12 Hours After

Translator: Khan

Editor: Aelryinth

I looked at Tak Mun-su and thought, ‘I don’t know if this person is a good person or a bad person.’ On the surface, no one was as kind and good as this. If I hadn’t seen him killing in the crow’s dream, if I’d been invited here, I would have thought this person was a truly trustworthy man. I bowed my head slightly to him in appreciation, for the moment.

Tak Moon-soo received it with a soft smile.

‘Umm…’ I didn’t know if it was because I’d seen it through the dream of Crow before, but every time he laughed, I felt like he was being pretentious. He was like a mannequin with a well-made smile. I watched the others, sipping the cocktail I was holding. The other CEOs of this group had weaknesses, every one. They were excessively narrow-minded, excessively ostentatious, excessively luxurious, excessively detached, or excessively cautious. However, if I thought about their characters the other way, they were also human. They were rich people with billions or tens of billions of dollars of assets, but Tak Mun-su did not feel that way well. It was like dealing with a computer.

He might have thought, ‘I’m going to comfort Han Sang-hoon. Then I can give him a good image,’ after Heo Joon-ik said what he had.

In a way, he seemed to be very capable, or very impersonal. He was somehow an odd character. I thought, ‘How will he react next April?’

I thought of the secret code “TWKC” written on the timetable at the time. That was the first news I saw on vacation when I went to Europe. [Tak Woo-kyung’s condition is critical and he is unconscious after a heart attack.]

‘If his father, who is hale and hearty, suddenly falls into a death crisis, he will face a great ordeal. If Tak Woo-kyung dies, he’ll pay an inheritance tax of 50%. Currently, Chairman Tak Woo-kyung’s assets are worth more than ten billion dollars. Tak Woo-kyung has been dodging inheritance taxes by giving out the prime businesses to Tak Mun-su and providing him with a lot of work to do, but it has not been enough to pass over that much money.’

He might have thought his father would live another ten years. However, even the richest man in Korea could not escape death. Of course, he wasn’t dying right away.

I kept searching for Tak Woo-kyung and found that he didn’t die after losing consciousness from the heart attack. [The cause of the heart attack of Tak Woo Kyung’s heart attack is an acute myocardial infarction.]

[Chairman Tak Woo-kyung is hospitalized in the VIP room of Seoul National University Hospital. He is unable to move, but conscious.]

But considering his age, it was highly likely that he would not last much longer. I felt Tak Mun-su might lose the smile at the corners of his mouth.

‘Hmm…’ I glanced at Tak Mun-su, downing the rest of the cocktail. Maybe it was because they were cousins. Looking at him reminded me of the face of Tak Joon-gi. Then, I recalled the data that Tak Joon-gi had investigated, and the will that was written there: When Tak Woo-kyung dies, I will detonate a nuclear bomb.

I thought I would be busy sometime in April and July next year.

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I brought my hand to the mouth of the dragon sculpture. The water from the mouth was very hot.

‘Is it too hot?’ I then put my hand in the outdoor bath. The water was just right as it cooled a little in the cold wind. ‘That’s enough.’

I turned my head and said, “Everything is ready here.” Then I threw away the robe I was wearing and went in. It was just the right temperature.

“Oho!…” I looked up at the sky with a shout. The winter sky of December was visible at a glance. Thanks to the hot, open-air heat of the outdoor bath, I could watch the scenery while completely naked. Ah-young appeared with a tray in her hands.

“How do you feel? Is it warm?” She was only wearing a long towel.

“If you don’t come in quickly, you’ll catch a cold.”

“Yes, wait a minute.” Ah-young put the tray down next to me; a gourd bottle with some Japanese words, cider cans, and fish cake skewers were on the tray.

“What are they?”

“The outdoor bath reminds me of Japan, so I prepared them. They are hot fish cake skewers and sake, Mr. CEO.”

“Oh yes. They look good.”

Ah-young came into the bath with her hands on the tie of the towel. Then she asked, pouring sake to the glass, “So, what are you going to do with one and a half billion dollars?”

I corrected her words by taking a glass from her. “Not one and a half, but 1.58 billion dollars.” I opened the cider can with my other hand and poured it into her glass.

“Does that make any difference when the numbers get so big?” She told me.

“Well, eighty million dollars is huge.”

Ah-young and I tinked glasses and took a one-shot of the sake. A hot fire poured down my throat. I breathed deep, as if I could exhale that fiery energy. “Hoo…”

Yesterday afternoon, I had signed a contract to sell the stake in Hyun Young Pharmaceutical owned by Invictus Investment to Pfizer for 1.58 billion dollars. I tried 1.65 billion dollars as a counter offer, but after looking at the failed deal in the future news, I called it at 1.6 billion dollars, and it was counter-offered at 1.58 billion dollars. I decided to sell it there without dragging things out further.

