“Down and down they go!”

Under the effect of the moon’s great collapse, Bit and Ether are crashing in earnest — no, tanking.

Ether in particular has come down a full million won, in won terms, from the price I sold at.

The profit has climbed sharply.

The compounding hours that thirty-times futures gives you.

With every day that passes the profit flies off into the sky.

“Haha.”

Joy wells up from somewhere deep in my chest.

It came bursting out as laughter I couldn’t hold in.

The points that flare briefly and go out again, those I can’t catch.

But the large picture and the cycle are printed clearly inside my head.

Right now it’s a short-term falling market!

“I’ll carry Bit through to the middle of next month.”

Once that time has passed, bitcoin enters a tedious sideways market for a while.

There’s no particular reason to leave funds buried until the year’s end.

“There’s food everywhere I look.”

Strength went hard into both my eyes.

A smooth motion. The next prey rises up.

In 2022 the American stock market was in correction.

A crash that came after a long, long run of rising.

It was a threshing season, shaking out the ants with weak nerve.

For the ants who couldn’t hold through it and fell back, no generous table came afterwards.

And then the bubble in American shares, rebounding sharply again around the year’s end.

I remember every one of the patterns that showed themselves at the time.

For a man who tried every kind of investment in the past to make money, right now is a golden age that will never come again.

“What should I eat to get a name for eating well?”

As American shares took their correction, bonds heaved and the price of every kind of raw material jumped about.

And in the middle of it, the one raw material that heaved hardest was——

“Crude and gas!”

Crude oil and natural gas, which had shot up over the war between Russia and Ukraine.

At present they’re catching their breath for a moment.

“A double top, soon.”

Among them, the crude graph and the timing of its collapse, which stood out clearly.

The reports on macro and micro flows that I submitted as papers while I was enrolled in business studies came back to me.

It’s one of the strands of knowledge I properly took in before I graduated.

Tip-ti-tick.

I searched the crude futures market.

“Futures are tasty too, but the best is……options.”

Equal to coin futures, no — the true gambling is the options market.

“Sell crude futures and buy puts at the same time……”

To maximise a profit, extreme investment is necessary.

In the futures and options market most people set a hedge to prevent being liquidated in one blow, but not me.

For a man who knows the outcome, a spike and a collapse are the short road to El Dorado!

“I need an overseas account.”

Overseas futures and options investment is possible from inside the country too.

An adult is given the qualification to invest with nothing more than simple instruction and the setting of an investment grade.

The capital gains tax an individual pays is about eleven per cent.

Unlike other profits, there’s no need to pay comprehensive income tax.

The risk is large, so they’re generous with the tax.

It’s a lot next to the coin market, where tax is zero, but for the future a legal route is necessary.

“Jo and Jang can open up a tax haven at least, surely. And if I make corporations elsewhere and mix the whole thing together……”

The opponent I have to fight is a group with capital in the tens of trillions.

At the same time it’s linked, chain upon chain, with the upper class who form the mainstream, including this country’s political and business worlds.

To bring Haryun to its knees I’ll need regular troops, and mercenaries and assassins and quartermasters as well, in quantity.

The next schedule stacked itself up neatly inside my head.

The design work also began on a route for turning coin profits out of the shade and into the sunlight.

“Overseas corporations, and private equity funds……”

The working life I went through before the regression is a great help.

Flick! Flick.

In the meantime darkness came down outside the window and brilliant lights began to shine like stars.

The Gangnam side takes hold of the eye.

Far off, Haryun Group’s head office building stands out where it rises.

It’s one of the decisive reasons I picked the Signiel and moved here.

“Grandfather, wait for it. This grandson…… is coming soon.”

Perhaps…… I shouldn’t have asked him.

Five o’clock on Saturday morning.

An Hyeonju, waiting for Ha Tae-ung in front of her building with her golf bag standing beside her.

Now the hour had actually come, she was uncomfortable about it.

Field practice is essential for a golf professional.

The field experience is different from a range or a screen.

But the other players wouldn’t play with An Hyeonju, who had been marked by Sinyang Financial Group.

Even before the scandal broke there had been a good many players who were jealous of her.

An Hyeonju, who has striking looks and ability together.

That the other women players held her in check was perhaps only natural.

And in a situation like that, the Sinyang Financial Group business had gone off.

To avoid being marked by Sinyang, a huge sponsoring company, her fellow players kept their distance of their own accord.

