[The characters, places, organizations, events, and so on appearing in this work have no relation whatsoever to reality and are fictional creations born of the author’s imagination.]
――――――――――
June 23, 1979, Devenger The Manor, office.
[An eccentric has appeared in New York’s prestigious Devenger family. - New York Poster]
“Interesting.”
Henry gave a nonchalant reply as he skimmed the tabloid newspaper Bart, whose expression had grown increasingly grave of late, had presented to him the moment the morning’s work began. Bart, however, seemed unable to let go of his anger. Barely restraining himself in front of Henry, he asked,
“How dare that vulgar Australian bastard… To think he would touch the Devenger family with an article like this. Henry, how shall we handle it? Shall we move District Attorney Robert Morganso, whom we once helped, and have him shaken down first? Or would it be better to mobilize the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance and strip them clean down to the last speck of dust? A trash company like this can’t possibly have clean books.”
While Bart poured out his impassioned speech, Henry opened the newspaper again. Until now, the Devenger family had thoroughly pursued seclusion. The reason Henry had found it strange, when he first possessed this body, that the family’s public recognition was low compared to its fame was precisely because of this almost bizarre aversion to the press. This closed-off family tradition, passed down through the generations, reacted with extreme sensitivity to media exposure, and had always met those who dared cross the line with merciless retaliation.
Considering that background, the tone was quite polite for a tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, who had been notorious in Henry’s memories of his previous life. To summarize the content, it was along the lines of “the young master of a prestigious New York family, educated at a western university, even took out bank loans to start a game console company.” They must have identified the existence of Henry’s investment company as well, but they seemed to have deliberately turned a blind eye to that part. With no premature judgment on success or failure and only a dry listing of facts, it was excessively tame for one of Murdoch’s newspapers.
‘Is this really the same newspaper that harassed the protagonist over every little thing in the original novel and bled him dry? Aside from the clickbait headline, it’s practically a heartwarming story.’
Henry briefly touched the corner of his mouth.
‘I don’t need self-PR right now… They should’ve used it later, once everything was finished. What a shame. Well, since they’re originally novel-writing types, writing it to this extent must be them testing the waters in advance. It wouldn’t be a huge problem to just coolly let it pass, but… the problem is I’ve only just become the head of the family.’
Henry placed the newspaper down on the table and sank into thought for a moment. Then he rose and gave Bart his instructions.
“All right. Let’s leave the prosecution aside for now and put our effort into a high-intensity tax audit of their business activities within New York through the state tax authorities. Even if the article is factual, we can’t allow them to take our family lightly. Let’s call it a preventative shot.”
“A wise decision, sir. Ah, and this afternoon, there was a request for contact from Mr. David Rockefeller. It is likely because of the large loan his immature nephew took out. To remind you once again, tomorrow evening is dinner with Donald Reagan. Though he has yet to declare his candidacy, he too appears to be harboring no small ambition. After that, visits from presidential candidates are scheduled one after another, so brace yourself.”
As Bart’s report continued, Henry’s eyebrows twitched.
‘The family background really is cheat-code level. A household that presidential candidates come to visit first? And Bart talks about the district attorney’s office or a tax audit like he’s ordering delivery food. Is my family way more OP than I thought? Or is it only working because New York is our home ground?’
Even before Henry became the head of the family, the Devengers had been a family in New York no one dared underestimate. The only person who had dismissed that stature as merely “a highly honorable but little-known family,” relying solely on the memories of a body that had never had any interest in the family, was Henry.
Even a cursory look at the media and press landscape made the answer clear. The Devengers reacted with near-convulsive sensitivity to becoming gossip fodder themselves and hid behind the fine-sounding virtue of being a secluded prestigious house, but behind that lay a severe contradiction. While they hated appearing in articles, they were the actual ruling family behind [The Time], which controlled magazines that shaped not only authority within the United States but public opinion around the world.
New York, their base, was quite literally the Devengers’ front yard. They said even a neighborhood dog had half the advantage in front of its own house; all the more so, it was only natural that a prestigious family that had sunk its roots into this land since the founding of the nation had driven lines of connections deep into every corner of politics and business.
At present, Henry was obsessed with multiplying the seed money under his personal name and had pushed the trust’s work to the back burner, but ironically, while its master was looking elsewhere, the trust was roiling more actively than ever in order to improve its constitution. Talent recruitment in particular was the source of trouble. Every person on the recruitment list was either the heart of their industry or a star whose name alone would be recognized, and in the process of drawing them to Devenger, a commotion had arisen that shook all of New York.
This disturbance was enough to put New York’s upper class on edge, and for ambitious men dreaming of the presidency, it became a perfect pretext. A pretext for a house call along the lines of, “The Devenger family has been so noisy lately, perhaps I should go ask after them.”
Although the U.S. presidential election would be held in November 1980, the presidential race was already heating up now, in June 1979, more than a year in advance. Under the tradition that, because the land was so vast, plenty of buildup time was needed, candidates were making a frenzy of getting their faces known before even the party primaries, let alone before the ink on their declarations of candidacy had dried.
And in this situation, there was Devenger, holding [The Time]. Moreover, once one added the fact that Henry’s maternal line was the Selzberg family of America’s largest daily newspaper, [New York Time], the situation became blatant. With historical legitimacy as a family that had signed the Declaration of Independence, immense wealth, and even pens capable of shaking public opinion, it was no wonder presidential hopefuls wore out the threshold coming to visit. Taking into account the web of connections extending into both parties without leaning toward any one in particular, the returns from winning over Devenger alone were simply too great!
