Night Walk (3)
Seven Round was a show I’d watched with ridiculous enthusiasm the first time around, so I already knew the whole story.
Yeonhui survived a brush with death thanks to the protagonist, and from there on she traveled with the group. In terms of importance, she came right after the hero and the hero’s friend.
I remembered that the role had originally gone to a rookie actress named Joo Bo-kyung.
Seven Round became a runaway global hit. It did especially well in North America and Europe, far more than in Korea.
The ripple effect was so strong that it even boosted viewership for other Korean dramas and films.
Thanks to that, the actors who appeared in it shot to international stardom as well. Joo Bo-kyung became hugely popular, landed modeling gigs for global brands, and even ended up acting in an American drama.
And yet Jiyu had actually won that role.
I spent a moment imagining Jiyu in that part.
It fit her perfectly.
No—if anything, it was stranger to think anyone else had played that role instead of Jiyu.
This was huge, wasn’t it?
“What happened with that thing last time? You said you auditioned for Director Oliver Page’s film, right?”
“Ah! That’s already finished filming. I only had a supporting role, so I didn’t have that many shooting days.”
“Wow... This time you might really become a global star.”
Jiyu waved her hands in a fluster.
“Oh, no, not at all.”
“Is it hard?”
“It is hard, but it’s fun. And enjoyable, too. It’s all thanks to you, senior.”
“What do you mean, thanks to me?”
As a fan, I’d always wanted things to go well for her, but I’d never imagined they would go this far. At this rate, she might climb to a place I couldn’t even have pictured.
“I got a call from Lee Dong-ho senior a little while ago. Oh! I call him senior instead of manager because he asked me to.”
“Huh? What does that senior want?”
Seriously, why was a girl-group fanatic calling Jiyu? What exactly was he scheming?
Dong-ho senior had no loyalty when it came to fandom.
He didn’t even stick to one main group; he was poking around at every girl group under the sun.
Even Edward Benson, who was also a massive girl-group fanatic, had praised him with a heartfelt, “He loves every girl group.”
Shouldn’t we isolate him from society immediately?
“He recommended that I do an online concert using Surreal Screen. He said it was perfect for me.”
“Really?”
Filming with Surreal Screen had already begun, but concerts hadn’t yet. If she went ahead with one, she’d be the first to claim that title. Being first at something was always good; history remembered firsts.
“Where would you do it?”
Jiyu answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“On Anyverse. They say all online concerts will be held there from now on.”
Anyverse had started out as a shopping app run by a subsidiary of Top Tier Entertainment, originally just a place to sell the company’s idol merchandise. But with the rise of Mukids, it evolved into a comprehensive platform where artists and fans could interact.
Top Tier Entertainment’s idols alone had their limits, though, so they joined hands with Continue Capital.
Continue Capital had invested broadly in Korean entertainment companies, and it also held stakes in the cloud computing firm Snow Crash, making it the perfect partner.
Continue Capital’s Korea branch acquired a 70 percent stake in Anyverse and poured money into a sweeping overhaul of the app.
The first thing they did was slash fees across the board and introduce Penny payments.
Within the app, fans could handle fan club memberships, merchandise purchases, online concert viewing, and reservation of tickets for concerts and events all at once.
They added a live feature so that when an artist went on air, fans would receive notifications and join the real-time chat. They also used Loki so fans could upload their own cover songs and cover dances.
The plan was to pull users away from A-Tube and TokTik through all of that.
There were no separate ads, but users earned points based on views. Those points could then be sent as support to others, or used inside the app to buy merchandise or reserve concert tickets.
Until then, if you wanted to get information about your favorite idol, you had to join that group’s fan café one by one or check the agency’s website manually.
Koreans had it a little easier, but foreigners struggled badly because of the language barrier.
But now all you had to do was go into Anyverse, click the artist you were interested in, and turn on notifications.
It meant the door had opened wider for K-pop to reach people more easily.
Once the app revamp was complete, not only the entertainment companies backed by Continue Capital but also artists from companies it hadn’t invested in joined the platform, and K-pop fans around the world flooded in.
For a time, its download ranking in the United States even shot up to third among social network apps.
The part they had worried about most while redesigning the app was scalpers.
Lee Dong-ho told the entertainment companies, “Whatever else happens, I’m going to wipe out ticket reselling when it comes to concerts, fan meetings, and every kind of live event.”
The resale market for concert, performance, and event tickets was serious business.
There were people who made their entire living off it.
To stop that, platforms usually limited the number of seats one account could buy, but scalpers would spin up hundreds or even thousands of accounts and use macros to reserve tickets.
Then they’d sell those tickets back to fans.
Fans who couldn’t get seats had no choice but to buy inflated black-market tickets and swallow the loss.
