“Team Leader Yu Se-ra.”

“Yes, sir!”

I came out of the CEO’s office and called Team Leader Yu Se-ra.

Team Leader Yu Se-ra had been at her monitor, deep in her English study, and she stood up.

Her look was at the top of the office-wear game again today.

A black two-piece suit that clung to her…

Went straight to the eye.

I saw her every day and she never seemed to wear the same thing twice.

Her sense for putting an outfit together was something else.

That long-limbed figure of hers would have turned a five-thousand-won T-shirt into a luxury item.

“You don’t need to come in from tomorrow.”

“What? S-Sir… then.”

A sudden notice.

I said it quietly, looking into her eyes.

Surprise filled Team Leader Yu Se-ra’s eyes, and then hurt came in behind it.

Heh. The bad man who makes women cry — that was me.

“Here.”

I took a white envelope out of my coat.

Team Leader Yu Se-ra took it without a word.

“This month’s pay is in your account. Thank you for your work.”

“…No. Thanks to you, sir, I had an easy month. Thank you for everything.”

A single tear spilled from her eye.

The reaction came far too fast.

Uh, hold on — this was not the scene I was after.

“Um, Team Leader Yu.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I can’t take this envelope. I can’t accept money beyond my station when I haven’t done any work.”

The more I saw of this noona, the more I liked her.

On the outside she was perfect enough to rule over every surgically built brand-chaser in Gangnam, and inside she was honest.

The world is wide, and it has plenty of women who are both pretty and good.

“Really? You won’t take a Lunar New Year bonus?” (TL Note: Seol, the lunar new year, is one of the two great Korean holidays; families travel home for it, and workplaces pay a bonus and buy new clothes for it.)

“What?”

At my words Team Leader Yu Se-ra’s eyes went wide.

Tears still stood in those big eyes of hers, drop by drop.

She looked like the heroine of a comic book.

“I’m going down to my family home in the country tomorrow. I’ll come back up after the New Year holiday. There’s nothing for you to do until then, so I’m giving you a long vacation. That envelope is your New Year bonus. There are gift certificates in it too, so buy yourself something new for the New Year.”

“S-Sir…”

“What is it? Not enough?”

“Waaaaaah!”

Out of nowhere, a grown woman let out a wail.

And then she launched herself into my chest.

Whoa!

I had played a little joke and gotten it back with interest.

“You’re awful, sir. I was ready to bury my bones in this company. And then…, you tell me not to come in…”

“W-When did I say don’t come in? I said thank you for your work~.”

In one stroke I had become a bad CEO.

No — I was becoming one.

Team Leader Yu Se-ra, sniffling into my chest.

The scent of a grown woman hit my nose.

The springy feel of a woman against my chest.

Aaaaargh!

I had dated inside my own department in college, and it burned me badly enough that I have been against office romance ever since.

This was not allowed.

It really was not…

“I’m sorry. I was only joking for a second.”

Pat, pat.

The wicked hand turned into a father’s hand.

My hand, patting Team Leader Yu Se-ra on the back — a hand at war with itself!

Really, truly awful.

Time went by slowly like that.

Ah… why does happiness come crowding into a heart at a moment like this?

“Oh my…, I’m sorry.”

A little while later.

I have never understood why women love to throw in an oh my.

Team Leader Yu Se-ra pulled out of my chest with her face gone red.

…, what a shame.

“The break runs long this time, so go abroad or something. As I promised before, the company covers two business-class round-trip tickets and the hotel, as an employee benefit. Unlimited, for as long as the vacation lasts~.”

“That promise was real?”

“Of course.”

Yu Se-ra’s eyes sparkled.

She seemed to have settled; the tears were gone and she was full of life again.

Twenty-five years old this year.

Overseas trips were catching on like a craze among working women her age right about now.

I had lived that age once, so I did what I could for her.

I used to dream about traveling abroad in my college days too.

“I really am going to book it today. Sir~.”

“One condition. Not with a man.”

“Pfft~ I’m going with my mother!”

The joke came out before I knew it, and Team Leader Yu Se-ra’s face went red again.

This was not allowed…

Why has my personality changed like this?

Is it a habit left in the memories of Chris Barnsdale, the linguist?

Or else…, Divine Lord Cheollyong, who claimed to be Sect Master of the Wudang Sect?

I started to suspect the man had used the office of Sect Master of the Wudang Sect to go around setting fire to the hearts of young women all over the martial world — an arsonist.

“See you after the holiday. I have to go now.”

“Have a good trip home…, sir.”

“What’s that face? Are you sad I’m leaving?”

“No! I feel wonderful, it’s such a relief!”

I threw out one more joke.

She said she was glad, but there was hurt in Yu Se-ra’s words.

Everything I had to do in Seoul was done.

I had opened the Miru Securities account that let me invest in overseas stocks.

And I had put the whole four hundred billion won into Google.

If I had regressed a little earlier I could have been one of Google’s early investors, but I had missed that chance.

Still, Google stock had not shot up yet.

That made it prey, and juicy enough.

“Go straight home today. And have a good holiday.”

“Yes… I hope you have a good one too, sir.”

Team Leader Yu Se-ra saw me out, still flushed, and I left the office.

Her eyes followed me a long way.

I did not look back.

The long, long winter vacation of my second year is drawing to a close.

“With that much in gift certificates, we’ll get a fashion show after the holiday, won’t we? Heh heh~.”

I am a man too.

