Not Mayo
James had faith in EST Electronics’ technical prowess.
“The quality and technology behind EST Electronics’ products are all but guaranteed, so I thought that if the advertising side held up as well, you’d be able to get good results.”
“Looks like I brought you into the company for nothing, then. Hahaha.”
“Still, I was glad to get a tour of the company.”
“Hey, hey. There you go again, always saying such nice things. Hahaha.”
Chairman Kim Seong-oh was in a mood where anything James said would sound good to him.
“Las Vegas was where I mainly operated, but the Consumer Electronics Show, the CES, was outside my concerns. Still, once I learned it was something connected to you, Father, I couldn’t just sit back.”
“Business is supposed to be give and take.”
“If I keep making this much effort, surely you’ll take care of me in return, won’t you?”
At James’s faint smile, Chairman Kim nodded in agreement.
“Bwahaha. Exactly. That’s only natural.”
Kim Seong-oh then began laying out the words he had clearly been waiting to say ever since James agreed to his request.
“First, there are a few entrepreneurs accompanying our EST Group. I’d like to introduce you to them...”
Being introduced to wealthy people who owned companies was welcome enough, but how he was introduced mattered even more.
“I haven’t really entered the business world yet, so I’m worried I might end up embarrassing you, Chairman.”
If this were after James had taken over TY Group, it would have been different, but for now he had no convenient way to introduce himself to businessmen.
“I don’t exactly have anything to put forward right now...”
“Why would you not?”
Chairman Kim rested a hand on James’s shoulder and said with obvious pride, “You’ll be EST Group’s son-in-law soon enough.”
“...”
It was true that James had feelings for Su-ji, but whether he could be a good husband and a good father was still a question he couldn’t honestly answer.
But for the moment, he couldn’t exactly contradict Chairman Kim.
Until the day I devour TY Group...
Until then, he had to remain on the best and closest terms with Chairman Kim of EST Group.
“I’m always more than I deserve, Chairman.”
This was not the first time James had heard Chairman Kim call him a future son-in-law. He made similar remarks even during ordinary phone calls, and Su-ji had once been so startled after overhearing one of those calls that she nearly dropped her phone.
“I honestly have no idea what Dad is thinking anymore.”
“So you hate it?”
“No, it’s not that... It’s just so unbelievable, that’s all. Hehe.”
Su-ji simply found it hard to believe that James was being acknowledged by her family.
“Now then. I’ll arrange the schedule for meeting the heads of the companies separately and let you know...”
“Yes, Chairman.”
With those words, James set aside his thoughts and began to focus.
“Next is an investment item your future son-in-law can get behind.”
Chairman Kim’s gift was not just one thing. If it was an investment target carefully vetted by EST Group’s think tank, James was prepared to invest without hesitation.
“Then we’ll be investing together with EST Group. Just tell me how much we’re talking about.”
He was already using a fair amount of capital to buy up TY Telecom stock, but he still had plenty of liquidity left.
“Hahaha. I appreciate that you trust me, but that isn’t something an investor should say.”
“Haha. Then at least tell me the name.”
Up to that point, James thought this was simply another new investment opportunity he had not yet come to understand.
“Duojardin. It’s an American biotech startup that’s been drawing a lot of attention lately.”
“Ah...”
James immediately recalled the hottest topic in the investment market of late.
Duojardin had announced that it had independently developed a new technology capable of diagnosing more than a hundred diseases from a single drop of human blood. In order to diagnose various illnesses, countless tests with different reagents had usually been required, but Duojardin claimed to have created a technology that far surpassed all existing diagnostic methods. It was an advanced technology that could drastically extend human life, and it still had room for further development. Even after developing that technology, Duojardin was not satisfied; what it was now developing was an even more astounding diagnostic kit said to be capable of detecting more than two hundred diseases.
After that, countless investors poured money into Duojardin, and experts in every field were certain of its success. But until recently, the company had been blocking new capital injections under the pretense of defending control, and Chairman Kim explained that he had been able to invest only because he had made a connection with Duojardin’s CFO.
“...I wanted to share this golden opportunity with you. We’ve kept it completely secret from the outside world. It’s an opportunity opened only to you.”
Chairman Kim was showing a remarkable degree of goodwill in his own way.
That’s not mayo; it’s shit. Would he only believe it if he tasted it himself?
James already knew about Duojardin, and he had even visited the company’s production facility.
“I’m afraid I have to say something a little impertinent, Chairman.”
“Are you short on money to invest? I can lend you some.”
“No, that’s not it. It’s just that I’d already heard the information from the Las Vegas VIP Club members.”
“Your information is awfully fast. Then have you already finished investing? We’ll have to hurry as well.”
“Please don’t hurry. ...Neither I nor the Las Vegas VIP Club members have invested, after all.”
“What?”
