Bohol, Philippines.
Emerald Resort.
For the first time in a while, I’d returned home?
After leaving the quiet of Darapanan and coming to Bohol, the crowds had me feeling dazed.
Bohol was still a quiet countryside compared to Seoul, but after being in Darapanan, it felt like a metropolis.
It was disorienting, but at the same time, there was a strange excitement to it.
Things on the Darapanan side had finally settled down a bit.
Edward was steadily extracting the concentrate,
and Jason was delivering it to China without a hitch.
Everyone was doing what they were good at.
As for what came next, China would take care of it on its own.
They’d make the candies themselves, and distribute them properly themselves.
That was how the work had been divided.
The system had been built.
Now it just needed to run smoothly.
Everyone only had to do their assigned role well.
The important thing was that there was nothing for me to get involved in.
I just had to collect money from the middle of it all.
Wasn’t that enough?
So today, I was thinking of doing a little of my original job as a guide.
The thought of mingling with the people who had come to Bohol for a trip made me excited.
The moment I put on the Candy Tour uniform, I could already see people here and there looking uncomfortable.
They probably didn’t want to work with the boss either.
But so what?
I wanted to do it.
Did I really have to worry about things like that just to do this?
Couldn’t I just do it?
I was the boss.
I was about to head out after putting on my uniform when I heard someone call me from somewhere.
“Boss, hold on a second.”
It was Anna’s voice.
If Anna caught me, I’d have to receive reports again and get dragged into a meeting.
I tried to sneak out while pretending I hadn’t heard her, but before I knew it, Anna had run over and grabbed me by the collar.
“If you’re back, you should receive the reports first. Where do you think you’re going?”
“Huh? Anna? I didn’t see you. Have you been well, Anna?”
I awkwardly acted and greeted her at the same time.
“Thanks to you. It seems you had a nice rest in Darapanan, Boss. Your face looks better.”
“Better, my foot. It’s swollen because I went through so much hardship.”
“Yes. Let’s say that’s true.”
“I’m serious…”
“Yes. I believe you. So, the report first.”
“Can’t I guide first and do it in the evening? I heard the guide team was short on people, so I thought I’d help out a bit.”
“Surely not. The guide team is absolutely not short on people. If anything, they always have some room to spare. So you don’t need to worry about anything unnecessary like that. Shall we go to the conference room together, then?”
“Do I really have to go? Can’t we do it later?”
“There’s an important matter.”
.
.
.
“Right now, Unity Town is progressing far faster and on a much larger scale than planned.”
“I get the faster part, but what do you mean by larger?”
“We expected that even if Unity Town grew, it would be a few thousand people. Ten thousand at most. But it’s already surpassed ten thousand.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I think taking in everyone who needed protection had a big impact. It’s becoming a multinational town.”
“Well, Patrick and Simon will handle that on their own. They’re the ones who said we should take them in. Not me.”
I vehemently denied responsibility, just in case the sparks flew my way.
“Yes. I’m sure. The problem is money.”
“Money? Money is the problem? No. Money isn’t a problem. Why? Because I have a lot of money. Do you want some? China’s been sending money nonstop as it is, so I’ve got even more now. So just use some.”
It was true.
I had too much money. Far too much.
I was someone who barely consumed anything, yet money kept pouring into my accounts.
Honestly, the money coming in from Gogo Casino alone was more than enough for me to eat and sleep well, but the casino was only the tip of the iceberg.
Once the payments for Ascend started coming in from China, the amounts were truly tremendous.
All of that money was well-laundered, untaxed money that landed in bank accounts.
On the other hand, I was either attached to the resort or staying in Darapanan, so there was nothing for me to spend money on.
Before, I had at least used my own money when buying buildings, buying land, or building factories, but after Anna joined, even that disappeared.
According to Anna, spending money was more important than earning it,
and she insisted that building factories and things like that were expenditures with all kinds of benefits, so they absolutely had to be done under the name of the construction company or the resort.
That way, she said, we could receive benefits.
So the money in my accounts was just sleeping there.
To be exact, they probably weren’t even my accounts.
They were likely corporate accounts the money ended up in after going around and around.
In any case, if money was needed, I could provide as much as necessary.
But Anna’s answer was unexpected.
“I probably know better than you how much is in your accounts, Boss. And Unity Town has plenty of money too. Not Unity Town’s money, but money coming in personally. That’s the problem.”
“Personal money? There’s something like that?”
“You told them to collect child support, didn’t you?”
“Ah—right. Child support. They should collect it.”
“I don’t know what you did or how, but everyone is sending it diligently.”
“Then isn’t that fine?”
“But for now, we haven’t been paying it out to each individual.”
“Why? Shouldn’t you give it to them? It came under the children’s names. You should give it to the children.”
