“...I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
At my words, Yoo Seon-a seemed to hesitate for a moment before sighing faintly.
“Ahaha, unnie, just go cling to your boyfriend or something. I’ll take care of the rest.”
“...How? No, Ha-yeon, the way you say that makes me a little nervous. Could you at least tell me roughly what you’re planning?”
“Really? I honestly think it’s a simple issue. No need to make such a fuss. If everything goes according to plan, you could get married right away. Ah, well... it might be hard if you play too coy....”
At that point, I paused to try predicting how Yoo Seon-a would act.
...But I really couldn’t guess.
Hmm. If I were still a guy, maybe, but after ending up in this body, I’ve never seriously fallen in love, so I just don’t know.
Logical people are easy to predict. But people in love? They’re impossible. Human emotions are just too damn complicated.
Rubbing my chin, I offered some serious advice.
“Unnie, don’t use birth control this time.”
“....”
What? Why that look?
If she got pregnant now, she’d probably give birth after graduation, when she’s around twenty-five. And honestly, in this era (1997), having your first child at twenty-five is pretty average. I think the average age for first-time moms now is around twenty-seven.
“Yeah? Just go for it. Let me have a niece or nephew.”
I already had plenty of nieces and nephews, but more is always better. And it’s not like Seon-a unnie’s kid is going to be a contender in the War of Princes or anything.
Yoo Seon-a was quiet for a moment, then muttered under her breath.
“Says the one who’s never even dated.”
“If I had someone like Yoo Ha-yeon, I’d have married them on the spot.”
Chuckling, I tapped my index finger against the table and continued.
“I’m just saying, if you don’t take the initiative, it won’t matter how much I push from the sidelines. You know that, right?”
“...Yeah, I know.”
Yoo Seon-a flushed and slowly nodded her head.
***
Did Yoo Seon-a say she didn’t have much time?
Of course, it’s not like I’m some time-stopping uncle Faust, able to say “Stay a while, moment!” and freeze time.
Sure, if I sent everything on Earth except Yoo Seon-a and her boyfriend near a black hole and brought them back later, I could maybe get time dilation out of it—but that’s not happening.
What I need right now isn’t Mephistopheles, the con-artist devil, but Mammon, the golden one.
“There’s a term called overbooking. You’ve heard of it? If you’ve ever taken a stats class, you should know.”
Since Yoo Seon-a had already left for the airport to save what little time she had, I called over Seo Ji-yeon and calmly explained.
“Overbooking, hmm. That’s when they sell too many seats, right? Are you... buying out seats with money? Wait... is that even allowed?”
“It is. And yeah, that’s the idea. Even if someone’s important, if there’s no seat, they can’t fly.”
It’s a much more economical solution than halting the entire plane.
Ahem.
“Here’s what overbooking really is. It’s a kind of trick airlines use to save money.”
Say there are 100 seats on a plane. Statistically, about 10 people no-show.
To avoid wasting those empty seats, the airline sells a few extra tickets—say, 5 more—on top of the 100.
So the number of tickets sold ends up slightly higher than the number of actual seats.
If everyone ends up showing up? That’s when it becomes an overbooking incident. At that point, the airline offers compensation—seat upgrades, hotel stays, all that stuff—to convince some passengers to voluntarily give up their seat.
Of course, on very rare occasions, some lunatic staff members beat up passengers and force them off. Don’t ask me what was going through their heads.
“That’s interesting. I didn’t know that. These days I mostly take private jets, so I wouldn’t have noticed.”
“Anyway, there’s no need to make this complicated. Just buy a few extra tickets and clog up the plane. I like spending money, but I don’t enjoy wasting it. If there’s a cleaner way, I’ll use that.”
Nodding, I looked at Seo Ji-yeon, who was just standing there and gestured.
“What are you waiting for? Get moving.”
“Eh? Oh, right. I’m doing it?”
“Well, I can’t exactly book the tickets myself, can I? Go round up a few employees who want to travel abroad. Tell them to volunteer. Let them take a little vacation while they’re hogging the seats.”
Two birds, one stone.
“...Can I go too?”
“Ah, obviously I’m not going. But... well, I’m not sure if our dear Ji-yeon could really enjoy a trip overseas all on her own, leaving me behind.”
“...Ugh, so petty. Fine, I won’t go.”
.
.
.
“You’re not going?”
Seo Ji-yeon lingered for a moment, thinking it over, then broke into a nervous sweat.
“Um, but... I don’t know how to book airline tickets. I mean, it’s fine when it’s just one person, but to cause an overbooking incident, I’d have to call the airline first....”
