I'm Going to Be a Landlord
"I'm going to own a building."
Dad came back with a bankbook in hand and held it out to me.
"What's this?"
"Your bankbook."
"I have a bankbook?"
"Of course you do. Everything our son has earned is sitting right here."
I'd appeared on a kindergarten program, shot commercials, and acted in a movie. Naturally, appearance fees had come in with all of it.
My fee for Confession of a Pianist had been twenty million won. Hong Jung-woo, the highest-paid child actor in the business, commanded somewhere in the thirty-million range, so it wasn't hard to see how massive a gamble Director Kim Si-woon had taken in casting me.
The TTN campaign had brought in another twelve million. Apparently, Sora and I were the first child models ever to break the ten-million-won mark.
My regular spot on Wagle Wagle Kindergarten paid around six hundred thousand won a week. Broadcast appearance fees were divided into eighteen tiers, with child performers slotted between tiers one and five — and Yu-jin, Sora, and I had all landed at the very top, tier five. It wasn't a grade a complete broadcast rookie should have received; I simply rode the coattails of being on screen next to those two.
A full year on Wagle Wagle Kindergarten had earned me thirty-two million won. Add in guest broadcast appearances, photo shoots as a kids' model, and the box-office incentive that had kicked in once the film passed five million admissions — worth a little over five million — and it came to roughly thirty million more.
Altogether, around a hundred million won was sitting in that account. The payoff for a year and a half in the business.
"I don't really need this much money, though."
"You don't need it now, but you will when you're older. You earned every won of it yourself, so I've been keeping it separate for you to use someday."
"Dad, you and Mom could spend it if you wanted to…."
"It's money our son worked hard for. We're not going to blow it on ourselves."
New Year's money handed over to your parents "to hold until you're older" almost never comes back. But Mom and Dad had quietly set aside this enormous sum — and handed it back to me. That warmth, that care for me, felt as gentle as spring sunlight, and I threw my arms around both of them.
"Well, Ha-jin, you're a rich man now. Anything you want to do with it?"
"There's nothing you can't say around this kid. That's an insane amount of money."
"Isn't it a bit much for him still?"
It was far too much money to leave rotting in a savings account, gathering interest. Cash only loses value as time goes on. It would take at least some basic investing just to preserve its current worth.
Too bad it's got nothing to do with acting — Future Sight hasn't twitched an inch.
This was exactly the kind of moment I wished my Future Sight would chime in with a way to make money. In manga and novels, these abilities always hand out brilliant investment tips or point the way to some guaranteed jackpot.
But mine revealed nothing except acting — and threats to acting.
So I decided to fall back on the one piece of investment knowledge I'd carried over from before my regression.
"Dad. Let's do some stock investing."
"GYAAAAH!"
Dad let out a strangled scream and toppled backward. At the same instant, Mom's expression turned grave.
"Honey. Don't tell me you're still—"
"No, no! I quit, I swear! I promised I'd never touch it again after I got bitten last time! Ha-jin, where on earth did you hear about…"
"There's an icon on the computer called HTS. You can buy and sell stocks with it."
HTS stood for Home Trading System — a computer program that let individual investors trade stocks from home or the office without ever setting foot on the exchange floor. After smartphones arrived, apps took over entirely, but in this age of flip phones, everyone still used HTS. Finding it installed on our computer was how I'd learned that Dad dabbled in stocks.
The moment I brought up investing, both my parents' faces went strange. Their expressions plainly asked how a six-year-old could possibly know such a thing.
"I saw the director and a senior actor doing it at the film company's office. I asked what it was because I was curious, and they explained. They said I'd need to know how to invest from now on."
All a lie, of course. When I visited the production office, the only thing anyone ever talked about was movies. I'd just burned my best excuse for hanging around there so often.
Dad nodded with sudden, passionate conviction.
"Exactly right. Ha-jin, if you don't understand stocks these days, you'll be left behind by the times."
"YOU."
Mom's fury was entirely justified. She'd seen Dad's catastrophic negative returns right there on the HTS. She'd thought I was asleep and had given him an absolutely scorching lecture in the living room — and I'd watched every second of it through the crack in the door.
It wasn't even a huge sum, but a man who'd thrown money away chasing tabloid-level rumors had no one to blame but himself.
"So, Ha-jin — why the sudden interest in stocks?"
"Because I want to invest this money in them."
"Ha-jin!"
