No Dogs Allowed

File_03 : Hillsider.zip

Wilder was a direct descendant of Hearth Technology, a multi-million dollar German technology company that produced a variety of computer hardware, and was an integral part of the behind the scenes of a hundred other technology companies around the world. Unknown to anyone who wasn't directly chained to the company or its owners, the company was not just in business with Janchi, but complicit to it.

Wang Association was a private arm of Janchi Group that was only known of and never explained. If anyone had heard of it, they assumed it to be a money laundering scheme or nothing at all. Any other theory was shut down by private legal cases before it could be materialized.

On the first week of senior winter quarter in Avaldi, an unidentified group came onto campus. CCTV was found to only capture a brief moment of action in which one made a move of attack against Poppy and an unknown second party. The footage was cut, wiped, and subsequently buried before anyone could find out who. No one would say who found her, or how they found her. An accident, a tragedy, and nothing more.

Hearth's exports plummeted, imports cutting off one by one, until suddenly, the company ultimately filed for bankruptcy within a month. Eventually, Hearth Technology wasn't anything but a memory, and all its respective buyers moved onto the next best thing. The company issued an official statement of discontinuation and disbandment, the CEOs retiring for good.

Wang was under its buyers.

In the subsequent summer, Janchi's CEOs Sangcheol Wang and Marie Wang stepped down to hand off the company to Marie's sister, Chaemin Wang. A fact unbeknownst to the public, whose reason was never revealed.

In the following fall quarter, Kane King took Wilder's place as Corvus's new captain. For the entire quarter, Corvus's games reached an all-time low in sponsors, ticket sales, and viewership. But, an all-time high in press attention.

By the beginning of spring quarter, Corvus had maintained a nearly impossible victory streak without a loss in sight. By the time they won Red Diamond, their sponsorships were higher than any other NCAA racing team, amassing a groundbreaking over one hundred fifty million dollars in victories alone. More than any of Corvus's years prior.

Avaldi, Corvus, and the NCAA never said a word about Wilder thereafter.

But that's their side. Let's talk about the other.

Elias Yun was a Class I Drachmann Alpha, son of Class I Drachmann Alpha, Byungho Yun, and Class III Drachmann Omega, Alice Nam. Yun was the sole owner of RIYU Group, a long-standing chaebol that had competed against the original Drachmann bloodline for decades. Despite both families constantly going head to head in who was more of a money-mongering, cold-hearted, life-leaching, soul-sucking, capitalistic headcase, they actually did very little business together besides co-owning half of America's Dunkin' Donuts. No one really knew why.

Elias graduated Yongsan International School of Seoul a year early and enrolled in Seoul National University as an economics major not much later. Throughout that period, he raced on the varsity team for his school and was recruited into the official team at Seoul, where he then won East Asia's Diamond Prix Championships. It earned him Asia's fame, American attention, magazine covers, new sponsorships, and a place as the second youngest racer on the South Korean Olympic team. Subsequently, at eighteen and a half, he and his team won Olympic silver.

How cute.

My brother and I, being of different ranks, were identical in the same way evolved Pokémon were identical between their stages; you knew the big picture was the same, but the parallel fell apart in the details. It might've been the only thing that saved me from tracing my brother back to me. We shared the same face—there's not enough ughs in the world for that—and we shared the same coloring, but the guy had a foot on me, his natural hair, and millions of more dollars to look every bit the winner I wasn't. That and he had a better jawline. That fucker.