LD Studio (1)
I discussed future investment plans with David. Because I could draw on Rush Fund capital whenever necessary, my room to maneuver had widened considerably.
“I’m planning to keep increasing our investments in games going forward.”
“Is there a reason?”
“Because it’s going to be one of the biggest growth industries in the years ahead.”
Enple, Guble, AMZ, NS, and WeChat alike were all eyeing the market. Among them, NS was the most serious. Satya Sharmalan, the third-generation CEO who was credited with reviving NS, picked cloud as the company’s core business after that—and later went all in on games.
But the truth was, there was an even bigger reason than that.
“My friend likes games.”
“Ah! The one you mentioned before.”
Sunwoo’s dream was to start a game company and make his own games. In the first timeline, he’d failed just as I had and ended up running a chicken shop, but this time was different.
I’d already promised him that if I invested, I’d help him found a game studio. I intended to cover every bit of funding he’d need for the startup and development process.
He couldn’t possibly fail after I’d gone this far to lay the groundwork for him, could he?
“I’ll introduce you sometime.”
“All right. I’m curious, too.”
I pointed to Senior Dongho, who was working beyond the glass wall, and asked, “How’s he doing now that you’ve been teaching him the ropes?”
David answered with calm composure. “He’s not exceptional, but he isn’t bad. To be honest, I’m a little curious why you chose him, Boss. You could have found plenty of people with better skills.”
If I’d only cared about raw skill, I wouldn’t have needed to bring Senior Dongho in at all.
But...
“Because I can trust him.”
David gave a faint smile. “Trust matters more than anything.”
The next day, Zombienado 2 was finally released.
It didn’t provoke the kind of explosive public reaction that set the whole world on fire, but among the die-hards, the reception was still pretty good.
While I was checking the online reaction, Sid called me.
“Have you seen Zombienado 2 yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Still not? Why not?”
“I just woke up.”
“I’ve already watched it twice. It’s a genuine masterpiece!”
“Really? Is it that fun?”
“Yeah. I think it’s ten times, no, twenty times better than the first one. I’m going to leave it playing beside me while I work.”
“...”
“When are you going to watch it?”
“Uh, soon.”
“I’ve got so much I want to say, but I don’t want to spoil anything. Call me after you’ve seen it.”
“Ah, got it.”
I really did need to watch it soon. But I still couldn’t bring myself to do it alone. Come to think of it, I should probably help promote the film while I was at it.
I called Trish.
“Hi, Miru.”
“What are you up to?”
“Working, of course.”
“Do you happen to like movies?”
“Obviously. I love movies.”
“Then do you want to watch one with me?”
“Oh! A date invitation?”
“You’re not with a boyfriend who’s about two meters tall, are you?”
“Luckily, no.”
“Then I’ll call it a date. When are you free?”
“I’m free right now, actually.”
“You said you were working.”
“I can slip out if I say I’m doing some reporting. Which theater should I go to?”
“Come to the JR Blackwood Hotel.”
“The hotel?”
“I’m planning to watch it here.”
“...”
“Ah! I meant the seminar room at the hotel. It’s a movie that never got a theatrical release.”
“I, I see. All right. I’ll head over right now.”
I hung up and frowned to myself. Was she about to say something else just now?
A little while later, I met Trish in the hotel lobby. For some reason, it felt like I’d been seeing her a lot lately. We headed to the seminar room together.
Trish smiled brightly as we walked. “So what movie are we watching? I’m really into romantic comedies.”
...I was already starting to feel guilty.
Without saying a word, I started the film.
The movie began with Prisoner’s prison-logo intro.
Two hours later, Trish was wearing a complicated expression that roughly translated to, What exactly did I just watch?
She couldn’t possibly be angry, could she?
Looking at me, she asked, “Why did you want to watch something like this with me, of all people?”
I answered lightly, “Because we invested in it. I was hoping WST might run a promotional piece about the film...”
“No.”
“I’ll pay for the ad space.”
“Still no.”
“...”
I didn’t get a movie promo article out of her, but she did agree to cover Prisoner itself.
I contacted Prisoner and congratulated them.
“I watched Zombienado 2. Congratulations on the release.”
Linus, the CEO, burst out laughing.
“Haha! Thank you, President. The movie came out a lot better than we expected, so both the director and the actors are very satisfied.”
“...”
“Fernando said he wants to start on the third film right away, so we’re already putting our heads together and writing the script. We’re planning to finish the screenplay within a month and move straight into shooting.”
“...”
“Ah, but now that we’re writing it, the third one may end up being bigger in scale. Is that okay?”
“Bigger than this?”
“Yes. It looks like it may even go into space.”
“...”
“Why would a zombie movie go into space?”
“Don’t worry. Continue Capital will back the production budget however much you need.”
“Oh! Thank you. Fernando will be thrilled.”
“I’ll stop by the company sometime soon.”
“Yes, understood.”
He answered with energy and hung up.
Now it was time to contact Sid and talk about Zombienado 2. I had to praise it without reservation.
I was just trying to clear my head and dial the number when another call came in first.
It was Kang Sunwoo.
What was this about?
I answered the phone.
“Hey.”
“Are you still in America?”
“Yeah. I’m in New York right now.”
“When are you coming back?”
“I’m basically done with work, so I should head back soon.”
