12 Hours After

Chapter 114. Screening

Translator: Khan

Editor: Aelryinth

I sat at my desk and reviewed the Jiwoo Entertainment report sent by Vice President Jang. The stock price of Jiwoo Entertainment recently had been in a downward spiral. According to the report, “They have been looking for activities in China ambitiously since they were acquired by the Chinese firm BEU, but they have performed worse than expected in the aftermath of recent changes in the stance of investment companies in China and the prolonged Hanhanlyeong.”

‘Their market capital is $25,000,000? It was like $30,000,000 when I bought it…’ I searched the stock price when I had been an employee, not a CEO. It was about $30,000,000. Then, it rose to $80,000,000 at some point. The move came shortly after it was acquired by BEU.

‘Ah, I sold it at this time.’ I looked at the chart and recalled the past for a moment. Now, even when I made $5,000,000 or $6,000,000, I was not impressed, but I cheered like I had the whole world when I earned $100,000 at that time.

‘It’s the greed of men…’ I tried to move the graph further with a smile on my face. Jiwoo Entertainment had been falling ever since it had hit $80,000,000. It was not very strange. No matter how the major shareholder changed, if it did not generate synergies, the value of the same company could not be maintained at more than twice as high. The stock price, which had soared, had fallen to $50,000,000 and stayed around the price for a while, and then it continued to fall again, until it reached $25,000,000 after half a year.

‘It’s way down from the time BEU took over.’

I guessed it didn’t work out really well. Jiwoo Entertainment’s main stars were a girl group, Nine Tales, and Ha Yeon-seo. They were famous for their visual appearance and ability, but they were not supported by the agency. It might not have improved since the owner changed to a Chinese company. I remembered that the CEO was abused, “Kim Dong-il, you son of a bitch! Don’t you feel sorry for Ha Yeon-seo?” Once again, I went to the stock bulletin board again.

– Jang-shin, you son of a bitch! Ha Yeon-seo is so poor since she was sold to China.-

There were some similar curses written. Only the name of the abused changed.

‘Jang-shin? Is this the president of the company?’

Listening to the story, the girl group Nine Tales seemed to have gone to China to release an album in Chinese and run events here and there across the continent. However, there wasn’t much success.

‘They have no luck… if we take over this company and let President Kwon take care of it… I think it’s not bad. President Kwon Oh-hyuk is famous for caring about his agency’s celebrities. If they get new management, they’ll be able to shine again.’

‘All right, then…’

However, I had a sudden thought: ‘Tak Joon-gi is moving.’ It was the advice Lee Won-jae had given me. If it had been the same as usual, I would have approved this deal without much thought, but now that I heard about it, I was ready to check everything.

‘What’s the probability that Tak Joon-gi is involved here? Is this is a Trojan horse?’ The probability was not that high, since this was a Chinese-based company, so it was going to be hard for Tak Joon-gi to touch.

‘I’m afraid it’s a little difficult… let’s be careful for now, but let’s pay more attention to the internal controls.’ I decided to do so. If he attacked our companies, there was a possibility of doing something about it with the existing companies. I had to stop that. I brought a notepad up on my cell phone. The notepad had three names on it: Jang Sang-jin, Shin Jae-eun, and Shin Dong-woo.

The three were none other than the main people in our companies: Vice President Jang of our company, Shin Jae-eun of Hyun Young Pharmaceutical, and Shin Dong-woo, CEO of Kai Games, were the most important people. I searched these people twice in a row yesterday evening and this morning. I might get some news because of the same names. As a result, the three men were clean. There was little content.

[The hidden power of Invictus Investment.]

[The little giant who leads a mid-sized pharmaceutical company.]

[The person who represents the creativity of the Kai Games.]

There were only good articles about them.

‘All right, I’ll search for these people tonight, and I’ll be starting on those people from this evening.’ They were the presidents of OH Entertainment, Blue E&M, and Oracle News. ‘Kwon Oh-hyuk, Ahn Yong-kyun, and Jung So-young.’

What really bothered me among those was President Kwon Oh-hyuk and OH Entertainment. Since the entertainment business was a business about people, there were times when they were greatly shaken by small issues, especially if the entertainer who was responsible for most of their good fortune, like Oh Hyun-joo, was shaken, the stock price could collapse.

‘After those three, I’ll scan the entertainers of OH Entertainment again. I’ll see what’s going on.’

Of course, I’d searched all of them in the past, but I’d overlooked one thing: the Butterfly Effect. I’d been watching the future news and making changes. If I hadn’t seen the news of the future, I wouldn’t have been playing with Tak Joon-gi, so I’d say that the present was the future I’d changed.

And the future would continue to change, because of me. So even if I’d already seen it, I needed to re-check it periodically. The good news was that the number of slots had increased to three by raising the level once this time. For that reason, I was able to search fifty percent more efficiently than before.

‘No matter who tries to attack me, I have the best shield.’ By the way, as I thought that, I suddenly got a strange idea, ‘Wait a minute, is he going to do something physical?’