Lately, James had been shuttling back and forth to Las Vegas often, and he’d also had to keep busy within the United States. It was all because of that biotech startup, Duojardin.
“To be honest, I was interested as well after hearing from the Las Vegas VIP Club members about a new investment target called Duojardin. I was curious just how much profit that investment might generate. So I started digging into the company.”
“You did?”
James had not doubted Duojardin from the start. On the contrary, the new technology the company claimed to have developed was astonishing. The reason James had visited Duojardin was that he had hoped his magic might help the investment succeed even more spectacularly.
I can’t trust any investment target I haven’t checked with my own eyes.
The same rule had always applied to every investment target recommended by the Las Vegas VIP Club. James would verify the opportunity himself and give it a small boost with magic. That was why he had always been able to secure such high returns.
“I went to Duojardin’s headquarters myself and met the man who has been absorbing the world’s attention lately.”
Duojardin’s CEO, Tarantis, had originally had black hair, but she dyed it blond and wore a black turtleneck that came up to her neck, deliberately drawing public attention. She then used her fame to enthusiastically promote Duojardin’s new product. She claimed to have left an elite university to devote everything to developing technology that would benefit the world. Through her storytelling and her imitation of the late Steve Jobs’s persona, she repackaged Jobs’s originality and leadership as if they were her own. Thanks to that, she had even earned the nickname “the second Steve Jobs,” and her company had been receiving love calls from countless corporations. That, in turn, had been possible because the diagnostic kit her company had actually developed was genuinely high-level technology.
“...So you met her in person.”
“Meeting her wasn’t the end of it. I even toured the research lab and production facilities, which are really the backbone of Duojardin.”
But the moment James shook Tarantis’s hand, the game was over. Caught in James’s magic, she confessed every truth about the product she had been using to deceive the world until now.
“...The reagent kit they recently claimed could diagnose 125 kinds of cancer and diseases, and the more than 200 new reagent kits they announced were close to completion, were all lies.”
It was a result completely opposite from what James had expected.
“!!”
“What Tarantis had developed was only a kit capable of diagnosing around ten diseases, and even that was still trapped in an uncertain research phase.”
“W-what did you say? It wasn’t at the productization stage, but the research stage?”
“The production facilities weren’t operating at all. From the outset, they lacked the equipment to produce anything in the first place, so I had no choice but to admit they had successfully deceived the world. For the record, those kits never even went through FDA review. They launched by targeting the exact gaps in U.S. government regulation.”
“...Is that really true?”
“Before long, his fraud will be exposed to the whole world. This is the latest information, and no one else knows it yet. I only gave the Las Vegas VIP Club the rough outline and didn’t tell them the details.”
Tarantis had exposed the lie with her own mouth, but by now she no longer remembered saying any of it. James had erased the very memory of her confessing the truth. Still, false information could not stay hidden forever, and that was something time, not James, would settle.
Someone’s going to go to the press and blow it all open.
So he had also brushed things off to the Las Vegas VIP Club by saying that the diagnostic kit Duojardin was developing was running into major trouble with both research and production. When James told the members that Duojardin’s future was uncertain, they were able to withdraw their investments.
“It would absolutely be out of the question for EST Group to invest as well, Chairman.”
Thanks to James revealing these facts, he had earned considerable trust from the Las Vegas VIP Club members. That was also why he had been able to ask Tony Anderson for the best booth in the house, all because of the credit he had earned by uncovering this matter.
“But the assessment report clearly said...”
The conclusion EST Group had reached contradicted what James had just said.
“Tarantis used the image of Steve Jobs to win the trust of investors and the media. She planned it from the very beginning. She moved with complete, meticulous design.”
He then explained that Tarantis intended to move the funds into a secret account and disappear the moment the investment round closed. Yet even now, she continued to appear in the media for interviews.
Because of that kind of behavior, Rupert Murdoch, the titan of global media, and Henry Kissinger, a master of international politics, were also said to have invested huge sums in Duojardin. Tarantis even staged interviews with former presidents of the United States, and that was enough to make people blindly trust her unverified technology. One by one, those events were turning a grotesquely overhyped fake company into something that looked genuinely promising.
“S-so then the CFO who came to our company to solicit investment, Blody from Duojardin, lied to me?”
“Blody is practically Tarantis’s right hand. He’s fully complicit in her scam. He was promised a very large sum even before the fraud began.”
“...I see.”
There was more information James had uncovered from his recent visit to Duojardin.
The problems inside were already festering. It felt like they were about to burst any day now.
Whistleblowers were starting to emerge inside Duojardin, and reporters had also caught wind of the scent and were rushing in.
“It won’t take long for you to verify the facts, Chairman. Duojardin’s investment value is approaching zero.”
Duojardin’s investment return had already gone past zero and was firmly negative.
If you invest there, you won’t get a single cent back.