Facenote Goes Public (3)
Seo Minju had gone to see Lee Jaseung.
They had eaten together at a restaurant in Cheongdam-dong.
The moment the news reached him, Seo Minjae bolted for Makers in a panic.
There’s no way Lee Jaseung would actually help Seo Minju… right?
He couldn’t bring himself to swear it. Seo Minjae knew Lee Jaseung too well.
If the numbers lined up, that bastard would help Seo Minju and then some.
They had only worked together once. Expecting loyalty from a relationship that thin was far too naïve.
He arrived half-suffocated, jabbed the elevator button, and dragged in ragged breaths.
Calm down. Act natural—like someone who just dropped by to congratulate him on the opening—and casually sound him out.
After straightening his clothes he stepped into the office. Lee Jaseung came out to the lobby to meet him.
“You’re here.”
“Congrats on the opening. Finally get to see the place. Oh—here’s a housewarming gift.”
Lee Jaseung accepted the heavy ceramic planter with a dubious look. The tall plant looked familiar.
“What is this?”
“A Cymbidium orchid I had flown in from China. They say bonsai calms the temper.”
“……”
Lee Jaseung let out a dry laugh. It was the exact orchid the future him had kept in the CEO’s office.
Guess I should get a bonsai stand while I’m at it.
“Thanks. Want a tour?”
“Sure.”
Questions about Seo Minju were jammed in his throat, but he followed Lee Jaseung’s lead and walked the floor.
The prime office in Cheongdam-dong was pure Lee Jaseung. Not a single unnecessary ornament, yet every glance landed on quiet extravagance—finishing materials, reception chairs, side tables, the soft wash of indirect light. Every detail had been filled with brand-name pieces that made the wallet scream.
Seo Minjae clicked his tongue.
No wonder the opening took forever. It wasn’t the construction—it was the shipping.
Strange man. He obsessed over efficiency, yet never skimped on the luxuries that bought dignity. Reason and waste living side by side in one body.
“It’s so you.”
“Meaning?”
“Contradictory.”
As always, Lee Jaseung only offered a faint smile. They settled across from each other on the lounge sofas. Time for the real business.
Seo Minjae took a sip of tea and began weighing how to open. He never got the chance. Lee Jaseung cut straight to it.
“You’re here because of Seo Minju.”
Caught cold, Seo Minjae scratched his nose, embarrassed.
“I can’t pretend otherwise. I was curious what you two talked about.”
“I promised full-spectrum support from Seo Seong Securities on the condition I don’t help you. And if I keep working with you, she’ll interfere with my investments.”
“……”
Delivered dryly, yet the content was anything but dry. Seo Minjae laughed and tossed it out like a joke.
“Lucky you. Cut me loose and you get Seo Seong Securities.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“What are you going to do? Take her offer?”
“Hmm. I’m more curious about you. What will you do?”
The return question was leisurely, but Seo Minjae felt the gaze dissecting him. Lee Jaseung was measuring value.
His own life had always been conditional; the situation was familiar. He drank some water and calmly took inventory.
To him I’m a broker.
A window into Seo Seong Securities’ financial network. But once Seo Minju moved to block that window, the equation changed. Lee Jaseung had no reason to keep a constrained broker. Dealing directly with Seo Minju would be cleaner.
On the other side of the ledger:
I need him absolutely.
To survive at Seo Seong Securities he needed a strategist of Lee Jaseung’s caliber. A one-way relationship, though, could never close a deal.
So then.
“If what you need is a broker, and I can’t be that broker inside Seo Seong Securities…”
He threw the gamble.
“I’ll leave Seo Seong Securities.”
For the first time a flicker crossed Lee Jaseung’s face. Interest.
“Leave?”
“I may not look it, but I’m a third-generation chaebol too. If I negotiate my exit with my father, I can land at a major house like Goldman. He gets rid of a thorn; he won’t fight me. I can deliver the brokerage you need even smoother.”
Once the conclusion locked in, the words came easily.
“Or hire me yourself. I know investment infrastructure and I have the network. Scout the right people, build the systems, and we stand up an independent investment team inside Makers.”
“So you’re giving up succession?”
“Hardly. Seo Seong Securities is a financial firm—it’s open to professional managers. Build a real track record outside and you can walk back in anytime. And I suspect you could arrange that door for me.”
Lee Jaseung’s eyes sharpened.
“You understand what you’re saying.”
“I’m putting every chip I have on you.”
Seo Minjae exhaled low.
Is this the right answer? He didn’t know. But if he had to choose only one, Lee Jaseung was the correct choice.
“I’ve given my answer. Your turn. What are you going to do?”