A deep furrow carved itself across Mom's forehead. Between a husband with negative returns and now a son wanting to follow him into the market, her reaction was entirely fair.
"Do you have any idea how hard you worked for that money, and you want to throw it into something risky? Stocks aren't something you mess around with. Let's just leave it in the bank, all right?"
Thanks to Dad, investing had already hardened into a category labeled "dangerous" in Mom's mind.
But I was not the type to back down here.
"Mom, you know in other countries a lot of parents open stock accounts for their kids as a gift when they start elementary school? They say it's how children learn about investing from an early age. I want to do that too."
There is no miracle drug quite like the word "education" when it comes to parents.
Mention financial education, and Mom's expression began to soften. Ever since I'd started working in entertainment, she'd been taking what I said seriously — she'd come to recognize an "adult quality" in me that set me apart from other kids my age.
"It's not like I want to start right away. I'll study stocks first, and then invest after I start elementary school."
Several investment firms even ran stock classrooms for children. I planned to attend one together with Mom, dutifully proving how serious I was about all this.
"So today, just promise me you'll say yes when I ask to invest later. Until then, I'll leave all this money in the bank."
I said it this way because two things had to happen first.
One was YJ Entertainment's IPO. The other was the subprime mortgage crisis that would erupt in America in 2007.
The subprime mortgage crisis — the cascade of bankruptcies that swept through American financial firms in 2007 — sent shockwaves through the Korean market as well. Foreign investors yanked their capital out in a panic, and stock prices plunged.
Among the sectors hit hardest was entertainment. To give you a sense of scale: SN Entertainment, the undisputed flagship stock of the industry, fell below 1,000 won in mid-2008. Before the financial crisis it had traded above 15,000 — a collapse to a mere six percent of its peak.
The reason I remembered all this in such detail wasn't just that I'd dabbled in entertainment stocks before regressing. It was because of a legendary online saga.
To think some hero actually held on for ten years.
A diehard fan of SN's girl group, Ladies' Generation, looked at a share price under 1,000 won and — heaven knows what went through his head — put twenty million won into the stock. Three years later, he posted proof of his returns: a gain of 2,700 percent, because SN's price had recovered to 26,000 won by the time he posted. He kept checking in with proof every two or three years after that, until his final post declaring he'd sell in 2018 — ten years after he'd bought. His ultimate return: 3,100 percent, with over 700 million won in pure capital gains.
It was the single greatest return I'd ever witnessed before my regression.
YJ Entertainment — the company built by Yu-jin's father — would go public before the financial crisis. In 2008 its stock would sink even lower than SN's, then claw back to life dramatically over the following years.
If I bought YJ stock in 2008, I'd out-earn that legendary fan of Ladies' Generation by a comfortable margin. That was exactly why I'd promised Mom I'd study first and invest later.
2008 would make me a fifth grader. By then, surely, after studying hard, I could beg and plead my way into permission.
My reason for choosing YJ in particular was simple: I'd owned the stock before regressing, and I had a rough memory of how its price moved. Beyond that, I remembered nothing — no other stocks, no coins, no other promising investments. Before my regression, I'd never cared about anything but the entertainment stocks I actually held.
YJ's share price climbed steadily after 2008, and on the eve of my regression it stood at 70,000 won. Pour a hundred million won in while it was trading under 1,000, hold on for ten years, and I could genuinely own a building.
A building. That's what I need.
And I didn't mean "landlord" as a figure of speech. I fully intended to buy an actual building. Not so I could sit back collecting rent — it was because of a memory that had grown sharper and sharper these past few days.
In that memory, there was a man. My manager hyung, who had looked after me with tireless devotion.
"I think this role would really suit you. The audition date is—"
"Forget it, man. How much does that even pay? You keeping up with your rent at least?"
"You'll nail the next one. Why's your face look like a death row inmate? So you bombed one or two auditions — who cares?"
"If you're not a lead by then, it's over. Get out there and chase every audition you can find."
He was the hyung who'd promised to sign me as the very first actor of his own agency, once I finally made it. Sadly, I'd regressed before ever seeing him build that company.
In this life, I was going to find him — and become his Client Number One myself.
Building the agency's headquarters with my own two hands, brick by brick. That, surely, was why Future Sight had dredged up my memories of him.
"Your mom had no idea you were this interested in stocks, Ha-jin. Once you're in elementary school, let's study hard and give investing a try. But before you put a single won in, you have to talk it over with Mom and Dad first. Deal?"
"Deal."
Yes! Mission accomplished!