Gathering Number Five
Lee Jinho of Saengsong sat to Jung Jinwoo's right, Shin Bin-sun of Node Group to his left. Across the table, Koo Hyungwoo of MG, Choi Ki-cheon of SA Telecom, and Jung Hyunmoo of Gyeondae Motors had taken their seats.
"Thank you for coming."
"No — thank you for calling us. We've been in your debt this whole time, wondering how we could ever repay you."
"He's right. We're all grateful to you, Jinwoo. Our standing as heirs has gone up, and we've taken in huge profits besides..."
Everyone around the table nodded at Shin Bin-sun's words.
"You've already repaid me plenty. My friend's wedding was more than enough."
"That? That was nothing. We're the ones who should be grateful you needed us. Call anytime. Hahaha."
"It was fun."
Choi Ki-cheon's remark set the whole table snickering.
It hadn't been empty courtesy. They had genuinely enjoyed themselves. They'd even gotten a look at what an ordinary person's wedding was like. Then again, it had been a construction company president's son's wedding — not exactly a working-class affair.
"If you ever need our help with anything at all, just say the word. We'll give it everything we have."
Koo Hyungwoo's eyes shone as he said it, and there was nothing polite about the offer. He meant every syllable.
"I'm grateful just to hear you say that."
That gaze is a Koo family trait, Jung Jinwoo thought. Those eyes that somehow make you feel every ounce of the sincerity behind them.
"So what's on the menu today? We've all been sitting here buzzing..."
Jung Jinwoo gave a short laugh at Jung Hyunmoo's impatience.
"I asked you here because I wanted to talk about a business we'll be doing together."
"A business?"
"Ahh..."
A faint stir, a subtle current of excitement, settled over Number Five.
The man who had only ever handed them investment tips — information you could simply follow and watch enormous returns pile up — had just said the word business.
People pitched ventures to chaebol families constantly. Official meetings were usually pre-vetted, but even those only turned into real businesses about thirty percent of the time. Personal meetings were almost all con artists. 99.99 percent of the people who said, "I've got a great idea — let's go into business together," were just trying to bleed you for money.
But these five had already tasted Jung Jinwoo's power more than once. Coming from him, the word was enough to set their curiosity on fire. What kind of venture would a man who read the global economy like the palm of his hand even propose?
A gulp went around the table. Someone cleared their throat, trying and failing to hide the rush of feeling.
"Can you tell us what kind of business it is?"
"Sign these first."
Jung Jinwoo handed each of them a single sheet of paper.
"It's an NDA."
"Yes. Given the nature of the matter, we need to run through a simple procedure. Sign, and you'll be treated as business partners. If you'd rather not, you're free to leave right now."
If they had never seen what he could do, they might have hesitated. They had seen it. All five signed in a flurry and pushed the papers back to him.
Jung Jinwoo collected the signed sheets, then met each of their eyes in turn, and began.
"This is a project with two hundred trillion won already invested in initial capital, and another eight hundred trillion still to go. Some of it goes live as early as next week. The full-scale launch is about a month and a half out."
"What is it?"
"Simply put: if you have a fairy-tale manuscript, it becomes a webtoon on the spot, then an animated video. Every 2D game converts into a VR 3D game. Dramas and films get turned into virtual reality — users don't watch them. They live them."
"Converting text into webtoons and animation is already possible, but the quality's usually terrible..."
"You're converting 2D games into VR 3D? Not building them from scratch?"
"Users going inside movies and dramas to experience them firsthand? Not digitally resurrecting old actors like James Dean or Heath Ledger?"
"That's possible too, of course."
These were people who kept themselves current on every new technology that mattered. Even so, they tipped their heads, struggling to believe what they had just heard.
"That's a quadrillion won all in, isn't it? How does nobody know about a project that size?"
"You should know, actually. Genvidia massively increased their HBM orders not long ago."
Lee Jinho and Choi Ki-cheon turned to stare at each other, stunned.
"How do you even know that?"
"That's classified information..."
Finding out after the shipment went out would be one thing — but they'd only received the order. How did he know?
"Two hundred trillion won has already been deployed. Those GPUs are earmarked for this project."
The fact that two hundred trillion had already been spent meant this was no vaporware pitch.
"Good God. It's actually happening?"
"We've already acquired Munpia, and we've contracted to launch the web novel platform across the Arab world, Europe, and North America. Copyright deals with major American film studios and entertainment companies are already complete."
"So it was real. He's actually going to do it."
"Jinwoo, you're out of your mind!"
The most critical pieces were already in place.
"Where is this business being run?"
"JW Corporation."
"JW? Where's that?"
Choi Ki-cheon looked genuinely lost.
"It exists. A company that succeeds at everything it touches lately — you probably wouldn't know it. We only found out about them because of Node Construction."
Shin Bin-sun was no longer smiling. Her nerves had drawn taut. Whatever Jung Jinwoo was about to say, if Node Group ended up involved, it could be a massive opportunity for a conglomerate that had been shrinking and dying by the year.
"You said you needed our help. What can we do for you?"
Lee Jinho put the question everyone at the table was waiting for.
"That's what I wanted to get to. Let me lay it out simply. Saengsong and SA are already tied into this project, given you're supplying HBM and RAM to Genvidia. First things first: Saengsong and MG need to collaborate and build an HMD better than anything you ever supplied to Pineapple. Specifically, it needs to come in at about half of Pineapple's retail price."