Even players who had made a show of being close to her turned their backs.

She couldn’t go round on her own.

Nor did she have the room to.

She had only just come into the professional game, and her finances were barely at the point of turning from zero into plus.

Go out for one round and the green fee, the caddie fee and the cart cost break up at least five hundred thousand won.

For her that isn’t a small amount of money.

She hasn’t the means to bear it every single time she goes out onto the field either.

And even when she does go out, there’s no avoiding the galleries and the caddies whispering.

On top of which, since the scandal broke, An Hyeonju had hardly been able to get onto a field at all.

For the first time in a very long while she’d had an offer of a round from a fellow woman player.

The condition was one.

A couple round, with a man accompanying.

An Hyeonju, whose wish to get out onto a field was large, and the partner she chose was Ha Tae-ung.

He’d said it was his first time at golf, but he showed considerable ability.

Fortunately Ha Tae-ung accepted the accompaniment.

The date was close, so she’d asked shamelessly, and he took it on gladly.

The truth is that she doesn’t know any men.

Can he really drive it himself?

An Hyeonju had visited the licensing centre meaning to take instruction, so that she could drive herself.

Unlike her first plan she had had to run into an awkward situation, and after the sexual harassment she gave up on the instruction altogether.

Instead it had been settled that Ha Tae-ung would collect her himself and they’d travel to the meeting place.

An Hyeonju, waiting for that same Ha Tae-ung.

Vrooooom.

Just then a large SUV came in in front of the studio flat she lives in.

BNW’s X7, which An Hyeonju knows perfectly well.

It’s a vehicle from a brand almost every golf professional covets.

The wide boot capacity, the solid body, powerful and smooth to drive — that’s why it’s popular.

It was An Hyeonju’s dream car as well.

It came in avoiding the cars parked along the alley neatly, like a veteran driver.

Screech.

Soon the car stopped in front of her.

“……??”

An Hyeonju, looking at the stopped car with its dark tinting, her eyes questioning.

Whirrrr.

The boot lifted.

And.

Click.

The sound of the car’s locks releasing, and then the driver’s door opened.

And out of it appeared——

“……!!”

An Hyeonju was badly startled.

Ha Tae-ung got down out of the dream car.

“Noona, have you been waiting long?”

“Eh? N— no.”

An Hyeonju was so flustered she stumbled over her words.

Ha Tae-ung plainly acquired a driving licence a few days ago.

A licence taken by the three-day fast route.

Ha Tae-ung, appearing in front of her with a driving ability she couldn’t believe even seeing it.

“Give it to me.”

Ha Tae-ung took An Hyeonju’s golf bag at once and set it inside the open boot.

“……”

At the reality unfolding in front of her eyes An Hyeonju was dumbfounded.

“Whose…… car is it? Your dad’s?”

“No. It’s mine.”

“Yours, Tae-ung?”

“Yes.”

“You…… you’re a charity case……”

An Hyeonju, so startled that she spat out a thing she should never have said.

“Why? Is a charity case not allowed to drive an imported car?”

Ha Tae-ung asked it back with a slow grin, so gently it was almost embarrassing.

“That isn’t what I——”

“Get in.”

Bringing the boot door down and opening the passenger door for her at once, Ha Tae-ung gestured her in.

Ha Tae-ung, with the manners worked into his body.

An Hyeonju, drawn along by Ha Tae-ung’s gesture as though she were under a spell, sat down in the passenger seat.

It’s wide.

BNW’s X7, which An Hyeonju is riding in for the first time as well.

The wide interior space and the comfortable, easy seats made even her mind feel it had room.

“Put your seatbelt on.”

“Eh? Yes.”

Ha Tae-ung, sitting straight down in the driver’s seat and getting ready to move off.

He’s a grown man through and through.

“Have your coffee.”

Two cups of hot coffee were already waiting in the cup holders.

In the middle of the day the temperature climbs, but it’s still early May, so the morning air was on the cold side.

At Ha Tae-ung’s manners, extreme beyond anything she’d expected, An Hyeonju somehow felt secure.

A warmth of a kind she hadn’t felt in a long time.

“Noona, the people we’re going round with today…… are you close to them?”

Vrooooom.

Ha Tae-ung, asking it at the same moment as moving off.

For a moment An Hyeonju bit her lip lightly.

“Well, that is……”

(End of Chapter 37)