Chapter 10: Losing a Challenge
Harry pov
After i choose Paul to be the singer of Let It Be , I talk a bit with the other two singers, and say hope i have a good song for them in the future, we exchange phone number, and since i don't have a phone yet, i give them uncle Mitch number, and told them honestly it's my uncle / personal lawyer phone , i find it funny, while uncle Mitch is just happy over the moon because he get the personal number of two hot singers. It makes him proud to be my uncle I guess ? But well after the small intermezzo, I asked Pat to talk a bit with Paul, and to be completely honest, he does look like a young Paul MacCartney in my previous world.
"So Mr MacArthur , nice to meet you, my name is Harry Dunphy, but please call me Harry, I'm the writer of Let It Be " I said while shaking his hands.
"Please call me Paul, and you write one hell of a song Harry, I fell in love with the song from the first time I read it, it's a masterpiece. " he said while smiling.
"Thank you for your praise, Paul , I love your voice as well, I just think they match the song so perfectly that I'm pretty sure this song is gonna do well on the charts " I said cheekily.
"Hahaha, I'm sure this song is gonna do better than that, Harry, I even believe it can reach the top spot on the billboard."
"Let's hope it does then, and nice seeing you Paul, but i need to go home now, or my parents are gonna get worried for me " I said while looking at uncle Mitch.
"Yeah nice to see you too, hope we can work together a lot in the future, bye Harry"
"Bye Paul" I said while walking away to the parking spot with uncle Mitch.
Uncle Mitch and I grab some lunch before we are going back, so when we are eating some burgers…
"Harry, are you sure, you're gonna skip school and let Haley go alone ? she's been throwing tantrums everywhere these past few days, she even calls me to make you go to school with her." uncle Mitch said to me while slowly eating his burger.
"Well for me personally, going to school is a waste of time. I can use the extra time I have to write some books or songs, or maybe learn something that's useful for me in real life rather than chasing some number in my report card." I said honestly, and the other reason is I'm too lazy for school and too lazy to socialize with kids, after all I felt like I'm an adult, or at least a teenager.
"She's gonna miss you a lot, after all I know how close you two twins are " uncle Mitch said again. And yes, I can't deny the fact that Haley and I are super close to each other. Maybe I'm gonna think about this some more, after all I still have around a year before we enroll in school.
After finishing our lunch, uncle Mitch drove me back home, all along the way I kept thinking about a lot of stuff, and when we arrived at my house, uncle Mitch woke me up from my daydreaming, and as I'm saying goodbye to him, suddenly Haley ran towards me.
As Haley gets closer and closer, I open my arms to hug her, but she stop before me.
"Harry, have a bet with me, if i can run faster than you, then next year you must go to school together with me" Haley suddenly challenged me to a bet.
"Wait , what ?" I replied with a confused face.
"Have a bet with me, if i win, you need to go to school together with me" Haley said once again.
"Are you serious ? Do you want me to go together with you that badly ? " I asked her.
"Yes, so bet with me" she said seriously.
"Are you for real ? What if I win ?"
"If you win, you don't need to go to school with me." Haley said once again.
"alright , let's do it, from our door to the garage, where dad used to park his car" I just accepted her challenge.
"Ready , one… two…. Three.. " Before Haley counted to three she already ran when she screamed two, I was a bit frozen with her blatant way of cheating and then ran towards the garage. But my short leg disappointed me. After she cheated and I froze for a few seconds, I couldn't catch up to her even when I ran as fast as I could.
"I WIN~ YEAY. " Haley screamed so loudly. I want to be a sore loser who doesn't honor my bet because she was cheating, but looking at her happy face… I decided to just relent and go to school with her. If I need to do something I just take the day off school or maybe take it easy for a few years, after all I can afford to take it easy.
For a whole week Haley was so happy, she literally felt on cloud nine, just because I agreed to go to school with her, and I know from her expression, mom also loved this, maybe she wanted me to have a normal childhood too.
