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"Leverage," Marvin said.
"What leverage multiple?"
"Average four to five times across the book. The Korean positions can support five times leverage through the local margin facilities that Jin-ho has established. The TSMC and Japanese positions can support four times through the Hong Kong entity and the Tokyo entity respectively."
"Five times leverage on a long equity position in the middle of a financial crisis." Rachel said this in the tone of a person presenting a statement rather than asking a question, the kind of statement that contains within itself the question it is asking without requiring the question to be asked explicitly.
"The maximum drawdown scenario is a fifty percent decline from current prices on the Korean positions," Marvin said. "At five times leverage, that's a hundred percent loss on the margin. The Korean positions represent approximately two hundred and ten million in notional exposure. The cash margin against that is forty-two million. A fifty percent decline from current prices on Samsung would put the stock at approximately fourteen thousand won — that's a level not seen since 1993, which I regard as a tail scenario that the fundamental analysis does not support."
"The fundamental analysis also didn't support a fifty percent decline from July levels, but the market delivered it anyway," Rachel said.
"The market delivered the decline because leveraged foreign investors were forced to sell. The same mechanism that created the decline — forced selling by entities that couldn't hold regardless of value — doesn't exist at December prices. The Korean institutional investors, the pension funds, the insurance companies, the domestic retail investors — they have already sold what they could not hold. The incremental seller at these prices is not a distressed forced seller. It's a marginal participant making a discretionary choice to be cautious. That's a different kind of selling. It doesn't produce fifty percent additional declines."
A silence.
"And if you're wrong?" Grant said. Not confrontationally — genuinely.
"The stop-loss parameters," Marvin said, "are embedded in the position documentation that Hoffman's office prepared. A twenty-five percent decline from the entry level on any individual position triggers a mandatory partial exit that takes the leverage down to two times on that position. A forty percent decline from entry triggers a full exit. The program survives a forty percent decline from entry at four to five times leverage with approximately thirty percent of starting capital intact."
"Thirty percent of two hundred and thirty-five million is seventy point five million," Grant said. "Which is more than we started the crisis program with."
"Correct."
Grant looked around the room. Nobody spoke.
"All right," Grant said. "Let's build the positions."
---
The equity purchases were made over fourteen trading days, from December 5th through December 22nd.
The execution was managed by Jin-ho Park in Seoul for the Korean positions, by the TSMC desk through the Taipei entity for the Taiwanese position, and by the Tokyo entity for the Sony and Toyota positions. Each purchase was structured to minimise market impact — staged over multiple sessions, using limit orders rather than market orders wherever the daily trading volume permitted, and distributed across multiple brokerage relationships to avoid creating visible footprints that would signal the program's scale to other market participants.
The Samsung Electronics position was the largest and the most complex to build. Samsung was the most actively traded stock on the Korea Stock Exchange, which provided the liquidity required to absorb a two-hundred-million-dollar-equivalent purchase without excessive price impact, but which also meant that large buying was visible to other market participants who tracked institutional order flow. Jin-ho structured the Samsung purchases across eight trading sessions, using three different brokerage relationships and varying the daily volume participation rate between four and nine percent of the daily reported trading volume.
By December 15th, the Samsung position was substantially established at an average price of approximately 29,500 won per share — a level that represented a discount of approximately sixty-two percent from Samsung's pre-crisis high of approximately 77,000 won.
The TSMC position was established at an average price of 62 New Taiwan dollars per share, representing a discount of approximately thirty-eight percent from TSMC's pre-crisis high.
LG Electronics was purchased at an average of 8,400 won — a discount of seventy-one percent from its pre-crisis high.
Hyundai Motor was established at 9,800 won, representing a seventy-three percent discount from the pre-crisis level.
POSCO was purchased at 26,000 won, a sixty-four percent discount.
Sony was established at 6,800 yen per share, a thirty-two percent discount from pre-crisis levels. The yen had strengthened through the crisis period — counterintuitively, as Japanese capital repatriated from the affected Asian markets — which meant the dollar cost of the Sony position was slightly higher than the yen depreciation alone would have implied.
Toyota was purchased at 3,050 yen per share, a twenty-seven percent discount from the pre-crisis level.