First of all, it was not a bad price, and second, I decided it was time to raise the cash. So, I sold it. As a result, Invictus Investment had secured 1.58 billion dollars from Pfizer, following up on the two billion dollars from Tencent gained from selling Kai Games to them. A total of 3.58 billion dollars was no doubt enough to say that the ammunition for the next battle had been secured.

Ah-young handed me a fish cake skewer and said, “So what are you going to do with 1.58 billion dollars?”

“Well… I’ll have to invest somewhere else.”

“Umm, are you investing again?”

“Yes, money is bound to rot if it stays still.”

There are two main enemies for the rich. The first is taxes, and the second is inflation. Although the tax goes out, it only does so if money comes in. If money stays still, the expense going out is inflation, chipping away at the value of each dollar every day. As a result, most rich people don’t hold much cash for a long time. Most of them invest in stocks, bonds, or real estate, even if they are in debt. This is because they know that there is a greater increase in asset value there than the decrease from the inflation rate.

Ah-young asked me, “What are you going to do with your continued earnings?”

It was a simple, but quite essential question. I thought it over, and replied, “First of all, I will be the richest person in Korea. That way, I’ll be able to live without anyone’s help. I’m thinking of running out there for now. And then I think of something else.”

As I said that, I recalled the gathering of the Garden Royale the other day. If I was not at the level to overpower all of them, I could not be said to be at the peak of Korea.

“Well, okay. What are you going to buy this time?”

“Well, I’m not buying anything this time. I’m thinking of selling it.”

“You selling?”

“Yes. There are some financial products that sell things that I don’t have: sell them first and buy it later and give it back.”

“Well, is it… Is this a short stock sale? That’s too bad. I thought I’d buy it too, if you were buying something.” Everyone around me was talking about the same thing.

I told her, “No way. Investors don’t make money by copying someone. You can make a quick buck, but you’ll end up losing it. Just be ready to go to my parents’ home next month. That’s your best investment.”

Ah-young replied, pouring sake again to my empty glass. “Well, I got that!”

In the meantime, I chewed a fish cake skewer she had given me. It tasted better than expected. “Wow, this is delicious.”

“That’s right, isn’t it?”

Ah-young had been learning in the culinary academy for half a year. Her skill had been rapidly improving. Whether her major in art helped her with her dexterity or not, she had her own talent for this.

“Yes, if I do this for your parents, I’ll be accepted right away as good at cooking.”

“Are they ready for this?”

“Yes.”

To be honest, my parents rarely opposed what I said now. I had bought them a big building and made them secure in their old age. Therefore, if I said something, it would usually go, “Yes, do it however you want.”

Of course, welcoming a daughter-in-law was a different matter, but I thought they’d like to see Ah-young as well. She had been really nice to me lately. I was sure my parents would agree, if she were in their eyes.

Ah-young said, leaning against my shoulder. “Then shall I have some side dishes when I go there? They can try them.”

“That wouldn’t be bad, either. My parents don’t like to go out to eat, even for expensive food. So if they see their daughter-in-law serving rice and side dishes this way…”

But then my cell phone on the back of the dragon’s head rang. I reached out and picked it up. When I pressed the call button, Vice President Jang gasped and made a loud noise.

“Boss! We have a big deal.”

“Big deal? What’s the big deal?”

To be honest, I didn’t have anything big to do. I’d already know if there was a really big deal through the future news. I spoke calmly, “What’s the matter, Vice President Jang?”

“Oh, I got a call from Amazon. They want to take over FutureSync.”

‘Oh… that’s it.’ I took a deep breath and shouted, “Really? From Amazon?”

At any rate, it was the hardest thing to pretend to be normal. When I made an agreeable response, Jang said even more excitedly, “I heard that at the last Silicon Valley conference, a senior executive at Amazon was impressed by FutureSync’s technology. They say the Amazon M&A team will come to Korea soon to bargain.”

I stood up from the open outdoor bath and said, “Oh, really? That’s great. I am going to sell it soon.”

I decided to go through the sales process without further dragging on this time. The year was about to change from 2020 to 2021. I didn’t have any more time to relax.

“Then we’ll prepare an M&A negotiation team right away.”

“Yes, Vice President. I ask a favor of you.”

When I finished talking, I put my cell phone back in place. Ah-young was looking up at me. “What’s going on?” she asked.

I hugged Ah-young’s shoulder with one hand, and said, lifting up a sloshing glass of sake with the other hand, “Everything is going well.”

“Hmm. You’ve never really lost…”

“That’s why I named it Invictus Investment, because I have not been defeated.” I drank a second glass of sake. Now all the preparations were over. It was time for the fire-breathing dragon to rise.