“Team leader, have you seen this rate of return?”

“What?”

“This one, sir.”

Yun Jeong-hyeok, a member of the audit team at Kaum Securities, handed his team leader the chart of one individual’s returns.

It was full of spectacular numbers.

Everywhere you looked, red figures.

“I’ve seen it.”

“Whoaaaa… a rate of return this monstrous… is he a god? Or a genius who has invented a new investment program?”

“I went over it and there isn’t one thread to pull on. It isn’t one stock either — the stocks are different every day. He used full credit for the funds, and that’s legal too. He’s a truly remarkable man.”

The team leader shook his head.

“The age on the account says high school student. Hahahaha… I’m so dumbfounded I can’t speak.”

“That’s just it. We ought to stick our noses in a dish of water and drown. Call ourselves stock men, and we’re not worth this high schooler’s toenail.”

Now and then geniuses appear on the stock scene.

They produce returns in ways an ordinary person can’t imagine.

But this time the returns were beyond imagining.

At brokerages it was routine to hire an individual with good returns onto the staff.

The terms and conditions said an individual’s returns were confidential, but that was a formality.

He has definitely found a new investment technique.

Jeon Yeong-guk, the team leader, was curious about the stock genius too.

He wanted to hand him money to invest personally, badly enough to burn.

But this must not come to light.

Not only did it run against the law, but if the man took offense and left, it was an enormous loss to the company.

The funds he traded in a day came to tens of billions of won.

The commissions were enormous.

He was certainly managing his parents’ accounts too.

At this level he was a super ultra among super ants.

“This is a critical secret. If word gets outside, you and I are both fired.”

“Yes, sir… I’ll be careful. I’m envious, but I’ll hold it in. This one is a god! A god of stocks!”

“Yes. That’s right. A god of stocks. I’ll grant him that much myself.”

The two of them looked over one individual’s file and shut their mouths.

Legal trading, and all the more suspicious for it.

Funds running to hundreds of billions couldn’t hand him a business card on returns.

A monster of the stock world who existed and should not exist.

He was a high schooler.

And his profit today, at Kaum alone… went past five billion won.

“Whoaaaa! Snow! It’s beautiful!”

“It really is snow… the first snow of the year! I love it!”

The twins let out cries of delight at the window.

The brats. If they’d been through the army they couldn’t spout nonsense like that.

The devil’s white shit, falling out of the sky.

The snowflakes of a frontline mountain sector, where you shovel all day and it never ends, were a curse.

I came back, but even after my discharge, seeing snow sometimes made me flinch at the memory of the army.

Opening my eyes and waking up in the army again — that kind of…

That nightmare I would refuse if it killed me.

“The outside work is nearly finished, isn’t it?”

“Yes. The interior finishing starts soon. Another month or so and we should be able to move in.”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

“Come home more often over the vacation. We’re going to fix up your room too.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oppa, when we start high school, can we stay here?”

“Of course. It’s close to Jangju Girls’ High, so you can walk.”

“Hee hee~! Nice!”

“Yesss!”

Ju-a’s nature had turned much brighter.

Ju-a, who had always thought of the family and grown up early, was coming to resemble Ju-hui.

That was how she ought to be.

The twins I had known in the past were nowhere to be seen now.

“Are the apples sweeter this year?”

Mother had peeled apples from our own trees like a work of art.

Sweet juice spread through my mouth.

“The Brix came out well. There was plenty of sunlight, and the new natural nutrient we put in worked. At this quality I think the co-op will take them without a word.”

Confidence overflowed in my father’s eyes.

My father was completely different from the past too.

He had become a perfect organic farmer now.

The whole family was gathered at the apartment.

The country house that looked ready to fall down is in the middle of a full renovation.

I spent money and brought in the best fusion hanok specialist in the country. (TL Note: 한옥, hanok — a traditional Korean house: timber frame, tiled roof, heated stone floors, rooms opening onto a courtyard. A “fusion” hanok keeps that shell and puts a modern interior inside it.)

I threw carpenters and workmen at it, and generously.

I had them keep the old house’s dignity while remaking the inside wide and practical.

Shortening the schedule doubled the cost, but it didn’t matter.

It was less than a day’s earnings in my mother’s stock account.

“Dad, are you going to keep farming apples?”

“Of course. I like farming. There’s nothing as cool and clean as sweating with nothing in your head.”

“Don’t you miss office life?”

“I know I’m a country caterpillar. I have no more ambition than that.”

My father looked to have no lingering attachment to Seoul life at all.

He was satisfied with the country, even though his degree was one people respected.

“I respect you, Your Royal Father.”

“Thank you.”

“What is this! Are Dad and Oppa the only ones puffing each other up? Ju-hui, once we marry I think we really do become somebody else’s daughters.”

Ju-a put on a clumsy show of jealousy.

“I’m fine with it. Even after I marry I’m not leaving Dad and Oppa’s side~.”

Ju-hui was a smart youngest child.

She seems to have caught the smell of her brother’s money exactly right.

“So, is the writing going well?”

Mom asked it lightly as she peeled an apple.

She still thinks I earn money by writing.

She really is a person who knows nothing of how the world works.

“Yes. I’ve handed over the manuscript through volume twenty. The publisher says they’ll handle publishing it and I shouldn’t worry about it.”

I set my stock trading schedule and wrote in the time left over.

Since it had been someone else’s story, I intend to finish it with everything I have.

That is the courtesy I, who was a reader, owe to readers.

A writer can die, but he must not leave a work unfinished.

“Yes. Mom believes you’ll do it well on your own.”

Mom smiled brightly.

She seems to get younger as time goes on.

By anyone’s reckoning she had become the best-looking woman in our city.

