The Second Gift
The moment official word of Jason Jang’s visit broke, the Korean Empire plunged right back into an uproar.
He was one of the hottest figures in the global AI market—the visionary who had transformed Neovision from a niche maker of gaming graphics cards into a world-dominating semiconductor colossus. And out of nowhere, that very man was landing in the Korean Empire?
Naturally, the internet was ablaze with chatter.
Amid the spiraling public fervor, hours melted away.
The very day after the articles dropped, the man himself set foot on Korean soil.
The arrivals hall of the airport was swarming with reporters. Given how aggressively the press had sensationalized his itinerary the prior evening, quiet was the last thing to expect. Then, through the sliding gates, the figure finally emerged.
A black leather jacket. A relaxed casual tee. And that unmistakable, boyish grin.
The second Jason Jang stepped into plain view, the collective rapid-fire clatter of camera shutters roared like a torrential waterfall.
“What is the purpose of your visit to the Korean Empire?”
“What will you be unveiling during the Playble broadcast?”
“Is this a new product reveal for Neovision?”
“Are there domestic investment projects planned for our nation?”
A relentless barrage of microphones thrust toward his face. Unfazed, Jason Jang came to a halt, raised a hand in an easy greeting, and offered a relaxed smile to the press pool.
“I brought along a few fun gifts for the people of Korea.”
The brevity of his reply sent an electric ripple through the hall. Gifts? Whatever it was, calling it a gift had to mean good news, didn't it? The reporters’ eyes burned with renewed frenzy as they fought to extract even a shred of elaboration.
“You’ll likely be very surprised,” he added.
That was all he gave them. Ignoring the follow-up shouts, Jason offered another breezy wave and strode forward.
Waiting to receive him on the other side was none other than Han Ji-hyuk, the Representative Director and CEO of Green Whale.
“Welcome to Korea, Mr. Jang. It must have been an exhausting journey. I am Han Ji-hyuk, CEO of Green Whale.”
“Pleasure. You pulled together the arrangements remarkably fast.”
“You flatter me.”
Han Ji-hyuk maintained flawless corporate deference. It wasn't merely out of awareness for the flashing camera lenses flanking them. While Green Whale was an undisputed tech giant within the Korean Empire, the man standing before him stood at the absolute zenith of the global AI landscape.
More than anything, this broadcast was a golden ticket for Green Whale. It wasn't simply a matter of viewer metrics or ephemeral hype; it was an unprecedented springboard to engrave the names Green Whale and Playble onto the global stage. For an opportunity like that, the CEO personally waiting at the arrivals terminal was bare minimum diligence.
“Our vehicle is prepared this way.”
Guided by Han Ji-hyuk, Jason Jang and his executive secretary, Alex, climbed into the private luxury van. The heavy door slid shut, silencing the deafening terminal clamor in an instant. The swarming reporters faded into distant silhouettes as the vehicle glided toward the highway, setting course directly for Yongsan.
Jason Jang gazed quietly out the tinted window at the skyline of the Korean Empire—towering skyscrapers of steel and glass, and arteries of asphalt packed tight with orderly traffic. He studied the scenery for a long while before letting out a soft, nostalgic chuckle.
“It’s changed quite a bit.”
Han Ji-hyuk probed gently. “Do you mean Yongsan?”
“Yongsan, certainly. But really, the whole country.” Jason Jang drummed his fingers lightly against the glass panel. Then, his tone shifted subtly. “Where is he right now?”
“He mentioned he would be watching discreetly from somewhere near the venue. He asked me to pass along that he’s very much looking forward to the show.”
Hearing that, Jason broke into an amused, deeply satisfied grin. Well, well...
‘Somehow, it feels like I’m the one being put to the test here.’
With that wry thought lingering in his mind, the van pulled up to the venue. It was 4:30 PM. Exactly thirty minutes remained until airtime.
4:55 PM.
The waiting screen of the Playble special broadcast was already white-hot with anticipation.
Beneath that stark, bold banner on the black display, the live chat flew past at blinding speed.
Back at Green Whale headquarters, the atmosphere inside the main server control room bordered on a frantic religious vigil.
“Concurrent stream connections just blew past 430,000!”
