Ding-dong-ding!

“Candidate number forty-seven, you have passed. Congratulations.”

“Yes!”

I clenched my fist hard.

How long has it been since I last got a driver’s license?

It’s the license I got with my friends at university before enlisting, back before the regression.

When I was in the automobile research club at school, the club paid for members to get a license.

The skill from driving my father’s junk car hadn’t died yet.

The written test, the course, the skills test and the road test, all passed on the first try.

It’s possible because it’s 2007.

Driving school isn’t compulsory.

If you can drive, you can get the license.

“Congratulations. You’ll be able to receive the license in a little while.”

A policewoman handed me the pass certificate kindly.

The license was issued right away too.

“Thank you!”

The pass certificate stirred a strange emotion.

It’s nothing, really, and my heart was thumping.

Now I can go where I like!

Being able to drive a car.

That was a privilege for adults only.

My chest, which had felt closed in, opened a way to breathe.

In a little while the third year starts.

My time as a third-year exam candidate begins again.

I never had any thought of quitting school and taking the equivalency exam.

I wanted to enjoy my teens to the fullest with friends who would be hard to see again the moment I went out into society.

There’s no guarantee I can regress again, and I don’t think I could live better than this.

I liked friends who throw friendship away like a worn-out shoe in front of food.

The taste of running a round with them at the PC room is a happiness only your teens can give you.

I lived into my thirties, and this stretch with my friends was what I missed most when things were hard.

“It’s raining…”

Raindrops fell from the sky, one and two at a time.

Seeing rain suddenly made me think of Clara.

She said she wanted to see the rain that falls in Korea.

“Clara…”

That night came back to me.

We had a full dinner with red wine at the top-floor restaurant of a hotel looking out over the Hong Kong sea.

One glass, two glasses, three.

She and I touched glasses.

Nobody suspected me of being a minor.

Her eyes were always focused on me.

Clara laughed even at my worthless jokes.

The mood was good too.

Reluctant to let it end, we took the second round to the suite where I was staying.

Standing at the window, watching the rain fall outside, we drank wine again.

And then…

At some point Clara leaned her head on my shoulder.

Breath turning hot.

The sweet scent of wine spread through the room.

Our eyes met…

And with neither of us leading, the two of us kissed, naturally.

She was hot.

Sweeter than any lips I had experienced until now.

“Haa.”

Hot breath came out of me.

Exactly that far.

I was too young to take it any further.

I may have regressed, but taking it further in the position of a high schooler weighed on my conscience.

On the day we parted, Clara smiled at the airport and said something.

That I should absolutely not feel burdened.

It’s a way of thinking different from Korean women.

She sent texts now and then.

She said I was welcome any time I wanted to come to Hong Kong.

I sent texts back too.

That I would wait for the day Clara comes to Korea.

Cell phone chat functions like Kakao Tong haven’t come out yet.

That is how the tie between Clara and me continued.

A thrilling memory to think back on.

I couldn’t lay it out for my friends either.

They would certainly have come at me saying I’d read some smut somewhere and was talking trash.

“Team Leader Yu. Is the thing I asked for ready?”

I called the office.

Becoming a corporation had plenty of advantages.

First, for the sake of expense processing, I can buy expensive cars to my heart’s content.

I had been aiming at today.

I had ordered the one I liked.

“Yes, sir. They say the car is ready.”

“I’ll take out the insurance myself. Have it delivered to the office parking lot.”

“Understood, sir.”

I couldn’t bring myself to say I got my license today.

Ms. Yu Se-ra thinks I’m at least a university student.

The Seoul office was running well.

Ms. Yu Se-ra had business cards made with general team leader on them.

She handled the small things I directed.

Her work was clean.

Her English ability is at a considerable level too.

She knew how to sort the corporate documents going back and forth from Hong Kong by fax.

“It’s hard to see anybody’s face.”

Even under the same Seoul sky, meeting people was this hard.

I thought of Ye-rin sunbae and Seo-ryeon.

I was busy with investing, the corporation and the Hong Kong trips, but those two were busier.

A month ago Seo-ryeon called in a voice half dead.

