Story of a Big Player from Gangnam

Chapter 187: World-Renowned Engineer (1) – PART 2

Gun-Ho stayed in New Otani Hotel in Akasaka. Tomorrow, he had to go back to Korea. He suddenly missed Mori Aikko so much. Gun-Ho gave a call to the general affairs manager in Korea.

“I want to extend my trip for one more day. I will return to Korea the day after tomorrow.”

“Okay, sir.”

The next day, Gun-Ho didn’t return to Korea but instead, he went to Kyoto without telling anyone. The emperors of Japan used to live in Kyoto. Gun-Ho headed to Okazaki Park where the festival was held in. There were posters here and there about the festival. A pretty geisha in colorful Kimonos posed with a traditional Japanese oil-paper umbrella in her hand on the poster. When Gun-Ho looked at the festival poster closely, he was astonished. It was Mori Aikko on the poster.

“Wow. It is indeed Mori Aikko.”

Gun-Ho smiled.

There were so many people at Heian Shrine in Okazaki Park. They all seemed to be there for the festival. Many photographers were standing in front of the shrine with their cameras ready. Behind the group of photographers, there was a huge crowd of general spectators, and Gun-Ho was inside the crowd.

With the sound of a drum, the festival started. Music started and a group of dancers in a white outfit came out to the stage. They were dancing geishas.

“Kirei na (Pretty)!”

“Kirei na (Pretty)!”

People kept shouting ‘Kirei na.’ The dancer in the center of the group was Mori Aikko.

“That’s her!”

The photographers started shooting pictures of Mori Aikko. Mori Aikko was wearing thick geisha makeup; she didn’t wear that makeup when she danced in the bar. The spectators participated in taking pictures of Mori Aikko with their smartphones. So did Gun-Ho. Gun-Ho took Mori Aikko’s pictures with his cell phone.

The geishas were dancing along with the music that was played with some musical instruments that Gun-Ho didn’t really recognize. Her dance was different from the one she performed at the bar. It was a really beautiful artistic dancing. People there were so busy taking pictures of Mori Aikko’s every move.

‘That girl is my Mori Aikko!’

Gun-Ho felt like he was willing to give her everything he had. He would have given the world to Mori Aikko if he could.

Gun-Ho quietly walked out of Heian Shrine; he wanted Mori Aikko to enjoy her moment and didn’t want to interrupt her activity. He, then, headed straight to the airport to take a flight to Korea.

A few days after Gun-Ho came back to Korea, he was told that Mr. Sakata Ikuzo is soon arriving at the Gimpo International Airport.

Gun-Ho called for the general affairs manager.

“Did you find an interpreter?”

“Yes, I had him on standby.”

“Why don’t you bring him here?”

The general affairs manager brought a young man to Gun-Ho’s office. The young man looked like three or four years younger than Gun-Ho.

“He will be interpreting for us. This is his resume.”

The general affairs manager handed the resume to Gun-Ho.

“You went to college and graduate school in Japan. Since the person who is coming is an engineer, you will encounter many technical terms to interpret. I hope you are ready for it.”

Since the interpreter would work temporarily for only a month, Gun-Ho didn’t talk long with him.

“Mr. General Affairs Manager, let’s send the assistant general affairs manager to the airport to pick up Mr. Sakata Ikuzo. It seems he has a nice car; he can bring that car to the airport.”

“I think he is an adequate person for the work. He is good-looking and he has good conversational skills as well. He also has a sophisticated etiquette.”

Gun-Ho asked for the assistant general affairs manager.

“Was your car Kia K7? It looked like a new car.”

“It’s actually a used car. It is less than 2 years old though.”

“I want you to go to Gimpo International Airport to pick up someone. I will ask the general affairs manager to provide you enough gas. A very famous Japanese engineer is coming to our company for a consultation. His name is Sakata Ikuzo. Please take the interpreter with you. The person standing next to you is our interpreter.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mr. General Affairs Manager, please reserve a room at Onyang Hot Spring Hotel for Mr. Sakata Ikuzo.”

“It will be a long term stay, isn’t it?”

“We expect him to stay here for a month, but it can change depending on how fast we can develop the product.”

“Understood, sir.”

In the afternoon that day, Mr. Sakata Ikuzo arrived at the factory in Asan City. Gun-Ho called for the directors to his office.

“This is Mr. Sakata Ikuzo. He will help us develop a new product. He used to work for Dyeon in the U.S. as the head of the engineering department.”

The directors greeted Mr. Sakata Ikuzo and exchanged their business cards with him. Mr. Sakata Ikuzo’s business card showed only his name without any company or organization’s name he worked for, maybe because he was a retired engineer.

Gun-Ho started assigning work to each director.

“Mr. Plant Manager, please give him a tour of our factory.”

“Yes, sir.”

“After the tour of the factory, please show him our research center as well. Mr. Chief Officer of the research center, you can show him around.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And find out whether he prefers to do his development work at the production field in the factory or in the research center.”

“Okay.”

The plant manager was walking out of Gun-Ho’s office with Mr. Sakata Ikuzo when he asked Mr. Sakata Ikuzo his age in Japanese. The plant manager seemed to speak Japanese a little bit.

“How old are you?”

Mr. Sakata Ikuzo answered while looking at the plant manager’s business card.

“I’m 65 years old.”

“You are three years older than me. I’m 62 years old.”

The two 60-something years old men looked at each other and laughed.

After having a tour both to the factory and the research center, Mr. Sakata Ikuzo decided to do his work at the factory where he could easily have access to the extruding machine.

Mr. Sakata Ikuzo brought two big bags with him. He took out several vinyl bags of raw materials from one of his bags; the raw materials seemed to be about 5 kilograms.

“Do you have a team leader in the maintenance and repair department?”

“We have a production manager here, and he is very good at maintenance work as well.”

The plant manager introduced Jong-Suk to Mr. Sakata Ikuzo.

Mr. Sakata Ikuzo unexpectedly smiled and offered his hand to Jong-Suk for a handshake.

“Can you set up a mould and things, so I can manually carve a mould.”

“Sure.”

Jong-Suk installed things for Mr. Sakata Ikuzo so he could easily start his mould work right away.

Gun-Ho received a call from Attorney Young-Jin Kim at Kim&Jeong Law Office.

“I heard the Japanese engineer arrived already.”

“Yeah, he is here.”

“Amiel called me and said that if the Japanese engineer succeeds in developing the new product, you would need to give him an incentive fee.”

“Incentive fee?”

“His consultation fee is 5,000 dollars, but his incentive fee is 20,000 dollars. He won’t claim any ownership of the new product then. He will give the full ownership of the new product to GH Mobile.”

“Hmm.”

“Amiel asked our law firm to notarize the statement.”

“Hmm.”

Gun-Ho took some moment before giving his answer.

“Okay. Let’s do that.”