“Overseas routing requests are climbing exponentially!”
“Initiate secondary load balancing on server clusters three and four immediately!”
“Dear God… please hold…” someone whispered under their breath.
Without glancing away from his diagnostic display, the lead network engineer snapped, “Don't pray, watch the error logs!”
“Sir, at this volume, prayer is part of the operational protocol.”
Not a single soul laughed. The pressure was suffocating. Even if Playble was the premier streaming network in the nation, the colossal traffic drawn by the singular name of Jason Jang defied conventional network modeling. Domestic users, overseas tech enthusiasts, developer forums, institutional investors, press syndicates, rival conglomerates—everyone was funneling into a single digital bottleneck.
Down at the physical venue in Yongsan, the situation was just as explosive. Jason Jang’s presence had drawn an ocean of onlookers that spilled far past the designated seating, while pedestrians wandering the nearby electronics arcades kept surging into the perimeter to see what the madness was about. The district was completely paralyzed.
“Thirty seconds to air.”
At the floor manager’s warning, the buzzing chatter below the stage gradually settled. Simultaneously, the towering LED display behind the platform lit up with a rapid montage of nostalgic imagery.
The cluttered, nostalgic stalls of the old electronics market. Towers of corrugated hardware boxes. Young geeks huddled over exposed, humming motherboards. The glowing, jagged pixels of vintage PC games. And finally, a snapshot from twenty years ago: a young Jason Jang in an oversized graphic t-shirt, grinning proudly as he held up an early graphics card.
Right on cue, Jason Jang strode out from the wings.
The moment he stepped into the light, an earth-shattering cheer erupted from the crowd.
“Jason Jang! Jason Jang!”
“Jason! I invested in your company five years ago!”
As that desperate shout rose above the noise, a wave of laughter rippled through the spectators. Having caught the remark via his earpiece interpreter, Jason grinned, pointing a finger directly toward the vocal shareholder.
“Five years ago? What was Neovision trading at back then? Ten dollars?”
“Fifteen dollars! You made me a rich man!”
“Haha! So, what are you planning to do with that fortune now?”
“Dump it right into whatever you invest in next!”
Basking in the shareholder’s unshakeable devotion, Jason let out a hearty laugh. “Are there any other Neovision shareholders in the audience today? Raise your hands!”
Nearly half the crowd hoisted their arms into the air with raucous whoops. Jason shook his head in genuine admiration.
“Wow. Now I finally understand why Korea is so rich.”
The lighthearted joke drew another burst of hearty laughter. With Neovision sitting comfortably at a staggering $190 a share, half the audience would have applauded if he had merely recited the alphabet.
Approaching center stage, Jason Jang planted his feet. There was no grand mahogany lectern. No stiff press conference table with bottled water and microphoned placards. There was only the open stage, the massive display, and a sleek presentation clicker resting in his palm.
“Twenty years ago, I stood right here in Yongsan, personally pitching and selling Neovision’s hardware.” The archival photo reappeared on the screen behind him. “Back then, society dismissed video games as trivial amusement. But inside those virtual spaces, I saw tomorrow.”
His voice was light and conversational, yet carried immense clarity and conviction.
“Faster computations. Breathtaking visual fidelity. Unprecedented immersion. I harbored an absolute faith that one day, mankind would demand computers to render and comprehend vastly more.” He paused, his lips curving upward. “Fortunately, history proved me right.”
Thunderous applause broke out across the pavilion. Letting the wave of appreciation roll over him, Jason cut straight to the chase.
“Today, I came to the Korean Empire for one singular purpose.”
The atmosphere shifted instantly. The air tautened. Down in the live feed, the chat stream surged so violently it blurred into a streak of white text. Jason looked dead into the center camera.
“To establish a collaboration.”
A collective gasp stirred the plaza. A collaboration? With whom? And on what scale? Before the mounting questions could boil over into shouts, Jason raised a hand, gently tamping down the crowd’s reaction.
“Of course, before we unpack that, there is something I must show you first.”
He pressed the clicker.
The colossal LED backdrop dropped into pitch blackness. Then, dead center on the void, a sharp silver emblem ignited.
A breathless hush gripped the entire square. In tech communities across the globe, the dam broke.
