I'll Be a Good Son (2)
My mother let out a long, frustrated sigh.
"Good heavens. What on earth were you thinking? And after you finally got into a company like that, how could you just quit? You should've groveled and stayed on."
After nagging me for what felt like forever, she needlessly turned her fire on my father.
"You keep saying useless things like that all the time. No wonder Miru picked it up from you."
"Ahem."
My father had nothing to say in his defense and just coughed awkwardly, turning his head away.
Sena frowned as if she genuinely couldn't understand.
"You said you did it for the company, right? If you exposed the defect, shouldn't they give you some kind of reward? I'm short on allowance lately."
"Reward my ass."
If she'd ever worked in a company even once, she'd never say something like that.
He was lucky he hadn't been sued. If the insolvency hadn't actually been confirmed, wouldn't he be in the audit team room getting interrogated right now?
My father set down his chopsticks and asked me, "What are you planning to do now? Do you think you can get another job somewhere else?"
"Well...."
Word had probably spread, so it wouldn't be easy.
I hadn't just blown the whistle; I'd also slammed into the chairman's son on my way out. It would be hard to land a job at a major conglomerate, and probably even at a smaller company too.
"I've been working nonstop, so for now I'm going to rest a little and prepare for something else."
Sena, listening from the side, puckered her lips.
"Anyone hearing you talk would think you'd worked there for three years. You were only there six months."
Including my regression, it really did feel like three years.
I looked at my parents. They were definitely younger than when I'd last seen them.
At the time, I hadn't thought much of it, but later on they would struggle terribly, and our family would go through so much hardship.
After the company collapsed because of the Primus disaster, they had watched their son do nothing but stay home, play games, and live off part-time jobs, and they worried about me constantly.
That was why, when I said I was going to open a chicken shop with Sunwoo, they welcomed the idea with both hands.
I'd only ever caused them grief in my previous life, but this life would be different.
I said it with confidence. "You really don't need to worry. This life—no, this time—I'm going to work hard and repay you for everything."
Maybe because they could hear how sincere I was, my parents looked at me with pleased expressions. I didn't miss the chance and went straight for the point.
"So, about that... could I borrow some money?"
Apparently that was not what they expected. Both of them jolted.
"M-money?"
"Yes. If I'm going to work hard and pay you back properly, I need seed money."
My mother clicked her tongue. "Oh, you. Where would our family have any money?"
"Could we just take out a loan against this house?"
"...."
"...."
The air around us seemed to grow chilly all of a sudden.
Was that just my imagination?
Sena stood up and looked around.
"Wait here, Dad. I'll go get a stick."
"...."
What kind of little sister was this supposed to be?
I went with my father to a barbecue place near our house.
We ordered two servings of pork belly and soju.
Come to think of it, it had been a long time since I'd talked to my father alone. I hardly came home in the first place.
"Here, have a drink."
My father poured soju into my glass.
"You did well."
"Huh?"
"If something has to be done and it's the right thing to do, then doing it is the right choice. You said you prevented even bigger damage because of it, didn't you? Then you did well. Don't worry too much about what other people say."
I was taken aback.
"You weren't saying that earlier."
My father gave a sheepish smile.
"That was because I was worried about what your mother would say."
While the meat sizzled on the grill, the two of us clinked our glasses. Before long, my father's face had turned bright red.
"Are you really planning to go into business instead of getting a job?"
"Yes."
"Because you think it'll be hard to get hired somewhere else?"
"No. I'd already been thinking about starting a business when I quit."
"Why?"
"Because this is the best chance I'll ever get."
We don't always notice it, but the world is constantly changing.
Only change doesn't happen neatly, step by step. It erupts all at once, explosively, at certain points. This was the very beginning of one of those points, and I had to move before anyone else did.
My father nodded. "At your age, you should try whatever you can. If you're going to run a business anyway, it's better to try early. Even if you fail, it's all experience. Can you work hard at it?"
I answered with confidence. "Yes. I'll work hard."
My father nodded readily. "Then it's settled. If it's around 100 million won, I'll figure something out."
He didn't even ask what I planned to do with the money.
"Are you sure that's okay?"
"I was planning to give you about 100 million won when you got married anyway. Think of it as getting your wedding money early. But if you blow all of it this time, then when you get married you'll have nothing left. Got it?"
"Got it."
At the time, I didn't really understand how hard things were for my father. I only learned later that the company situation wasn't very good.
Even family can have things you won't know unless you pay close attention.
He hadn't said it, but I was sure he had a lot on his mind already. And a few years later, with bad luck piling on top of bad luck, the company would shut its doors.
So this time, I really had to do well.
And I was confident I could.
"All right, then let's have another drink."
I hesitated, then said, "Dad."
"What?"
"Since you're already helping me, could you make it 100 million won... no, could you throw in another 50 million too? I really need a lot of money. I'll pay you back as soon as I make it."
My father's hand, still holding his glass, began to tremble as he shouted, "You little brat!"
Back at my place in Gangnam, I sat down and sorted out what I needed to do next in order.
I was busy drawing up my plans when the prodigal son who'd run off to make games finally came home.
In just a few weeks, he'd become so worn down he looked like a homeless man. No, judging by the way he looked, maybe he really had been living on the streets.
"You're done with development already?"
Sunwoo nodded with an utterly exhausted expression.
