12 Hours After

Translator: Khan

Editor: Aelryinth

“Wow, that’s good.” Ah-young liked it like a child, sitting on a tube and splashing water with her feet. “I don’t even have to go to the hotel… I think this place is better than the hotel!”

I watched her with a satisfied look, drinking a cocktail. I had bought this penthouse last fall, so it was the first time that the pool was filled with water.

Ah-young had grown up in a wealthy family and had been abroad since she was a child, but no matter how much she had been, she had never experienced playing in the water in the middle of the buildings in Seoul.

I asked her, “So, how are you doing these days?”

“What?”

“Becoming an announcer.”

“Ah, it’s going well. Have a look at this.” She cleared her throat for a moment and spoke to me with correct, clear pronunciation. -Hello, everyone. This is the nine o’clock news for BKS on Saturday, May Second. Today’s first news: former lawmaker Kim Eun-jae has been named the new chief of staff to the president. After joining politics and serving as a re-elected lawmaker, he failed to win the nomination race, but he is said to have been trusted by President Park due to his unique affinity and political sense.”

She was good. If I closed my eyes and listened, I would have believed that a real incumbent announcer had just spoken to me. She was talking to me on a yellow tube, in a blue pool, wearing a red bikini, and it just didn’t feel that way.

‘… she is really good.’ I think so, and she asked, “How about me? Am I good? Do you think I’m going to be an announcer?”

After graduating from art school, she suddenly thought of being an announcer. When her father had been found innocent in the past, she had looked up a video of herself, and the female announcer who had proudly announced the news looked so cool. It was too sudden a career change, but she had enough qualities to be an announcer. She was beautiful, and she was in good shape. Of course, she had not even known how to say ‘Hello, ladies and gentlemen,’ but she had quickly gained her skills, going to an announcer academy near her school.

However, I said to her with an ignorant look, “Well… I don’t know.”

“Hmm… really? That’s weird… because my teacher complimented me a lot these days.”

“It might be better if you keep doing it, but isn’t the written test more problematic than the practical examination? What about the Korean proficiency test?”

“I’ve been working hard on that lately. My scores on the mock test are also increasing.”

According to her, she had been doing well at school until she decided to pursue her career as an artist. She had just majored in art because she had liked it better. Her English score had been perfect from the beginning. She could have briefed the news in English in the first place.

“Oh, well…” I nodded.

‘… it’s really going to work, isn’t it?’ When she had first started doing it, I had thought it was a fling for a rich girl, but if she passed the written test, which I thought was the biggest barrier, she might actually become an announcer. In particular, she would be an announcer in a general programming channel, which had a low competition rate. In that field, appearance was preferred to ability. If she said she went there, she would pass the exam.

The problem was that I didn’t like her being an announcer. I had felt it the last time in ‘The Shock Interview Girl,’ but I hadn’t really liked my girlfriend being famous. When she became an announcer, she would become very popular again, as she was pretty.

‘I can’t stop her from doing this…’

I’d been talking indirectly about this before. “Well, do you need to be an announcer, leaving art as your major?”

But every time she said, “As I said before, modern art…”

I didn’t know what the real reason was, but she seemed to have been disillusioned after seeing something dirty in the domestic art world. She said that the professor’s eyes became the standard of art.

“I wish I could be a webtoon writer. I’m not going to do pure art.”

So that was how it ended. She studied abroad and graduated from graduate school. It was a bit of a waste, but I had to admit it was her choice. Even if she did that, she would not have any problems.

Then, Ah-young suddenly said, “But, oppa. Isn’t it a little bit big living alone here?”

“Oh, that’s right,” I answered, and then added right away, “But it’s great. It’s good to have a big theater, and it’s good to get used to. And I like high places, originally.” That’s all I said and no more.

She’d been talking more and more about marriage these days. She then asked, “By the way, are you expecting a guest in the evening?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“A business person.”

“Hmm…” She squinted at me. That was not too much. These days, for some reason, a lot of women dashed after me, starting with the MBE announcer, including a dentist, a department store worker, a former middle school classmate, and even a new employee of the Invictus Investment, wherever I went.

“I’m supposed to meet him here. If you want to see him, meet him. He is a big foreign guy.” He was none other than Crow. After meeting him a few times, Ah-Young knew of his existence.

“Really? That important foreign guest you spoke to me about then? Shall I prepare dinner for him? What does he like?” Even after moving here from next door, she would still cook for me once in a while.

“Chicken.”

“Chicken?”

“Yes. He likes chicken.”

“Then I’ll do it for you. Less greasy. You look a little fat these days. You shouldn’t get adult diseases in your early thirties.” She worried about my health so often these days.

“… yes.”

————-

That afternoon, I asked, looking at Crow who was ripping off the chicken leg, “How about it?”

“I think it’s lighter than usual. It’s the same with the sauce. But it’s delicious. It’s a little different from the greasy ones. Where is this chicken from?”