The product render materialized slowly across the screen: a streamlined chassis melding obsidian black and polished chrome, featuring an internal architecture far denser than existing data-center accelerators, encased by shimmering dynamic visual overlays representing millions of parallel compute nodes.
Jason Jang’s eyes sparked with pure, youthful excitement. Beaming like a child presenting his favorite prized possession to the world, he spoke into the microphone.
“This is the first gift I brought for you today.”
Low murmurs of awe swept the audience. Jason paced slowly across the stage, maintaining an effortless cadence.
“The AI race is no longer a rudimentary sprint for raw clock speeds. We have entered an era where we must process unfathomable torrents of data, consume drastically less power, ensure bulletproof hardware stability, and train models of unfathomable magnitude.”
Intricate schematics, node maps, and performance vectors populated the display behind him. Yet Jason refrained from drowning the audience in esoteric jargon.
“Let’s put it simply. Twenty years ago, consumers hungered for superior gaming fidelity. So we engineered graphics cards.” The screen shifted to an old-school gaming demo—blocky pixels, crude textures, yet filled with pioneering charm. “And today, modern civilization hungers for intelligent machines. Machines that think faster, learn deeper, and respond with surgical precision.”
The screen transformed once more: massive server clusters, towering racks glowing blue in climate-controlled server farms, neural network weights training in real-time visual simulations.
“To bring that future into reality requires exponentially more computing horsepower. But brute-force compute alone is not enough.”
With a deft flick of his thumb, Jason clicked the remote.
The architectural specifications of Orion flooded the display: throughput multiples that obliterated current-generation benchmarks, an unprecedented leap in power-efficiency ratios, exponential reductions in large-model training cycles, and an interconnect fabric purpose-built for next-gen hyperscale infrastructure.
With every metric that flashed on-screen, the muttering in the crowd swelled into a stunned buzz. The industry veterans and tech-literate engineers in the audience turned pale with shock.
“I-Is that even physically possible?”
“Wait... that power draw... are those numbers verified?”
“What does this mean for Atlas Core?”
“Screw Atlas Core, this isn't just about their rivalry—this flips the entire global AI hardware hierarchy upside down!”
Observing the delightful blend of disorientation and euphoria below, Jason Jang wore a thoroughly contented expression.
“However, the reason I chose to reveal Orion here today is not simply to show off our engineering prowess.”
Jason came to a halt. The overhead stage lights bathed his silhouette. While his eyes still held that charismatic spark, they were anchored by an unyielding gravitas.
“Twenty years ago, I spoke of the future right here in Yongsan. Back then, what I peddled from stalls was not merely silicon boards.” He paused to draw a measured breath. “It was conviction in a faster, more connected world.”
The venue fell pin-drop silent. Only the digital chat feed continued its frenetic blur.
“And today, I stand here once more to speak of that future.”
Orion was never meant to be Neovision's solitary crusade. Hence, the word he had dropped earlier reclaimed center stage.
“No one navigates the dawn of the AI era in isolation. No matter how magnificent an engine you design, you cannot change the world without a partner capable of flawlessly fabricating it, packaging it at scale, and deploying it across the four corners of the earth. That is why I flew across the ocean to Korea.”
The tension in the square snapped taut as a bowstring.
Yet a single, burning contradiction plagued every observer's mind. Who could Neovision possibly partner with on this scale? Green Whale was an IT portal—they didn't own advanced semiconductor foundries!
Jason Jang held his tongue. He knew the spotlight was ready to shift.
“And so, it is time to unveil my second gift. There is someone joining me on stage today. In fact, he is the very visionary who proposed this stage to me in the first place.”
As Jason's voice echoed through the speakers, a single high-intensity spotlight snapped on toward the stage wing. From the shadows, a figure strode into the illumination.
Or rather, a youth.
His features were still kissed with the youthfulness of a boy not yet fully grown into adulthood. Yet his gaze possessed an uncanny, razor-sharp clarity that instantly commanded the gaze of every living soul in attendance.
There was not a single citizen in the Korean Empire who didn't recognize that face.
The 3rd Chairman of Seonghwa Group—
“Good afternoon. I’m Kang-geon.”