Seven Hundred Billion Reasons to Cry
"I went and bought seolleongtang, so why the hell can't I eat it?"
The classroom atmosphere froze in an instant. The kid I'd cursed out of nowhere stood there looking utterly flustered.
"Wh… what?? Fuck, who do you think you are??"
Whether from agitation or fear, his hands trembled so violently it was almost pitiable to watch.
"If you want to throw down, stay behind after school."
Despite being only a first-year in middle school, I already stood a solid 180 centimeters, and unlike in my past life I'd been training hard, so my frame looked even bigger than the numbers suggested.
"O… okay. See you after school, then."
The look on his face practically begged to be let off the hook, but I paid it no mind. When the homeroom teacher came in and everyone took turns introducing themselves, the tension finally drained out of the room.
When the break bell rang, I headed for the school store. Guess it's true what they say about being young again — I'm hungry all the time.
I'd bought some dumplings and was about to pop them in the microwave when that guy came strolling over.
"Hey, your name's Chanhyuk, right?"
He didn't look like he was picking a fight, so I didn't bite his head off.
"Yeah. Why?"
No hemming and hawing — he asked me point-blank, as if he'd drilled the lines a hundred times.
"Sorry about earlier. I wasn't trying to start something."
Internally, I was thrown completely off balance. Huh. For a kid his age, he doesn't cling to his pride all that hard, does he?
At this age, swallowing your pride doesn't come easy. And watching him do it anyway, I found myself liking the kid a little.
"I'm sorry too. Honestly, goofing around like that — it doesn't look good, you know?"
Relief seemed to wash over his face.
"What's your name?"
"Me?? Kim Daehyun."
Oh, right. There was a kid like him, wasn't there?
In my past life he'd spent the start of the semester posturing, and only much later did he slowly begin mingling with the rest of the class.
"Hey, share some of those dumplings."
I handed over a couple, and just like that, I'd made my first middle school friend since regressing.
After the last class of the day—
"Chanhyuk, where do you live?"
"Me? Jangjeon-dong."
"No way, I live there too. Let's walk home together."
So we headed home side by side, trading stories the whole way.
"Why the fuck are you so tall?? Aren't you the tallest kid in our whole school?"
Puberty or not, did he gargle with a sewer on the way here?
"Hey, knock off the swearing. It's grating on the ears."
He gave me a sheepish look and shot back, "You're one to talk?? Fine, I'll cut it down."
The kid was a softie at heart.
"Mom, I'm home."
"Oh, Chanhyuk's home??"
My family wasn't poor, exactly, but we weren't well-off either. I knew, too, that Mom was planning to go job hunting soon so she and Dad could both bring home paychecks.
As soon as things get on track, I'm telling them. That they'd never have to grind like this again. Not that I'd tell them everything. A billion won or so ought to be fine, right? Though honestly, even a sum like that might stop both their hearts from the sheer shock of it.
I made a lot of friends. All through elementary school the kids simply hadn't clicked with me, but once I got to middle school I discovered that, a few exceptions aside, plenty of them were actually decent human beings.
"Chanhyuk, what kind of sports do you do??"
"Hey, Kim Soyoung, what's it to you? Talk properly for once — your voice is fucking creepy."
"F… Kim Daehyun, who asked you to butt in??"
Hm. They were bratty little kids, but being popular was popular — and damn if it didn't feel good.
"Hey, the teacher's coming."
Class began, and I started writing down everything I needed to do going forward. First, slip my parents some spending money. Then sink money into Apple stock. After that…
I had absolutely no intention of just sitting on my coins. Crypto was value that didn't physically exist, and even knowing a single BTC would someday be worth over 100 million won, I had no way of knowing how the road there might twist and turn.
And so, between walking home with Daehyun and the others, grinding games at the PC bang, hitting the karaoke — enjoying school life to the fullest — final exams came and went, and then…
"What the fuck is this."
Bitcoin — thirty-five dollars a coin, once upon a time — had gone to the moon.
"Chanhyuk, what are you doing in your room?? Did your exams go okay??" I could hear Mom calling for me, fresh back from grocery shopping. But there was no room in my head for her voice.
So… with almost 600,000 coins in my wallet…
"…"
"That's over 700 billion won?"
Tears began welling up in my eyes.
Then Mom, finding my silence strange, opened the door and came in—
"Chanhyuk!!! Why are you crying!!?? Did you bomb your exams???"
Without a word, I wrapped my arms around her.
"Aigoo, Chanhyuk… It's okay even if you didn't do well…"
Calmed in my mother's embrace, I gathered my feelings and said, "Sniff… Obviously I aced everything, Mom."
She kept pressing me about why I'd been crying, but I just mumbled my way past it every time.
