Everyday Life 2 (5)
I thought back to my first life.
It was during the second cabinet confirmation hearings that Representative Gi Donguk’s wife’s corruption came to light.
The opposition had seized on it at the time, but he denied knowing anything about it and was appointed Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport without much trouble.
The case was then handed over to the courts, but it ended in an acquittal on the grounds that there was no evidence he had taken any illicit gains.
But this time was different.
It was presidential election season now.
Both major parties were desperate to find faults in each other.
The New Reform Party launched a fierce offensive, and Im Chang-sik, who could be called his backer, had already lost the primary and gone to the United States.
Calls for his resignation came pouring into the party, and the Our People’s Party held an emergency caucus to discuss expelling Representative Gi Donguk.
In the end, unable to withstand the worsening public backlash, Representative Gi Donguk submitted his own party resignation letter.
“Today, I leave the party with the conviction that the party must come before the self. However, I want to make it clear that all of this is nothing more than a malicious witch hunt by the media. Neither I nor my family have taken any improper profits. It may take time, but the truth will surely come out. But I do not wish for my party to bear the burden because of me. Therefore, I am leaving the Our People’s Party so that my family and I can clear our names and return to the party. Once again, I apologize to our party members and the public for the disappointment I have caused.”
* * *
As the situation spiraled, Choi Hyeonsook stepped down from her post as residents’ representative, and the push to install a smart security system naturally collapsed with it.
The residents talked about nothing else whenever they ran into one another.
“So that’s why she kept saying they absolutely had to install that smart security system or whatever it was.”
“Who would’ve thought she was funneling the work to her brother’s company?”
“I wonder how much she was taking all this time.”
“There’ll probably be a ton more if someone digs deeper.”
“What if this drags down property values?”
“I saw in the news that her son was allegedly hired through special treatment too.”
“Honestly, that son of theirs went to some mediocre university. It was always suspicious how he ended up at a big company.”
“My kid got turned down in the interview and came home crying, and this guy lands a job at a major corporation because his dad’s a member of parliament. I’m furious.”
On the other hand, a very different rumor began circulating about Kwon Mija’s family.
“Their son must be incredibly filial. The car, the apartment, all of it looks like he bought it for them.”
“Is it true he swept through a department store because he didn’t know what his mother liked?”
“It’s true. I nearly fell over when I saw the gifts he brought home.”
“And apparently their son went to Korea University. He works at some investment firm and makes a ridiculous amount of money.”
“He’s single, and they say he isn’t even seeing anyone.”
“If he’s such a good son, wouldn’t he definitely meet someone if his mother introduced them?”
“But there used to be some bad rumors about him, right? That his husband stabbed his business partner in the back?”
“Oh, come on. No way that’s true.”
“Honestly, it was probably all nonsense spread by the residents’ association president.”
“Exactly. She’s used to pushing out residents she doesn’t like with stuff like that.”
“Oh my God, really? I had no idea.”
“We nearly got the wrong idea about them!”
Choi Hyeonsook was so enraged she felt like she might go mad.
Until now, she had been a local notable, the wife of a famous politician. Now she was treated like nothing more than a criminal who had embezzled the residents’ maintenance fees for her own gain.
The rumors were so vicious she could barely bring herself to step outside.
When she did go out and ran into a resident, they either avoided her or gave her a cold stare.
Until now, she had ruled this apartment complex.
The security guards and residents alike had bowed their heads and greeted her first whenever they saw her, and everyone had worked hard to stay in her favor.
Whenever there had been a resident she disliked, she had isolated them by spreading ugly rumors about them. But this time, she was the one in the same position.
Do they have any idea how hard I worked for this apartment complex?
Every day she checked the state of the grounds’ cleaning and parking management, gave orders to the guards, and did everything she could to raise property values by going around to real estate agents nearby and preventing them from listing homes below market price.
And yet, all it took was the accusation that she had steered contracts to her brother’s company for her to become the object of scorn.
Because of this, her husband had been forced to leave the party, and her son could not even go to work because he was too conscious of what people thought.
This is all because of that family! If only they had never moved in!
In any case, the situation had become one where she could no longer hold her head up in the neighborhood.
In the end, Choi Hyeonsook packed up her husband and family and moved away as if fleeing in the dead of night.
* * *
I heard about it from Sena and finally relaxed.
Sunwoo asked me, “What have you been so busy with lately?”
“I was dealing with some family matters.”
“Family matters are important. Did you get it sorted out?”
“Yeah. Cleanly.”
That should mean my parents could keep living in that apartment without any trouble.
And once Sena graduated, they could move to Gangnam if they wanted.
“How’s work going?”
“Good. But lately I’ve been feeling a little strange.”
“What do you mean?”
“Honestly, when I started thinking about founding a company and making games, I had no idea how to actually build one. But once I started, the ideas just kept flowing. It’s like I’ve made something similar before.”
I was caught off guard for a moment.
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
“You know that feeling of familiarity? Like déjà vu.”
“……”
Wait.
Come to think of it, when we were hit by that car that day, I hadn’t been the only one on the motorcycle. Sunwoo had been riding with me too.
Then what if he had regressed with me?
I grabbed Sunwoo by the shoulders and asked, “Anything else come to mind besides that?”
“Like what?”
“Seeing the future, or knowing what’ll happen next.”
“Like lottery numbers?”
“Yeah. Exactly that.”
“Hmm.”
Sunwoo folded his arms and thought for a moment.
