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Chapter 1. The Day I Accidentally Fell into the Han River, I Became the Third-Generation American Robber Baron
Right now, I am standing in front of the Han River.
They say the Han River is warm today.
The stock market is cold.
Cryptocurrency is even colder.
I wonder if the bridge is warm?
[Value, depreciating, continuously declining.]
A status window?
No.
This is simply the visualization of intuition and information created by my highly intelligent brain.
The Mapo Bridge I am standing on was completed in 1970, making it the fourth bridge across the Han River.
In other words, this bridge is old, and despite undergoing maintenance, it is gradually deteriorating. Naturally, its value can only decline.
Of course, that is not the only obvious thing.
I was born with intuition.
Whenever I look at the rise and fall in the value of people, objects, or animals, I can feel it.
I obviously do not know the exact figures, but I can intuitively judge in an instant whether something is going up or down.
The words appearing before my eyes are merely a product of my imagination.
If I had to put it into words, it is an application of the [Mind Palace], or “Memory Palace.”
It is the visualization of the art of memory, a field of study that has been passed down since ancient Greece.
Of course, having a highly intelligent brain is necessary for this to be possible.
But why am I saying that stocks are cold and all that?
Doesn’t that mean my intuition is completely wrong?
It is because of timing.
Modern society is simply too fast.
I can predict whether something’s value will rise or fall, but I cannot know the exact timing.
I can clearly predict that something will rise, only for it to happen tomorrow instead of today. Or I can predict that something will fall, yet it does not drop immediately and instead continues rising for a long time before suddenly crashing in the afternoon.
It was fine when I was investing normally.
But from the moment I started investing in cryptocurrency and derivatives...
The moment I aimed for a massive windfall, I lost everything.
Because the market changes too quickly.
“You would have struck it rich if you had been born back when people traded by hand! Like in the early twentieth century! Hahaha!”
That was what a senior who invested alongside me used to tease me about.
Being a full-time investor leaves you with too much time.
Especially when you are losing money, because there is nothing else you can do.
So I once looked up everything that had happened in the early twentieth century.
With my naturally high intelligence, I studied hard, even using my Memory Palace.
And it really was true.
If it had been back then, in the early twentieth century, when trades were made by hand...
I might really have struck it rich.
But what could I do?
I had been born in the twenty-first century, an era when trades were already being made in tens of thousands, no, hundreds of millions of a second.
That senior of mine blew everything on crypto futures, and I have no idea where he is on some bridge over the Han River right now.
Anyway, merely estimating the temperature of the Han River like this was not going to solve anything.
Not unless I wanted to die by drowning.
“Yeah, damn it. I’ll just have to earn it all back somehow. Ugh.”
Then suddenly, a gust of wind blows.
Whoosh!
Huh?
Why is the wind suddenly this strong?
I think I heard that weather abnormalities have become severe lately because of climate change.
“Uh, uh, uh?”
Wait a second. My body... at this rate, I’m going to go over the bridge!
HOOOOONK!
A truck!
Wait, don’t come this way!
Huh?
While trying to avoid the truck, the bridge pillar sends my body over the edge?
No, am I the one going over?
Suddenly, the bridge is moving farther away.
Damn it, my last sight is the old Mapo Bridge!
Splash!
Everything in front of my eyes turns pitch-black.
If I had known I was going to die this pointlessly...
I would never have wondered about the temperature of the Han River.
Glug.
The truck did not even hit me, yet I simply died.
After falling into the Han River.
---
Now, this is where my memories from just moments ago end.
“Now, can you see this? How many fingers are there?”
When I opened my eyes, some man was waving his fingers in front of me.
“Who are you?”
“Who am I? I’m the person who saved you after you nearly drowned in the Hudson River today. Mr. Gould!”
“What? Who did you say I was?”
Wait a minute.
What is he talking about?
Come to think of it, the man in front of me is a foreigner with a prominent nose.
No, not just that. He has a genuinely hooked nose and looks somewhat Jewish.
And he is speaking English.
Of course, with my highly intelligent brain, I had studied English quite a bit, but not to the point where I could understand it this naturally.
Suddenly, the hooked-nose man shook me irritably.
“How does Howard Gould Junior not know his own name?”
Come to think of it, my body is wet.
Of course it would be, since I fell into the Han River.
No, that is not right. He just said I nearly drowned in the Hudson River.
But the Hudson River is in New York, isn’t it?
In an instant, I opened my eyes wide.
This man had just called me this.
Gould.
I had definitely seen that name when I studied the history of the stock market in the early twentieth century.
“Did you just say [Gould]?”
