“The God of Stocks…, has closed out every trade.”

“…You mean he sold all the stock? All of it???”

“Yes. He left a balance of ten thousand won in the account. The balances in the other linked accounts under other names were transferred out too.”

“Ah!”

Jeon Yeong-guk, team leader at Kaum Securities, clutched his head at the report from Yun Jeong-hyeok on his team.

A throbbing headache came over him.

If the God of Stocks had cleared the table, there was nothing bigger than this.

The God of Stocks, who appeared like the wind and vanished like the wind.

The footprint he left is the highest rate of return in the world, unofficially.

He had shown a negative return on stocks lately, but that was certainly a momentary slip.

“Where did he go? That money didn’t just disappear, did it! Find the trail!”

“Probably…, it looks as though he crossed over to the currency futures market. A friend of mine who works at KR Futures called at lunchtime yesterday to say that several hundred billion won of private funds had come in.”

“The currency futures market! That gambling table?”

“Yes. Funds on that scale, it’s got to be the God of Stocks.”

“And L.O.R. Investment Corporation?”

“Quiet.”

“Damn it…, I want to quit this company and get hired at the one where the God of Stocks is. How much is he planning to strip out this time?”

Age aside, to the staff of a brokerage the God of Stocks is an object of limitless respect.

There’s a level at which you can be jealous, but this was on another plane.

He is the God of Stocks.

The one wish he had was to lay eyes on that astonishing rate of return, if nothing else.

“If L.O.R. Investment Corporation is hiring, I’d like to go and try too.”

“Yeah? Right? It isn’t only me, is it?”

“Of course not. I want to follow in the footsteps of a god.”

“Find out for sure whether they’re hiring. And pay your respects to Team Leader Yu Se-ra whenever you have the time.”

“Yes, sir! I’m entertaining her to the best of my ability.”

“Don’t slobber over her. Anyone can see the CEO didn’t hire her at random.”

“Yes…”

The team leader’s advice had a bone in it, and Yun Jeong-hyeok answered weakly.

Team Leader Yu Se-ra, the only employee of L.O.R. Investment Corporation, had set fire to the heart of every man who visited the place.

Yun Jeong-hyeok is in the vanguard of those men.

“Ah well. Anyway, I’m worried about the God of Stocks. The currency market is the pure essence of the pit, in a different way from stocks…”

Team leader Jeon Yeong-guk worried about the God of Stocks.

But he did not know.

That the nickname God of Stocks was soon to become the God of Exchange Rates.

Back in my army days there was a saying that the Ministry of Defense clock keeps turning even if you hang it upside down.

It’s the same with the school clock.

Before anyone noticed, it was July.

School life went by quietly and fiercely at the same time.

Under the weight of the third year, the skulls of boys who had shaved their hair down to the scalp shone all over the classroom.

But the good cheer of that time of life hadn’t gone anywhere.

Better than anyone, they know they’re comrades who were in the same room together.

With my friends I still spent every day giving it my best.

Now and then I handed pizza out to the whole school and took points for it.

I put heating and cooling units in every classroom in the school in my mother’s name and took points again.

I donated a scholarship to the school anonymously and earned points that way too.

Human beings might not keep count, but the karma points were calculated exactly.

“Kyaah! That’s cool~. Tae-san, be sure to tell your mother we’re really grateful.”

“Thanks to your mother I think my entrance exam score is going up ten points!”

“Heh heh heh. When a friend gets rich, all kinds of things turn out nice.”

In the classroom with the air conditioning running cool, my friends enjoyed the drowsiness that comes after lunch.

The abuse they used to pour on me has dropped off sharply lately.

The burning love aimed at me(?) seems to have cooled.

Today at last…, it’s settlement!

The three-month investment period was over.

The time had come to close out the FX margin on the Canadian dollar, overvalued against the yen.

The Canadian dollar and yen part, which I’d get a taste of first.

The part with the larger sum in it — buy Canadian dollars, sell American — is left steeping.

That one is going to top out for real in November.

“What’s with that look on Tae-san’s face? He didn’t watch something good on his own last night, did he?”