I didn’t know, but there were still violent organizations in our country. Although they weren’t as open as they once were, it was true that they still existed. This Tak Joon-gi was a person who could have a connection with such people. Kang Joo-hyuk wrote a suicide note and committed suicide, but there were some things that were not clear.

I wandered around the office and thought, ‘Is it possible for Korea in the twenty-first century? A normal person would not do such a bold thing … but he’s lost a hundred million dollars… he’ll lose his temper and do something strange …’

I was suddenly worried about that. I could defend the CEOs by searching in People Search. But people like my family were not famous, and I could not search for them in People Search. If they were killed in a strange way, it would be news, but if they disguised it as an accident, they would not come out in Person Search.

‘What do I do then?’

There was also my girlfriend, Ah-young. Because of Go-young Food, she had a grudge against them. If Tak Joon-gi knew she was with me, he would think she had asked me for revenge. Actually, it was true, but it wasn’t just because of her request that I had trampled on Tak Joon-gi. She was not one that would get on the news if I searched for her name, either.

‘It’ll take a month. If a month passes…’ I was thinking about it, I had another thought, ‘Oh, by the way, Ah-young was supposed to go to America…’

Come to think of it, she was originally scheduled to go to the United States this August. Sarah and Ah-young would travel across the United States, from New York to Los Angeles. However, as she recently started dating with me, she was almost inclined to cancel it. I picked up the phone right away and dialed.

She answered my call before the phone rang three times. “Yes, oppa. What’s for? Aren’t you working now?”

“Ah-young, you are scheduled to go to America for the rest of your vacation, right?”

“Yes.”

“I think you’d better go anyway.”

“Really? Are you sure you’re okay with it?”

I liked being with her because we were in the middle of a fire of love, but I thought it would be comfortable to send her to the U.S. right now.

“No, I’m afraid I won’t be in Korea, because I have a business trip abroad in the middle of the month. If I don’t send you to America and I go abroad, it doesn’t mean anything.” I made an excuse that way.

“Okay…” She gave it a little thought, but soon agreed. Breaking the promise with her friend Sarah must have bothered her, too. The trip would go until fall, when a new semester would begin. By then Crow would bring me some information.

‘All right, this is enough.’

I went on to call my sister.

Turr, turr, turr… My sister really didn’t answer my phone. Fortunately, when the connection tone was repeated around ten times, she answered the phone, “What?” She got the phone in a slightly sleepy voice.

When I had started giving her an allowance of a thousand dollars a month, she said, “brother, just tell me,” but these days she had returned to her original position.

I said, scratching my forehead, “Sujin, what are you going to do for the rest of your vacation?”

“Well, I have no plans.”

Last time, I had heard from my parents that my sister, who was an elementary school teacher, had broken up with her boyfriend, a doctor, and was staying in the house with nothing to do during the vacation.

“If you don’t have anything to do, why don’t you take our parents to Europe for the rest of your vacation?”

“Europe?”

“Yes, you can go to the south of Italy, France, Spain, or Russia, Finland, and Denmark, and I’ll pay all the expenses.”

My sister changed her voice. “Really?”

“Yes. It’s vacation season anyway… and take our parents to Europe as soon as possible. I’ll pay the plane tickets and even the cost of the hotel… I’ll give you a Visa card, and can you handle everything?”

My sister was completely restored to life, “Yes! I will, brother!” Anyway, she was only nice to me when I gave her money.

“It’s a condition to take our parents with you. You can’t go alone, and only if both our parents want to go…”

My sister said, cutting off my words, “Don’t worry! You know dad can’t say no to this, right? It’s my daily routine to hang out with mom these days, so I’ll take both of them along!” she declared in a confident voice.

“Yes. Then I will rely on you.”

“Yes!” My sister hung up with a lively voice. That was it. Those who could be exposed to physical danger would be abroad for the next month.

—————————

That night, I met Ah-young and set up the schedule for the United States.

“Are you sure it’s okay?”

“Yes, have a good trip.”

———

“Brother, I got three tickets for a flight to Rome. I was sorry for the first class, so I bought the business class.” I received a report from my sister, and I felt so relieved to send the four abroad for a month.

I decided to concentrate on the presidents for the rest of the period. It was actually this way that the possibility was high. ‘Kwon Oh-hyuk, Ahn Yong-kyun, Jung So-young.’

The first day passed without much trouble.

[President Kwon Oh-hyuk announced Vision 2019.]

[Ahn Yong-kyun is aiming for a gold medal in freestyle at the championship.]

[The announcer Jung So-young looks elegant.]

It was a little bit sad that the two behind were not famous or had common names, and they were pushed away by others. But the more there were, the more I put their names in People Search the next morning: Kwon Oh-hyuk, Ahn Yong-kyun, Jung So-young.

Out of these three people, one person had a strange piece of news. I looked at it for a long time. “What’s wrong with him? Why is he…?”