Young-hoon's Business Blueprint (1)
He was just drifting off to sleep when the phone began ringing, infuriatingly persistent.
It grated on his nerves, but he ignored it anyway.
Yet the ringing simply would not stop.
With the nagging feeling that it would keep coming until he answered, he squinted at his phone screen.
The caller was Chairman Choi.
“Chairman, what brings you to call on a Sunday morning?”
[I just wanted to hear your voice, Young-hoon.]
“Save that sweet talk for your lady friend, sir. Was there something you actually needed from me?”
[How on earth do you zero in on exactly what I want, every single time? Now that's a remarkable talent, let me tell you.]
“That's only because you'd have absolutely no reason to call me on a Sunday morning, Chairman. And yet here you are, calling—so it must be business.”
[You've got me there. If nothing urgent came up, I was going to have you come to lunch today with Jang-ga here.]
“When two chairmen summon me, I come running no matter what.”
[Ha, that's straight out of a song lyric. You really are overflowing with charm. Anyway, come to my house in Seongbuk-dong around noon. I'll read you the address—can you take a memo?]
Young-hoon scrambled for a pen and readied himself to write.
“One moment. All right, go ahead. Seongbuk-dong, XXX... got it. I'll see you around noon.”
[See you then.]
The moment the call ended, Young-hoon began getting ready to go out.
Even starting now, he'd be cutting it close to make it by noon—especially with it being Sunday, when traffic conditions could shift unpredictably.
Hurriedly dressed, Young-hoon swung a leg over his beloved motorcycle and set off for Seongbuk-dong.
Fortunately, he arrived at Chairman Choi's Seongbuk-dong residence without being late.
The moment he pressed the doorbell, the gate swung open. He parked his bike, and there stood Chairman Choi and Chairman Jang, already waiting outside.
“Why are you standing out in the cold? I could've just let myself in.”
“When my savior comes calling, of course I come out to greet him. But what in the world is that junk heap of yours? Looks a good twenty years old if it's a day. No, this won't do. I'm buying you a car right this minute.”
“Choi-ga, that's already my turf. I've got Secretary Byun looking into it as we speak—one will be delivered to Young-hoon soon enough. So drop the whole car business, would you?”
“And why can't I just gift him one myself? Young-hoon, you don't mind used, do you? A year or two off the lot, barely been driven. Come on, just walk with me a minute.”
Chairman Choi led Chairman Jang and Young-hoon down to the underground garage.
In the fairly spacious garage sat close to thirty luxury foreign cars, parked in neat rows.
“These all belong to my eldest son. The fool never even drives them, but he keeps buying more anyway. It's a waste of parking space, so pick whichever one you like and take it home. The one you rode in on—I'll have it scrapped.”
Young-hoon was grateful for Chairman Choi's generosity, but snatching up whatever was offered was hardly good manners, so he declined once, as a matter of form.
“If you hand over a car without even asking your son, what might he say to me later? So I'll simply accept the kindness behind the offer.”
Chairman Choi's voice rose a notch.
“What, you think he bought these cars with his own money? It was my money, every one of them. I'll prove it to you right now—just hold on.”
Chairman Choi dialed his son, exchanged a few sharp words back and forth, then hung up.
“He claims he's out on a golf course entertaining a client— utter nonsense. The only one that boy knows how to entertain is himself; I know better than anyone he's no entertainer. Anyway, I've told him to let you pick anything you like, so don't feel burdened.”
“Still, how could I possibly... And more to the point, I can't show up at the office in a luxury car like these.”
“You made enough from selling me that elixir alone to feed three generations comfortably—and you're telling me you plan to keep grinding away at a company that pays you pocket change and works you overtime every single day? Until when, exactly?”
“I have thought about quitting, but I haven't settled on a concrete plan yet. If things take shape properly, I'll resign. Until then, I intend to keep showing up. It shouldn't be more than a month at the outside.”
“Oh ho. So if the plan were solid, you could quit as early as tomorrow?”
“I couldn't quit tomorrow at the drop of a hat. Though the timeline would move up, sure. I have work in progress—there's a proper handover to do, or I'd catch hell for it.”
“If you were my son, I'd hand you the inheritance and tell you to take life easy, one slow day at a time.”
Chairman Jang, who'd been listening alongside, chimed in with vigorous agreement.
“He's right. My daughter refuses to come back from America at all. Says I should give every penny I've ever earned back to society when I die. Does she have any idea how I busted my back to make this money? Would you give it all away?”
“Don't make me laugh. If I announced I was donating my fortune to society, my children would probably have me committed to a psychiatric ward and declared legally incompetent. Those ones would do it and worse.”
Then, as if a sudden thought had struck him, Chairman Jang's expression turned dead serious, and he pressed Chairman Choi with a pointed question.
“Hold on, Choi-ga. Something's off about you.”
“What did I ever do?”
“Why are you making eyes at Young-hoon? You've got two sons to hand your business over to, don't you!”
Chairman Choi flinched.
He had drawn up a plan to win Young-hoon over and tossed out the bait—only for its intended target to show zero interest while that scatterbrained Jang-ga snapped the bait right up. There was no question about it: that old fox was clearly cooking up some scheme of his own to snatch Young-hoon away.