“Suspicious… Tae-san, what happened with those goddesses that time? Are you still seeing them?”

“I’ve got a bad feeling. Every time that punk looks like that, something happens…”

I was sunk in a fantasy about the money that would rain down after the close-out, and my friends harassed me.

I brushed them off and ignored them.

I wanted to enjoy this tension and this pleasure whole, until the American market opens this evening.

Ding-ding~ ding-ding-ding~♪.

Just then my cell phone rang loudly.

School rules are strict, but it’s a privilege granted only to the boy at the top of the school.

An unknown number.

Overseas?

And the leading digits of an unfamiliar international code were showing.

I pressed the call button.

“Daniel!!!”

The moment the call connected I heard the excited voice of a woman calling my English name fiercely.

It was full of gladness.

“Clara?”

It was her, the one from Hong Kong — Clara.

The instant I heard the voice, she came back to me.

“Daniel, surprised? What are you doing now?”

“I had lunch and I’m resting a little. But what is this number?”

“My cell phone got soaked in the rain, so I’m using the company phone. Director Leo says hello.”

Unlike his other investments, this one had brought Leo his principal and his interest for certain, so he must be grateful to me.

Right now the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank is in the middle of a battlefield.

And soon a nuclear bomb is due to land in the center of it.

“Oh no, how did it get wet?”

“I was walking along thinking about Daniel and I dropped it in the rainwater. It rained a lot in Hong Kong this morning. So I missed Daniel. I was just about to send a text and my foot slipped and the phone fell into the drain.”

“You weren’t hurt? Are you all right?”

“Mm~ I’m fine. Daniel worrying about me has made my heart a lot easier.”

“Next time we meet, shall I give you a sexy, well-shaped cell phone that looks like Clara?”

“Daniel, you miss me, don’t you?”

“Of course. My body is far away, but my heart is always beside Clara.”

“Pfft~ and yet you never once come to see me?”

“…, things are busy here.”

If I skip school it’s a minus on my school record.

My heart wants to, but reality is what it is.

“All right. I’m out of my mind with work too. We invested in the American mortgage loans and now it’s chaos.”

“Really?”

Somewhere along the way Clara had dropped into comfortable speech with me.

Between trading texts and calling now and then, it had happened naturally.

The age difference was no problem at all.

I pretended not to know about the HSBC business.

The way of the world was fair.

Somebody had to be stripped for my pocket to be filled.

“So anyway, it looks as though I’ll be taking my vacation soon. They say the secretariat won’t have anything to do for a while.”

“Vacation?”

“Daniel invited me. I want to stay at Daniel’s Korean old house for my vacation. That’s all right, isn’t it?”

“Of course! You’re welcome any time!”

My mouth shouted yes, but for a second I was thrown.

My parents don’t touch anything where I’m concerned, but if they find out a high schooler is spending a vacation with a beautiful foreign woman…

I was curious about what their faces would do.

“Daniel, then I’ll be looking forward to it~ may the day I meet you come quickly…”

Clara’s voice was moist.

For a second my own heart caught it.

I missed her a great deal.

“Clara. Text me the date and time you’re coming. I’ll come out to the airport to meet you.”

“Really?”

“Of course. It’s only natural for a friend coming from far away.”

“Daniel. You really are…, a good man.”

“Clara, so are you.”

“Then I’ll text you.”

“Yes. I’ll be waiting.”

The sweet phone call, honey dripping off it, came to an end.

Thinking about Clara, my whole body got hot.

She is, in a lot of ways, a really nice(?) and good woman.

But the mood in the classroom was cold.

“…”

Silence hung in the classroom that had been loud with noise.

Every one of them was looking at me.

No — glaring.

Their mouths hung wide open and wouldn’t close.

There were boys whose faces had gone white.

“J-Jang Tae-san…, since when have you been that good at English?”

“Hey! Was that really a woman called Clara you were just on the phone with?”

“Whoa! Jang Tae-san. You disloyal bastard! What? You’ll wait for the day she comes? That’s right, isn’t it? That sentence, that’s what it was, right?”

“Sexy! Uwaaaah! He said sexy!!!”

