Ssssizzle! Ssssizzle!

Park Jiung, grilling meat in a new frying pan, the old one thrown out a few days ago with its coating worn away to nothing.

“Jiung. Grandma’ll do the grilling.”

“Sit down. You said your back hurts.”

“Aye, but even so……”

Jiung was happier right now than he had been at any time.

The exams had gone well.

Above all, he can’t forget the one thrilling stroke that landed at lunchtime last Friday.

Ha Tae-ung had cleared away Oh Seora and her lot, who had been tormenting Jiung all that time.

Everything knotted up in him had come loose.

And after smashing Oh Seora’s lot apart, five hundred million had landed in his passbook.

All of it came from Ha Tae-ung putting himself to the trouble.

Ha Tae-ung is holding the money now, but that doesn’t matter.

The truth is he doesn’t need it.

Five million won in cash is left in the passbook.

He has never had money that large in a passbook before in his life.

Simply having a balance in there is enough to make Park Jiung happy.

His grandmother’s knees, after all those years of going round collecting waste paper, have been very bad lately.

They had been getting by on the state benefit, scraping along on it.

In among that he had grilled hanwoo for his grandmother, and simmered ox-bone soup for her as well.

It’s a satisfaction he has never felt in his life.

“But…… where’s the money come from, then?”

Lee Malnyeon asks her grandson carefully.

Once the benefit money has gone on the monthly rent every time, what’s left barely covers other living costs and the hospital and the medicine.

The state of things is that not missing a meal is doing well.

But watching what Jiung has been doing, he’s been spending a fair amount for days now.

Hanwoo, which she can’t remember the last time she tasted, and ox-bone soup on top of it.

“A friend helped me out a bit.”

“A friend?”

Lee Malnyeon started slightly.

Since he went up to high school, her grandson had not once brought up a friend.

Jiung, who had shut himself away entirely after his only son and her daughter-in-law died the way they did.

These last few days her grandson has not been as he was.

Even studying for exams there was no shadow on his face.

And the reason for it, it seemed, was a friend.

“Yes! Ha Tae-ung, he’s called. A friend you can properly lean on.”

There was strength in her grandson’s voice as he gave her the friend’s name.

The way he said the name Ha Tae-ung, clear and distinct, was a little unfamiliar.

“Aye……. That’s a friend I’ve not heard of. You get along well with him.”

That her grandson had made a friend was more welcome to Lee Malnyeon than anything.

Something that had been pressing heavily somewhere in her lifted a little.

“Grandma.”

“What is it?”

“Should I…… go for the bar?”

“A bar? What’re you wanting with a bar?”

“Eh? No — the bar exam. A prosecutor.”

“A prosecutor? Them high-up gentlemen?”

“High-up gentlemen? Right, shall I do that, then?”

“My, my!! Your daddy passed the first stage of that exam too, he did. It was only that we couldn’t put up the money. Your daddy was clever.”

“Did he?”

It was the first Jiung had heard that his father had passed the first stage of the bar examination.

Park Jiung’s eyes lit for a moment.

There had been a reason Ha Tae-ung told him, out of nowhere, to be a prosecutor and not a thug.

“Then I’ll be a prosecutor.”

“Aye! Our grandson’ll be a prosecutor. You’ll be making your daddy’s dream come true.”

“T— team leader! What is this?”

“What?”

“A request has come in to raise a withdrawal limit.”

“Raise a limit? By how much?”

“It’s…… they want it opened up to a billion won a day?”

“A billion? What kind of madman!”

Appbit’s customer response team.

The team leader’s face creased at the content of the customer’s complaint.

Very occasionally there are people outside the range of a normal customer.

They are the ones who have struck it big on a coin and want to withdraw it all in a single sum.

Which is impossible, obviously.

Pay out a vast amount in one go and the operating funds walk out of the door.

The company is left shaking.

Trillions come in and go out in a day, but what’s genuinely left over isn’t much.

Withdrawals have to come wholly out of net profit.

Which is why it’s tied down at a maximum of two hundred million or so.

And yet…… a billion?

That’s a figure permitted only to VVIPs, and to them within limits.

“It’s that boy from a few days ago.”

“That boy? Who?”

“Ha Tae-ung. Nineteen years old.”

“Ha Tae-ung? The billion won?”

“That’s him.”

“So this time he says he’s pulling all of it out?”

The woman hesitated over her answer.

“What is it! Say it and get it off your chest.”

“It’s…… he’s put eight hundred thousand Tether into the account.”

“Eight— eight hundred thousand Tether??”