"The hardware we can do. But collaborate with Saengsong? I like Jinho, but telling my people to lock arms with Saengsong is nearly impossible. How are we supposed to work with Saengsong?"
"Same on our side. We can't join hands with MG either. The staff would go berserk."
Koo Hyungwoo and Lee Jinho were both shaking their heads.
"You collaborated to supply Pineapple. Saengsong's optical sensors, MG's displays — you already did it that way."
"That was Pineapple. A global company. That's the only reason it was possible."
"Pineapple took seventy percent of the sticker price as net profit. What did Saengsong and MG clear — two percent? Three?"
Lee Jinho and Koo Hyungwoo had nothing to say to that.
They had bent over backwards to meet every last demand of that notoriously picky company and barely turned a profit. The only real value had been the prestige of supplying the world's number-one. The seventy percent net on the list price had gone to Pineapple, every last bit of it.
"JW Dive In will handle the control software. And I'll guarantee Saengsong and MG a minimum ten percent net profit each."
That was not a small number.
"What kind of volume are you thinking?"
"Five million units to start. About ten million a year."
Koo Hyungwoo shook his head.
"They won't sell like that. A hundred thousand would be a stretch. Even Pineapple never moved a hundred thousand units. How are you—"
"That's because there was nothing to use them for. You just heard the JW Dive In pitch, didn't you? That's the service. In every major country in the world. And the HMD will sell at half of Pineapple's price, with a ten percent net guaranteed to both Saengsong and MG. You think they won't sell? Buy one of these and you get a full month free to try everything."
He was right. Pineapple had sold hardware and nothing else — and at a staggering price. Half that price, with a flood of genuinely compelling content behind it... and Pineapple's HMD was a years-old model besides. The technology had come a long way since then.
"We're in! Saengsong will gladly take this on. If MG won't, we'll handle the displays too. Hell — we'll take the entire hardware."
"Jinho! Don't cut in like that. Who said we were out? We're doing it too."
Two million won apiece, ten million units — a twenty-trillion-won project. Even a one percent net margin would mean two hundred billion. There was no reason on earth to refuse.
"Good. Then the two of you work it out and build me the best HMD you can. I was going to pit you against each other at first, but that wouldn't be the honorable thing, so I'll leave it to you."
"Understood."
"We'll have to find a way to convince them. Ah — that's the real problem. They'll shudder just hearing Saengsong's name..."
"Same on our end..."
The most important piece — the HMD — was settled.
Next was the simulator.
Jung Jinwoo looked at Jung Hyunmoo. Hyunmoo sat up from where he had been leaning back, settling into a perfect posture, eyes bright, like a vassal awaiting a royal decree.
"Existing VR simulators are too heavy. And too expensive. Gyeondae has a real gift for manufacturing lightweight, high-strength alloy plate from building car frames."
"We source the high-strength alloy plate from the steel mill."
"The simulator I have in mind needs to fold for transport. When it's locked in place, it has to support a two-hundred-kilogram person hanging from it. Total weight around forty kilos. The standard model about 2.3 meters tall. Anything larger, made to order."
"We can build that. But how many do you actually think you'll sell?"
"Two million units."
"This isn't an HMD. We'd need a guarantee they'll move at that volume."
"JW Dive In will guarantee the quantity. We'll pay cash if we have to."
A no-lose deal. Building it with car-frame tech wouldn't be hard. And they're guaranteeing two million units? That's pure profit. If it's a moving hunk of steel rather than a static lump, nobody outdoes Gyeondae Motors.
"On top of that — we could install modules in Gyeondae vehicles that work with our HMDs. The exclusive window would be capped at five years. Rear seats only, not the front... though once autonomous driving is the norm, the front seats could be in play too."
Jung Hyunmoo had thought about putting HMDs in cars at least once. And if Dive In launched the way Jung Jinwoo said it would, it was going to own the content market of the future. If Gyeondae Motors had that exclusively...
"We'll do it. I'll take full responsibility for the simulators."
"You'll need Saengsong and MG for the electronics inside. Work together on it."
Jung Jinwoo glanced at Lee Jinho and Koo Hyungwoo, and both men nodded.
"What about us? Doesn't SA get anything?"
"Why wouldn't you?"
Jung Jinwoo turned a grin on Choi Ki-cheon.
"That 50-gigabit fiber line SA laid as a test this time..."
Choi Ki-cheon jolted as if he'd been slapped.
"That's ridiculous. Our fastest line is 10-gigabit."
"Ask around. You laid a 50-gigabit line. SA is betting the company on this test. I understand you're standing at a crossroads — whether you can roll it out nationwide or not. For our Dive In service to run smoothly... of course a 1-gigabit line is enough, but faster is always better. Meaning SA doesn't even need to bet the company. You can now deploy 50-gigabit lines far ahead of any competitor. I want you, Choi Ki-cheon, to push that. Hard."
"Ohh..."
Choi Ki-cheon looked more shocked than anyone else at the table.
He ought to have been checking on the new tech coming out of his own company's labs. Oh Gong-tae had already verified all of this while installing the servers and accelerators. They had collaborated with SA to build the data center — and the man who was supposed to be running the company didn't even know.
Ah. Right. Choi Ki-cheon still wasn't working on the management front lines.
"What about us? Don't we get anything? I'm disappointed, Jinwoo... What about Node Group?"
Shin Bin-sun was pouting, her voice edged with genuine sulk.
Jung Jinwoo turned a smile on her.