On the Anyverse app, macros were blocked thoroughly, and facial and fingerprint recognition were required at payment. Before the concert, you received a QR code for entry, and then your face and fingerprint were checked again to confirm your identity.
That meant tickets could not be transferred to someone else; refunds were the only option.
Of course, scalpers would always look for loopholes somehow, but just doing this would eliminate ninety percent of the existing black market.
There were some voices of concern about it, but most fans cheered with both arms in the air.
I had invested in a great many companies over the years.
Some firms had had their fates dramatically altered by me, while others had remained almost exactly as they were in the first timeline.
O’Connor Burger belonged to the latter category.
It had already been destined to succeed; I had merely added my spoon to the pot.
Even now, O’Connor Burger was wildly popular.
Not long ago, it ranked first in a New York Times survey asking Americans which hamburger they liked best.
Hamburgers were the soul food of Americans. That was why hundreds of franchise brands fought a burger war in the United States.
To become the most beloved burger of them all—that carried a very special meaning.
O’Connor Burger had a few distinguishing features, like its potato bun and eggs, but compared with other hamburgers, it wasn’t insanely delicious.
And taste, of course, was subjective; everyone experienced it differently.
What mattered was the story inside it.
After all, Green Bottle hadn’t become famous in the busy heart of Silicon Valley for slow-poured drip coffee?
The rough outline of O’Connor Burger’s success story went like this.
The O’Connor family was an Irish immigrant household.
Born under a strict father, Sean O’Connor had dreamed since childhood of starting a business in Silicon Valley.
But his father wanted him to inherit O’Connor Pub, and that became a source of conflict between them.
One day, over this issue, Sean O’Connor had a huge fight with his father.
“I’m sick to death of hamburgers! I’m not going to live a life making burgers like you do!”
After shouting that, he crossed the continent and headed for Silicon Valley.
He left home determined to come back successful and prove himself, but the startup he founded with a friend failed before long.
Having lost everything and collapsed in defeat, what surfaced in his mind was the hamburger his father used to make for him when he was little.
When he made and ate that burger himself, he thought of his father and cried.
“I’m sorry, Dad.”
Gathering the courage to stand back up thanks to that hamburger, he bought a food truck and took to the streets. Sean asked his father for help, and his father willingly came through for him.
That was how father and son reconciled, driving the food truck together as they traveled all over California.
That was the beginning of O’Connor Burger.
Dong-ho senior asked me, “Doesn’t that all sound a little absurdly exaggerated?”
“Well, it’s not like none of it happened...”
The broad strokes were more or less the same.
For the record, we hadn’t invented and spread that story ourselves; it had been inflated through the press and through people talking.
He and his father had been a little awkward with each other, sure, but they hadn’t actually fought. If Sean O’Connor had really said something like that to his father, he probably wouldn’t be walking on two legs right now.
I thought of Sean’s father, Carl O’Connor.
A man who looked easily over six and a half feet tall, with a face buried under curly red beard, muscular arms, and tattoos etched across a thick neck.
The first time I saw him, I’d thought he was a pirate from the Age of Discovery. Maybe a guy named Hayreddin Reis?
These days he played the role of O’Connor Burger’s mascot.
In any case, it had everything Americans loved: challenge and exploration, failure and success, the value of home and family, and even father-son reconciliation.
On top of that, it had the image of being beloved by Silicon Valley tech founders and Hollywood celebrities.
How could it not be popular?
The reason I was bringing this up all of a sudden was because O’Connor Burger’s entry into Korea had finally been decided.
Under normal circumstances, O’Connor Burger would have expanded first into North America and Europe—Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany—and then entered Japan as the first Asian market.
But this time, because I had invested in it, Korea was chosen as its first overseas destination.
Because I was going to eat it.
At the moment, the headquarters was already struggling just to keep opening more stores in the United States, so they were looking for a partner company in Korea.
The news that America’s best hamburger was coming to Korea drew strong interest from a number of food service companies.
In the end, they decided to team up with Hwaan F&B, the food and beverage subsidiary of Hwaan Group.
The working-level teams had already finished the backchannel negotiations, and all that remained was signing the contract.
Since this was their first overseas expansion, Sean O’Connor flew to Korea himself for the deal. I sent a car and driver to meet him at Incheon Airport.
I greeted him at the company.
“Welcome to Korea.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Chairman.”
“You weren’t too tired?”
“This is my first time in Korea, and it’s surprisingly close.”
We exchanged handshakes, smiling with the pleasure of seeing each other after so long, when someone peeked out from behind him.
“Hey, Miru. I’m here too.”
Reddish blond hair tied up high, a pair of oversized glasses, a few freckles across the bridge of her nose.
Seeing her, I froze in surprise.
“Trish!”