Gift (2)
I walked through Central Park with Trish.
Trish stretched her arms high over her head and said, “Coming to Central Park really makes me feel like I’m back in New York.”
When you talked to New Yorkers, you could feel how fiercely they loved their city.
That alone told you just how livable it was.
“How does it compare to Seoul?”
“Seoul’s nice too, but they don’t have a park this big.”
There were plenty of parks in Korea that carried the name Central Park, but the real thing existed on an entirely different scale.
If you wanted to see it properly, one day wouldn’t be enough, and if you got lost here, you could easily end up stranded.
“So what happened with buying the house?”
“Ah! The contract’s in progress right now.”
It was such a massive deal that the paperwork had taken several days already.
“Really? What did you buy?”
“That one.”
I pointed to a building that stood alone, making its presence known among the surrounding skyscrapers. It was finished entirely in a curtain wall and tapered slightly as it rose, giving it the look of a blade of glass.
The reason it could be built so high was that Rose Organization had purchased the air rights from the neighboring buildings as well.
Trish’s eyes went wide.
“Y-you didn’t mean you bought the penthouse there, did you?”
“That’s right.”
“No way…”
“You know about it?”
“Of course. The media kept calling it the most expensive residence in New York. More precisely, that’s how Rose Organization advertised it. I was wondering whether anyone would ever actually pay that price, and now Miru went and bought it.”
“I didn’t pay full price. I got a discount.”
“How much of a discount?”
“The actual price is $200 million, but it’ll probably be reported externally as around $230 million.”
The previous record for the most expensive real-estate transaction in New York had been the penthouse in the building across the street. It sold for $212 million, bought by Jamie Ryman, the head of LymanGold PE.
Rose Organization wanted the prestige of having sold the most expensive penthouse in New York.
So the official sale price would be $230 million, and the difference would be recovered another way.
“Is this an investment?”
“No.”
Price appreciation on ultra-luxury homes might look enormous, but in terms of actual returns, it didn’t beat an ordinary apartment.
In a market with so few sellers and buyers to begin with, it was hard to sell at fair value anyway.
“I’m giving it as a gift.”
“A gift? To who?”
When I told her the name, she nodded.
“Oh! That makes sense.”
“Doesn’t it?”
Trish’s eyes shone as she said, “Take me to see it.”
“Now?”
“Yeah. When else am I going to get to see a place like that? I want to take some photos too.”
Once I gave the gift away, though, bringing her inside would be difficult.
“Come on, then. I’ll show you around.”
Since I didn’t have a key, I called Eric Rose.
I’d expected him to tell one of his staff, but Eric Rose himself came running over to the building.
“I’m sorry to bother you when you’re busy.”
“Not at all. I happened to be nearby.”
Just as he was greeting me, he caught sight of Trish standing beside me and looked stunned.
“Wait, Trish…?”
“Oh! Eric!”
That reaction left me confused.
“You two know each other?”
“Ah! He’s my friend’s older brother.”
Eric Rose laughed.
“How long has it been?”
“Exactly.”
“You used to look like such a tomboy. You’ve gotten beautiful.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. How have you been all this time?”
The two of them stood there talking for quite a while.
I looked at Eric Rose and thought, What the hell? He’s just her friend’s older brother, and he’s acting like they’re practically family.
The United States was the world’s number-one economic powerhouse.
Because its economy was so large and the history of capitalism so deep, countless investment firms fought fiercely for survival.
If you asked people to name the best investment firm, opinions would split.
But if you asked which firm had grown the fastest over the past three years, everyone would point to the same one.
Continue Capital.
In just a few short years since its founding, it had scored massive wins in major investments and made its name known around the world.
By now, practically every financial institution was watching Continue Capital’s every move.
The company’s CEO was David Lockhart.
Once mocked as a failed investor, he had now risen into the ranks of the world’s great financiers.
People wanted to know what he was thinking, and prominent politicians from both the Democrats and the Republicans lined up for a chance to meet him.
And yet, no matter how much fame he gained or how much money he made, his life hadn’t changed all that much.
He still lived in the same house, and he still drove the same car.
New York’s elite bent over backward to invite him to parties, but he turned them all down, and he paid no mind to the women who approached him either.
He simply devoted himself to his work.
Many people praised him as the world’s greatest investor.
But David knew better than anyone that wasn’t true, because the person who had hired him was the real world’s greatest investor.
David thought of his boss.
In terms of raw skill and career experience, he himself was better.
But investing wasn’t about that.
The financial markets were a place where even the most celebrated experts went down in flames. To earn more than everyone else here, you needed something that went beyond knowledge or experience alone.
What was that, exactly?
Maybe it was something intangible, like luck or intuition. And his boss had that.
If he hadn’t, there was no way he could have achieved such enormous success in such a short span of time.
By the time he’d finished work and was getting ready to head home, a young Asian man stepped into his office.
When David saw his face, he was shocked.
“Boss!”
“How have you been?”
“What brings you here without telling me first?”
He smiled.
“I wanted to surprise you. Are you free right now?”
“Yes, yes. Is something big going on?”
“I’ve got a gift for you.”
David looked mildly flustered.