“That is correct. You are one of the heirs of the Gould family. I am the family’s personal attorney, and I came to handle your inheritance now that you have reached adulthood.”
“You mean that Gould? No way.”
I asked the hooked-nose man as if seeking confirmation.
“Jay Gould?”
The hooked-nose man frowned.
“You should call him Mr. Jason Gould. Or you can simply call him Grandfather.”
“I’m Jay Gould’s grandson?”
“That is correct. If you are indeed Howard Gould’s son.”
The hooked-nose man replied while glaring coldly at me.
“I mean Howard Gould, the man who married against the family’s wishes, got divorced, and then filed a lawsuit over an adultery issue, only to end up having to pay alimony himself.”
Jason Jay Gould.
A man who lived in the same era as the famous Rockefeller, Morgan, and Carnegie.
He could not be called an insanely wealthy man like those giants who adorned the early days of capitalism.
But this man was famous.
Why?
Because he was a [Robber Baron] who made money by destroying his enemies by any means necessary.
There were even rumors that he had hired a hitman to kill a business partner after their relationship soured.
Whether that was true or not, he was an extremely dangerous man.
And he was my grandfather?
“I’m the grandson of a robber baron? No, where am I right now? What year is it?”
“Did falling into the water make you lose your mind? Why on earth did you fall into the water? I heard you had been quietly living at home, doing nothing but [homeschooling] all this time.”
“Homeschooling? Me? I fell into the water?”
What was he talking about now?
Homeschooling meant studying at home.
It was not as if I were some shut-in who never left the house.
Why had I spent my life cooped up at home?
And why would the grandson of a wealthy robber baron live that way?
The hooked-nose man grumbled.
“Yes. When I informed you that your father would no longer provide your living expenses, you suddenly ran out and ended up falling into the Hudson River. You didn’t attempt suicide, did you?”
Apparently, that was what had happened.
But obviously, I had never attempted suicide.
Judging from everything I had heard so far, the situation was like this.
I was Jay Gould’s grandson.
I had lived shut away in this house, doing nothing but homeschooling.
Then my father informed me that he would cut off my living expenses, and immediately afterward, I was found after falling into the Hudson River.
Anyone would assume it was clearly a suicide attempt.
But the problem was that I had never done anything like that.
And I had fallen into the Han River, not the Hudson River.
Unless there was one other possibility, this could not possibly be reality.
“What year is it right now?”
The hooked-nose man finally lost his patience and shouted.
“January 15, 1927! The first transatlantic telephone call connecting New York and London was made a week ago. Do you not even read the newspapers? Mr. Gould!”
1927.
A transatlantic telephone call.
Newspapers.
Simply making a phone call was important enough to make the headlines.
Before that, newspapers were the best medium for obtaining information.
No, more astonishing than that was the year itself.
At that moment, I burst into laughter.
“Puhahaha! My God, it’s 1927? The early twentieth century?”
“Why are you suddenly acting like this? Mr. Gould? Please come to your senses.”
“Did I really come back to that time?”
Whether this was a dream or whatever else, one thing was certain.
“This is a real opportunity! Ow!”
I jumped up, tripped, and fell over, then started jumping around again.
It hurt.
It felt incredibly real.
---
I could tell this was reality just by looking at the documents in front of me.
“Opportunity or not, you need to sign this.”
The hooked-nose man said it with a face that looked like he desperately wanted to curse me.
If this were a dream, there was no way such minute details could appear so clearly.
Then had I been reincarnated?
The fact that the time period was in the past was strange, but reincarnation itself was something beyond imagination anyway.
Still, being handed something to sign immediately after waking up was a bit much.
“What exactly is this?”
“It is a letter from your father informing you that, now that you have reached adulthood, he will no longer provide you with living expenses and that you should not expect to inherit anything.”
“No, he’s rich. Why would he suddenly stop paying my living expenses? Even if I’m an adult?”
Adult. How old was considered an adult in this era?
Around twenty?
I think I had heard that in America, once people became adults, they were kicked out of their parents’ homes and expected to live independently.
But suddenly cutting off all support without giving me any money or means of survival?
Even if he was my father, wasn’t that a little too harsh?
The hooked-nose man replied coldly.
“Your father was practically driven out of the Gould family. Of course, he did receive something, but compared to the Gould family, it was not very much. Then again, the Gould family has gone bankrupt as well.”
So my father, Howard Gould, had not received much in the first place.
For someone in that situation, this house was surprisingly enormous, old-fashioned, and expensive-looking.
But something he said bothered me.
The Gould family had gone bankrupt?
I quickly searched through my memories.