“I heard him say he’d go out to the airport too!”

“So are you? What’s so are you, you bastard! Today you’re setting fire to our hearts!”

“Bring down Jang Tae-san!!!”

“Heaven for singles! Hell for couples! Comrades! Every one of you, raise the fist of justice! Today we are gathered to execute the traitor Jang Tae-san, who has forgotten that he is a third-year exam candidate!”

“All attack!!!”

“Waaaaaaaaaaaah!”

What the hell! These bastards have really lost their eyes!

My friends’ eyes had rolled clean back in their heads over one phone call with Clara, and they charged at me.

Rumble-umble-umble-umble.

“Stop! I said stop!”

“Die! Dieeeeeee!”

Thud! Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!

My friends’ stinging fists came flying in from every direction.

I covered my face and took it on my back.

Their listening scores are all high, so they’d more or less followed the conversation in English.

In a class where almost nobody has a girlfriend, I had become the object of a curse.

“I surrender! I surrender!”

I had to stop these crazed males.

They looked like they really meant to beat me to death.

“Shut up! You have to take it until lunch break is over!”

“Because of you my anger gauge has gone up two hundred percent! It’s already a big crime to be good at your studies and good-looking, and you have a foreign girlfriend too? Do you think this is fair?”

“If we kill that traitor, the odds of a beauty coming our way go up! Comrades, put your backs into it and let’s beat him!”

They could have gone easy on me, but some of the boys really put their weight into it.

Fine, hit me. I’m all right.

The fists doing the hitting are the ones that are going to hurt.

I pulled up more internal energy.

“Huff, huff…, but why doesn’t this bastard say it hurts?”

“My hand hurts more…”

“This monster of a guy…”

The ones doing the hitting wore out and dropped off.

Thanks to the effect of the Taegeuk Five Elements Dual Intent Mind Art, my body had turned hard.

With a little internal energy blown into it, cotton fists like those did no damage at all.

“If you’re envious, boys, you lose.”

I recited the winner’s line.

“Hey! Jang Tae-san! You bad guy! And you call yourself a friend!”

“Bad guy! You deserve to die! You rotten thing!”

“I don’t know what the ghosts are doing. A playboy like that should be reported straight to King Yeomra and dragged off, so a world where commoners like us are happy can come!” (TL Note: King Yeomra — the king of the underworld in Korean belief, who judges the dead and decides where they go next.)

Curses full of resentment came at me from every direction.

Fine, I know that feeling too.

In the past I hated boys with girlfriends just the way you all do.

“Belly’s on me.”

“???”

“You’re not eating? I said pork belly is on me today! And fresh-cut belly at Dajeong Diner, your hyung‘s treat!”

“!!!”

My friends’ faces twisted into something bizarre.

You could see the conflict in them plainly.

But I wasn’t worried.

I’d bet everything I own that those pigs aren’t mentally old enough to throw away belly.

And then…

“My friend!!!”

“Hey! Look at this friendship, overflowing with love! Tae-san! My father told me. Love is something you do while your blood is boiling!”

“Tae-san, we support your love unanimously!”

“Tae-san, you’re a real piece of work! I respect you! Jang Tae-san!!!”

The troop of monkeys from three in the morning, four at night isn’t far away.

Every one of them went over to the fresh-cut belly at Dajeong Diner, where they say people line up even downtown.

They were all blind with appetite.

It would have been strange if they hadn’t gone over.

Dajeong Diner’s cold-aged pork belly was the best pork belly I’ve ever eaten.

The card bill will run a little today too, but it’s no loss at all.

The enormous lump of money coming in tonight.

And the karma points the boys hand me in small change make it a trade that always comes out ahead.

“Yeah? Then your hyung will buy unlimited drinks for everybody! Everybody follow me to the store!”

“Tae-san hyung! Wait for us!”

Full of spirit, like Sun Wukong the monkey chief of Flower-Fruit Mountain, we charged the store.

My friends, who are the happiest in the world right now over a single bottle of soda.

Let us never forget this friendship, all of you.

That however much the world hurts us from here on, today we were happy!

(End of Chapter 52)