Crow had become an expert on franchised chicken these days. It was because he had a chicken party with me every month when he came to take a request.

“They don’t sell it, but a chef made it for us.”

“I see. I think the chef is good at it.”

“Well… if she were a chef, she’d rather…”

“What?”

“No. I was talking to myself. I think it’s the first time I have asked you to come to my new house here.”

Crow replied, looking at the pool over the table, the garden, and beyond them, the night view of Seoul. “Yes, sir. It’s… It’s like the castle of kings.”

I asked him, ” Kings?”

“Yes, sir. You’re like a king.”

‘It’s not very wrong. I’ve been feeling that way, a little bit, since my fortune became over a billion dollars. I am a king made by capitalism. There is nothing that I can not do because I have money, and the people around me bend their heads. Even if I don’t want to, if I have a lot of money, I become a king. This is the age.’

Nevertheless, I talked about democracy to Crow, “However, South Korea is a democratic country. There’s no king. There’s a president.”

Crow nodded and said, “… president. Yes, I know that.” In fact, what he had been doing for seven months had been investigating the next presidential candidates.

I continued, taking out the documents he had assembled. “Today is the second report for Rep. Han Sang-hoon.”

What I received today was the second report of the investigation of Rep. Han Sang-hoon. I had already confirmed that Rep. Han Sang-hoon had received money from the dead man during the “Goo Soon-gil List” incident, by the first report of the investigation seven months ago. Of course, it was a bribery case.

However, as he had said in that incident, “I don’t even know him,” there would be added perjury. If this was revealed, he was sure to be hit hard as a politician.

But I didn’t release it right away, because it had already been a case of “not guilty” by the Supreme Court. If it was exposed again, it would put pressure on the legal profession. ‘Even if the truth is yes, it becomes no if the judiciary says no.’

Furthermore, Rep. Han Sang-hoon was a former prosecutor, who graduated from Seoul National University’s law school. Numerous judges were his university seniors, colleagues, and juniors, and he was a real power of the opposition party. Therefore, there was no guarantee that it would be accepted as true if I exposed it. So I decided to add one more thing.

Rep. Han Sang-hoon had been said that before he became a lawmaker, when he was a prosecutor, he received sex entertainments and freely visited hostess bars because he was captivated by the charms of a woman. However, since he became a lawmaker, he had been so scared of reporters’ eyes that he couldn’t do so, so he changed his secretaries and slept with them. So I got Crow to dig up this rumor, too. The more weaknesses I knew, the better.

Crow told me, “Yes, following the last time… it contains the information you want. You can see it by the Dream of Crow if you want.”

I said, nodding my head, “Yes, I’ll look at the contents and… I’ll do it.”

But when I saw it, my face was slightly flushed and I shook the document a couple of times. ‘Oh, my God. This is completely a sex story.’ The report clearly stated that a middle-aged lawmaker was having an affair with his secretaries. If I slept with the eye patch on me, I would be watching a sex video.

‘Where the hell did he do this?’ It was the National Assembly’s office in Yeouido. ‘Is the National Assembly’s office a motel? I didn’t pay taxes for this.’ I was paying tens of million dollars a year in taxes. Taxes were high, as profits were high.

‘In any case, one more weakness is added.’ Rep. Han Sang-hoon was married and already had three children. If this turned out, his presidential dreams would be no different than being thrown overboard. Of course, the adultery law had been abolished these days, and even though there had been generous understanding of infidelity, with this alone, he would lose about ten percent of the voter base during the presidential election. Rep. Han Sang-hoon could never be president, if I made a move.

‘The question is, when will it burst? Let’s see who the president will be next year and make a decision.’

Today was May Second, 2020. The next presidential election was scheduled to take place on May Second, 2021. So by tomorrow morning, I would know who the next president would be.

There were three slots in People Search. If I wrote down each name, ‘#1 Joo Sung-won #2 Han Sang-hoon #3 Kwak Ji-won,’ such articles would appear.

[Joo Sung-won, former Seoul Mayor, was elected president!]

[Presidential candidate, Han Sang-hoon, failed to win the presidential election.]

[Presidential candidate, Kwak Ji-won, had a breeze instead of a gusto.]

That way, the articles would appear. If I didn’t like the result, I would step up and change the next president.

‘Shall I buy a presidential theme stock? What was the stock related to Mayor Joo Sung-won? What kind of construction was it? Was it development?’

Suddenly, I remembered seeing the future news and buying stocks during the Seoul mayoral election. At that time, I had bought, sold, and changed stocks after watching the news about who would become the mayor of Seoul, but now I had reached the point of deciding who would become the president.

‘I’ll decide the next president…’ Come to think of it, I was the king of the present age. I was the one who could wield information of the future, and who would know all the information of the past. The President would not be able to touch me either, since I would appoint him.

I rubbed my hands and thought, ‘All right, let’s see who the next president will be tomorrow…’