She said her cell phone was going to be confiscated that evening, and asked me over and over not to two-time her while she was gone.

That is the last call I had with Seo-ryeon.

Since then there hasn’t been one text or one call.

I roughly know how idols are trained before debut, so I cheered Seo-ryeon on from a distance.

“And sunbae…”

Ye-rin sunbae was even harder to reach.

We exchanged texts here and there, but hearing her voice was hard.

After the final acceptance, she went to a gathering for incoming freshmen, and after that contact thinned out.

Sunbae has changed.

Sunbae’s family moved to Seoul.

I made contact a few times because I wanted to meet Ye-rin sunbae.

But sunbae was busy.

She had already made a state-exam study group with her new friends.

I knew Ye-rin sunbae is ambitious, so I understood it.

“I’ll be able to see her at the graduation ceremony.”

In a few days it’s the Jangju Girls’ High graduation ceremony.

I thought I’d be able to see my busy sunbae’s face then.

“Right! Shall we go and collect my first state-certified qualification!”

A license issued twenty minutes after you pass.

I moved off with a light step to receive my brand-new license.

“Let’s get rolling~.”

I sat down in front of the computer.

Two of the newest thirty-inch LCD monitors released by Dell sat on either side of the wide desk.

The price went well over two million won, but I didn’t spare the investment.

The acceleration of IT technology is getting faster and faster.

From 2006, LCD monitors grew in earnest and drove out CRT monitors.

And in no time the LED era will come too.

I was that busy myself.

Tick tick, tick-a-tick-tick.

I opened the US market account.

Under the name of the Hong Kong investment corporation, I could open a foreign futures account.

It isn’t the corporation HSBC set up for me.

It’s a corporation newly merged after running the Central and South American corporation I bought from the operator around a few turns.

Briefly as it lasted, I closed two stages of corporations and accounts.

It’s a system where, once it disappears, the data is destroyed forever.

Tracing the funds was impossible.

The name of the newly and secretly opened Hong Kong entity is BMJ Investment Incorporated.

It’s the initials of Big Mountain J, another English translation of Jang Tae-san.

Whrrrrrr.

The screen updated and a familiar price chart appeared.

The office was quiet.

Ms. Yu Se-ra has gone home.

The field I’m attempting now is futures investment.

Futures and options are an eternal love and hate for investors.

They’re the final boss of the gambling world, presenting enormous returns and explosive ruin.

In a single night you can end up a prince or a beggar.

With options in particular, a payout several hundred times over is possible.

If futures are a product handling the time value of the future, options are buying and selling intrinsic value and time value.

In a word, it’s a casino where you buy and sell the rights over things to come — stocks, oil, gold — and test your luck.

Firms trading with foreign countries use hedging to remove risk, buying in opposite directions to prepare for exchange-rate movement.

A speculator like me went at it from one side only, aiming for the jackpot.

An official worldwide gambling floor.

You can be left with an empty can in one shot.

The leverage on crude oil was fifteen times.

Without knowing future prices, it’s a table even I couldn’t invest in.

“Settle the margin and…”

I concentrated hard.

Press one number wrong and I’m out on the spot.

The contract margin on the futures I was aiming at was three thousand one hundred and ninety dollars per contract.

But the actual transaction is a contract of forty-seven thousand five hundred and eighty dollars, fifteen times that.

“The instrument is West Texas Intermediate, the light crude they call WTI crude oil!”

I selected the instrument in the English-language futures trading window.

The current spot price of oil was fifty-eight dollars, and the settlement date for the March contract was about twenty days off.

The oil futures I would trade were the March contract too.

The period was short, but it doesn’t matter.

The price of oil starts climbing hard from tomorrow.

Then it rides a roller coaster and falls roughly.

With the March settlement date approaching, trading in the next contract month is starting up actively.

The market price kept rising and falling by small amounts.

It’s evidence that the heavy investors haven’t invested in the rising market in earnest yet.

“Hoo.”

When my heart shook, I quickly circulated the Taegeuk Five Elements Dual Intent Mind Art.