The real me was thinking: Cash out. First things first.
If I moved my fortune so much as a hair — the wallet holding 500,000 BTC — the entire Bitcoin ecosystem would shatter on the spot. Even a back-of-the-napkin estimate put my holdings alone at over 700 billion won. Was there really enough buy-side volume in the whole market to absorb that?
Sure, there were no whale-alert programs tracking this sort of thing yet, but there had always been eyes on the flow of money. The moment serious capital moved, those people would blast it across social media until not a soul on earth didn't know.
Which meant, in a word: I'd be fucked.
If I so much as twitched, a 90 percent crash would be the best-case scenario — Bitcoin itself might very well cease to exist.
That was why I'd prepared the other twelve wallets. I would release them little by little, drip by drip, securing my capital along the way.
I put the plan into motion, intending to sell 4,000 BTC apiece out of the twelve wallets, spread across a leisurely six months — and then…
"Fuck — how the hell am I supposed to sell?!"
I searched high and low, and the answer was this: there was no system in place like there had been before my regression, and under Korean law the money would be written off as illegal, untraceable funds. Bottom line: as of right now, I could not dispose of a single Bitcoin.
I flung my blanket aside, kicked at the air, and howled.
"FUUUUUCK, I HAVE IT, WHY CAN'T I SELL IIIIT!!!!"
"Incorporate a shell company," my ass — seriously, fuck, how was I supposed to pull off any of that…
And so I'd landed in the cruelest position imaginable: rich beyond measure, and able to touch none of it.
"Hey, Chanhyuk, you doing okay?? You seem like you've lost your mind lately?"
Time had passed, and still I'd lost every last ounce of drive.
Whew… Fine. What can I even do about the situation as it stands?
I pulled myself together.
"Never mind, forget it. What are you doing after school today?"
"Oh, right — a bunch of girls were saying they want to hang out with you??"
Hang out with a pack of middle schoolers… what would we even do…
Having attained full sagehood, I told Daehyun, "Pass. Come work out with me instead."
"Ugh, exercise… I hate sweating."
"Dude, rather than getting your teeth kicked in somewhere someday, come learn MMA with me."
I'd been training consistently ever since the regression, and as a certified UFC fanatic from my past life, I was studying mixed martial arts.
"Your body's already a walking murder tank, and you're STILL learning to fight???"
But all the money in the world meant nothing, really — if I ever stumbled into some unforeseen danger, every last won of it would be useless.
"Fine, forget it. I'll go alone."
Before the regression, I'd done nothing but play basketball, milking my height for all it was worth — and all it left me was an ankle with blown-out ligaments and seniors hauling me around by the arm. More than 70 percent of my school-days memories had basketball tangled up in them somewhere. That chapter of my life was closed for good now.
And so second year of middle school rolled around, and I came face to face with the heroine of my first love — and my first relationship.
"Hi there~? You're Chanhyuk, right?"
There she was: my dark history made flesh. The past I'd forgotten — no. The past I'd wanted to forget.
"What's your name?"
Just the sound of her voice felt like a knife sinking into my conscience, straight into my heart.
"Me?? I'm Lee Dajeong!!"
Right. Back in first year I'd brushed past her in the halls and already known exactly why she existed, and I'd known, too, that eventually we'd land in the same class like this. But with the moment actually upon me, my heart only shook harder, swaying and refusing to steady.
"Right?? Let's get along well, then. But how'd you know my name?"
The circumstances differed from my past life, and curiosity got the better of me.
"Oh, come on~ you're famous and you know it. Top grades, crazy tall, stacks of muscle — everyone talks about you!!"
Feels nice, though. Is that because things are different this time around?
The old me didn't know the first thing about taking care of himself — timid, oblivious, hopeless. Fuck, the fact that my birthday gift to her one year was a mud pack for her face should tell you everything. Discount tag still stuck on it, no less.
Watching me suddenly seize fistfuls of my own hair, Dajeong stared at me with worry written all over her face.
"Chanhyuk, are you okay??? What's wrong???"
"It's nothing. Sorry — some bad memories just came back to me."
Very, very bad memories, they were.
"Hey, when you've got time later, let's all hang out casual around Pusan National University."
"Wait, really?? Okaaay~ then later, it's a promise, 'kay???"
Phewww…
For the first time in ages, I could breathe.
How the hell does this hurt worse than not being able to sell my Bitcoin…
In second year, Daehyun and I ended up in different classes, but with the unwritten laws of a semester's start making new friends hard to come by, he simply came over to wherever I was and we hung out together anyway.
And then—
"Hey, get lost. This isn't even your class — why are you hovering around like a fly?"
Kim Daehyun Mark II had appeared.