"Sunbae-nim……."

"What's with that voice? Shrinking on me now?"

"No……."

"Heh heh. Look at our Branch Manager Sim, shrinking. You've spent your whole life rolling around in banks, so this is your first time at a board like this, huh?"

Nine p.m., September 12, 2022. They were back at the same secret bar they had visited once before Chuseok.

Hong Seokju, representative director of Daehan Securities, and Sim Taejun, manager of Daehan Bank's Jamsil branch, had taken the same private room as last time.

A few days had passed, and here they were, sitting across from each other again.

Hong Seokju was in a fine mood and couldn't stop grinning.

"Our young Chairman. Isn't he something?"

"……." "My God. He moved the three big foreign rating agencies in one shot and smacked the Dongmyeong Group upside the head! Khhh!"

Hong Seokju shook his head in admiration.

"Killer. Just killer."

On paper, he was the representative director of a major brokerage, a man with every mark of success.

But the look on his face and the way he moved were nothing like a respectable financial executive's.

He was as worked up as he had been back in his days as a young broker, hanging around the edges of rigged trades.

Hong Seokju thought back to when he was a new hire.

Money had blown through the securities industry back then far rougher and wilder than it did now.

Manipulated stocks, matched trades, operators and big players.

Billions, tens of billions, changed hands several times a day.

Watch a flood of money that size pass in front of you, and before you know it your nerve swells out of all proportion.

And right on cue, the dark hand of temptation reached out to the people working in the industry, every time.

The guy who leaked one juicy tip and pocketed more than his monthly salary. The guy who lent out an account in his name and pocketed a year's pay. The guy who teamed up with operators and jumped into the game himself.

Back then, Hong Seokju had tasted that sweetness a…