Yokohama Electron 5
The lodging was the JR Blackwood Hotel in Roppongi, the same place we had stayed the last time.
The middle-aged man waiting in the lobby opened the door for us himself and welcomed us inside.
He spoke to me in English.
"Welcome, Mr. Han Miru. Thank you for visiting our hotel again."
"It’s been a while. I hope you’ve been well."
His name was Ando Yoshihide, the manager of the hotel.
I introduced everyone in turn.
Then I suddenly remembered that Sena had been studying English. She’d said she could handle simple conversation, hadn’t she?
I turned to my little sister and said, "Go ahead. Introduce yourself."
"Right now?"
"Can’t you?"
"Hmph! Why wouldn’t I be able to?"
Good attitude. Language was confidence.
Just as it was natural for a foreigner not to speak Korean, it was natural for a Korean not to speak English. The important thing was not to be afraid of making mistakes, but to speak as much as possible.
Sena stepped forward with a smug expression.
"Okay. Hokason me."
Huh? Hokason?
I was already uneasy. I had a strong feeling I needed to stop her.
But before anyone could, Sena launched into her fluent(?) English self-introduction.
"My neimu is Sena Han. I amu university stu-dant."
What the hell? Why did her pronunciation sound like that?
Before I could even be surprised, she kept going.
"I have a family. Faza, maza, Ando my braza."
"......"
For a moment, my mind went blank.
What in the world was she saying?
How did she know the manager’s surname was Ando?
Seonwu said in a small voice, "Did she just say braza?"
Soyjin nodded with a look of utter disbelief.
"I-I think so."
Why braza, of all things?
You’re not supposed to be doing that.
......Was this something like that?
It wasn’t just me who didn’t understand; Seonwu and Soyjin both looked completely stunned too.
But Manager Ando smiled and said, "Oh! Miss Han, you are a family with your father, mother and brother."
He understood it!
No, how on earth had he understood that? Could it be something only Japanese people could decipher?
Sena nodded.
"Yes! Of course."
Seonwu clapped his hands as if he had just figured it out.
"Ah! So braza meant brother."
"......"
Sena looked downright triumphant, apparently convinced she had done well.
"See? All that practice with my Japanese friend at school was worth it."
No, it wasn’t. It really wasn’t. Don’t practice with that kid anymore.
"Would you follow me? I’ll guide you to your room."
As we followed the manager toward the room, Seonwu asked in a low voice from behind me, "By the way, what was that first word she said? Hokason?"
"......No idea."
Wasn’t that worth at least ten points on a test?
* * *
I had considered booking two rooms, but in the end I just reserved one presidential suite.
There were three bedrooms and three bathrooms, so Sena and Soyjin could use the large room with its own bathroom.
Every time I stayed at a place like this, I thought the same thing: it was good we had partnered with Blackwood International. It meant I had somewhere to stay anywhere in the world.
Leaving money aside, the convenience of always being able to make a reservation was hard to beat.
"Wow! This place is nice too."
Through the window, Roppongi spread out below us in a single sweeping view.
Sena and Soyjin busily took photos.
"I’m posting this in the group chat."
"It would’ve been better if Yejin and Kyung had come too."
We unpacked our bags at an easy pace.
Maybe because the flight had been so short, I didn’t feel tired at all.
"What should we eat for dinner?"
"Let’s just eat at the hotel. We can order room service."
Sena waved a finger.
"Nope. If we came to Japan, we should eat local food."
"What local food?"
"Ramen. Let’s eat ramen."
Leaving a good hotel restaurant behind to eat ramen?
These days there were ramen shops all over Korea, so the novelty factor wasn’t exactly high.
Still, if we had come all the way to Japan, maybe we should eat something that felt like Japan.
"Fine. Let’s go."
Sena and Soyjin quickly searched for a ramen shop near the hotel.
Fortunately, there was a decent place nearby, so we went on foot.
Maybe because it was still before dinnertime, the place wasn’t very crowded. Seonwu opened the menu and asked, "What do you want?"
"Just order whatever you’re good at."
"You’ll want gyoza too, right?"
"Order it."
"Beer?"
Sena answered immediately.
"Absolutely. Draft beer."
I asked Soyjin, "You’re drinking too?"
"Ah, well, I..."
Sena cut in from the side.
"Of course she is. She’s a heavy drinker. She can really put it away."
"Really?"
Come to think of it, back in Barbados she had never seemed to let go of her cocktails either.
Soyjin looked flustered. "N-no, I’ve cut back a lot lately."
Seonwu placed the order in fluent Japanese.
The draft beer came out first.
Sena shouted eagerly, "All right! Kampai!"
We lightly clinked our glasses together.
If I had come alone, I would have eaten casually at the hotel and never stepped outside. Going out like this with everyone made it feel less like business and more like a trip.
"Wow! Ramen."
A moment later, the ramen arrived, and everyone dug in with enthusiasm.
"Is it good?"
Sena nodded hard.
"Yeah."
"Eat a lot."
Since we were out anyway, it might be nice to look around the neighborhood a little.
"Is there anywhere you want to go?"
At my question, Sena answered as if she had been waiting for it.
"A club! I want to go to a Roppongi club at least once!"
"Nope. Absolutely not."
"Aw, why not?"
* * *
The next day.
Sena and Soyjin hurried out early for sightseeing.
If this had been a resort in a thoroughly secured vacation area, maybe I would have been less worried, but hearing that they’d be wandering around a big city made me uneasy.
Before they left, I gave them a thorough safety lecture.
"Always watch for cars, and watch the people around you too. If some stranger offers to buy you something, don’t go toddling off after them."
"What are you talking about? Do you think I’m an idiot?"
"......"
I did think that.
Even though a guide and a bodyguard were going with them, I still couldn’t feel completely at ease.
