As soon as I finished work in Osaka, I returned to New York. Jonathan was now in his early thirties, but his face had a lot of wrinkles. Since he felt self-conscious, he was getting a premium massage from a famous masseuse who only dealt with the upper class. When I came in, Jonathan sent the masseuse outside. He said to the mirror while washing the massage oil off his face, “It might be because you are Asian, but you don’t seem to age.”

“No, you’re getting ridiculously old,” I replied.

He snorted. “Heh. You have no conscience. When are you going to come out into the world? I’m getting exhausted by myself.”

“Don’t be such a baby.”

War never stopped on Wall Street, where Jonathan belonged. He had led the acquisition of integrating medium-sized banks last year, and he was now a joint stakeholder and the lead manager of Googol. That was why his skin was rough and was in the midst of a breakout.

Poor Jonathan.

If he had awakened in his twenties, he would have kept his youth. Instead, he had awakened on the Day of Advent in my past life. He sat in front of me after wiping the water off his face.

“Investing in Googol was a stroke of genius. No one knew that APE would collapse and that Googol would lead the internet market. Well, only you would’ve known, Sun. Thanks to you, I’m getting more wrinkles.”

Even now, Jonathan’s phone was ringing loudly. He stared at it as if he wanted to throw it away, but he suppressed his irritation by letting out a sigh and turning the phone off.

“They are annoying.”

“Who are they?” I asked.

“You know… Those who would die for money.”

He was referring to the large investment banks on Wall Street like AP Morgan and Silverman. They also had spots at the Bilderberg Club.

“They said Googol’s IPO1 goes against Wall Street’s traditional rules. Whatever. Who doesn’t know that? They couldn’t convince Googol, so they are bothering me now.”

I was surprised because I didn’t expect Jonathan would approve of Googol’s way of doing an IPO. Traditionally, the lead manager searched for potential investors and determined the price and quantity of the public offering before launching the IPO.

However, Googol refused to use the conventional strategy. Instead, they applied the auction method instead of the demand prediction way. This was obviously a challenge against the orthodox ways and authorities of the Wall Street investment banks that controlled IPOs.

People began gossiping that it was a war between Silicon Valley and Wall Street or that it was a conflict between Western idealism and Eastern Wall Street’s vested interests. However, the irony was that the Jonathan Group was now the symbol of Wall Street, so there was also a rumor stating that it was a battle between Wall Street and the Jonathan Group.

The Jonathan Group was an investment company. Aside from having a fifty percent stake in Googol, their goal, like any other investment company, was to reap everything they could from Googol’s founders. By using the traditional IPO method, they could take ten percent of the commission fee from the listed stocks and further increase their stock holdings by applying the privilege that allowed them to allocate a certain stake in advance.

However, Jonathan refused to use that strategy while I was guarding Osaka’s dungeon. On that day, he asked for my opinion as he wanted to support Googol’s IPO method.

“…”

I stared at Jonathan’s face. A massage worth a thousand dollars couldn’t get rid of the stress that covered his face.

“It means you are pulling out a knife against the entire Wall Street.”

Jonathan smirked when I replied and slowly nodded.

“The Iraq War is nearing its end. After amending the situation, the White House won’t just sit back. Isn’t that obvious? Those bastards will try to teach us for sure.”

They were in a similar situation as Korea was in during the IMF crisis. A rascal, Jeon-il, had been born during that turmoil, and our group in New York had become evil by devouring small and medium-sized banks while the U.S. government was waging a war on terrorism. The U.S. government had repeatedly warned our group not to expand our business to banking.

“They will conduct tax audits and move Wall Street at the same time. So Sun, this is a warning from us that if they plan to restrain us, we will destroy the traditions of Wall Street one by one. That’s why we should never fail.”

For a moment, Jonathan’s eyes blazed like the way they used to when he was a hunter in the past. He was armed. Even if he went into the Trial Tests without skills or traits, he would probably survive.

Jonathan picked up his phone as if he had just remembered something. He turned it on and moved his lips quietly.

Berry.

The company had been regaining their reputation with their APod and would soon lead the smartphone market by launching the APhone. Jonathan was contacting Berry’s founder.

“It’s me, Jonathan. I saw your interview yesterday. How could you do that to a co-company in Silicon Valley? I mean, how could you conclude that Googol’s IPO will ‘fail’ that easily?”

Unfortunately, that was the general market’s reaction. Everyone thought we wouldn’t be able to beat the Wall Street tradition and end up flopping.

“Threatening with action? Yeah, sure. Look at it that way. I’m so disappointed. I’ll give you time to think again. It’s not too late,” Jonathan slightly raised his voice at the end.

