Convenient Payment (2)
Yang Jeong-uk had investigated Han Miru thoroughly.
Han Miru had nothing to do with Primus, and he wasn’t really connected to Yang Ja-eun either. At least, that was how it had looked. Back then, right after everything blew up, Yang Jeong-uk had assumed that I, too, would be doing badly.
Who would ever hire a whistleblower?
I probably won’t be seeing him again.
But not long after that, he heard my name again.
What? That bastard is a representative for Continue Capital?
Continue Capital was a massive private equity firm that stood shoulder to shoulder with the world’s leading global investment houses. It was dozens of times larger than DA Financial Group.
There had even been talk that Han Miru had attacked Hanjeong Group and blown the whole conglomerate apart, and that he had also led the GL Chemical and GL Entech incidents.
What Yang Jeong-uk later found out was that the head of the Korea branch was none other than Lee Dong-ho, an assistant manager from the research department.
Did Dong-ho bring in his junior, Han Miru? Then how the hell did that assistant manager become branch manager?
No matter how many times he turned it over in his head, none of it made sense.
What the hell is going on?
He even began to suspect that he might somehow be tangled up in a far larger conspiracy.
And yet, while he had been shoved to the fringes of the group and left to live in humiliation, the man who had brought him to this point was racing ahead, thriving.
Just thinking about it made his blood boil.
And then, all of a sudden, that bastard appeared right in front of him.
It was the first time I had seen Yang Jeong-uk since the Primus Fund scandal.
One thing I noticed right away was that he was shorter than I was. Strange. Back then, he had somehow seemed huge.
That was how much a person’s perspective changed depending on where they stood.
Yang Jeong-uk ground out, as if he were chewing glass, “What brings you here?”
“I came because I have something to tell you.”
“You have something to say to me?”
Seeing him brought the Primus Fund disaster back to mind at once.
The worst fund fraud case in history. One that had ruined countless lives.
Mine had been among them, too.
Fortunately, I had regressed to a point before it all happened and stopped the catastrophe early. If I’d come back after the fact, I would have spent this life regretting everything, too.
The ringleader, CEO Park Tae-il, was arrested at Incheon Airport just before he could leave the country.
Because it had been such a huge case, Park Tae-il received an unusually harsh sentence for a financial criminal: ten years in prison. He was behind bars now.
If it hadn’t been for Yang Jeong-uk, then that terrible disaster in the first timeline never would have happened, and I never would have regressed in the first place.
I said to him, “If you’re even thinking about stirring up some kind of management-rights dispute, you should wake up and forget it.”
“What?”
“Even after causing a mess like this yourself, do you still want to keep playing at management? If it were me, I’d keep my head down and live quietly, reflecting on what I’d done.”
Yang Jeong-uk’s expression went cold. “I heard you met Executive Director Yang Ja-eun at DA Securities yesterday.”
“You hear news fast.”
It was common knowledge that he was scheming to claw back the heir position.
But the odds of him succeeding were as close to zero as it got.
Things were different from the first timeline. The Primus Fund scandal had been judged a disaster brought on by his own poor judgment.
What shareholder in their right mind would support him becoming chairman?
And yet, he seemed completely oblivious to that fact.
I told him the truth.
“Even if something were to happen to Executive Director Yang Ja-eun, they’d bring in a professional manager. There’s no way you’d inherit the chairman’s seat.”
That set him off. “This group was supposed to be mine!”
Hearing that made me think of Ju Cheol-jin, whom I’d met not long ago. For some reason, Korean chaebol heirs all seemed to think of their companies as personal property.
If that was the case, then they should stop listing them on the market and run them as one-man companies like I did.
Yang Jeong-uk forced himself to calm down and said, “I’ll ask you one thing.”
“What is it?”
“Did you expose it because you were following your sister’s orders?”
...What the hell is he talking about?
The fact that he was still spouting nonsense like that told me he hadn’t come to his senses at all.
I let out a long sigh. “I exposed it because the fund was rotten. What would orders have to do with it? I didn’t make up a nonexistent scandal out of thin air.”
Then he slammed his fist on the table and shouted, “Don’t lie to me! You teamed up with my sister and exposed it on purpose without reporting it to me!”
...
There was no point in talking.
People believed what they wanted to believe.
I looked him straight in the eye and said, “Just keep living quietly like this. Then nothing will happen to you.”
“You think you can stand there and say that to my face and get away with it?”
“Then what are you going to do about it?”
He looked ready to throw a punch at any second. And yet, strangely enough, I didn’t feel afraid at all.
Was he weaker now? Or had I simply become stronger? No—maybe it was both.
For some reason, I almost laughed.
Why had I ever been afraid of this man in the first place?
I took the documents out of the envelope I’d brought and laid them out in front of him.
“If you look at this, you’ll understand that no matter how hard you run around appealing for support, you still won’t be able to push out Executive Vice Chairman Yang Ja-eun.”
He swept his eyes over the papers in disbelief.
