Ju Jinyeong's Ball Brother, Kim Bongshik

Kim Bongshik.

Kim Bongshik worked at a biotech research institute on the outskirts of Gyeonggi.

An institute, yes—but his work was nothing like sitting in the middle of a lab with his eye to a microscope, parsing gene sequences. He wasn't a researcher on the staff. He was an assistant, there to support the people who were.

A day in Bongshik's life almost always started the same way. He came in, made the rounds of the cell-culture rooms, and hauled off the dishes that had been growing since the day before. Sterile gloves on, he pulled glass flasks out of the ultrasonic cleaner and sent contaminated samples from the waste bins to the incinerator, exactly by the book.

Afternoons were for data entry: cell growth rates and protein-expression figures the researchers had scrawled by hand in their notebooks, transferred one line at a time into Excel. Now and then ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it also fell to him to check the reagent stock and write up the purchase orders.

Quietly grinding through that drudgery was the whole of his role, and the pay stopped in the upper two-million-won range a month. Among the ball brothers he ran with—friends close enough that nothing was off-limits—he took home the smallest paycheck of the lot.

Maybe that was why. Every single day, Kim Bongshik dreamed of one big score.

His investing had nothing to do with value. He didn't read the news or weigh where an industry was headed. He dumped everything into whatever name was running hot and hunted for the kind of move that multiplied in a handful of days. The results, of course, were mostly wretched. He'd been through delistings more than once, and the days his losses swelled until they ate the principal far outnumbered any other kind.

Still... if it hits just once, that's enough.

He believed that single success would let him pay off his loans, get a hair transplant, even buy a small apartment. But the hope had started to sag, and the stress piled up in step with it. Worst of all, lately the hair loss had become impossible to miss. At first he'd written it off as stress, yet every time he stood in front of the mirror he could see the M of his hairline cutting a little deeper.

If it weren't for the stock stress, maybe it never would have gotten this bad...

Even so, Kim Bongshik hadn't given up hope. And the last name he picked was Bitcoin.

He started with a million won. Little by little his seed swelled until, before he quite noticed, it had cleared thirty million. Because he'd kept buying into the rise, his return sat near a hundred percent—more than thirty million won in profit. Halfway through, his fingers had itched to sell, but the gain existed only because Joo-nim—Ju Jinyeong—had told him to hold. It was the one stretch of his entire investing life in which he was actually making money.

At this point I've covered every loss I ever took.

He knew better than anyone that he had no talent for this. If Jinyeong hadn't been there this time either, he would have skimmed a little off the top and gotten out. Which was why he was right in the middle of swearing that, once Bitcoin climbed just a bit more, he'd close it out and try living as an ordinary man on a salary—

—when the institute's center director called the entire staff into the conference room.

"...It doesn't look like we'll be able to secure any further funding for the research."

For a moment, silence moved through the researchers in their lab coats.

"Then what happens to the rest of us?"

The center director lowered his eyes and went on.

"We'll need to meet with each of you in turn and let you go, along with a consolation payment. All of this is my failure. I'll do everything I can, right up to the end, so that I might be of even a little help on the road ahead of you. Once again, I'm sorry."

The staff began to murmur.

"I've still got a mountain of loans left to pay..."

"Springing this on us out of nowhere is too much. Every one of us has a family."

"What can you do. If the institute itself is shutting down, all we can hope is that they pad the consolation pay."

In the middle of it, Kim Bongshik hung his head. The other researchers had careers, credentials, the kind of ability that could land them at some other institute no matter what. The problem was support staff like him. The hunting dog goes into the pot once the rabbits are dead—people who could be used and thrown away whenever it suited. Bongshik figured that was him.

Who am I going to blame. I just wasn't good enough...

The older he got, the more everything turned to regret.

And what good is regretting it now...

A buzz.

And right then, word came from Ju Jinyeong.

"J-Joo-nim reached out? Himself?"

Me, Bongshik, and Dahun. The ball brothers, together for the first time in a while. Taeseong couldn't make it—some client's case had him buried. I owed Taeseong a proper thanks one of these days.

The matter of Section Chief Yoon at Jinhan Bank was something I'd asked for myself. A man worked up enough to drag family into it was a man who would try something against Kang Dahun and his family. Sure enough. In the photos Taeseong sent, Yoon Seongjun was prowling near Dahun's apartment with a brick in his hand.

I think I let go of reason for a moment then. I'd told Taeseong to handle it however he saw fit.

I should have told him to keep it on the legal side of the line...

I'd worried Yoon Seongjun might actually be dead, but thankfully he never made the nine o'clock news. Still, Section Chief Yoon had stopped calling altogether, which told me Taeseong was the sort who finished a job.

We arrived at a Korean-beef house people called premium even ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠by Gangnam standards.

"We're really going in here...?"

Bongshik's eyes went wide. A single serving—a hundred and twenty grams—was a hundred thousand won. The special cuts ran past double that.

"Come on. Hyung's buying."

Dahun caught Bongshik by the shoulder and steered him inside.

......It's a company card anyway.

I supplied the magic. Dahun took the bow.

We sat, and we ordered without hesitating.

"Ribeye, chuck flap, top blade, skirt, hanger steak... two servings of each to start."

"Yeah. A first-tier bank really is another world..."

Bongshik was watching Dahun with open envy.

I still hadn't told him that the two of us had both walked off our jobs and gone into business together.

I'll have to wait for the right moment.

While the meat was coming, I called him.

"Ppongshik."