Then, he called a few more places. The IT companies that had our New York Group as their largest shareholder couldn’t avoid Jonathan’s criticism. It was true that I was concerned because the market’s response was perfectly normal. In the past, Googol’s IPO had failed. Despite its large listing, they were only able to raise just over half of the needed investment, and the offering price had plunged from one hundred dollars to eighty. They had suffered from a crushing defeat, and that was the price for going against Wall Street’s established rules.

How will things go this time?

Googol’s IPO had put Wall Street and Silicon Valley into a hysterical state. Although they had drawn lots of attention in my previous life, they were gaining much more attention nowadays. The term ‘premium’ was now attached at the end of Jonathan Group’s name. It was because their founders had moved up the corporate history to a considerable extent with the twenty million dollars of investment we had placed in Googol. In the previous timeline, sales around this time totaled around three billion, but they had already exceeded ten billion now.

The decisive factor of Googol’s growing trend was their number of employees as they had recruited more than five thousand IT elites. They had secured those who had lost their jobs when the dotcom bubble burst. Investors’ demand was much stronger now than in the past, so I had hoped that their IPO would succeed this time.

But I’m not sure.

By all accounts, our New York Group was on the front line not only as a co-owner, but also as the lead manager who was spearheading Googol’s IPO. It was a war that Jonathan started and I supported, so we had to win no matter what. If we lost, it would make us look weak.

“Even if we lose, we should make sure that it doesn’t look like we failed,” I said.

That was our last resort. The moment Googol’s IPO had any signs of faltering, I would make my paper companies intervene in the share auction.

“I get what you mean, but that will expose your paper companies to the world. You shouldn’t do that,” Jonathan advised.

We could have chosen to veto Googol’s IPO method. In fact, we could have stopped them even if we needed to threaten them. However, we went ahead with this plan in order to warn Wall Street that if they challenged us, we would destroy their traditions like we did this time!

“Is that so? Sun, you… you think it could fail, right?”

Jonathan’s face hardened.

“I’m saying that we should never fail. We started the fight first. How many IPO stocks do we have at the roadshow2?” I asked.

“25.7 million shares.”

“That’s a lot.”

“We’ve increased the quantity from the previous plan.”

“A sudden increase in stock volume could lose investors’ faith in us. Just because the size of the IPO is large doesn’t mean that investors will flock unconditionally toward it. Can’t you withdraw some now?” I questioned.

“Ah, that’s difficult. We already finished calculating, and the Googol guys are a bunch of crap.”

“Can you do it or not?”

“No. I didn’t expect you to worry so much. You weren’t like this when you approved it.”

“Because I needed it. You are not wrong, but it’s just that we must win.”

Jonathan wasn’t wrong because it was true that now was the perfect time. As he had mentioned earlier, the White House would take the lead on Wall Street and attack us when the Iraq War was over. Wall Street needed a warning.

Jonathan said, “Mmm… We need an impactful subject. What about Predict?”

A few days later, the news that Predict, the second largest software company in the world, had offered a huge deal to Googol went viral. Although it was just a rumor, not a public announcement, the market’s reaction was heated. The scary thing about taking control of the market was this. As long as the fact that Predict was under our control was hidden, the deal that they proposed to Googol was considered normal business, not an attempt to manipulate stock prices.

Jonathan smiled insidiously at the news. Sooner or later, Wall Street would realize who their real owner was.

***

I was ready to jump into Googol’s IPO with my two laptops. I displayed the overseas stock trading account under the name ‘Na Seon-Hu’ on one screen (my mom had not used a single penny from my account even though I had told her to use it freely) and another account with three billion dollars to keep my powder dry was on another monitor.

Jonathan’s excited voice came out of the speakerphone. He was inside the New York Stock Exchange with the founders of Googol. It was quite noisy. Wall Street would have congratulated themselves for purchasing cheap Googol stock, but we had excluded them from the beginning. I felt like I could hear their curses and groans. We were at the crossroads of whether Wall Street’s tradition would shatter or not.

I began typing on the keyboard.

「Two hundred and fifty dollars. Three hundred stocks.」

At this time, individual investors like ‘Na Seon-Hu’ were participating in the bidding. There were a total of ten rounds in ten days, and I waited for today’s round to end. The day’s round ended in the afternoon when I was scheduling my future plans with Woo Yeon-Hee, Mick, Revolucion, and Tomorrow.

On the first day’s round, ‘Na Seon-Hu’ didn’t win. The final price for the first round was two hundred and sixty dollars. From that day on, the price of each round began to soar without falling. Two hundred and eighty dollars in the second round, three hundred and twelve dollars in the third round, three hundred and forty dollars in the fourth round, and four hundred dollars in the fifth round.

Googol’s IPO had been a huge success so far, and our victory was on the horizon. However, no one knew when the market trend would fluctuate, so I had to stay in the hotel room until the end of the final round.

1. Initial Public Offering ☜

2. An investment briefing. ☜