“What are you doing there?”
“I’ll tell you when I get back. Have you still been getting worked to the bone at the company?”
Sunwoo let out something that sounded almost like a sigh. “I’m resting comfortably at home.”
“You’re on vacation?”
“No. I got fired.”
“...Huh?”
Wait.
That hadn’t happened in the first timeline.
Along with LEXON and Let Marble, LD Studio was one of the companies lumped together as the “3L”s, and it was the largest game company in Korea.
Its market capitalization stood at roughly 30 trillion won, and it employed about 4,500 people. Even compared with major game companies around the world, that was a formidable scale.
The company’s beginnings went back to 1997. At the time, LD Studio wasn’t a game company at all, but a firm that developed enterprise software. It had been founded by Jin Taekyeong and Park Hyunjong, who’d been seniors and juniors in college.
Then Kim Jae-kyung joined them, and they began developing the online game Brotherhood. It hit at just the right time, riding the explosive rise of PC bang culture in Korea, and the result was a runaway success.
From that point on, games became the company’s main business. LD Studio kept the hits coming with online titles like Blood and Magic, and its momentum only grew.
Then the mobile era arrived. LD Studio released Brotherhood M, the mobile version of Brotherhood, and scored an even bigger success than before, which was how it had risen to become Korea’s top game company.
Executive Director Park Hyunjong was a co-founder of LD Studio alongside CEO Jin Taekyeong. His stake was 8.6 percent, putting him in second place behind Jin.
Recently, however, he’d run into a ridiculous problem.
He had a son who’d been born when he was in his early twenties.
The boy was bright and good at his studies, so he’d been admitted to New York University and later earned an MBA before working at Mirae Investment Securities.
After building such a glittering résumé, his son had proudly joined LD Studio.
Park Hyunjong had never doubted that the boy would one day follow in his footsteps. Then, in less than a year, his son found himself under police investigation.
He’d secretly generated items inside the game and sold them to users for profit, pocketing illegal gains in the process.
When Park Hyunjong learned that his son had been involved, he was shocked.
He ordered the matter buried as neatly as possible and separately contacted the users who’d been harmed, offering compensation.
But the user refused and went public with it through the press and online communities, and the situation spread like wildfire. Once users began threatening a large-scale protest outside headquarters, the company had no choice but to admit fault and bow its head.
Staff members even started posting on anonymous boards, arguing that Park Hyunjong should apologize and take responsibility as well, and his position at the company was weakened dramatically.
He simply couldn’t understand it.
His son was so lovable it felt as if he could have put him in his eye without it hurting. He was nothing but kind and innocent, so why on earth would he do something so rotten?
“Why on earth did you do it?”
At his father’s question, the son cried out in grievance, “It’s all because of that bastard! If it weren’t for him, none of this would’ve happened!”
According to the son, he’d been lured into investing in a pump-and-dump stock by someone around him and taken a huge loss.
Trying to make up for that loss, he’d borrowed money from people around him and thrown it into one thing after another, only to watch the damage snowball.
So, he claimed, he’d had no choice but to do what he did.
As if that wasn’t enough, the money he’d made that way had later been thrown into a company called Thomas Motors and vanished as well.
“Who was the bastard?”
“Kang Sunwoo from Development Team 3.”
He looked into Kang Sunwoo right away.
By then, Development Team 3—the team that had made Fantasia Tales—had already been disbanded, and the employees were being interviewed internally so they could be reassigned elsewhere in the company.
That punk lured my son into a pump-and-dump scheme? And then he sold at the top and walked away with the cash himself?
There was no way he could let an immoral employee like that keep working for the company.
So he pulled every string he had to make sure no other development team would take him, and in the end, he got him fired.
I listened to Sunwoo’s story and couldn’t hide my surprise.
“So you got fired because the executive director thought his son’s mess was your fault?”
[The assistant paused because no action is required here.]
“Pretty much.”
...
That item-creation scandal had happened in the first timeline, too. And back then, the executive director’s son had been involved just the same.
I remembered it clearly because Sunwoo had been cursing up a storm every chance he got when the incident broke.
Honestly, if you looked at the way he’d been swayed into investing in a pump-and-dump stock by someone else, it made sense that something similar could have happened before. It wasn’t as if KNC International was the only manipulated stock in the market.
In the first timeline, he must have lost money on some other scheme. And then he’d gone and done exactly the same thing again.
But this time, because he’d happened to follow Sunwoo into investing in KNC International, Kang Sunwoo had ended up marked by the executive director.
Only then did it all make sense to me.
Borrowing money for Sunwoo and investing in KNC International with him was something that had never happened in the first timeline. And yet somehow, because of that one change, Sunwoo had incurred the executive director’s wrath and been fired from the company.
So this is what they mean by the butterfly effect.
“As for me, I can live with it, but the other Development Team 3 employees are in trouble too, since nobody wants to hire them either. If this goes badly, all of us might end up fired, not just me.”
In truth, it wasn’t that serious a situation.
If he was going to found his own company anyway, then leaving the company was part of the plan. But there was a difference between walking out on his own and getting kicked out.
He’d been wrongfully dismissed. There was no way I could just sit on my hands and do nothing.
“Hey.”
“What?”
“Want me to get revenge for you?”