“No. I don’t think I’m getting anything like that at all. The games just end up getting made well, that’s all.”
“……”
So I was wrong?
Was I really the only one who had regressed?
Sunwoo suddenly widened his eyes.
“Oh! Wait a second……”
I flinched. “You remembered something?”
Sunwoo said with a grave expression, “What if I was actually a genius developer? What if I just didn’t know it until I quit my job and awakened to it? Yeah! That must be it!”
“……”
Why was I having this useless conversation with him first thing in the morning?
I changed the subject.
“Let’s go to work.”
“You’re going too?”
“Yeah. I’ve got a meeting with Chairman Yoo Jae-ho.”
* * *
The middle-aged man looked at me and said, “Somehow, it feels like it’s been a long time.”
“That’s because it has been a long time.”
I shook hands warmly with Chairman Yoo Jae-ho.
“You look much better than before.”
“Do I? Honestly, I’ve been finding work enjoyable lately.”
The stock price had been climbing steadily, so there was no reason I wouldn’t feel good.
When we sat down, his secretary brought tea and coffee.
We drank and talked.
“It’s nice to have our companies right next to each other.”
Chairman Yoo Jae-ho seemed pleased as well.
“I’m glad we sold to Continue Capital. Thanks to that, I get to see Ahreum more often too. She came with Representative Lee Dong-ho the last time.”
Lately they seemed to be attached at the hip, and for some reason that made me proud.
“Did your business trip go well?”
The reason we were only meeting now, even though I’d been in Korea for quite a while, was that he had been away on business.
“Yes.”
“You went to China, right?”
Chairman Yoo Jae-ho nodded.
“I attended the groundbreaking ceremony for the semiconductor plant in Xi’an.”
China was the world’s largest producer of semiconductors, and it was also the largest consumer.
So from the semiconductor companies’ perspective, it was the most important customer of all.
“How is the mood in China these days?”
“I met with some senior officials, and they didn’t seem particularly concerned about sanctions. The rise of Chinese semiconductor companies is frightening, honestly. The sanctions are only accelerating their technological development.”
The paradox of sanctions, so to speak.
The United States and China were in a semiconductor war.
For several years now, the U.S. had been imposing all kinds of sanctions on China’s semiconductor industry.
At first glance, it would be easy to think Chinese semiconductors had been crushed, but both production and consumption were still growing.
The U.S. talked tough about sanctions, too, but in reality its exports of semiconductor-related products to China kept rising every year.
Even just last year, 19 of the 20 fastest-growing semiconductor companies were Chinese.
Still, with the data center build-out and the expansion of semiconductor plants on top of that, they must have been stretched thin.
“Lately I’ve been feeling like the pressure on us has gotten a lot stronger.”
“It’s inevitable.”
Yuseong Electronics had originally been the largest memory semiconductor producer.
But recently it had been reaching into foundry and memory semiconductor design as well.
In foundries, TSMC stood in its way, and in design, companies like Qualcomm, Intel, and Enple held the line. In effect, every semiconductor company in the world had become a competitor.
And then there were the cloud companies, too.
The fight to claim future dominance had already begun.
“It seems Enple and Guble are both furious over this incident. I spoke with Glenn Connelly, CEO of Guble, as well, and he made no effort to hide how displeased he was.”
“It was bound to happen sooner or later.”
Only the timing had been brought forward because of me.
In my first life, it had only been Legend Games, Enple, and Guble in court. But this time, because of me, Snow Crash and Yuseong Electronics had been dragged in as well.
We might have scored a kind of technical victory, but the real issue was what came next.
They had surely realized by now that we were a threat.
I thought of my meeting with CEO Tim Keaton.
That meeting had been a process of confirming that we were enemies. The next fight would not be easy.
Chairman Yoo Jae-ho sipped his black tea and said, “I hear Yokohama Electron is going to be put on the market this time.”
“Yokohama Electron? You mean……”
“The world’s third-largest semiconductor equipment company.”
Of course I knew it.
It was one of the names that always came up when analyzing the semiconductor sector.
“That company is already for sale?”
“Already? Did you know it was going to be sold?”
“Ah……”
I felt a slight jolt of embarrassment, but I nodded calmly.
“Yes. I thought if they were going to sell it, that would be the first thing they’d unload.”
It was the kind of prediction anyone could make, so Chairman Yoo Jae-ho nodded without suspicion.
“I see.”
The parent company of Yokohama Electron was Softbox Group.
Its industry was telecommunications and information services. In Korean terms, it was something like a company fused together from Neotin and LK Telecom.
The chairman was Song Gazuki, a Japanese man of Korean descent.
By industry, it leaned heavily toward the Japanese domestic market, but it was famous around the world.
And the reason was simple: it was one of the biggest players in the startup world.
Softbox Group itself had originally been built through Chairman Song Gazuki’s aggressive mergers and acquisitions. After that, it continued buying stakes in companies all over the world.
One famous anecdote was how it invested twenty million dollars in the early days of Jibaba and turned it into roughly one and a half trillion dollars.
It also invested in companies like Qupang, Iver, and Workspace.
Softbox made more money from investments than from its core business, and its share price had risen so much that it had become Japan’s second-largest company by market capitalization, behind Toyota.
And yet…
Just in the last quarter, it had posted a loss of more than three trillion yen, while its debt ratio kept climbing and its stock plunged, setting off alarm bells throughout the company.
And when you traced that outcome back, the cause was, ultimately, me.