If I had been reincarnated, my body should obviously be different.
No, naturally it was a different body, since they were calling me Howard Gould Junior.
But my memories were still perfectly clear.
They were not the memories of this body.
They were my own memories.
The early twentieth century I had studied, especially the era of the Great Depression.
I could see it whenever I closed my eyes.
The Memory Palace, the world of memorization techniques I had mastered.
I approached one section of the palace, where there was a bookshelf.
I pulled out a book.
There it was.
The records of the Gould family.
Jay Gould had died in 1892, thirty-five years ago.
Howard Gould was his fourth son, so the eldest son must have inherited the business.
“Bankrupt? Well, Grandfather is dead now. Then Uncle must have taken over the business.”
“George Jay Gould, the eldest son, passed away as well. After ruining the Fuller Syndicate, the business on which he had staked the family’s fortune?”
“The Fuller Syndicate? Ah, the one that failed in the railroad business.”
Come to think of it, I had apparently not studied the Gould family that thoroughly.
I had even forgotten that George Jay Gould had died.
But I clearly remembered the record of the Gould family’s downfall.
The Fuller Syndicate.
The Gould family had originally been a family known as the [Railroad Kings].
At the end of the nineteenth century, the most important means of transportation was undoubtedly the railroad.
Jay Gould had engaged in numerous businesses, but what he was most famous for was railroad speculation.
His eldest son, George Gould, also entered the railroad business.
In this era, it was organized in a form called a [syndicate], which was similar to a corporate group in modern times.
But when the [Fuller] Syndicate went bankrupt, the Gould family also fell into ruin.
Of course, they say a rich man’s wealth lasts for three generations.
Even after their downfall, they still had plenty of money left.
You could tell just by looking at this enormous mansion.
The hooked-nose man nodded expressionlessly.
“That is correct. You completely ruined the business during the [Panic of 1907].”
I blinked.
The Great Depression?
Already?
But wasn’t the Great Depression originally the one that swept across the 1930s?
“The Great Depression of 1907?”
“That is correct. My father was their chief legal adviser at the time, but he lost his job. After that, he became the family’s lawyer and has been cleaning up their mess ever since.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. The Great Depression?”
The hooked-nose man continued without stopping.
“Morgan, Rockefeller, Rothschild, and Stillman all gathered together at the time and barely managed to prevent the crisis from spreading. But the Gould family could not survive it.”
Right.
A depression was not something that had happened only once.
Capitalist market economies periodically cycle between booms and recessions.
And when a recession becomes severe enough?
That becomes a depression.
But there was only one storm in history severe enough to be called the Great Depression.
Ten years of hell that changed the history of capitalism, no, the entire world.
To people who had not yet experienced it, a relatively minor depression was simply being called the Great Depression.
I looked around the extremely old-fashioned house, which looked less like an American mansion and more like the residence of a European aristocrat.
“Even so, the house looks rather luxurious.”
“This is everything.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Once again, the hooked-nose man answered without changing his expression.
“This house is all of your wealth, Mr. Gould Junior. There is no other property for you to inherit, nor will there be anything else for you to receive in the future. Ah, there is the thirty-five thousand dollars your mother receives every month.”
This was truly cold.
I was not even getting a single penny from the house.
As far as I remembered, Howard Gould, my father, was a yacht enthusiast.
There must have been some inheritance Howard Gould received after his father, Jay Gould, died.
I gave a bitter smile and asked,
“Well, fine. Come to think of it, I never heard your name. What is it?”
“I’m a Junior as well.”
“What?”
The previously expressionless hooked-nose man slightly frowned.
“Winslow Selby Pierce Junior. I have the same name as my father, who was your family’s chief legal adviser and went down with the family. I am also your family’s lawyer.”
Winslow Selby Pierce.
I remembered.
The chief legal adviser to the Fuller Syndicate.
When the syndicate went bankrupt, he apparently went down with it as well.
I clicked my tongue and looked around the house.
“This house is my only property?”
“It is a rare Tudor-style mansion in Long Island. Many wealthy people coveted it, but your father refused to sell this house. Of course, he has fled to Europe now.”
“It’s depreciating in value. Even so.”
I could see it.
The value of this house was plummeting.
And now my living expenses had been cut off, and I had nothing else.
Then what alternative did I have?
There was only one.
“I’ll sell the mansion. Selby, can you help me?”
The hooked-nose lawyer, Selby Pierce Junior, showed the first major change in his expression.
“You want to sell your only property? Why on earth?”
The answer was simple.
“Because the Great Depression is going to come again soon.”
Two years later, on October 24, 1929.
On that famous Black Thursday.