Teacher Gumong's Answer

Before he ever set foot in Ju Jinyeong's apartment, Kang Dahun sank into a long, deep thought.

That closest friend of his had never come out of a business or economics track. Force the point, and Jinyeong sat nearer the engineering colleges than anything else. His feel for numbers was sharp enough, but the man had never had the slightest tie to investing.

So Dahun had figured that if he took Jinyeong's hand, there would be a great deal he could do for him—ten years of experience stacked on the trading floor, the knowledge he had piled up just to work in finance, and above all the live-market instinct he had beaten into himself as a private banker, moving the assets of VIP clients.

Fine. Call the five billion won luck. Growing it is my job from here. I'm the one who has to help Jinyeong.

That was what ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠he thought. A few conversations with the man himself were enough to show him how foolish the thought had been.

The beginner terms were a given—financial statements, PER, PBR, EV/EBITDA, EPS. Beyond them, Jinyeong saw straight through the macro context and the architecture of the financial system, the very things Dahun himself used to skim past without a second look.

When the hell did he study all this terminology?

He put his finger on it the way a man does after years of working the floor on his own two feet. Not only the drift of a stock price, but the mood across the whole asset market, and—watching a chart—the fine shiver of volatility inside that flow. The longer Kang Dahun talked with him, the more clearly he understood he had been living inside a delusion.

Kang Dahun, you lunatic. How is five billion won luck? If that isn't skill, it doesn't even make sense. Yeah. Of course it doesn't.

And there, right in front of his eyes, was the Bitcoin futures chart. Inside it, Jinyeong had already pulled in more than a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

"......You've got that much money sitting in there, and it really doesn't rattle you?"

"Nope. I'm sure of it."

For baseless confidence, the way he said it was far too firm.

Watching him, Kang Dahun thought it through in silence.

Maybe... I've just grabbed the greatest chance of my life. The one who offered me the chance to work together wasn't me. It was Ju Jinyeong.

He meant to pick the conversation back up in that frame of mind.

"How should I address you from now on... sir?"

The polite ending leapt out of him again before he knew it.

The daily grind of clawing for numbers at a top-tier commercial bank, the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fatigue stacked up by overtime night after night—add all of it together and it still couldn't touch the salary Jinyeong had put on the table, not even with a fingertip. Two hundred million won a year. Kang Dahun was prepared to greet a whip across his own backside with a glad heart.

"Address me however you want. Just treat me the way you always have."

"...So I don't have to get hit?"

"Why would you suddenly get hit?"

"With a whip..."

"What the hell kind of nonsense is that?"

"Sorry."

He still hadn't climbed out of the cognitive dissonance, and so he kept blurting rubbish without meaning to.

"Jinyeong."

"What?"

"I'm seriously gonna give it everything. I'll wring my whole body dry if that's what it takes, and prove your choice wasn't wrong, sir."

Unbelievable. He started the way they had always talked and finished, at the very end, in formal speech.

I handed him a yogurt drink from the fridge and settled the overexcited Kang Dahun down.

"Don't you have anything besides yogurt? Coffee?"

"Coffee? Yeah."

"Then give me that."

"There are only a few left, so no. And since I mostly buy whatever Yeju drinks, it's all yogurt. Just have that."

"......You make this much money and you still don't stock the place."

Anyway. Dahun, having barely grabbed hold of his wits again, went on.

"You said you wanted to set up a corporation, right?"

"Yeah. But I'm stone blind on that side of things. I don't know how any of it works."

The corner of Kang Dahun's mouth twitched. At last there was something he could teach, and he couldn't keep the grin off his face.

"The sums are big enough that if you keep investing under your own name, problems are going to show up fast. Taxes, obviously, and you may have to file on the foreign-exchange side too."

"So it's better to make a company?"

"Yeah. Except that company ought to be set up overseas, not in Korea."

"Overseas?"

"Have you ever heard the term tax haven?"

I shook my head. Nothing like that had been in the investing books I'd read.

Dahun launched into the explanation as if the whole thing delighted him. A tax haven—the Cayman Islands, the Virgin Islands, Panama, and their like. The word for countries where the corporate tax rate sat near zero. Incorporating there as a foreigner was astonishingly easy, and accounting disclosure and tax reporting were almost nonexistent. That was why the wealthy of the world stacked paper companies into tax havens in droves.

"...But if you get caught, isn't that tax evasion?"

The more questions I asked, the more arrogant his face became. He seemed to have briefly forgotten that I was the one employing him.

