he had completely forgotten one glaring fact. Seonghwa Group was the supreme chaebol conglomerate of the Korean Empire. And the direct owner family of such an empire had naturally accumulated an unimaginable mountain of private wealth. The only hitch was that a bolt from the blue had wiped out every single one of them in one fell swoop.

Save for one person.

"At present, you are the sole legal heir to the owner family," Yuna explained evenly. "Consequently, the primary equity holdings and private assets of the direct bloodline—including the late Vice Chairman Kang Jun-hyuk—will devolve entirely upon you in due course."

"..."

"Naturally, we must account for inheritance taxes, equity structuring, and foundation asset allocations, but..." Yuna swiped lightly across her tablet screen. "Once the inheritance procedures conclude, the liquid cash reserves you will be able to deploy with relative freedom are estimated at approximately one hundred and fifty billion won."

"*Cough, hack!*"

Kang-geon hacked into his fist, violently choking on his own saliva.

And that was just petty cash. If one factored in the actual shares and equity stakes, his true net worth was on the scale of tens of trillions of won. Kang-geon stared silently up at the ceiling.

His vision swam.

He hadn't even fully wrapped his head around being the Chairman of a global chaebol, and now tens of trillions of won were dropping directly into his lap?

"Secretary Choi."

"Yes, Chairman."

"I'm resigning right this second. Hurry up and find the next group leader, will you?"

Kang-geon beamed with pristine, radiant innocence. At such a tender age, he had just acquired more wealth than he could burn through in several lifetimes. Why on earth should he keep grinding away in an executive chair that didn't suit him in the first place?

However, the moment Kang-geon caught the sub-zero chill radiating from Choi Yuna's face, he pivoted with lightning speed.

"Haha... Just a joke, of course."

The trouble was that as the words left his mouth, a strange prickle of dissonance settled over him. Hadn't he explicitly declared to Choi Yuna from the very start that the moment the group stabilized, he was going to walk away from the chairmanship without looking back? So why was he the one walking on eggshells around her?

...Something isn't right here.

Of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠course, at that moment, Kang-geon brushed it off as a passing oddity and let it slide. And regret, as always, was something that arrived far too late.