New Assignment
James had no intention of getting involved with the rest; that was ST Group’s problem to handle. Besides, Colt had already chewed him out for stepping in on Choi Yeong-jin’s mess in the first place.
“Um...”
She didn’t understand why her mouth had opened, but she could already guess what would happen if the conversation ever made it into ST Group’s hands.
“...Please spare me.”
“You picked a fight with ST Group? You know what Chairman Kim’s like...”
Thud.
James left the reporter behind, her legs giving out as she collapsed onto the floor, and went back into the shop.
“...What am I supposed to live on now?”
Her career as a reporter was over, of course, but at this point it wasn’t her career she needed to worry about so much as how to survive life in prison with any shred of dignity left.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
When James came back into the shop and showed Jung-ho and Joo-ho the video on his phone, the color drained from both their faces.
“......”
“......”
“No wonder Chairman Kim keeps going on about manners and etiquette. If they come at you this deliberately, there’s really no way to fight back, is there?”
If he had actually brawled with the man earlier, it would all have been caught on the reporter’s camera. They would have been stuck with no way out, forced to pay a settlement, unable to refuse any future request for an interview, and dragged around by the nose.
“We’re alive because of you, hyung.”
“Phew. That really was close.”
“For now they didn’t get us, so I think we should hand the rest over to the strategy office.”
“Send me the video and the materials. I’ll pass them along to Director Ma.”
“Got it.”
Director Ma Sang-hoon called Jung-ho as soon as he received the video.
“Director. This is Kim Jung-ho.”
-Jung-ho. What the hell happened?
“We came to a college-area bar with James hyung, and a reporter latched onto us.”
-So after meeting the chairman, that was the next stop? Was anyone else there?
“Yes. Suzy was there too.”
-...You mean SBC reporter Kang Jung-yoon, right?
“Please handle it appropriately.”
-We’d already had our eye on her. She’s done plenty of filthy things. There have been quite a few chaebol kids who’ve been burned by those people already.
“Is that so?”
As she had already confessed, they had been deliberately targeting not just entertainers but chaebol heirs as well, and until now they’d mostly succeeded. This time only James had thrown the plan off course.
-They’ve got a nasty reputation in the entertainment industry too.
“Really?”
Through Director Ma, Jung-ho learned everything about what the YouTuber connected to reporter Kang Jung-yoon had been doing all this time. Their targets had included singers and celebrities just starting to rise, along with the agencies that represented them, and through maliciously edited testimony from so-called whistleblowers, those targets had been left with the worst possible reputations. But the actual court rulings were completely different. Most of the entertainers and agencies had been found not guilty. They had won in court, but it was a hollow victory. The malicious rumors had been blasted all over the place by the YouTuber and SBC, while the fact that the courts had cleared them barely got any attention at all.
They’d planned this attack on us with everything that came after it in mind.
If the man they’d provoked had suffered even a minor injury, a not-guilty ruling would have been hard to come by. Once the outcome of a trial could be guessed in advance, a prior settlement became essential, and that would have meant a considerable sum of money.
It wasn’t the money that mattered. It was the chairman’s disappointment.
Jung-ho had never once disappointed his father, and he never wanted to. If today’s situation had gone through, he would have been the one broken by it, even more than by his father’s disappointment.
-Gather up the people who got hurt this time and go after them all at once. Cut off the sprouts and tear out the roots, and they won’t be able to do this ever again. The evidence is solid, so it shouldn’t be too difficult.
“Thank you, Director.”
Later, Director Ma would contact the victims based on the materials James had secured, and they would be able to pursue a joint lawsuit. It was a matter that would affect not only the victims from the past, but also the coercion still being carried out against them in the present.
After confirming the facts through Director Ma, Jung-ho had no choice but to bow deeply to James once more.
“Thanks to you, hyung, we avoided a disaster.”
“From now on, don’t pretend you’re common folk and come to places like this. If you go somewhere that suits a chaebol family, stuff like this won’t happen, will it?”
“You’re right. We came someplace full of people for no reason.”
The gathering ended there. Once an incident had already blown up, there was no reason to linger any longer.
“Hiiing. We finally made time to come out, and you’re already leaving?”
“If Director Ma hears about this, it’ll only be a matter of time before Chairman Kim does too. Go straight home.”
“Then we’ll see each other separately.”
“When have we ever not seen each other separately? Be careful on your way.”
James held Suzy in his arms, while Jung-ho cleared his throat and signaled for them to separate.
“Ahem!”
But James went beyond an embrace, drawing Suzy’s face toward his own.
Joo-ho, not wanting to watch, turned his head away and grabbed Jung-ho’s arm just as his brother was about to cough again.
“Hyung, if you try to stop them, it’ll only get worse.”
“My brother can’t even get a girlfriend and just works at the company all day...”
“Then you should try telling Father that.”
“......”
Both of them understood that the relationship had begun not through Suzy’s own will, but because of her father and mother.
How long are they going to keep doing that? There are people watching, too!
Still, he didn’t want to keep seeing his little sister kissing a man out on the street.
“Hyung. You should let go now!”
“Tch.”
“Jeez. Brother is just...”
“Let’s go.”
Jung-ho took Suzy by the arm, and Joo-ho quickly said his goodbyes too.
“I’ll see you again next time.”
“Sure. See you again.”
James watched the three of them recede into the distance, envy in his eyes.
Family and siblings...
Once again, he felt keenly that Suzy had grown up in a truly wonderful environment.
“Lucky...”
His American adoptive parents were the first to come to mind, and after that came the memory of his biological mother, who had died at the hands of Choi Jeong-san.
If you had lived, I would have treated you so well...
It felt as though having even one family member left alive would have been a comfort, but James was utterly alone.
......