“That’s what I wanted to ask you. Right now, the children don’t have the ability to discern. If we pay out the money, it will go to their mothers. Is that right? Or should we steadily save it like a fixed deposit and pay it out later?”
It was a question I had never even considered.
It was a question that would never have come up if she hadn’t truly been thinking about the children.
I was grateful to Anna.
I was already grateful enough that she handled countless funds so well, but she was even considering the reasons and purposes behind each incoming fund in detail, as well as the children’s future.
“What do you think, Anna?”
“To be honest, I think it would be best to pay it out later, when they become adults. Right now, the mothers have an opportunity to work too. We’re providing jobs as well. If we pay out the money now, probably half of the mothers won’t work.”
“You think so?”
“There’s an extremely high chance. Some of them might even leave Unity Town relying only on that money.”
“Really?”
“It’s entirely possible. If we give them the money, there will probably be quite a few who leave their children behind and go. Even when we were recruiting town residents, there were a lot of people who told us to just take the children, weren’t there? The children would just be abandoned. And when the children grow up and want to do something, won’t they need money? We would be keeping it safe for them until then.”
I wiped every hint of playfulness from my face and asked again.
“You know that if this goes wrong, it becomes embezzlement, right? And worse, it becomes the trashy act of skimming off the children’s child support.”
“I have absolutely no intention of doing that. If anything, I’m thinking of putting the money into a fund and growing it into a lump sum. So that when they’re grown and want to do something, it can become a solid source of capital for them.”
“If that’s the case, I have no reason to oppose it. But you have to let them know how much money has come in and how much has accumulated. And make sure the children know that the money is coming from their fathers. At the very least, the children should know that their fathers didn’t abandon them, but are working hard far away and sending them money.”
“Yes. I’ll make sure it’s handled that way.”
“And no matter what happens, make sure the principal is guaranteed. Even if you take a loss while investing, cover at least the principal plus interest from other funds if you have to. You know what I mean, right?”
“Yes. I understand perfectly. There will never be any reason to touch the principal. In fact, I’m considering interest that will be as large as the principal.”
“Good. Then please take care of that, Anna. For the children, it could become their future.”
“Yes, sir.”
*******
Zhou Qiming could not hide his smile as he looked at the massive amount of Ascend concentrate that had come in through Guangzhou.
With that, it seemed they would be able to solve the chronic shortage of supply.
How much had they suffered all this time because they had no stock?
They needed to open new Ascend stores, but the lack of supply had kept delaying everything.
If they couldn’t even supply the existing stores, how could they open new ones?
But with the concentrate coming in, a significant portion of those worries had been resolved.
Once that enormous amount of concentrate was combined with production capacity capable of making hundreds of millions of units per day, the supply issue would be resolved quickly.
“Send it to the factory and make sure they can start production immediately.”
“Understood.”
“And collect samples, send them to the National Medical Products Administration, and have them analyze the ingredients once more. Also, find out whether an identical copy is possible.”
“Yes. Understood.”
After giving orders to his subordinates, Zhou Qiming looked at the Ascend being unloaded.
Just looking at Ascend put him in a good mood.
Should he call it a placebo effect?
He felt good just looking at it, even without eating it.
In truth, there was something even better.
As he distributed Ascend, Zhou Qiming’s power had grown even stronger.
First, he had gained a reliable source of funds.
That foolish man was supplying the product at a cheaper price than expected.
If it were Zhou Qiming, he would charge far more than that.
Thanks to that, he was able to pocket a fairly handsome amount of money.
The people who opened stores also paid him a set amount every month as a kickback.
They sent money proportional to their sales volume.
That was why Zhou Qiming had to sell even more Ascend.
Also, once rumors spread that Zhou Qiming was in charge of Ascend overall, people lined up to get on his good side.
Everyone began pledging loyalty to Zhou Qiming because they wanted to own even one Ascend store in their old age.
******
A meeting of the Central Politburo Standing Committee was held.
The seven committee members gathered and attended the meeting.
“There is news that the number of obesity and diabetes patients has surged recently. And research results indicate that this is largely related to Ascend.”
A major national health issue had been brought up as an agenda item, but no one took the issue seriously.
It didn’t matter what happened with something like that.
They sat there with the thought that it would somehow work itself out.
More than that, what came first was a deep sense of fatigue toward this uncomfortable standing committee meeting.
The recent standing committee members did not like these meetings.
The direction of state affairs differed from their own thoughts.
The fact that they had to follow Li Guoqing’s opinions, which they did not like, was extremely irritating.
That fact made this seat increasingly uncomfortable.
They hadn’t felt that way before, but gradually, they found themselves unable to hold back their anger.