"Development's wrapped up. We're bug-fixing now. Release isn't far off, and I swear the number of bugs is going to kill me. One carriage keeps spinning in circles in place, and when a monster hits you, the lower half of your body sinks straight into the ground."
According to Sunwoo, no game was ever completely free of bugs. It would be nice to fix them all, but in reality that was impossible.
So as long as there were no fatal problems that made the game unplayable, they would just launch it.
If something came up, they'd patch it later.
That was why characters could clip through walls or horses could end up flying through the sky.
"Still, I really think this game is going to be a monster hit."
"Oh?"
The game LD Studio was currently developing was called Fantasia Tales.
The name made it obvious enough: it was an MMORPG built on a fantasy setting.
Sunwoo said with a confident look, "You know how PC MMORPGs have been in a slump lately, right? Hardly any new ones are coming out. I guess development costs are too high compared to mobile games, while the returns are lower."
"So?"
"But mobile is mobile, and PC is PC. MMORPGs on a computer have their own charm, don't they? If a big title comes out right now while every other company is playing it safe, it'll scoop up all that pent-up demand at once. Even inside the company, the expectations are insane. You know we've poured in a record-breaking budget, right?"
Not only the company, but the shareholders were bursting with expectations, and thanks to that, the stock price was hitting all-time highs day after day.
Well, as for the result....
I said casually, "What if it flops?"
"What kind of nonsense is that? I'll stake my entire fortune and my wrist on it being a hit. What are you willing to bet?"
Yeah. That game is going to die.
I could stake my entire fortune and my wrist on the service shutting down within a year.
What good was great graphics? Aggressive cash-grab monetization was bad enough, but the final blow came when it was exposed that right after launch, the operators had been creating characters and items at will to deceive other players.
And the company's response only made things worse.
In the end, the disappointed users all turned their backs and left.
But Sunwoo had no way of knowing any of that, so he kept his happiness engine running at full blast and said, "At this rate, I might become a star developer myself, and maybe start my own game company someday."
....
Yeah. No.
You'll end up opening a chicken shop with me and frying chicken together.
Lost in his own pointless fantasy for a moment, Sunwoo looked at me and asked, "By the way, your company was completely turned upside down. Who the hell did that? Do you know them? Don't tell me it's someone you know."
I nodded.
"I do. Someone you know pretty well, too."
"I know them? Who?"
"Me."
"Huh?"
"I was the one who exposed it."
"Quit bullshitting me."
"I'm serious."
"...."
He sat there blankly for a moment, then shouted, "Why? Why would you do that!?"
I answered as if it were obvious. "I couldn't stand by and watch injustice, I guess."
"What kind of bullshit is that? I've never seen anyone as good as you at standing there and taking it when faced with injustice."
....
Was I really that bad?
Well, only this time. He wasn't wrong; I wasn't actually the kind of person who burned with a passionate sense of justice.
"So what happened? Didn't the company say anything?"
"They did."
"Wasn't it awkward at work?"
"It was."
"Then what are you going to do?"
"What else? I quit and came out."
"...."
Sunwoo lost his words again.
Now that I'd come home after so long, he probably hadn't expected his friend to have become unemployed.
"S-so then what are you going to do now?"
That was exactly what I'd wanted to talk about.
"I've drawn up a bit of a plan."
"What kind of plan?"
"I'm going to use the money I've saved up and try starting a business."
"With what money? Did you at least get severance pay?"
"I didn't get severance, but I do have the money I made investing in Red Hole Studio."
At that, Sunwoo nearly jumped out of his skin.
"What? You bought Red Hole Studio stock?"
"Yeah. Five million won."
"That thing skyrocketed."
"It's probably worth around 100 million won now."
Sunwoo's jaw dropped.
"100 million won!? I should've bought it back then too!"
That was always the line people used when someone else made money in stocks.
"Why didn't you buy it?"
"Because I had no idea that game would blow up like that. Nobody in this industry could have predicted it. I played it myself and was shocked. It really was well made. But how did you know?"
"I picked up bits and pieces of information here and there while I was working."
If I hadn't had that money, I'd have been in serious trouble.
"What kind of business are you going to do with it?"
"I'm thinking of starting an investment company and doing things properly."
Even apart from this mess, I had already been planning to quit the company anyway.
When you're an employee at a securities firm, there are all kinds of restrictions on investing. You have to report your investment amounts, trading history, and so on to the company on a regular basis.
That's why some employees just trade under someone else's name entirely.
"Will 100 million won be enough?"
I nodded.
"Not nearly. That's why I borrowed 100 million more from my parents."
I nearly got hit with a glass for that one, but my father lent it to me after making me swear that if my mother found out, we'd both be dead.
"Whoa. That makes 250 million won."
"And I also took out a credit loan for salaried workers. Another 50 million."
Sunwoo asked in disbelief, "But you're not a salaried worker anymore."
A credit loan was an unsecured loan based purely on a person's credit. I only got 50 million because I still had a job with the four major insurances; without that, they wouldn't have approved anything.
"Yeah. That's why I took it out at full throttle right before quitting."
Of course, banks weren't idiots. The moment they found out I'd left my job, they'd jack the interest rate up into double digits and start hounding me to pay it back immediately.
As long as I used it until then, it didn't matter.
"So you put together a total of 300 million won?"
"Yeah. You should invest some too."