Giving Without Reserve
The chat was already boiling over.
"Hey, you lunatics! That never happened. And blacklist every manager making political comments!"
The chat was running hotter than I'd expected. Before things could spiral into genuine outrage, I smoothed it over by explaining that the endgame-gear bit had been a joke, then picked the thread back up.
"Honestly, compared to other companies, the scale of this gift is pretty massive. Just the raw cost of the building materials alone would come out to roughly seven or eight million Rena. Factor in the labor and the value of a plot sitting right next to the Pokémon Center, and you're looking at whatever the market will bear. Around twenty million Rena?"
"Th-that much?"
Park Bong-sik answered in pure shock, and I gave him a solemn nod.
There was no lie in what I'd said. I was simply leaving out a few inconvenient details.
Sure, it's worth that much. But that's exactly why there's nobody who can actually buy it. It's the ultimate luxury good.
Even floating a price of twenty million Rena would make every player on the server think twice before daring to make an offer. Oh-ha Company had recently made some money off quartz sales, but most of that was company funds, and they were already burning through it on Mending enchantment books and gacha pulls.
In the end, it was a white elephant — too expensive for anyone to take off our hands. Why? Because the second Rena-ttang started tightening the tax policy, this building was going to get hit with an absolute tax bomb.
Right. So this is the chance to dump it cleanly.
Park Bong-sik, who had no idea about any of the hidden facts, was staring in open astonishment — and so were Apple-mong, Dananyang, Rim-ani, and the rest. They'd all played the game themselves. They knew exactly how hard it was to scrape together twenty million Rena.
Which was why they all insisted they couldn't accept it. The gift was simply too much.
So I casually rolled out the justification I'd prepared in advance.
"Look, it's an expensive house, sure, but honestly I don't need it anymore. You all saw it. I've been yelling in world chat that our company building was for sale. I even posted a notice on the board in front of the Pokémon Center. Two full days, zero interest. That's when it hit me. Ah! Nobody on this server has the spare cash to buy this place. It's become unsellable real estate."
"Why do you have to get rid of it, though? It's such a nice building. Just keep it."
"Great question! The truth is, we're moving. You all know about it, right? The server admin's My House inspections this week."
"Yeah, yeah. That's why all our company staff scrambled to build houses too."
"Exactly. So we flattened a plot about a thousand meters west of here and started construction. We finished the My House builds — and then the problem hit."
"What problem?"
"Commuting between our personal houses and company HQ is waaaaay too annoying. Every time you need one item, you're walking a thousand meters. And this whole area is already saturated — there's nowhere left to build. So we decided to just rebuild the company headquarters from scratch."
"Ah, so that's the situation…"
It was a thoroughly prepared cover story. A house that had outlived its usefulness and become a management headache. Two days of hard selling with not a single buyer rich enough to bite. So was it supposed to sit there forever as pure decoration?
And then, with perfect timing, Park Bong-sik had wandered into Rena World.
"Ah! That was it. That's when I thought — I'll just dump this on sucker Uncle Bong-sik and take the credit."
"I just heard that! I really heard that. You definitely said sucker. You said sucker!"
"Aigoo! Looks like Uncle Bong-sik needs a hearing aid. When did I ever say that? Hmph! If you don't want it, fine. Even when someone's giving you a house this expensive, you've still got complaints."
"Huh? No, it's not that I have complaints… Ahem! Maybe I misheard?"
A plausible justification was on the table. Even so, the twenty-million-Rena figure was so enormous that Park Bong-sik still looked hesitant.
But I still had a hidden card left to play.
"Everyone, go."
"Huh? What do you…"
Leaving our bewildered visitors behind, the staff of our company who'd been standing by sprang into action. Their targets: the curtains covering the pure white wall dead ahead. The ceiling. The second-floor terrace. The streetlamps in the courtyard. One by one, the secrets we'd tucked carefully out of sight were unveiled before every eye in the room.
"Hah!"
"Whoa! What is this!"
"Ah, don't do this to me, seriously! My eyes!"
Framed display photos we'd installed all over the company building had been enlarged for maximum visibility — and every single one of them was of Park Bong-sik. His companions stared in horror. Fair enough. I'd deliberately curated the most devastatingly charming selections available.
The second-floor ceiling, for instance, featured him in a maid outfit doing a full manspread. The first-floor wall displayed the dead-eyed wreck of a man who'd just finished a forty-eight-hour outdoor stream.
"See? This wasn't some spur-of-the-moment decision. The second I heard Uncle Bong-sik was coming, we got to work. This house is already contaminated. You have to take it."
"Hey! What are you talking about? Having my photos in it makes it contaminated?!"
Before long, public opinion had swung decisively in our favor. I'd prepared a reasonably sound justification, and more importantly, I'd delivered the one thing viewers valued above all else — entertainment.
If anyone was still hatereading after all of that, they were the kind of anti who'd never change their mind no matter what you did. People like that were a lost cause. Best to write them off from the start.
"I really do appreciate the thought, but… this is… it's just such an expensive house."
The viewers were sold, but Park Bong-sik still seemed a little overwhelmed. Running Star University had made him hypersensitive to anything that smelled like a free ride. Accepting a gift this big would leave him feeling indebted — like he'd have to pay it back someday — and that was what made him hesitate.
"The location is tempting as hell, but no matter how I look at it this is too big a gift. I'll just take the thought…"
"Shh! Put that away. Put it away."
Oh no you don't. If he didn't take it here, I was the one who'd be in trouble. Already the merciless tax bomb Rena-ttang was going to drop was flashing through my mind. Sure, resident outrage would eventually force her to cut the rates in half — but even half was nothing to sneeze at.
If I hand this building off to Park Bong-sik, I score massive goodwill with his fandom, dodge the future tax problem, and the story after that…
This transaction wasn't the end. I already had plans for what came next.
When Rena-ttang's tax bomb finally hit, what would become of Park Bong-sik? A building sitting right next to the Pokémon Center would land him with a tax bill he couldn't possibly handle. He'd come after me to settle the score for sure.
Heh. And just like that, a brand-new storyline would open up between the two of us.
Factoring in that future arc, today's building absolutely had to change hands as a gift.
So I decided to play the cheat code.
"Aigoo! Uncle Bong-sik, don't stress about it so much. Twenty million Rena is whatever… Next time I hop into an MCK I'll just pull another forty or fifty thousand Candies. It's nothing, right? Right?"
The key was delivering it in the most smugly loaded, leisure-dripping voice imaginable — like I genuinely believed every word.
"You— you are seriously the worst. An MCK isn't enough. Hey! Seo-a, you are registering for Myeolmangjeon, no excuses. We're settling this properly in Myeolmangjeon. We're putting penalties on the line and going all the way. Let's end this for good!"
As expected, the fastest way to get under a man's skin was to bring up his game skill. Unable to stop himself from seething, Park Bong-sik was now invoking Myeolmangjeon itself.
I cheered silently.
The King of Pangea TV, singling me out and telling me to enter Myeolmangjeon? The name recognition boost among teams hunting for roster spots — and among their fans — was going to be enormous.
Truly, King Bong-sik, the Giving Tree!
Today, once again, my gamble paid off.