Once she had the clothes to go with it, her class came out.

Dad smiled brightly, looking at Mom.

She had a shine on her, designing her life again in a space of her own.

Mom had finished a few paintings.

She keeps them hidden away in her room, but from the glimpse I caught they are at a considerable level.

That she hid a talent like that, lived in the country with her husband and raised three children, made Mom remarkable.

“Yes~ believe away.”

Nobody in our house asked about the money.

They seem to think it’s money I earned the hard way.

My parents are probably sorry about it.

The twins were grateful to me too.

Nobody got greedy about the money either.

Everybody knew how to be thankful for the moment they had been given.

I let it out in reasonable measure.

I gave my sisters two hundred thousand won a month in allowance.

I didn’t buy them clothes recklessly either.

They wore uniforms, so they didn’t need many street clothes.

Paying their cell phone bills was about all I added.

Even that made the twins happy.

Material things seem to work that way.

Adding more when the other person doesn’t want it and can’t handle it seems to cause trouble.

On that point I have changed a great deal too.

I’ve gotten bold about money.

My capital finally hit a hundred billion won.

I understood clearly that money is nothing but numbers.

The profits showed as numbers for a short moment and then turned into stock.

That is one of the advantages of stocks: the asset-hiding function.

But I didn’t let my guard down.

With the astronomical profits I was pulling in, the brokerage would treat me as a person of interest.

It was the same at the brokerage I worked at in the past.

When an ant succeeded at investing, they looked over that individual quietly and closely.

That is why I kept to the law thoroughly.

The money was spread across many stocks so that it wouldn’t violate the Securities Exchange Act.

I didn’t want to be tagged with price manipulation.

There were plenty of stocks to invest in on KOSPI and KOSDAQ.

As the capital grew it started to get hard to build the list.

Luckily, foreign buying was increasing.

The foreigners kept my investment amounts from being exposed.

I set the rate of return at ten percent.

I took long-term positions too.

I did not trust the government or the brokerages.

If they saw a weakness in me, they would tear me apart.

I wanted to keep the world from finding out if it killed me.

If people learned an individual had made money in stocks, they would tear him into strips and still have appetite left.

There is no better chewing material than another man’s success.

I didn’t know it in the past, but there were plenty of cases I’d seen living into my thirties.

People whose carefully built tower came down overnight, and who fell with it.

“Over the vacation I’m thinking of going to an academy in Seoul and taking a short trip abroad.”

“Abroad?”

Mom looked startled.

“I want to look around here and there and find some material to write about.”

“All right… are you going alone?”

“Yes. I’m not a child.”

“Beloved Oppa~ can’t you take me? I’ll be the porter!”

“Me too! Me too, Oppaaaa~!”

While I was talking with Mom, the twins laid the charm on.

Their charm game was low grade.

If they had seen Seo-ryeon, the final boss of charm, they wouldn’t dare put on a voice.

Seo-ryeon spread honey on even a single text.

She overflowed with a special charm past the point where a man thinks this much would move anybody.

Ye-rin sunbae’s texts, against that, were plain — the entrance exam over, the essay exam being prepared for.

Today was hard too.

Next year you’ll be an exam candidate too.

If you prepare in advance it won’t be as hard for you as it was for me.

And so on, entirely textbook answers going back and forth.

Seo-ryeon, against that…

Oppa~ Oppaaaaa~♡

Oppa is love~♡

That I want oppa more than a steamed bun in the middle of this diet is my honest heart ×10000!!!

If only oppa were in this cold-hearted Seoul I’d have nothing more to ask for… hnngh~.

And so on, sending nothing but highly desirable(?) texts.

Seo-ryeon made me laugh and sunbae moved me.

I knew both of them meant it.

I didn’t know why the situation was developing this way either.

Seo-ryeon on the left and Ye-rin on the right were not in my life’s plan.

Neither of them was a connection I had in my past life.

Even with Ye-rin sunbae, all I ever had was passing her often on the bus.

There was never a chance to meet her privately.

Even now not that many words go back and forth.

It’s the same with Seo-ryeon.

That a superstar likes me was not to be believed.

“Do you have your passport ready?”

“Yes.”

“Should Mom go with you?”

“You, Mom?”

“Yes. Mom can manage English, French and Japanese.”

“…”

Everyone except Father stared at Mom blankly.

I was the same.

Nobody in the family had known.

She helped the twins with their English study now and then, and that was all.

In the past I had pushed Mom away.

Three languages — easy to say.

For an ordinary person to speak three languages is a considerable thing.

“You kids ought to be grateful to your dad. You were born with pretty faces and good heads because you take after the mother your dad picked.”

Dad opened his shoulders wide.

His confidence stabbed the sky.

Then again, among men a wife’s face has sometimes looked like the measure of a man’s success.

On that point Dad is a hundred out of a hundred.

But.

“Dad, but haven’t you considered that if it hadn’t been for you… we might have been born a little more perfect?”

“Oh my! That’s true!”

The twins had grown up a lot.

They knew how to put Dad on their palms and play with him.

“Wh-what did you say~.”

Dad, flustered.

“Puhihihihi. Dad’s an idiot~.”

The twins burst out laughing.

“Oh my! That could well have been the case~.”

Mom started a second round of arson.

“Daaaaaarling!”

Dad, flustered, called for Mom loud enough to lift the roof off.

“I love you~.”

Mom put down Dad’s shout with a single line.

A full moon rose on Dad’s face at once.

Haa…

A couple who specialize in rubbing their love in, right in front of their children.

Clear goosebumps rose up all over my body.

But the smile never left my mouth.

This kind of mood…

It’s really good!

(End of Chapter 32)