I liked seeing a beautiful employee turned out sharp and working.

The courtesies came in thick this time.

Gift certificates poured in from every brokerage and from the banks, HSBC among them.

Executives turned up with handsome potted plants, saying they had never paid their respects on the opening of the company.

They left an envelope of gift certificates behind with a line about it being a small thing, just enough for a cup of tea.

At this time the Kim Young-ran Act had not come into force yet, so this was a courtesy people exchanged as a matter of course. (TL Note: the 2016 anti-graft law, named for the official who proposed it, which caps the meals and gifts anyone may give a public official, teacher or journalist.)

The amounts on the certificates were a little large, though.

I tore off a piece of that and gave it to Team Leader Yu Se-ra.

I wanted to.

The company’s CEO had hit it big, so that much was fine to hand out.

Yesterday I closed out my futures and set off a super jackpot.

The long position had worked exactly as it should.

In three days the spot price of oil had shot up more than ten dollars.

Unlike the scalpers and day traders, who trade in and out, I was a position trader.

It is an investment technique only a man who knows future prices can choose.

A return of roughly fifteen percent.

Unrest in the Middle East and word that the American oil inventory figures due Thursday were short had driven the price up by a full ten dollars.

As the spot rose, the futures ticks climbed sharply with it.

The settlement date was close, and short-position hedgers sitting on soaring spot oil thrashed to meet it. The market wanted the price up, and the market won — futures went up with the spot.

I sold at once.

And I hit the jackpot.

“Fifty million dollars turning into a hundred million… this market really is a thrill~.”

Rolling big money in the domestic stock market was not easy.

The bigger the sum, the more design it took.

From here on I would have to be satisfied with earning small change.

The global market was another thing entirely.

Nothing but overseas futures could give a return that enormous in one clean shot.

A hundred million dollars looked bigger to me than a hundred billion won in cash.

The seed money I meant to turn on the world was getting bigger by the day.

The moment settlement was done, I threw down thirty thousand contracts on the short side.

Fifteen thousand contracts went into the March contract and fifteen thousand more into the June.

American-style futures contracts, which unlike the European kind can be closed out at any time.

Thank you!

The oil price that jumped will drop back into the high forties.

I can finish it off after I go down home.

Ding!

The elevator reached the underground garage.

I took out the car key.

Beep-beep.

With that welcome sound, the black silhouette lit its headlights and greeted me.

“Black Tiger~ let’s go pay our respects at home.”

It was time to drive down to the family home for Ye-rin sunbae’s graduation and the New Year holiday coming right behind it.

I had given the Porsche the nickname Black Tiger.

Black Tiger, king of a darkness with nobody in it.

That was exactly the future I was after in this second life.

Vrrrrroom!

Black Tiger let out a full-throated blast of exhaust.

And then it swept out of the garage.

“He’s not even a high schooler and he’s a total prankster… Pfft! Pfft!”

The CEO’s joke sent Yu Se-ra to hell and heaven at the same time.

There is no other workplace like this anywhere in Korea.

In a few days Yu Se-ra had taken business cards from executives at the big banks and the brokerages, all of them coming to the company. That was the weight the CEO carried.

Go to the main bank and it is straight to the VIP room.

She had never been treated like this.

When she worked at the law firm she was worn down by sexual harassment and errands.

Copy, make coffee, be something to look at; copy, make coffee, be something to look at, over and over.

Was this what she went to kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school and university for — she suffered through that thought more than a few times.

But L.O.R. Investment Corporation was different.

A five-day week, in on the dot, out at five, clean as a knife.

Yu Se-ra could find time for her English and for the self-improvement she had never managed in college.

She swore to herself that she would become the talent the company needed.

It was the first time she had ever looked forward to going in to work, every single day.

“Our CEO’s chest really is broad~ hee~.”

Being in his arms had not been planned.

It was a reflex, out of real hurt and real surprise.

Yu Se-ra had never dated a man seriously.

There had been plenty of seniors and classmates making passes, but she had been busy preparing for a job.

Her father was a schoolteacher, and under his influence her curfew in college had been nine in the evening.

People told her be a model, told her go in for Miss Korea, so often that her father brought her up strict.

Which was how being held in a man’s arms for real came to be a first for her today.

Just thinking about it made her face burn and her heart thump.

The CEO, who had grown handsome enough that he felt like a different man from the one she first met.

Yu Se-ra got ready to leave.

The office felt empty with the CEO gone.

“This envelope is thicker than I thought?”

She opened the white envelope the CEO had given her and pulled out what was inside.

“Kyaaaaaah!”

Yu Se-ra screamed as loud as she liked in the empty office.

For a New Year bonus, there were five cashier’s checks for a million won each in there.

That alone was moving, and then the department store’s top-denomination gift certificates, the five-hundred-thousand-won ones…

“Twenty of them? So that’s… ten million won?”

She had worked there such a short time that bringing up length of service would have been embarrassing.

And here was a CEO shooting fifteen million won at her for a bonus and new holiday clothes.

“Sir! Don’t throw me away! I really am going to bury my bones in this company…”

It was not about the money.

Jang Tae-san, the CEO who always put her at ease.

Just as his name said, the CEO was becoming a great mountain to Yu Se-ra.

A tear rolled down.

Yu Se-ra was crying without knowing she was doing it.

“Sir…”

Yu Se-ra wiped the tears away with her hand.

A CEO who had moved her several times in one day.

She missed him already.

(End of Chapter 42)