---
The January KOSPI put book closed in the first week of January. The financial sub-index had continued to decline through December and into early January as the banking sector restructuring progressed. The put position closed for a final gain of approximately fifteen point three million dollars, bringing the total KOSPI put program realised gains to twenty four point seven million dollars.
---
The weekend arrived, blanketing the San Marino estate in a quiet, golden Californian calm. While other boys his age were outside riding bicycles or playing video games in the cul-de-sac, Marvin was locked inside his master suite, engaged in the meticulous act of world-building.
He sat at a drafting table positioned perfectly by the floor-to-ceiling windows. The morning light poured over his shoulders, illuminating the crisp, high-grade manuscript paper pinned to the board.
In his elegant, impossibly steady hand, he held a specialized G-pen dipped in rich, black India ink. He moved with a supernatural speed. The scratching of the metal nib against the paper was a continuous, rhythmic whisper.
He was not merely drawing; the Incubus was bleeding a fully realized universe directly from his mind onto the page.
The title he was currently architecting was
*Bleach*.
Marvin possessed the encyclopedic memory of a transmigrator, and his timing had to be flawless knowing the middle and end of story helps it so much. He knew the landscape of the Japanese manga industry in 1997. The titans of the "Big Three" were either already established or in rapid motion. Akira Toriyama's *Dragon Ball* had already defined the era. Eiichiro Oda was just launching the unstoppable juggernaut of *One Piece* this very year. Masashi Kishimoto was about to publish the pilot one-shot for *Naruto*. That train had already left the station.
But *Bleach*, with its stylish, urban-fantasy aesthetic, its soul reapers, and its thematic obsession with death, power, and the spiritual realm? It was originally slated for 2001. It was ripe for the taking. More importantly, the dark, edgy aesthetic perfectly suited the soul of an Incubus. It was a masterpiece he could effortlessly reproduce and elevate with his superior, supernatural artistic precision.
And *Bleach* was merely Phase Two. Phase One was already crossing the Pacific Ocean.
Marvin paused, setting his G-pen down and wiping his ink-stained fingers on a linen cloth.
He looked over at the fax machine resting on his desk.
Just days prior, Marvin had quietly executed a wire transfer of 3 million dollars—equivalent to roughly 380 million Japanese Yen in the current, wildly fluctuating exchange rate. Alongside the capital, he had securely transmitted the complete drawn Phase One manga for *Death Note*.
The capital and the art had been sent directly to his hand-picked, Japanese proxies: Gregg Araki and Carrie Ann Inaba operating *Myers Media Japan*, and Irene Hirano and Norman Mineta handling the corporate logistics through *Scarlet Capital Japan*.
The strategy was a masterpiece of macroeconomic timing.
The Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 was currently tearing through the Eastern hemisphere. While Japan was slightly more insulated than Southeast Asia, the cascading banking crisis and deflationary pressures were suffocating medium-sized businesses. Credit was tightening. Cash flow was drying up.
For 3 million dollars, Marvin wasn't trying to buy an impenetrable Tokyo giant like Shueisha or Kodansha. That would be arrogant and impossible. Instead, he had ordered his Vanguard team to target a distressed, debt-ridden, mid-sized regional manga printing house.
The printing industry was a notoriously low-margin, industrial grind. Countless facilities carried heavy debt, relied on aging offset printing machines, and were entirely dependent on the scraps of major publisher contracts. With the economic crisis squeezing their throats, the owners were desperate to sell. For a few million dollars, Marvin had secured a fully functional, mid-tier printing facility complete with a trained staff of eighty to hundreds of workers, offset machinery, and—most crucially—existing, functional distribution relationships.
But Marvin knew the unwritten rules of 1990s Japanese corporate culture. It was an incredibly insular, relationship-based ecosystem. A foreign, American billionaire could not simply kick in the doors and buy his way into the *keiretsu* trust networks.
That was precisely why he utilized his Japanese-American proxies. To the outside world and Japanese people, the printing house was simply undergoing a domestic restructuring under local, respected management.
The brilliant play was the publishing model.
In 1997, the lifeblood of the industry was the weekly anthology magazines. Marvin's proxies were currently negotiating to serialize *Death Note*—and soon, *Bleach*—in the pages of the monolithic *Weekly Shonen Jump* to guarantee immediate, explosive national exposure. But the true, wealth in manga didn't come from the disposable weekly magazines; it came from the *tankōbon*—the separately sold, compiled graphic novel volumes.