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
When James got home, he suddenly missed his mother and teleported to the East Sea.
Pop.
......
Before it was the place where Choi Jeong-san and Park Jin-tae had died, it was the place where his mother, Jeong Min-ju, had been killed.
Standing on the shifting waves, with the wind carrying the salty scent of the sea, James remembered her.
Swish.
The only thing that could be called a memory was the old photograph in his hand now. It was the one surviving picture of her, left behind while sorting through the officetel Park Jin-tae had managed.
“I’m sorry... there aren’t any memories left between Mom and me.”
That was why his heart ached so deeply. His mother had loved the child she brought into the world enough to give her life for him, and yet nothing remained in James’s memory at all.
Splash.
James lowered himself onto the water and pressed his palm against the seawater.
“...Mom.”
Plink.
Several tears slipped from James’s face and lent their salt to the sea.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
The convention center where the Consumer Electronics Show, CES, was being held was packed with businesspeople from all over the world. It was an event that brought out every major electronics company on the planet.
Held in New York at first, the event took place every two years in Las Vegas and Chicago, and this time it was Las Vegas’s turn.
In the past, CES had centered on home appliances, but recently companies with the latest technologies in electric vehicles, drones, artificial intelligence, and robots had joined in, turning it into a place where you could see the trends of cutting-edge technology all at once.
“...It’s dazzling.”
Looking at the brilliantly displayed electronics and vehicles there, James felt as if he’d stumbled into a new world.
“JimJim, don’t say a word. You don’t have the right.”
Under normal circumstances he would not have taken that from Colt, but at the reprimand James only nodded.
“...Okay.”
“The TY Telecom booth is stuck in a corner, and all you did was focus on the ST Group booth, so what exactly were you planning to do?”
“I told you, I didn’t know...”
The number of Korean companies taking part in this exposition was considerable, and TY Telecom, Korea’s number one telecommunications company, was one of them. Not knowing that, James had only secured a good booth for ST Electronics. Colt had learned about it later and scolded James for his indifference.
“How can you be a vice president and not know about an important company event? That excuse isn’t even a proper excuse!”
......
If he had devoted even a little more time to company work as Colt had said, he could have known. Since he thought TY Telecom’s existing business came first, he had focused only on base stations and infrastructure investment, unable to spare much attention for new technologies, and even the company’s participation in the exposition as part of its marketing efforts had only come to light later.
“Sorry...”
“Jimmy. Can’t you still do something about it now?”
“...I checked through Tony, but they said the booth setup was already finished, so it’s impossible.”
“Damn.”
Seeing Colt disappointed, James added, “And besides, the event only runs for three days, so even if we moved things around in the middle, it wouldn’t really be worth it...”
“That’s exactly why it matters even more! If we grab a good spot, we can promote our new products!”
“...Right.”
James figured he’d only get more nagging if he kept standing there, so he pretended to inspect the new base-station equipment TY Telecom had brought for promotional purposes. Judging by the code marked Alpha 0.1, it seemed to be an experimental device.
“Is our technology really good enough to work on a global scale?”
“......”
Even though Colt could see right through why James was changing the subject, he still gave a product explanation the way he would to a buyer.
“TY Telecom’s new 5G technology isn’t all that different from what already exists.”
“Huh? Then what’s the point?”
“I said it isn’t all that different. I didn’t say it was the same, did I?”
Colt launched into a fervent explanation of how TY Telecom’s new technology set itself apart from the old one.
“The main advantage of TY Telecom’s 5G is Data Sharing. Network resources aren’t used only by us; they’re shared with other carriers too.”
“Wait, so instead of TY Telecom’s own independent network, you’re going to distribute it?”
“If network resources are shared, utilization goes up. You can install and use more of the network, and it even improves overall communication quality. The total number of base stations differs by country, but in Korea it’s around ninety thousand. Even so, each carrier can only use its own base stations, so one company effectively gets access to only about thirty thousand. But what if shared network access meant they could use fifty thousand?”
The result would obviously be better than using thirty thousand base stations.
“If every carrier can fully use fifty thousand base stations, the total number of networks needed drops sharply. That means maximum efficiency, and it also saves on wasteful infrastructure costs. And if you then divide up the networks through virtualization technology so each carrier can use its own share? They can use the base stations and share data just as before, without interfering with one another. Our technology may look simple, but it’s actually pretty innovative.”
James could already picture the profits TY Telecom stood to gain from that.
“So TY Telecom can skim a fee off the top in the middle?”
“Even so, it’ll still be cheaper than expanding network infrastructure. Especially in countries that have to apply new frequencies, they’ll choose this without hesitation.”
“Ooh.”
Colt did not forget to mention the downside either, the part James would actually be disappointed to hear.
“The problem is that 5G’s transmission range is short. Korea has enough dense urban areas to make it work, but overseas you’d need jaw-dropping levels of investment just to cover an entire country. That’s why some countries are still using their old base stations as they are...”
“So, anyway, you’d rather expand overseas than stay in the completed domestic market?”
“...The domestic market still isn’t there yet either. There are still huge regional disparities. That’s why the government keeps pressuring us to install more base stations. The 3.5 GHz 5G band is just too short-range. Of course, the fact that we overhyped it in the first place is a problem too, but...”
The 3.5 GHz 5G band was only about three times faster than the existing frequencies, yet TY Telecom and the other carriers had advertised it as an ultrafast line twenty times faster, promising service on the 28 GHz 5G band. If TY Telecom had actually been able to offer 28 GHz 5G, there would have been no issue. But in reality, TY Telecom and every other carrier had been supplying base stations capable only of the 3.5 GHz band, claiming that 28 GHz simply wasn’t feasible.
“So this thing...”
James could tell he’d just run into a new assignment.