After a few relaxing weeks Pat finally called me to tell me a good news, that next week Paul gonna release the single Let It Be I can't wait any longer, I want to finish my mission as fast as possible, after all with a professional team, I can get a lot of things done , maybe starts a few business to make me more money.
After waiting a grueling week. Finally the song was released today, and yes in less than 16 hours, I got the notification that's mission was completed, Let It Be managed to climb the billboard charts to the top in less than a day, and I'm so happy with it.
When I was watching tv in the living room, suddenly the phone started ringing and when i picked it up.
"Hello, Dunphy residence here"
"Hi my name is Mark, can I speak with Mr Harry Dunphy please ?"
"Yes it is myself, I'm Harry Dunphy , what do you want to say to me Mr Marks ?"
"Sir, we are already waiting for your order, I'm the leader of your Equity manager, do you have any instructions for us ? "
" yes, i do and it's not gonna be an easy one, I want to to make a proposal about making a grocery store, but with limited number of brand, maybe under 3 per item type, and i want it to be cheap, so customer can enjoy the best price to performance item there, make the margin smaller than 3% per item, and I don't want any employee to complained about wages, so make the wages range more than enough for them to lives, and clearly way above than the minimum wages, and to save cost, no decoration, make it organised like a warehouse, can you do that for me ?" I told him clearly what I wanted.
"Yes sir, I can make the proposal, but according to my rough calculation it's gonna be hard for this grocery store to be profitable, after all the margin are too small, and the wages are higher than our competitor, that will result in bigger cost and smaller profits even if we manage to sell as much as our competitor." Mark seems to have trouble with my request.
"Clearly i understand that Mark, but higher wages will result in the staff to care about the works and the companies, and lower price will make customers happy especially for the lower income group, they gonna love our store, and make another proposal to create a brand for inhouse item, it can make the price cheaper but the quality still high." I explained it to him.
"Yes sir, I will try my best, we can deliver the proposal in less than 3 days, so on wednesday afternoon I can come directly to your house to deliver the proposal"
"Good , I will be waiting for you to work, and for the grocery store name, I already have an idea, it's going to be Dunphy's Store . yes the name is very normal, it's my family name, but because of that we need to keep the qualities high and the staff wages above living cost, I want to help others after all." I said confidently.
"So if the store is not profitables it's already calculated sir ? or is it your objective to help as many people as possible without thinking about the profitabilities ?" Mark asked me.
"Yeah, one of my main objectives is to help as many people as I can, but doing charities doesn't really match with my style, so I guess this is way better," I said honestly.
What Mark don't know is, with my abilities, losing money is impossible, i will get 10 times what the customer pay, so if someone buy an apple for 1 dollar, the system gonna give me 10 dollar, that mean in total I gonna make 11 dollar, and 10 of that is free from taxes, I already can see that in the future, my grocery store gonna be the biggest in the country, maybe even in the world, because everyone love cheap but high qualities item, and the government gonna support it, even if it's not profitable, I can simply put it as tax deductible.
Wait , i forgot to tell my family about the store , fuck, how do I explain this to my family ? I need to explain this to mom and dad because this is gonna affect them the most, I mean the store name is Dunphy's so no matter how small it is, it's gonna affect my dad.
"Yes sir, I'm gonna personally deliver the proposal on wednesday." Marks said to me.
"Sure, good work mark, see you on wednesday, bye." I said before closing the call.
Now.. What should I do ? How to break the news to my family ? damn.. This is a new problem for me.
General pov
While Harry is troubled with his new plan for business, the world was shaken by let It Be , apart from climbing to the top spot of the billboard, it put the song writer, the name of Harald Harryson enter a lot of people radar, from the music industry giant, to all the singer and songwriter, and to the aspiring singer. They all heard about Harald Harryson, he only released 2 song to the public, but both in a very different style and genre but both are doing so well, and with this single Paul name also climb to stardom, a lot of people became his fans, and they do notice that the song only have 1 writer for both the music and the lyric. We can only wonder, how many people will search for Harald Harryson and ask for a song from him ? How many people will dig around ?
And how many will be successful in finding out who he was.