Using energy, I held an unmoving mind.

Mechanically, I put in the buy orders.

I trusted the overseas stock charts and futures movements stored in my head.

In January 2007 the futures market at home was only beginning to find its feet.

Individuals approached that market from May.

My memory of the domestic futures market is fragmentary.

But I knew the flow of the overseas futures market inside out.

At this time, with China’s rise, crude and raw materials began to soar in earnest.

Knowing that oil, the physical commodity, would keep surging, I was bold in the investment.

They say futures are the shadow of the physical commodity.

I had a grip not only on the physical but on the movement of the futures.

In the futures market there’s a phrase, wag the dog.

It means that futures, a virtual product, control the real physical commodity.

Conversely, knowing the physical price, I can see the substance of the shadow that is futures.

Ding, ding.

Trade notification windows sounded.

Overseas futures trading, unlike domestic, has no basic deposit.

Only a transaction margin was required.

As befits a market led by fierce American gentlemen, the leverage is fantastic.

“Are my hands shaking right now?”

The price window turned red, announcing a rise.

While I was putting in orders, the market price went up.

“Melting away like grains of sand…”

But my trades quietly disappeared, as though nothing had happened.

Over a full six hours I bought oil futures at a suitable average price.

It was like a river merging into the sea.

Today’s total investment was forty-seven million eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

The purchase contracts were fifteen thousand.

The total converted physical investment was over seven hundred and thirteen million dollars.

Drop ten percent in a day and seventy-one million three hundred thousand dollars flies away.

“Next~ shall we fatten LOR’s belly a little too.”

I opened my own brokerage account.

Once the unit went past hundreds of billions, it looked like nothing but numbers.

I hadn’t been idle all this time.

I had set up the stock investing precisely.

The instruments I invest in on a single day run to dozens.

As the funds grew, creating returns at home was getting harder and harder.

Even an upper limit price could turn into a lower limit price the moment I pulled my funds out.

So far, money has been slapping money in the face and dragging it in.

Somewhere along the way the total stock assets hit seven hundred and fifty billion won.

It’s a general bull phase, so more than a hundred instruments a day were exploding, KOSPI and KOSDAQ alike.

That is what makes the returns possible.

The Financial Supervisory Service, too, generally doesn’t react sensitively to worked stocks in a rising phase.

I couldn’t fail.

Out of that, I shook out four hundred billion and moved it to my corporate account.

Otherwise known as topping up the corporation’s capital.

I got permission from HSBC’s legal team.

At the enormous rate of return, they quietly bowed their heads and released the account freeze.

“This one… goes into safe stocks.”

The unit is four hundred billion.

To invest a sum like that, the American NASDAQ was easier than our stock market.

I didn’t want to draw glares for nothing.

The brokerages would obviously be keeping an eye on me.

I could sense invisible currents of envy and jealousy.

It was time to hide myself.

“There’s one delicious one~.”

I found my target on the NASDAQ.

As I expected, its price is in a flat range.

This one will start jumping around in a few days too.

A price of eighty-five dollars printed seven hundred dollars eight months later.

A full eight times the return.

The rate of return isn’t that high, but this stock is official investment money.

Later this one will become another hidden weapon of mine.

“Heaven helps me too~.”

Around this time the government was going wild trying to shovel dollars out.

In 1996 overseas securities investment was fully liberalized.

Overseas securities investment stalled for a while with the IMF.

Hearts still pounding, they swept dollars in, and now the national coffers were overflowing with them.

The government put out a measure.

In January 2007, radically, it took a three-year temporary policy of tax exemption on overseas investment returns.

Without the exemption I’d have to pay a total of 15.4 percent in tax.

For a man who has regressed, it’s a grateful government, laying out a cushion of money for me.

In a situation like this, anybody who can’t eat what he’s handed is an idiot.

“Google, hold on a little. Big brother is coming!”

I moved four hundred billion in funds from each brokerage account to the investment corporation’s account.

It’s a transfer amount made possible because I had the trading limits released.

Tomorrow morning…

I could see plainly that the brokerages were going to have a fit.

(End of Chapter 40)