"Yeah?"

"Eat all you want tonight."

"...F-for real?"

"Yeah. I owe you. A debt of the heart."

"You owe me? Did I lend you money or something?"

"......"

Kim Bongshik. If he hadn't been there, I might still have been delighted to have made a mere few hundred million won. He was the first person who ever told me about Bitcoin. He'd dragged me out for a drink, and at that chance table the subject had come up for a minute. Curious, I'd installed an app and stared at a chart—and a status window had opened in front of my eyes. What I'd made off that alone came to twenty billion won.

......

Count today's day trades, and it was a little over twenty-two billion.

Anyway. A commendable brat.

I reached over and pinched his cheek.

"...What are you doing?"

"You earned it."

"Did you skip a pill you were supposed to take, or take one you weren't?"

For Bongshik, I was prepared to let a blue streak of swearing slide, and nonsense too. Tonight would end with buying him something good to eat, but once the company settled, I fully meant to bring him in. His work might fall a little short of Dahun's... but carrying that, and carrying him anyway—wasn't that what a ball brother was for?

The meat hissed as it browned, and we filled our glasses. We had the money for whiskey, but beef put me in mind of soju. We knocked the glasses together and let the meat sit on the tongue.

Maybe it's the price, but it really is tender.

Chewing, I glanced over to see how happily Bongshik was eating.

Something was off.

Normally he would have sold his soul for a free meal and free drinks. Tonight, of all nights, a shadow lay across his face.

"Something going on, Bongshik?"

"Right? Why's the pressure so low today?"

"It's nothing... Talking about it would only wear my mouth out."

I lifted a piece that had finished cooking and set it on the plate in front of him.

"You know the saying. When the pressure's low, you head toward the meat. So what is it?"

Bongshik was the one who always played the fool and appointed himself the mood-maker. Seeing him like this, I couldn't get my bearings. And Bongshik, with beef this expensive sitting in front of him, not eating—that was a rare specimen.

He let out a sigh and went on.

"Haa... I think I'm getting fired. Soon."

The words stopped me cold.

Don't tell me. After singing Bitcoin's praises every single day, he'd been glued to the coin at the office instead of doing his job?

Back when I was at Jinseong Planning, the crypto boom had been in full swing, and more than a few people on staff had stopped paying any attention to their work and done nothing but watch the coins.

Some of them even claimed they were out on a field assignment and then parked themselves in a corner, staring at nothing but the price. An attendance audit came later. Everyone caught it took heavy discipline, and the worst of them were pushed all the way to a pressured resignation.

Is Bongshik the same?

A man wrecking his own life is a man doing it to himself. If that was the case, there was no reason to help him. If he didn't get up on his own at a moment like this, he'd only end up back at the same bar of the song. We could have hired him tomorrow. But if it was that, I meant to leave him alone for a while, long enough for him to get his head on straight.

And beside me, Dahun spat out, word for word, exactly what I'd been thinking.

"You crypto-goblin. Slacking off again, staring at coins all damn day?"

"That is not what happened!"

"The hell it isn't. You remember the time you got so deep in stocks you botched a cell culture, wrecked the whole experiment, and got cursed out within an inch of your life? This is the same—"

"—Fuck. I said that's not it!"

The air turned ugly in a heartbeat.

Damn it. With the mood like this, there was no way I could eat the meat sitting in front of us. If the meat scorching on the grill still nagged at you even now, then yes, you were Korean.

The truth was, I had a reason not to worry, even in a moment like this. Twenty years of friendship. In that time we'd cut each other off ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠more than once, and we'd traded punches too. But we always found our way back. Fought, laughed, drank again. We'd grown too close to drift apart over something this small. Which was probably why the meat burning in front of me worried me more than their fight.

Embarrassed that he'd snapped, Bongshik dropped his head.

"Sorry. I lost it for a second. And since that time I've had my head on straight. I don't look at coins at work."

Dahun gave his shoulder a pat.

"It's fine. I wasn't scared at all."

"......"

I lifted my glass.

"First, we drink. And Bongshik—tell us the rest. If there's something we can do, we'll do it."

We knocked the drinks back clean, and Bongshik picked the story up again.

"There was a project our institute was running. It was also something the director had been researching for decades. Expectations were high, and in the beginning it actually looked pretty good. The investors must have smelled blood, because they were falling over each other to put money in."

"What was the project?"

"It's called the Cov Project. Research into developing an mRNA vaccine."

Cov? mRNA? Terms I didn't know passed back and forth. Bongshik kept going.

"It was good at first, but time went by and there were no visible results. The fade was as fast as the hopes had been high. They couldn't bring in more investment, and in the end they couldn't raise another won, so the word came down to pull out. The signs had been there for a while. The really good researchers jumped ship first, and I think that made it worse."

"...So how long does the institute stay open?"

"Two or three months at the outside, right? I'll have to go looking for another job. And at my age, I'm not even sure that'll be easy."

Dahun set two pieces of meat on the plate in front of him.

"Sorry. I didn't know it was something like that."

"Drop it, you bastard. Between ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠us? I'm the one who's sorry."

"No. I'm sorry. All right, all right, the mood's dying. Let's just drink."

While we drank, I kept turning Bongshik's words over.

The Cov Project...

And then it happened.

What?

This was one of the Random Box abilities I'd drawn before and set aside.

There was no further description. Just that one line.

So I'd assumed it didn't mean anything at all. Why was it firing now?

Don't tell me.

Because of the Cov Project Bongshik just talked about...?