“A gift?”
I went up to the penthouse in Central Park Tower with David.
As soon as we stepped inside, New York’s night skyline spread out below us. It felt as though we were floating in the sky.
“What do you think of the place?”
David looked around the house.
“It’s excellent. Surely you didn’t buy this house?”
“I did.”
I held out the key card to him.
“Take it.”
“What is this?”
“I told you. It’s a gift.”
At my words, surprise flickered across David’s face.
“You’re giving me this house?”
“Yes. You’re paying rent for the place you live in now, aren’t you? As the CEO of Continue Capital, you should be living somewhere like this.”
Considering how much he had earned over the years, he was more than entitled to a gift like this.
I called it a gift, but strictly speaking, I wasn’t buying it and handing it over directly. If I did that, I’d have to pay half the price in taxes.
So Continue Capital would pay him a performance bonus equal to the price of the house plus the taxes, and the title would be transferred into his name.
For some reason, however, he looked rather reluctant.
I watched him and said, “I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“No matter how much money a person has, if they’re given a $200 million house as a gift, they’d be over the moon.”
After hesitating for a moment, he answered carefully, “I’m truly grateful for your kindness, Boss. But I’m comfortable in the house I live in now.”
“That’s usually what people call a lie.”
“……”
Who in the world hated a good house and a good car?
Well, there were a few.
Aaron White, for instance, still lived in the house he’d bought when he got married, for $100,000, and he drove a car that was already twenty years old. He even ate McMuffins every morning.
And the founder of IKEA, the richest man in Sweden, drove an old car and flew economy class without even owning a private jet.
But at the very least, David wasn’t one of them.
I remembered an article I’d seen about him in my first timeline.
As far as I recalled, it hadn’t said anything about him living in a shabby house or driving an old car. On the contrary, it had mentioned him attending lavish parties and making headlines for affairs with beautiful women.
For all I knew, he’d been living the way most people with money lived.
“Your salary and bonus can’t be small, so where does all your money go? You wear the finest suits and drive the finest cars at work, yet after you get off duty, you keep clinging to that old house and old car. Why?”
He donated tens of millions of dollars without blinking, yet when it came to spending money on himself, he was stingy.
He didn’t enjoy parties. He didn’t meet women.
Why was that?
The reason was probably…
“Because of Meggie?”
“……”
David said nothing.
I waited quietly, as if I intended to hear the answer no matter how long it took.
After a long while, David spoke in a voice that sounded like he was forcing down emotions about to spill over.
“Meggie has been suffering in a cramped hospital room ever since she was born. If I could take that pain in her place, I would have done so a hundred times over. And yet do you think I, as her father, have any right to happiness?”
If someone had told him to throw away his life for his child, he would probably have done it without hesitation.
If the problem had simply been a lack of money, at least there would have been hope. Then he could have earned the money and paid for treatment.
But no matter how much money he spent or how good the care was, Meggie’s illness had never gone away.
What had it been like for him to watch that?
He was the co-CEO of Continue Capital.
He stood in a position where he could enjoy anything he wanted.
But as long as his daughter was in a hospital, none of it meant a thing.
I handed him the documents.
“Actually, this is the real gift. Want to take a look?”
“This is…”
“Lincaspic, the pediatric lymphoma drug developed by Lunavax, has been approved in Korea.”
The Lunavax drug had been in development even before Yuseong Bio invested in it.
So while it did finish a little earlier than it had in the first timeline, the difference wasn’t that huge. The bigger difference was how quickly the clinical trials and approval process had moved.
It was originally supposed to take two more years, but I’d cut that period down as much as possible.
In the meantime, the phase 3 trial had been completed, and applications for sale had been submitted to multiple countries. It was currently under review by the FDA in the United States and the EMA in Europe.
But Korea had approved it first, ahead of both of them.
The reason the review had moved so quickly was that Chairman Yoo Jae-ho had put his weight behind it.
The power of the Yuseong Group reached far and wide, influencing not only politics and business but academia and the media as well.
Of course, even Chairman Yoo Jae-ho couldn’t force through approval for a drug that was ineffective or had serious side effects.
The Korean system wasn’t that easy to push around.
Still, if something could be approved, it was possible to make it happen as quickly as possible.
“FDA approval hasn’t come through yet, so it can’t be used in the United States, but it can be used in Korea. We’ve already arranged a bed in the VIP ward at Yuseong Hospital, so she can receive treatment there. How about taking Meggie there for care?”
“……”
David couldn’t say a word for a long time.
At last, he forced the words out.
“Is that really true?”
“Yes.”
“If she gets treatment, can she be cured?”
“Yes. Meggie will make a full recovery, and after she leaves the hospital, she’ll live in this house. I promise you that on my name.”
A moment later, he seemed unable to hold himself together any longer and collapsed to the floor. His shoulders were curled inward, shaking violently.
“I’m going to head out first, so take your time looking around.”
Just as I turned to leave, I heard his voice behind me, thick with a tangle of emotions.
“...Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
I left David behind and got into the elevator.
When the doors closed, I let out a long breath and pressed two fingers against the corners of my eyes.
Ah. I almost cried too.