Heavy silence settled over the lounge. Lee Jaseung rubbed his chin, studying Seo Minjae; his fingers traced the clean line of his jaw.
Half-baked chaebol, after all.
He hadn’t expected this answer. Willing to walk away from Seo Seong Securities. A pure-blood heir would never even think it.
Because he’s always lived on the periphery, he has the flexibility to leave the center.
And from the start, Lee Jaseung had never intended to drop Seo Minjae.
“I already rejected Seo Minju’s proposal. And you don’t need to leave Seo Seong Securities.”
“What? But Minju—”
“Ignore your sister’s noise. You didn’t actually think I’d swallow that kind of presumption and step aside, did you?”
Irritation saturated the voice. Seo Minjae felt it instantly.
…He got scratched.
One look at this space—practicality and dignity fused—told the story. Lee Jaseung was ruthlessly pragmatic, yet even more ruthlessly proud. Telling a man like that to abandon a client, threatening to sabotage his investments—pure condescension. She had driven a spike straight into his pride.
The practical problem remained.
“Then how do the investments move? Minju will really interfere.”
“Irrelevant. I can’t run this one through Seo Seong Securities anyway. Conflict of interest.”
“Conflict of interest?”
“Seo Seong Securities is in the Facenote IPO underwriting syndicate. Not lead, but still on the book.”
“And?”
“I’m shorting Facenote.”
A beat later Seo Minjae’s shout exploded.
“What???”
Lee Jaseung recalled the future he had seen.
Three months after listing, the share price sat at seventeen dollars. IPO price thirty-eight—more than halved. There was only one way to extract profit from that trajectory: a short position.
But Seo Seong Securities was an underwriter. The entire firm had bet on Facenote’s success. Taking short-sale orders on the side would be a textbook conflict of interest.
Seo Minjae understood that much.
“So you need a broker who isn’t Seo Seong. I can set that up—I know a few teams. But… you’re seriously going to short Facenote? For real?”
“They just raised the IPO price another ten dollars, didn’t they?”
“Yeah—twenty-eight to thirty-eight.”
“How’s the house reacting?”
“Plenty of talk. Global says demand is explosive; the floor is muttering that it’s too high.”
Lee Jaseung asked, “Your view?”
“Hard to say. Post-IPO volatility is chaos—nobody knows. Early moves are driven more by psychology and speculation than fundamentals. Hot air can send it vertical or it can dump against every expectation. But.”
Seo Minjae sighed.
“Separate from all that, shorting the day it lists is just technically insane. You know why.”
“Lock-up period.”
“Exactly. To short you need to borrow stock. Right after IPO most of the float is locked. Circulating supply shrinks, short-squeeze risk spikes, and borrow costs are murderous. Too many landmines.”
A casual chin-tilt. Looking at that arrogant little nod, Seo Minjae thought, Yeah. Didn’t land at all.
After using U.S. Treasuries to flip Seo Seong Securities once, Lee Jaseung was now walking straight into the Facenote deal the firm had poured its blood into.
“Don’t overthink it. You design the structure and line up the brokers. I’ll feed you Facenote intel. How you use that intel to hit Seo Minju is your business.”
The corner of Lee Jaseung’s mouth curved.
“So—deal?”
Seo Minjae was speechless. He raked a hand through his hair and exhaled hard.
Here we go again—another impossible trade.
And yet, oddly, he felt steadier.
“You know you sometimes make the most random investments, right?”
“Have I ever been wrong?”
“Never. Every one a home run. That’s why I keep my mouth shut.”
“That’s why you’re my broker.”
Insufferable bastard. At the muttered complaint Lee Jaseung simply grinned.
“Deal?”
“Deal.”
The contract closed. They immediately began building the plan. Lee Jaseung spoke first.
“Start with capital size.”
Every strategy has an optimal ticket; past that point returns compress. Seo Minjae answered.
“Expected short interest after listing runs seven hundred fifty billion to one trillion won. Twenty percent of that is a clean size.”
“Twenty percent—one hundred fifty billion. Done.”
“And where are you getting a hundred fifty billion? You’re broke.”
“······.”
Suddenly cornered, Lee Jaseung shot him an irritated look. Truth was truth, so he said nothing.
Strip out real estate and operating float and the capital Lee Jaseung could actually deploy was four hundred twenty billion from the Treasury trade, two hundred billion in fees from Han Juhyeong—seven hundred billion even with cash. Nowhere near one hundred fifty billion. But he had never planned to fund it alone.
“I’ll put in only seventy billion of my own. We raise the rest.”
“Ah. Make money and raise capital.”
Lee Jaseung nodded.