It was not that Henry knew nothing at all of the family’s true nature, but the speed at which he was learning could not keep up with the changes in reality. He merely scratched the back of his head awkwardly at David Rockefeller’s request for contact, which now loomed right before him. Because the original owner of the body had been so indifferent to his relatives, to be honest, Henry did not even know whether his relatives in this world were alive.
Even when he had recently received the loan, he had simply marveled innocently, “Wow, since the trust is loaded, loan approval is practically a free pass, huh?” He had never dreamed of what lay behind it. Only after returning home and getting bombarded by Bart’s nagging had he realized how terrifying his genealogy was. His mother was from the [Selzberg] family, the principal shareholder of [New York Time], and his grandmother had been none other than the daughter of the oil king Rockefeller.
‘What is this, not even a golden spoon but a diamond cheat code. There was a reason we held shares and our main bank was Chase Manhattan. The bank president is practically my grandfather’s generation, so how could he refuse to lend to me?’
Henry swallowed a hollow laugh and looked back at Bart.
“Bart… no matter how much I search my memory, I don’t remember ever seeing Uncle David after I became an adult. Does he even know me?”
“When you were crawling around the living room in diapers, he used to come and go from this mansion as if it were his own home. After your grandmother passed away, he stopped visiting for a while, though. Well, more decisively, you ran away from home and fled west, so where would you have had a chance to meet him?”
“Phew. Better to get the beating over with first. Let’s deal with it now. If you reach him, connect him to my office. Ah, and when will the computer arrive?”
“That computer? It should be installed the day after tomorrow. And this is the list you had Gilberto prepare before. He looked ready to cry, worried you might cause some other outrageous accident. In any case, I’ll leave it here. I’ll connect the call through the extension as soon as it’s ready.”
“Yes, thank you, Bart.”
Once Bart closed the door and left, Henry had a brief window before the call was connected. He pulled out the thick list he had once ordered while drunk on sweet dreams, something that, even if it offered no immediate practical benefit, might help him understand the current situation. Taking a sip of cooling coffee, he turned through the documents.
“The number one broadcasting satellite business is [Hughes]. Well, that’s only natural. Number two is [ACA]? Ah, right. They did satellites too. If I separate out and purchase only the satellite division, it’d be around four to six hundred million dollars… The rest are all defense contractors. If it were possible, targeting only [ACA]’s satellite division would have been the best option.”
Before he knew it, Henry had drawn a large circle around [ACA], torn out the corresponding page, and sorted it to one side of the desk. It was the work of picking out things whose current prices seemed absurdly cheap from the perspective of his knowledge of the future. The next list was American clothing companies.
“[Nevais] at one billion? This is way too expensive, no chance. [Kelvin Colline], one hundred million dollars, okay, check. [Nike], one hundred million dollars, check that too. [GAB], eighty million dollars, check that as well…”
Next was the list of luxury brands. Seen from the perspective of 2026, their valuations were cheap enough to make one faint, but on the books of 1979, they were all listed as similar, unremarkable numbers.
“[GUGII] is one hundred fifty million, [Hermes] eighty million, [Louis Viton] one hundred twenty million, [Tiffanian Co.] one hundred million, [Cartier] one hundred eighty million, [Chanel] two hundred million, [Ferragamo] sixty million, [Givenchy] forty million? Wow, they’re all practically pocket change.”
Before he had even finished reading the list, Henry casually piled the luxury brand list to one side. From the perspective of 2026, the prices would make one’s eyes flip over, but at present, the luxury industry was treated as a “declining industry sought only by nobles,” and handled on the level of a neighborhood corner store.
‘I do want to sweep them all up right now, but… there must be a reason people are calling it a declining industry. There’s still some time before the Japanese kids ride the bubble and show their luxury-brand madness anyway. Within three years, if anything they’ll fall further; none of them are going to shoot straight up.’
Rather than luxury brands he did not know well, profits right in front of him mattered more. Henry’s gaze turned back toward the sports brands.
‘It’d be a far better deal to mark [Nike] as mine instead. As soon as it goes public next year, at least doubling is guaranteed, and once Brother Jordan appears later, the graph will break through the ceiling. Ah, right. When I took out the loan this time, there was some spare change left in the trust account, wasn’t there? I should tell them to pull in some [Nike] shares with that. If we enter now, we could become shareholders at a bargain price, couldn’t we?’
For Henry, who in the future had once lined up all night to buy a single pair of shoes, the genius sense possessed by [Nike]’s founder was a truth as firm as a verse from the Bible. Until professional managers came in later and started making a mess, this founder was, in terms of a game board, a unit so strong he broke the balance.
‘He’s practically on the level of Manchester United’s old man in management ability. With someone like this, we just give him all the voting rights and sweetly collect our shares from the side.’
With a hand full of conviction, Henry drew a large circle on the [Nike] documents. Beside it, he left a note: “Secure as much equity as possible under the trust’s name, in the form of angel investment with voting rights entrusted to the current founder.”
‘I’ll have to keep gradually buying up choice companies like this under the trust’s name too. Though of course, my personal name comes first.’