Investment and Rumors
The gap in their conversation was narrowing.
“Two hundred billion... a private house over a hundred pyeong...”
Even after buying the house, there would still be plenty left over.
“Um... excuse me?”
“Ah. Yes, yes. Right away, sir.”
“No house like that?”
“...Just a moment. I’ll look it up right away.”
He mostly dealt in apartments, so he had to search separately for private house listings.
“Two hundred billion, huh...”
While the broker searched the computer for uploaded listings, he kept glancing at the two of them.
“They don’t look like that kind of money...”
Then he remembered the saying that real rich people could not be judged by appearances.
“They look so ordinary... are they children of some conglomerate family?”
Without realizing it, the broker was half right. James was the abandoned illegitimate son of a chaebol family.
After a short search, the broker found several listings and came back carrying a few sheets of paper.
“This is a private house in Yulhyeon-dong, Gangnam-gu. The building itself, counting the first and second floors together, is about a hundred pyeong...”
“And the price?”
“Around 2.9 billion won, excluding incidentals.”
“Oppa, what do you think?”
James looked at the printed photos and shook his head.
“It looks too small. You must have shown us something cheap on purpose.”
“Right?”
“...”
Hearing that 2.9 billion won was cheap, the broker moved on to the next listing.
“This one’s 3.5 billion. It’s a traditional hanok detached house.”
“It only has one floor, right?”
“Yes. Since it’s a hanok, a second floor would be difficult...”
“Oppa, he says it doesn’t even have a second floor.”
“I never seriously considered a hanok. I don’t think I’d be able to maintain it properly anyway.”
“Exactly. I heard hanoks need separate upkeep.”
The broker, who had been about to show the next listing, covered the papers and asked, “Uh...”
“Yes?”
“To be honest, it’s not easy to find a house worth 20 billion won, and I think you’ll have to compromise at a more realistic price.”
“Really?”
“The chairmen of conglomerate families and people like that live in houses like that, but listings like those hardly ever come onto the market.”
“Ah...”
Suji looked at James with an oh-no expression.
“Oppa. Maybe we prepared too much money for nothing.”
“...Maybe I overestimated Seoul real estate prices.”
“...”
The broker flipped over the last sheet of paper and said, “How about Hannam-dong?”
“How much is that?”
“26 billion won.”
It was a twist that overturned his earlier advice to compromise at a reasonable price.
“Huh? 26 billion won?”
From the photo, Suji could pull a memory to mind.
“Oh! I know this place. I heard it’s a great place to live. There are a lot of foreign embassies nearby, so security is good too...”
“It has one basement floor and two floors above ground, with a total site area of 370 pyeong. The total building area from basement to second floor is around 250 pyeong. It’s on a high hill, so it has a view of the Han River, and there’s plenty of parking space for six cars.”
James was also nodding at the house’s exterior.
Privacy is definitely taken care of.
The high walls blocked out the view of outsiders, and the garden was filled with trees thick enough that you could enjoy a forest bath without leaving home. Looking out the window from inside, the Han River stretched out in full.
“It’s been standing for a while, but if you have the interior renovated separately, wouldn’t it turn into something like a brand-new house?”
“Is someone living there now?”
“Yes, but if the deal goes through, I don’t think they’ll take long to move out.”
“Oppa, this looks good.”
“It does. So you weren’t telling me to prepare 20 billion for nothing, huh?”
“Hehe. I do have some sense, you know. But the price is higher than you expected. Is that okay?”
“Yeah. It’s just right.”
He had sold the Texas lot for thirty million dollars, so there was plenty of spare cash. If that somehow fell short, he could always buy it after the gold auction ended.
“...”
The broker could not figure out when 26 billion won had become a reasonable price.
I thought they’d back off after hearing the price...
So he had deliberately brought out the most expensive house he could find. He intended to recommend a more realistic property that he could actually close the sale on.
“Still, I don’t think I want to pay the full asking price. The people putting these houses on the market probably didn’t expect to get everything, anyway.”
At James’s words, the broker quickly answered. If he could make this sale, he’d pocket the commission from several other listings’ worth of work.
“Of course. I’ll try to bring it down as much as I can. Big listings like this aren’t easy to close, so if you lose the buyer, the whole deal becomes uncertain.”
James said that because he knew it already.
“Please look into this one first, and find some other listings too. I don’t think there are many houses like it only in this neighborhood. And I’m not in such a rush that I need to beg someone to sell me a house. If you can’t find one, I’ll go over there and look again myself.”
“No, no! Leave it to me! I’ll narrow it down to a list of candidates you’ll like!”
The broker’s eyes were burning.
The commission’s at least a hundred million won.
That was the fee he could earn if he closed this house deal.
“Come to think of it, isn’t this near the hotel where Oppa and Mister Colt are staying?”
“Ah. Right.”
Now that he thought about it, he had seen a high-end residential complex on the way to and from the hotel.
“...Then should I show you the inside sometime soon?”
“No. We’re not in that much of a hurry.”
James left his contact information with the broker and walked out of the agency. Suji was simply happy that he was buying a house.
“I hope it works out.”
“Me too.”
After that, James firmly sent Suji back instead of going to the hotel with her. He had shaken off the people tailing him, but if he went back to the hotel, a new round of surveillance would begin.
“Tch.”
“I just can’t relax completely, that’s all.”