“And what about you, exactly?”
The truth was, Chairman Jang had his own eyes on Young-hoon too.
He had naturally assumed he held priority over Choi-ga and had been patiently waiting for the apple to ripen—but Choi-ga's attitude had turned suspiciously aggressive.
Watching this unfold, he began to feel like the dog that chased the chicken only to end up staring at the roof. He couldn't let things go on like this.
A full-blown contest for Young-hoon was about to erupt.
Meanwhile, Young-hoon found the whole situation bizarre.
He'd come for a simple lunch, and here were the two men said to hold more cash than anyone in South Korea, bickering like neighborhood kids.
Just how extraordinary did they think he was, to growl at each other over him as though some great war were about to break out? Ever since he had acquired the ring of the Archmage Hains, the things happening around him had been far from ordinary.
“Chairmen, what's gotten into you two?”
Flustered by Young-hoon's reaction, Chairman Choi opted for a strategic retreat.
“Jang-ga, let's call a ceasefire here for today. It doesn't look good to be clawing at each other in front of a guest who came for lunch.”
“If that's how you want to play it, I've got no objection.”
“Good. Now—why were we down here again?”
“You were going to gift Young-hoon a car, remember?”
“Ah, right! This is why they say you should die before you get old. Listen, Young-hoon—I'll pick out something suitable and have it delivered to your place, so handle the rest yourself. Drive it on weekends, sell it off, whatever suits you. Now let's head upstairs. Lunch is waiting.”
And so the first round of the contest for Young-hoon ended in nothing more than a light round of probing.
Chairman Choi mentioned that he lived with his eldest son and daughter-in-law. The house was so vast that he occupied the main building while the young couple lived in a separate annex—though the annex was nearly as large as the main house. So while they technically lived together, he said he rarely laid eyes on them outside of mealtimes. His only consolation was that his grandsons came by now and then to keep him company.
Chairman Choi's mansion, much like the chaebol chairman's homes often shown on television, was filled with stately antique furnishings.
The furniture in the house Young-hoon had moved into just yesterday was extremely refined and luxurious in its own right, but compared to Chairman Choi's, it didn't even register.
The lunch Chairman Choi had prepared was a lavish feast.
No doubt the housekeeper and his eldest daughter-in-law had arranged it all themselves, but Young-hoon ate with genuine relish all the same.
Partway through the meal, he caught himself thinking how much better everything would taste with a dash of Magic Seasoning—but out of respect for the effort of the people who had cooked it, he decided against it.
The biggest reason, truthfully, was that he still didn't consider the Magic Seasoning a finished success.
After lunch, the three men moved to the study and continued with easy conversation.
Young-hoon stirred Magic Seasoning—his elixir powder—into the tea the housekeeper brought, and shared it with the two chairmen, who both seemed deeply satisfied.
Once they had savored the tea at leisure, the real conversation finally began.
“Jang-ga, when I woke up this morning, my young lady suddenly looked beautiful to me. She was never hard on the eyes to begin with, but lately, with me giving her plenty of water, she seems to have gotten even lovelier. Wouldn't you say so, about Ji-hye?”
“Huh? I was thinking the exact same thing. Ji-hye's face has gotten prettier, and her stamina's improved enormously. She used to barely make it through the second half, but now she seems to have built up the endurance to go into extra time. I'd been wondering whether it was all the water I've been giving her.”
Apparently these old codgers, just like his brother-in-law, thought of the bedroom as a football match.
Impressive stamina, for men their age. Going into extra time meant putting in a good four or five hours of work—and it occurred to Young-hoon that the women on the receiving end of all that were every bit as remarkable.
“So we've added 'makes women prettier' to the list of effects? My sincere thanks to both chairmen for your service.”
Chairman Choi answered with a hearty laugh.
“Didn't we say we'd act as your test subjects and your sales force? And to do that properly, shouldn't we know the effects inside and out?”
“Choi-ga's got it right. Leave the elixir sales entirely to us. Don't even think about trying to sell it on your own. A draught like that only fetches its proper price when it's sold by people like us—men with money and unquestionable credibility.”
“That's exactly what I've been saying! But that's not why we asked you here today, Young-hoon. We wanted to hear your plans for the future. As you said yourself, you're hardly going to cling forever to a company that pays you pocket change, are you?”
It seemed the two of them had coordinated their script before he even arrived.
The conversation was about to turn into a serious business discussion, which meant he needed to answer with care.
Young-hoon counted himself lucky that he'd sketched out his future business plans just last night.
Still, he couldn't fathom why these two gentlemen were so interested in his plans.
“It's true I've been thinking about my future direction. Nothing's been fully fleshed out yet, so I was planning to share it once the plan became clearer. But if you don't mind, I can tell you what I've come up with so far.”
The two men, as though they'd been waiting for exactly that answer, urged him to speak up at once.
“There we go—so you do have a plan of some sort? Let's hear it. I have a feeling there's something we can help with.”
Young-hoon drew a deep, steadying breath and began to lay out everything he had been conceiving.