In the eyes of the Minister of National Defense, who was responsible for national defense, that idiot bastard Li Guoqing knew nothing.
In the middle of all this, he was shamelessly spouting nonsense about increasing the people’s working hours even further.
If he could, he wanted to slap him across the face.
China was not a country that developed that way.
It needed to be founded on powerful military strength.
Military strength so powerful it could rival even the United States.
That was what the Minister of National Defense thought.
But Zhou Qiming thought differently.
Li Guoqing being a fool was true.
But strengthen the military?
That was something one would think of in the 1990s.
The future revolved around information.
They had to gather information and carry out disruption operations centered on AI and hacking.
Without information, nothing could be done.
Only then could China become the greatest nation.
When he looked at the committee members who were trying to take a long detour despite there being a perfect and fastest path, or who were trying to go down an entirely different path altogether, he truly felt the urge to kill.
He could not understand how such fools had made it onto the Standing Committee.
However, the person most dissatisfied in that meeting was Li Guoqing.
He had brought in obedient sons of bitches and seated them there, yet these days, he could see them thinking other thoughts.
All they had to do was what they were told, but he had no idea what was so difficult about that.
If they simply did as they were told instead of using their useless brains, everyone would be happy, but they were needlessly asking to be beaten.
Li Guoqing was thinking that he would have to replace the Standing Committee members soon.
There were seven members seated on the Standing Committee, but each of them thought differently.
Each of them envisioned a different future for China.
They all shared the desire to create the greatest China, but their methods differed.
In particular, after eating Ascend, their self-assertion had grown stronger.
In their minds, they could vividly see China as the greatest in the world.
To create such a China, things had to proceed according to their own methods.
That was the only way to create the greatest China in the world.
Everything the others said was wrong, and only they were right.
They had simply been unable to express it until now, but that would no longer do.
They could not endure it.
If things were left as they were, China might fall behind instead of becoming the greatest in the world.
It seemed the time had come to make a decision.
Each of them was devising their own way to create the greatest China.
.
.
.
“Minister Zhou Qiming, you designated all Ascend production factories as national key enterprises?”
“Yes. I believe it was a necessary measure for effective management.”
After the Standing Committee meeting ended, President Li Guocheng called Zhou Qiming aside to receive a report on Ascend.
“Well done. That is how it should be managed on a national level. But if you’ve designated it as a national key enterprise, shouldn’t you change its representative? You can’t leave the existing presidents sitting there as they are.”
“For now, we’ve maintained the representative positions as they are. Instead, we’ve sent an auditor who can oversee the overall operation of the factories.”
“I see.”
Li Guocheng answered, but he was not pleased.
The reason he had brought this up was simple.
It was so he could send his own people to be the factories’ representatives.
But because sending them as representatives would require Li Guocheng’s approval, Zhou Qiming had skipped that step by sending an auditor instead.
He had bypassed the process and seized control of the factories.
They already seemed to be packed full of Zhou Qiming’s people.
Li Guocheng wore a bitter expression.
This did not seem right.
This could not be allowed.
Zhou Qiming’s power had grown too great, too quickly.
He had to weaken him.
Lately, Zhou Qiming’s influence seemed to have grown far too large, and that was extremely unpleasant.
It was good that he had brought in Ascend, but once he had, he should have offered it up to Li Guocheng.
Instead, he held it in his grasp and refused to let go.
Rather, he was coveting even greater power.
It was unsettling.
Pocketing some money on the side was understandable.
But gathering people and aiming for power was not allowed.
Before long, he would have to do something.
.
.
.
The old geezer had sharp instincts.
Recently, the way Li Guocheng looked at Zhou Qiming had been anything but ordinary.
It was obvious he suspected Zhou Qiming.
That stupid bastard. If he made his suspicions that obvious, even a sloth would notice.
But Li Guocheng’s suspicion was a serious threat to Zhou Qiming.
Whether he was stupid or smart was not what mattered.
The President of the People’s Republic of China and the Minister of State Security could not be compared.
The difference in their authority and the power they could wield was enormous.
No matter how Zhou Qiming handled information and commanded agents.
Even if he was distributing Ascend, Li Guocheng’s power was not something he could casually disregard.
Zhou Qiming agonized over it.
Would he return to being an obedient dog?
Or would he be reborn as a lone wolf?
Should he go back to being a dog and neatly wrap up all his power, including Ascend, and hand it over to Li Guocheng?
Or should he become a wolf and tear into Li Guocheng?
His face darkened with worry.
He could not fall asleep easily.
Having no other choice, he took one pill of Ascend.
As a sweet thrill brushed across the tip of his tongue, Zhou Qiming’s golden future rose before him.
Soon, having made up his mind, Zhou Qiming picked up the phone.