"Don’t worry, Oppa. If anything happens, I’ll call you right away."
"Yeah. I like that attitude."
I was really glad Soyjin was with her. If Sena had gone off alone, I would’ve been on edge the whole time.
Sena and Soyjin left first, and Seonwu also got up, saying he had a meeting with a game company.
"I’m heading out too. Aren’t you worried about me?"
"You look Japanese enough, so you’ll be fine."
"......"
Honestly, the way he spoke Japanese made him seem even more Japanese.
After Seonwu left as well, I changed into a proper suit and went out on time.
A Rolls-Royce Phantom was waiting in front of the main entrance. A bodyguard opened the door for me, and I climbed in, saying, "Take me to Softbox headquarters."
* * *
I met the man in his sixties in a high-rise building in Minato.
"Welcome."
"It’s a pleasure to meet you, Chairman."
At a glance he looked like a Japanese man, but by blood alone he was completely Korean. He had also been born in Korea.
He said he used the Korean surname Song on purpose so he would never forget his identity, but since he had come to Japan with his parents as a child and grown up there, his identity was closer to Japanese than Korean.
He could barely speak Korean, and in his speeches he often quoted Japanese proverbs.
His shaved head was striking.
When someone on Twitter once said his "hairline recession was severe," he famously shot back, "My hairline isn’t retreating. I’m advancing." It had become a well-known anecdote.
The way he openly showed his scalp without trying to hide it with a side-swept comb-over seemed to say plenty about his personality.
This was none other than Chairman Song Gazuki of Softbox Group.
His Korean name was Song Ilgi.
We exchanged greetings and sat down.
The conversation was in English.
Having studied in the United States when he was younger, he spoke fluent English, so no interpreter was needed.
"Thank you for making the time. I’ve wanted to meet Chairman Song for a long time."
"Me?"
"Yes. I admire you."
He looked a little surprised.
"Really?"
"Yes. If we were to meet, there was one thing I wanted to ask you."
"What is it?"
"Why did you decide you had to go overseas?"
Portals and telecommunications were domestic monopoly industries.
Even on their own, they allowed for a stable and profitable business. But he had kept insisting that he had to expand overseas, and he had put that belief into action.
"For survival."
"Survival?"
"Yes. Japan was already too late. Among developed countries, its aging population was the worst, while its digital transformation was the slowest. At first I tried to change Japan itself, but I soon realized it wasn’t possible. Settling for Japan alone is no different from dying a slow death."
"I see."
The same was true for Korea.
If it didn’t hurry and transform now, it would end up like Japan. In my first life, that was exactly what happened.
"I have one thing I’ve wanted to ask you as well, Mr. Han."
"What is it?"
"Did you really help Chairman Samara escape?"
I burst out laughing.
"Hah! You wouldn’t believe me even if I said no, would you?"
He smiled faintly.
"Actually, Continue Capital has been on our radar for quite some time."
"Since when?"
"The first time I learned the name Continue Capital was when the Cooloud... rather, Snow Crash acquisition was announced. In fact, the Insight Fund first considered investing in Snow Crash. If we’d been able to invest, I would have sold everything to buy it."
The reason he hadn’t been able to invest was simple.
"We negotiated several times, but the two co-CEOs insisted they would never sell. Then one day we were shocked to see that they had sold off their entire stake and left. When I looked into the details, I was even more surprised. I never imagined they would be acquired that way."
Chairman Song Gazuki gave a wry smile.
"If I’d known there was a method like that, I would have used it myself."
Without knowing the future, I would never have known either.
"It was luck."
He nodded.
"Investing is all about having the luck of heaven on your side. You need foresight too, and money. There have been more than a few times when I watched companies I couldn’t afford to buy grow into something huge, and felt nothing but regret."
"So that’s why you created the Insight Fund."
"Exactly. But I didn’t expect PIF to stay out of it."
Making money had one real benefit: it let me meet people like this.
As an investor, he was truly a figure of legend.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say he was second only to White Road’s Chairman Aaron White.
Aaron White was devoted to pure value investing. In fact, as much as 40 percent of his portfolio was in Enple, the company with the largest market capitalization in the world.
Chairman Song Gazuki’s investment style was completely different.
He found startups with potential, acquired them, and poured in enormous amounts of money to make them grow fast.
Then he would take profits through an IPO or a sale.
Over the past ten years, it had truly been the golden age of tech companies. Gasoline and diesel cars were being replaced by electric and hydrogen vehicles, supermarkets by e-commerce, finance by fintech, and companies of every kind were rushing to adopt cloud services.
Thanks to that, Chairman Song Gazuki’s investment portfolio had grown at a frightening pace.
But...
This kind of strategy could make a fortune when the market was rising, but when the market turned downward, enormous losses followed.
As the saying went, when the water drains from the pool, you can see who wasn’t wearing swimwear. Once the bubble burst, the true faces of frauds like Therapis or Thomas Motors, and of weak companies, were bound to be exposed.
Workspace, one of the companies the Insight Fund had invested in, saw its losses and debt revealed right before its IPO, causing its valuation to collapse to a quarter of what it had been and forcing the offering to be canceled. Other Chinese tech companies, such as Jinababa and Dadachuxing, also crashed under sanctions from the Chinese government.
Rex’s bankruptcy was especially devastating.
Major holdings in the portfolio vanished one after another, wiping out not only the huge profits earned over five years but also inflicting losses on the principal itself.
The planned investments came to a complete stop, and investors began showing signs of pulling their money from the Insight Fund.
A classic fund run.
Chairman Song Gazuki looked at me and asked, "So what brings you to see me?"
He probably already knew why I had come.
I gave him my answer.
"I’d like to discuss the acquisition of Yokohama Electron."
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