"Strictly speaking, it's tax avoidance. Every step stays inside the law, your identity stays protected, and you cut the tax risk. In Korea, even people sitting on one or two billion won break a cold sweat over taxes. Five billion? Don't even start."

I nodded.

"Can you ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠actually set up a corporation in a tax haven?"

"They say even a dog at a village school starts reciting poetry after three years. I picked things up with my own eyes while I was looking after VIP clients. Something like that isn't hard for me."

"Then I'll leave it to you."

"Okay. Leave the incorporation with me. There's still one thing that matters most."

"There's more?"

"What are you going to name the company?"

"Ah!"

I'd never had much of a gift for naming things.

What would I even call it if I wanted people saying I'd named it well?

Banging our heads together on the spot wasn't going to spit a name out, and incorporation would take a little time anyway, so I decided to think it over as we went.

After that short stretch of talk, Dahun got to his feet.

"Unca, byeee! See you!! And you can't forget you're taking Yeju to the kids' café later!"

"Of course not. Uncle's going to be working with Uncle Jinyeong from now on, so I'll come over to play all the time."

"Yeah! Let's have lots of fun with Yeju later!"

I walked him all the way to the front door. There, Dahun went on, careful now.

"Jinyeong."

"What?"

"...You think Bitcoin keeps going up from here?"

"Weren't you the one who said you weren't touching coins because they're a scam?"

"If it's coming from you, I think I can believe it."

Someone like Dahun, I could tell. He had a family, and he wasn't the type to invest past what he could afford.

"Yeah. It'll chop sideways for a while, but I think it trends up through the rest of this year. Tuck some away whenever you've got room."

"...Thanks. I'll call the moment the company's set up."

A corporation. It was only a two-person shop, but my heart started to pound at the thought of becoming a CEO.

Two people become twenty. If twenty became two hundred, how much fun would that be? I'd loved RPGs as a kid. Wouldn't this feel like the real-life version? And if it kept going... maybe a company holding a whole string of affiliates, like Jinseong Group.

I'd made a vow while I watched that last incident—Creation Construction, and Team Leader Park.

Lee Jayeong punished them with a single sentence.

Even if she had her blood to thank for it, the sight had been nothing short of dazzling.

Whoosh—

All at once, Lee Jayeong's face rose up in front of me. Was she doing all right? I hadn't really grown attached to the people at the company, but Section Chief Lee Eunsik, forever rattling his pocket change for vending-machine coffee, and Lee Jayeong, whom I'd grown a little close to at the very end—I had a feeling I would be thinking of them for a long time.

Someday... if the thread is still there, I'll see her.

I finished sorting the thought away and dumped every position I'd been running at twenty-times leverage. In a little over an hour of talking with Kang Dahun, I'd made about two hundred thousand dollars.

An hourly rate of... two hundred and seventy million won?

Beautiful. If a single electric shock returned money like that, I hadn't lost a thing. I ought to give my body a jolt now and then anyway, so maybe it was even good for me. This wasn't about to turn me into a masochist, was it...

Anyway. By the time the corporation actually existed, it might not be five billion sitting there, but something close to ten.

Now that I've got an employee, I'd better make as much money as I can.

I turned back to the Bitcoin chart and started settling on the next position.

It's been pressed down too far. Even if it's only temporary, the odds of a rise are high...

Long. Twenty-times leverage. And this time, how much to put in...

At that moment, a status window with its cooldown fully charged opened in front of my eyes.

Has it already been this long?

Better to open the Random Box before I placed the trade. If I chose wrong and lost consciousness, a whole day's box would fly off for nothing.

Press. I hit Y.

Flash—

Light rippled in front of my eyes like a flare. It blinded me every single time, and I still never got ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠used to it. As my vision slowly crawled back, a single status window came into view.

Something fresh this time. It would answer any question... Was that close to being told the future? I thought about where to put Teacher Gumong to use. How far would it actually answer? Something I wanted to know... I puzzled over it for a moment, then decided.

A new window had risen. I looked at it and spoke, taking my time.

"Other than Bitcoin... is there a better thing to invest in?"

A moment later, status windows rose in front of me one after another.

......

Insane!

It would tell me this kindly?

A moment later, Teacher Gumong set the Bitcoin monthly closes I already knew beside Ethereum and laid them out one by one—each close, each high.

Gulp—

With this, there's no way to fail an investment, is there?

Dopamine started bursting out of me. Scratch, scratch. I copied every character on the window, not a single syllable off.

Bzzzt—

That was when a message came in from Dahun.

...I shouldn't do this.

There he was again, right in front of me—another little bastard who couldn't eat a meal even when you set it in his hands.