The team leader doubted his own ears.

Eight hundred thousand Tether!

In won it’s on the scale of ten billion.

“Is that even possible? That bastard has only been investing in coins a few days.”

“Do you think he raised leverage?”

“……Ugh. Bloody leverage!”

It was like being robbed with his eyes wide open.

Unlike the overseas exchanges, leveraged investment isn’t possible domestically.

And Ha Tae-ung has completed his verification, so he isn’t subject to the Travel Rule either.

“Did a message come?”

“Yes.”

“Saying what?”

“That if we don’t change the limit setting to a billion…… he’ll move to another operator……”

“Petty little bastard, over a mere ten billion.”

The team leader shuddered with envy and fought it out inside himself.

Ten billion is easy to say, and it’s a sum he could go his whole life without holding.

Some young thing called Ha Tae-ung who has made a pile off futures leverage by luck.

Threatening them openly.

“That isn’t…… all of it.”

“What! There’s more?”

“He says not to entertain the petty notion…… that the Tether he’s put in is all he has……”

“……!!”

The team leader’s expression set black.

And then.

“Well— well, get on with it! Contact him right now!!”

“About time it came.”

I didn’t spend my working life for nothing.

It hasn’t been a long life, but it’s rich in experience.

A moment of opportunity that can belong only to a man who has lived on a board already laid out.

Dee-ring dee-ring dee-ree-ring~♬

The number 1588-56XX came up.

“There it is.”

The call I’d been waiting for.

I touched the answer button, laughing through my nose.

“Who is this?”

I knew, and I asked as though I didn’t.

—Good morning, valued customer. This is Go Hana, your Appbit adviser.

An Appbit adviser with standardised courtesy mode equipped.

Friday, five past nine in the morning.

An adviser you couldn’t reach by ringing until you died has made contact herself.

“Yes. Go ahead.”

I kept it short.

Right now the power is mine.

—I understand there’s a matter causing you inconvenience. How may I help you?

She knows what it says, so what is she asking!

Behind the adviser somebody holding the actual authority is giving instructions.

“Exactly as I wrote in the mail. Open the limit to a billion won of withdrawals a day. Such that I can take it out in cash inside an hour.”

—You’re referring to the limit. As you’ll be aware, sir, the cash withdrawal limit is set by assessing your transaction record and your activity history. You do not yet meet our company’s regulations on——

“Shall I move, then?”

—Sorry?

“Understood. I’ll shift it straight into a Batsum wallet. Simple enough.”

I drove the flow of it as though I were about to end the call there and then.

And in that moment.

—No— no, sir! Your limit has just been adjusted upward by special approval. Withdrawal is available immediately.

Is this a joke?

I held back a laugh that almost got out of me.

In the lawless free-for-all of the coin market there is only one absolute power.

The number of coins!

“Thank you.”

—You have been registered as a VIP. Should you have any complaint to raise in future, please contact us at any time.

Click.

The call I needed was over.

Appbit, which normally produces every excuse under the sun to refuse an ordinary customer a raised limit.

They already know the coin count is what rules.

“Look after me properly, then. Heh heh.”

I took a small revenge for the power-tripping the exchange did to me in the past, back when I held a handful of coins and got no respect for it.

Ding.

A Kkaetalk came in.

—Your withdrawal limit has been opened to one billion won. Available for immediate use.

“Managers of my pocket money. I’ll be counting on you.”

The Korean coin exchanges are nothing in my plan but a window for managing spending money.

I’ve no intention of trading conspicuously and leaving records behind me while I do it.

I’ll make dollars with the overseas exchanges as the main stage and change them here.

I’m a patriot who takes a different route.

Even at this point in time, dollars and Tether were the same foreign currency.

“Shall we move it, then.”

There’s a fair amount of spending to do today.

The cash has to go across into the bank account.

Tip-ti-tick.

A few operations and the Tether was changed into won.

And then a transfer to the account!

“This is what real money is.”

The billion won I inherited from Grandmother has been laying golden eggs, one after another after another.

Golden geese breeding in real time through the overseas exchanges.

A billion won!

A number I can’t believe came up in the passbook.

The most I ever held, back when I was delighted with myself for striking it big on coin futures, was a few tens of millions.

“What shall I buy first?”

To earn hundreds of billions and do nothing but hold it would be foolish as well.

Money is like a living thing.

Money that lives and moves doesn’t make plans for tomorrow.

Right now is the time to flex, for myself, and no argument about it!

“So, today, something light……”

(End of Chapter 27)