“Fine. I can’t help it if you’re doing it for my sake.”
“I’ll keep an eye on the area for a while. If everything seems fine, you won’t need to worry.”
“Okay. You be careful too, Oppa.”
“...”
It was the enemies, not James, who should have been careful.
“And you said you’d look into my residence permit?”
“You got it. Leave it to me.”
“I’m counting on you! Hehe.”
* * *
While the two of them were choosing a house like newlyweds, the people who had run themselves ragged around Hapjeong Station were, as James had predicted, back near the hotel with the soles of their shoes worn down.
“Damn it...”
Even if their target appeared right now, it would not change anything. They had missed all of James’s movements today, so they had too little material to report.
Vrrrmmm.
Just then, the taxi James had taken pulled into the hotel.
“Huh? He’s here.”
He quickly ordered the man behind him, “Photo! Take the picture, now!”
“Yes, sir!”
Click-click-click.
James got out of the taxi and was about to walk straight into the hotel, then stopped. He lingered unnecessarily around the entrance for a moment before going inside. It was the bare minimum of mercy he could offer the fools who had lost him today.
Don’t lose me next time.
Then he went right into the hotel. Once James disappeared, the man who had ordered the photos let out a relieved breath and asked, “Phew. Got them all?”
“Yes, boss.”
“Good. That’s enough.”
“Still, there’s a big empty gap in the middle...”
They had only photographed him leaving the hotel and going back in, so the middle was still blank.
“Tch. Idiots.”
By taking those photos just now, he had been able to settle on a report for the day.
“The guy stayed in his hotel room all day and only came out for a moment just now.”
“Ah!”
If they reported that he had never come out in the first place, they could skip over the empty stretch of time entirely.
“Just send a few shots from the end and that’s it.”
“As expected... boss, your little tricks are really...”
“You punk. This isn’t a trick, it’s flexibility!”
“Yes, sir!”
“Idiots... if you miss him again tomorrow, then you’d better know you’re really dead!”
“Yes, sir!”
* * *
James stayed in the hotel after that and kept playing hide-and-seek with the tailing men, but the whole thing was causing him considerable stress.
“...What am I supposed to do with these bastards?”
Choi Jeong-san of TY Telecom, the man who had allowed his genes to exist in the first place, and his whole family were naturally targets of revenge. But the men tailing him on that bastard’s orders did not give him much reason to retaliate personally. They were just doing their jobs for money.
“...”
Even now, if he looked out the window, he could see the cars of the men waiting near the hotel for him to come out.
It’s nice that this gave me more time to train my magic, though...
There was not much he could do while staying alone in a hotel, but James was a magician. He was already short on time to practice high-level magic, so he had taken this whole mess as an opportunity to become even more familiar with the higher forms of spellwork.
“Still, it’s suffocating.”
Large-scale magic could be strong enough to bring down buildings, and even smaller spells produced enough noise and destruction to cause problems. So he could not use them carelessly inside the hotel.
“Once you’ve learned something, you have to use it to truly master it...”
He wanted to go into a deep forest and test his magic, but he could not move lightly because of the people tailing him. He worried that any careless movement would make those bastards suspicious.
It would have been more fun if they’d been relaxed about it...
James had decided it was time to move.
“Peace is over. War begins now. Try to endure this.”
He was declaring war on them. And James’s hand moved toward his phone.
-Beep.
He might be a magician, but he had no intention of starting this war by physical magical force.
-James. So you’ve finally decided on an investment target?
“That’s right, Tom. I’ve decided at last.”
Tom was a fund manager at a Citibank-affiliated investment firm, and James had entrusted him with the Texas land sale money that had been deposited in his account. However, he had told Tom he would decide which company the investment would be executed in.
-James. I should warn you in advance that you ought to avoid overly risky investments.
“...”
There is a saying that the bigger the risk, the bigger the return, but investment firms tended to prefer stable profits over high-risk bets.
“Sorry, but this is going to be a pretty high-risk investment.”
-Oh dear.
“I’m planning to invest in a Korean company.”
-There are plenty of stable Korean companies too. I heard you’re in Korea now, so I assume you’ve found a good one?
“I’m planning to invest in TY Telecom.”
-Let me check the information for a moment.
Tom typed on his keyboard and searched for TY Telecom.
-Oh.
He quickly found that TY Telecom was the holding company of the TY Group, which had a solid financial structure.
-Not a bad choice. You won’t take a huge loss. Which also means it’s hard to expect much profit.
It was a far cry from the risky investment he had mentioned earlier. TY Telecom, which collected steady annual revenue, was colluding with other telecom companies to raise communication fees, and it was not losing ground in the competition for new frequencies either. Telecom companies were the kind of business that made money while sitting still.
“When I said I was planning to invest in TY Telecom...”
He did not mean he would buy TY Telecom stock in any ordinary way.
“I meant I wanted as much leverage as possible so the trade could be executed as a short sale.”
-James!
A normal stock trade was a buy-low, sell-high strategy. But the short sale James was talking about was the opposite: borrowing stock on margin, selling it high first, then buying the same amount back after the price fell and repaying the borrowed shares. And to leverage it meant taking on derivative exposure several times greater than his own capital, with the risk of losing everything if the loss exceeded what he could cover.
-James! There’s no recognized bad news for TY Telecom, and there aren’t any real rumors either!
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