“Exactly. Show outsized returns in a short window and the money will chase us. Do it while the entire street is looking the other way and the drama only multiplies. Makers’ footprint expands on its own.”
U.S. Treasuries, the Yuseong Steel raid, now Facenote—three straight home runs. Sparse, but every single one a portfolio piece no one could ignore.
They moved to the next layer.
“Structure is short stock plus puts. Target price?”
“Three months out, seventeen dollars.”
“……What?”
Seo Minjae’s pen froze. This time he couldn’t hide the shock. He thought he knew Lee Jaseung; this was beyond even that.
“Seventeen? You’re saying it falls to seventeen in three months?”
“You just said it yourself—early price action is psychology and speculation, not fundamentals.”
“……Okay, I said that, but—”
Thirty-eight to seventeen. That wasn’t a correction; it was a collapse.
“No matter the chatter, Facenote’s listing is a consensus love story. To break that kind of expectation you don’t pour cold water—you dump glacial melt.”
He had the glacial melt. Instead of naming it, Lee Jaseung offered a more terrestrial reason.
“At the three-month mark the first lock-up expires.”
Seo Minjae’s eyes flashed; he understood instantly. When lock-up lifts, insiders can sell. That supply hits the bid.
“Heavy volume comes out and it drops?”
“Crashes.”
“……Wow.”
He was still half-stunned. Even the bears weren’t calling for a fifty-percent haircut. But he stopped arguing and accepted the number. Structure design and broker sourcing—that was his lane.
Seo Minjae shook his head slowly.
Nothing ever goes according to plan with this guy.
After Seo Minjae left, Lee Jaseung lined up the next moves.
Fund formation and structure design are Minjae’s. All that’s left is capital raising.
A one-hundred-fifty-billion short fund. He knew it would not fail; everyone else would think it was suicide. Facenote was the market’s darling. Shorting it the day it listed? They would call him insane.
I need an anchor.
Not merely money. A symbolic name that would signal the fund was serious—someone whose participation alone would pull the rest of the herd.
Who first?
Easiest mark was obviously Han Juhyeong. A little poke and the guy would flip. Zero prestige, though.
Chae Eunchae is better.
Right now she was wearing out the carpet at Seo Seong Securities trying to get Facenote allocation. If someone that deep in the long suddenly reversed and went short…
Publicity guaranteed. And if she turns her back, Seo Minju takes a body blow too.
He had not forgotten the threat. Better to break her now than leave her as a permanent obstacle.
The play assembled itself: recruit Chae Eunchae, use her to rattle Seo Minju. The only problem was approach. He could not simply call and say, “I’m shorting Facenote—want in?”
I need a megaphone. And for megaphones, Han Juhyeong is perfect.
As if on cue, a hungover Han Juhyeong staggered into the office.
“Ugh, I’m dying. First time in ages I watched the sun come up before I went home.”
Lee Jaseung probed lightly.
“What were you and Chae Eunchae talking about?”
“Investment stuff. Seeing her again tonight.”
“Facenote IPO?”
“Huh? You know about it?”
“Email came to me too.”
Han Juhyeong’s face lit up.
“Right? Looks solid. I pulled the deck—growth story’s clean, monetization looks real. Thinking of putting in about twenty billion.”
“Not bad. Historic opportunity.”
“That good?”
“If you want to vaporize twenty billion in a single afternoon, there’s no better address.”
“······Hey!”
Realizing the sarcasm, Han Juhyeong grumbled.
“What’s the problem now? Eunchae said it’s the real deal. And Facenote’s huge—billion users worldwide. How does that go to zero?”
“Don’t. Three months from now it’s cut in half.”
Han Juhyeong’s eyes went round.
“······For real? Facenote? Why?”
There were plenty of conventional reasons not to buy: stretched valuation, mobile-transition risk, ad-model ceilings, privacy landmines. None of them were loud enough. To travel through the megaphone that was Han Juhyeong and reach Chae Eunchae’s ear, he needed something sharper.
Counterfire.
“I’m shorting Facenote.”
Han Juhyeong’s jaw dropped.
“……You’re shorting Facenote? You?”
A small nod.
“Company-level?”
“We’re launching a formal fund and raising capital. Target: one hundred fifty billion.”
“···Are you insane? Who launches their first fund as a short book? Blow up out of the gate and you’ll never raise again.”
“You think I’ll blow up? Me?”
Lee Jaseung smiled as if the idea amused him.
“Want to bet?”
“Bet?”
“Chae Eunchae long, me short. Aren’t you curious who’s right?”
※ This work is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, place names, and events appearing herein are entirely fictitious and bear no relation to any real-world counterparts. Professional knowledge and technical details have been reconstructed and dramatized for narrative purposes and may differ from actual information.