And Marvin's contracts included but not limited to retained ownership of those publishing rights.
He would be credited as the genius author and illustrator, but *Meyers Publishing House Japan*—his once acquired, fully retrofitted printing facility—would handle the physical volume publishing, distribution, and eventual merchandising and animation licensing. He was using the giants for exposure, while quietly building his own fortress in their backyard.
*Ring! Ring!*
The sharp trill of the line on his desk shattered the quiet concentration of his room.
Marvin stood up, his tall, lean frame moving with grace. He picked up the receiver.
"Speak," Marvin commanded softly.
"Marvin, it's Jeff!" His agent's voice crackled through the speaker, practically vibrating with corporate adrenaline. "I'm leaving the agency right now. I'm coming to pick you up. Harvey Weinstein just faxed the final, executed contract over from Miramax."
Marvin's blue eyes gleamed.
"I've had the senior partners at the law firm review every single page, line by line, twice," Jeff continued, panting slightly as if he were walking fast through a parking garage. "Harvey caved on the back end. The 50% equity co-financing from the Zenith Trust is locked. The gross participation is locked. There are no traps, Marvin. It's clean. Your parents can sign it in the presence of the court and lawyers."
"Excellent work, Jeff," Marvin purred, a victorious smirk spreading across his face. The $3.8 million base and the profit-sharing for *The Sixth Sense* were officially his. "Come over immediately. I will have the estate staff prepare the drawing room."
"I'll be there in twenty minutes," Jeff promised, hanging up.
Marvin placed the receiver back on the cradle.
He looked out the window at the sprawling, manicured lawns of his estate.
Signing the Miramax contract meant the grueling, intense machine of principal photography would soon begin. He was going to be trapped on soundstages and location shoots for months. He would have to take another extended leave of absence from his Los Angeles private academy.
Which brought the Incubus to a recurring, philosophical question.
"Is it still necessary for me to attend school at all?"
Marvin crossed his arms, leaning against the desk, seriously considering the issue. He possessed a computer mind, centuries of Transmigrated and demon knowledge, and a liquid net worth that rivaled small nations. Sitting in a middle-school classroom listening to a nervous teacher explain basic fractions was, objectively, an absurd waste of his time.
But as quickly as the thought arose, he dismissed the idea of dropping out entirely.
School was not a place of learning for him; it was a hunting ground. It was an incubator for raw potential.
He needed to maintain those carefully cultivated relationships. He needed the adoration of girls like Lindsay and Dorothy to subtly feed his Incubus mana, maintaining the love.
But more importantly, he needed Mark.
Mark was the quiet, slightly awkward, brilliant tech and psychological prodigy. Marvin was meticulously training the boy. He was casually dropping advanced coding concepts and architectural, psychology theories into their conversations, subtly guiding the teenager's brilliant mind. In a few years, Mark could easily become the ultimate asset—the designated CEO of Marvin's future internet empire.
Marvin's vision for the web was absolute. He was already planning *Face*, a revolutionary internet community combining media functions, social networking, and data harvesting. It would be the ultimate platform for publicity, cultural control, and invisible power.
Could Marvin sit down, learn the nascent programming languages of the 90s, and code the entire platform himself?
Certainly. His mind was vastly capable of it.
'But I absolutely refuse to do so,' Marvin thought, a scoff echoing in his mind.
He simply did not have the time, the energy, or the desire to become a hunched, exhausted code monkey staring at a glowing cathode-ray tube for eighteen hours a day.
The Incubus's philosophy of power was absolute: True emperors do not lay the bricks of their castles; they simply command the architects.
He would execute his technology dominance exactly the same way he executed his financial warfare. He would act as a massive, hyper-intelligent "zombie shareholder." He would provide visionary, impossible ideas.
He would provide the limitless capital of the Zenith Trust. And he would simply hire the right brilliant, desperate minds to do the grueling manual labor.
When the time came, he would find the young Larry Pages and Sergey Brins of the world. He would fund the creation of Google, YouTube, and the future algorithms of TikTok. He would own the around 80% controlling shares, dictate the cultural direction, and reap the astronomical profits, all without ever writing a single, miserable line of C++ code himself.
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