They detailed the business agreement between Continue Capital and DA Financial Group.
“Continue Capital will help Executive Vice Chairman Yang Ja-eun take the chairman’s seat.”
DA Financial Group was the largest financial chaebol in Korea.
But it was nothing compared to Continue Capital. If I really wanted to, I could buy the whole thing outright.
Of course, acquiring a financial company still required regulatory approval.
Even so, just having Continue Capital behind her would be enough to make it impossible to overturn Yang Ja-eun’s position.
Surely he understood that now.
He glared at me and shouted, “Who the hell are you?”
“Me?”
“What’s your relationship with Continue Capital?”
Not many people in Korea knew my true identity.
But for some reason, I felt like I should tell him.
“I guess you still don’t know. I’m the owner of Continue Capital.”
“What? What did you say?”
He looked as if he hadn’t heard me properly, so I said it again.
“Continue Capital is mine.”
...
He stared at me as if I’d just told him the sky was green.
Well, it wasn’t exactly easy to believe.
After all, until just a short while ago, I had been nothing more than a lowly new hire, while he had been the favored heir apparent.
But now the positions had completely reversed.
I was the owner of a giant private equity firm, and he had been reduced from chaebol heir to a mere executive.
“You, you’re the owner of Continue Capital?”
“Yes.”
“Ha... That’s ridiculous.”
Believe it or not, then.
I left him there, laughing in disbelief, and stood up.
“Then I’ll be going.”
I drove back to the company.
I went into Yuseong Town D Building, which was now mine, and rode the elevator up.
Dong-ho, who was working at his desk, looked up when he saw me. “Where did you go?”
“I went to see Yang Jeong-uk.”
“Jeong-uk... Wait! Executive Director Yang Jeong-uk?”
“Yes.”
That made Dong-ho widen his eyes in surprise.
“Really? What’s he been up to lately?”
“He was at the DA Financial Research Institute.”
“Hmm. I see. So he really has been pushed all the way out to the sidelines. But why’d you meet him?”
“Just because.”
Dong-ho said pityingly, “That’s rough.”
“What’s rough about him?”
“If he hadn’t caused that accident back then, he’d be chairman by now, wouldn’t he?”
...
I wondered whether he could still say that if he knew he’d nearly died because of Yang Jeong-uk.
When I stared at him for a while, Dong-ho grew flustered.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
I let out a sigh. “You’re better off not knowing.”
“Huh? No, wait—what do you mean? Now you’ve just made me curious.”
There were already dozens of simple payment services fighting for attention, so the fact that a financial company was entering the market wasn’t, by itself, huge news.
But once people learned that it would be based not on credit money but on cryptocurrency, and that the company had signed a business agreement with Continue Capital, the market reacted immediately.
Fueled by expectations for fintech, the stock prices of the group’s affiliates—DA Bank, DA Securities, DA Card, and the rest—rose across the board.
By contrast, the shares of competing simple payment companies dipped slightly on fears that competition would intensify.
Yang Ja-eun rose to the vice-chairman position and announced plans to link the simple payment service with the bank, securities, card, and insurance divisions.
Shareholders strongly backed the Yang Ja-eun regime.
Watching all of that unfold, Yang Jeong-uk screamed in rage, “Aaaah! Han Miru!”
MFW signed a contract with SW Games and made a game to promote its brand.
The first one they released was for the Quikshaka brand.
The game was called Quikshaka Ocean World, and it let players enjoy surfing and other water sports against an ocean backdrop.
Each time a wave came in, you had to press the arrow keys and buttons with the same precision as a rhythm game. It was easy at first, but the higher the wave, the harder the input became.
If you succeeded, your character would stand on the surfboard, ride the wave in style, and draw everyone’s applause. If you failed, you flopped into the water and thrashed around helplessly.
Anyone could make a game in Block Valley.
Because of that, there were games of every imaginable kind, and only a tiny fraction of the thousands out there ever became popular.
And yet Quikshaka Ocean World climbed into the top 50 not long after release, then rose all the way to number one in less than a week.
Quikshaka had been a brand known only among surfers in Orange County.
They had put up a website and an online shop, but they had never run a single TV or magazine ad. Then Quikshaka Ocean World became a hit, and orders suddenly came flooding in.
Before long, every product sold out.
"We’re getting nonstop inquiries asking when new stock will arrive. Even the inventory in our stores is gone, to the point where we can barely keep the business running."
Min Ah-reum answered calmly. “Got it. I’ll line up fabric and a production factory right away.”
After hanging up, she thought back to when Han Miru had first said he wanted to promote the brand through a game and had wondered what on earth he was talking about.
Normally, when people talked about promoting a clothing brand, they thought of fashion shows, pop-up stores, TV commercials, or marketing through influencers. Who would ever think of a game?
Still, she had secretly been looking forward to it after hearing him say it would work out well, but...
Min Ah-reum clicked her tongue in amazement. “This is a monster hit.”