“Just go and give them your name. It’s already mine. Not through BS Investment or anything—this time I bought it through another company.”
“Oh, right... you threw a ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ tantrum about the lack of online booking and changed it all.”
“Well, it was my company even back then, so I had the right to be mad. I was trying to charter an entire plane for a school trip instead of using the private jet, but they made it annoying by not offering online booking.”
Still, suddenly acquiring an airline just for Seon-a would’ve been too obvious. I didn’t even have the time for that.
But someone a little more brilliant and a lot more greedy would’ve thought differently.
—“Ah, I might run into problems with airline seats in the future. I should just buy an airline ahead of time.”
So I did.
Didn’t everyone’s teachers and parents teach them the basics? When you go to the beach in summer, pack a life vest. When you hike, wear proper shoes.
Same thing here. If you’ve got enough money, you can just acquire a few companies in advance for comfort’s sake. That’s how I ended up buying a couple of airlines, dozens of hotels, and hundreds of apartment buildings.
‘Well, the foreign exchange crisis left me no choice anyway.’
During a recession, when consumer sentiment’s down and demand for travel drops, how can airlines survive?
This kind of business is all about endurance. If you can just hang on, you’ll profit in the long run. So I bought them cheap.
I wanted to haggle a little harder, but I let it slide for the sake of the pilot who flies my private jet several times a week.
This industry is a small world, and a pilot elite enough to regularly fly Yoo Ha-yeon’s private jet? He’s got a lot of juniors watching him.
What if he suddenly goes, “That vile Yoo Ha-yeon blocked my juniors’ future! Perish, demon!” That would be bad.
With Seon-a’s boyfriend and all the other people I’ve unknowingly messed with, I have to clean things up in whatever way I can.
And thanks to that, I get to pull off fun little stunts like this one. If I hadn’t been able to dig into the airline’s internal systems, I wouldn’t have even come up with this plan.
.
.
.
Well, it’s not like there were no flaws in the plan.
“But even if you cause an overbooking, it’s not like he has to get off the plane, right?”
Seo Ji-yeon had a point. The whole thing could fall apart depending on a few people’s whims.
But I just laughed.
“Yeah, true. Normally they offer compensation, and if that doesn’t work, it’s either first-come-first-served or a lottery. Even if I send a ton of staff, if someone who’s already seated gets chosen to leave, that’s that.”
Still—if that’s all it took for a guy to leave, didn’t that mean he never loved her in the first place?
That’s how I saw it.
No matter how much money you throw at something, if love’s not in the heart, nothing will come of it.
***
Yoo Seon-a thought to herself:
Today is... really just the strangest day.
“...Hi?”
“Oh—hey. Wow, weird. Haha... we were supposed to meet at the airport, but I guess we’re meeting early.”
She laughed awkwardly inside the bus.
She had no idea what kind of magic her brilliant little cousin had pulled, but somehow, she was already face to face with the guy she was only supposed to meet briefly at the airport.
“...This is great. We get to spend more time together before the flight.”
Something about the way he smiled, a little sheepishly, reached her heart.
And she realized—
Ah... this isn’t something I can just walk away from.
—“Unnie, if I can give you one more piece of advice: be careful who you marry. You know how many women end up in ruined marriages because they married into ‘normal’ families?”
She let that warning fade from memory. She knew, instinctively, that if she let this one go, she’d regret it forever.
Rustle.
With a soft smile, Yoo Seon-a leaned gently against him.
“Mm, let’s just stay like this for a bit.”
.
.
.
Time, oddly enough, passed far too quickly—and at the same time, the schedule slowed down thanks to a traffic jam caused by a certain someone’s interference on the way to the airport.
Because of that delay, Yoo Seon-a was able to spend more time with him than expected—and just before she could even think to thank her cousin mentally, she received another shocking bit of news.
‘She said she’d take care of everything, but I didn’t think she meant this....’
[...This is your airline speaking. We sincerely apologize for the current inconvenience. If any passengers are willing to give up their seat and take a later flight, please notify a crew member. Compensation and hotel reservations will be provided by the airline—]
Looking stunned, her boyfriend returned with his suitcase in hand, smiling like an idiot.
But he didn’t look upset at all. In fact, he looked strangely amused and cheerful as he said—
“Wow... maybe fate really does exist, Seon-a.”
In his hand were two hotel vouchers.
Because no one had volunteered to give up their seat, the airline kept raising the offer—and thanks to the traffic jam that made him late, the voucher wasn’t just for one person anymore. He’d been given accommodations for two.
‘Sorry, but... that wasn’t fate.’
The guilt passed quickly—and the happiness lasted as long as the night.