Whom to Eat

"The poor wonder what to eat every day."

Hankuk University.

Fresh sprouts just beginning to push up through the soil. The next generation of South Korea's elite, or so they liked to think.

"The rich wonder whom to eat every day."

"Ooooh!!"

But they were still children. They understood nothing of how the world actually turned.

If they knew, they'd cream themselves.

Finance. The fastest way on earth to rake in the most money. Some people in the industry used it for personal comfort. Put bluntly: luxury.

"So? You want to get rich?"

"Yes!"

"I want to get rich! How do I do it??"

Against greenhorns like these? Nothing hooked the masses like money. You let them taste it. You dangled the sweetness of capitalism's fruit as bait.

"I feel like I've put on weight."

"Yeah, you look a little puffy!"

"I knew it the second you started sucking down Frappuccinos instead of—"

Meanwhile the actual goal was nowhere in sight.

Across the way, the girls were chattering.

How about sucking on mine for a change. Zero calories.

That part actually mattered. Wall Street legends whose names everyone recognized all said the same thing with one voice.

"I wish I'd had a lot more sex when I was young." — Kenneth Fisher

Once you get old, you can't even if you want to.

Even the kind of tycoons who didn't just have money rotting in piles but could buy an entire country still carried regrets. Sex! Why hadn't they done more of it? That was the honest feeling of the Wall Street legends. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠As someone who had once been a pillar of the next generation myself, I fully agreed with the seniors of the industry.

That fucking bitch should've just stuck to camming!

They had no idea of the deeper meaning. The boob girl shot me a sharp glare. The rest of them followed suit and stared daggers. The feeling of being ostracized. That was right. For a while now the atmosphere in the department had been exactly like this.

"Hyung."

"Got a question?"

"So which stocks are going up?"

"……."

Only the useless ones were sticking to me. Hyenas who just wanted to make a little pocket money off stocks.

Nothing but dick-for-brains swarming around.

Their level was pathetic. They asked questions that wouldn't even surface if you spun a single brain cell.

Investing. An act where one click of the mouse could make you hundreds of billions or trillions. It could look easy at a glance. Buy and wait and the money just rolls in? People rarely considered how much effort went into that single click.

Just think about it with basic common sense.

It took a student at least eleven years to become a doctor. Lawyers took 9.6 years. Architects eight. Hitting max level in MapleStory took three years and eight months. Most professions demanded long stretches of time. So what about an investor? It was a job that didn't lose to any of those so-called "sa"-ending professions. No—you could make more money than hundreds of thousands of those people combined. So of course the corresponding effort was required.

Obviously.

I only wanted to make a little. But making even that little was statistically extremely difficult. Ninety-five percent of retail investors left the market in the red. Meaning you had to be in the top five percent just to make money. To make it a profession: 0.1 percent. Even five percent was hard enough, and impossible without experience and effort.

"I want to make money with stocks too."

"Just buy whatever Sora recommends."

"Then I'll make money?"

"Hehe, want to see what I bought last time?"

A path of pure thorns. As a senior I wanted to help while pocketing a little personal gain on the side.

Because of that bitch I can't even eat!

The center of the girls. She had entered as valedictorian and her looks stood out. Apparently a few empty-headed bitches had felt girl-crush vibes just from watching her argue with me. Ultimately—

"Wow, for real? It went up five percent!"

"Heh heh, I bought the second I heard."

"Any pick Sora makes just sits there and goes up for sure."

She hadn't been showing off about being a trader for nothing. She was gathering popularity by giving the girls stock advice.

That should've been my role, fuck.

Economics department. Most of the students traded stocks. The YouTube incident had only poured more fuel on it. The real prizes had been snatched away. Instead of rolling around in a flower field I was stuck wasting time surrounded by dick-for-brains.

"Hyung, what should we buy?"

"Something that doubles."

"I want triple!"

"Go open a savings account at Solomon Savings Bank, you little shits!"

No real talent among them either. Even on Wall Street, where talent from around the world flocked, the usable ones could be counted on one hand.

Kids with one-dimensional thinking stay one-dimensional for life.

The sprout of talent. Even when you spotted it, the securities industry was a place where that talent might or might not grow after surviving land battles, sea battles, and aerial combat. "Should I buy this?" "Is this going up?" Humans whose brains reflexively spat out those stupid thoughts were doomed to supply market liquidity forever.

"Sora only does paper trading, right?"

"Yeah."

"You should do real stocks. Feels like you'd hit it big."

"Right, right!"

"Like, become a billionaire overnight?"

"Kyaaaaah~!!"

"I'm just going to study diligently until graduation."

People usually never imagined the future that would actually arrive. Most first-time stock traders thought, I'll be different. They treated the fact that ninety-five percent of retail investors left the market in the red as no big deal. Won't I be in the five percent? Statistics are ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠science. Just like you can never trust the Yasuo on your team, the stock market is no pushover either.

"Her dream is to be a trader, remember?"

"Oh right!"

"Her goals are on a completely different level from ours."

"Don't say that. She's still a student."

Especially the professionals. The average survival rate of newly launched hedge funds (investment institutions) was three years. Only 0.5 percent survived the market. Simply lasting more than ten years in the securities industry was close to a miracle.

This is the stage where flower fields are still blooming full force inside their heads.

You couldn't understand the industry's brutality without living it. It was completely divorced from ordinary people's lives. Dropping into the middle of a battlefield would feel more realistic by comparison. That was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠about the only analogy that worked.

"Uh… that'll be all for today's lecture. There's one assignment, though."

While I was zoning out, class ended. Making a scene had its downsides, but honestly the upsides were bigger. Lecture time. I could spend it completely relaxed. Face-down sleeping or phone games got zero interference.

"Group project?"

"Aww, Professor~!"

"Solo is always better."

Even I couldn't dodge this one. The college student's natural disaster.

Whoever invented this needs to die.

You came to realize that Jiboro Sensei's famous saying—when five people gather, one is always trash—had actually been an understatement.

"I've assigned groups by attendance number, so complete the assignment and submit it. If you have questions, contact the TA."

Having read the room, the professor made a clean escape, leaving only the assignment details and group list behind.

"And so we arrive at the present situation."

"You look happy about it."

"Of course."

Sighs rose from the table where we sat. For me alone, it had turned into a good thing.

Yeah. This is college life.

Four group members. Everyone except me was a girl. One regret, though.

"You just stay out of the way and don't interfere."

"Why are you talking like it's a given I won't do anything? Saying it like that pisses me off."

"You're not going to do it anyway."

"Well, that's true."

Oh.

The boob girl was here too. Cold air rolled off her in waves; she was openly planning to freeze me out.

"Still, we need the grade."

"You actually care about that?"

"I live this diligently."

"Ah, right~."

"Want me to present at least?"

The first meeting had already been rocky, but lately the relationship had deteriorated to pure mortal-enemy levels.

Of all places, we had to run into each other ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠at school.

A camgirl–passionate-fan relationship wouldn't have been bad. That it had to be school, of all the locations in the world, was deeply regrettable.

The group assignment. It concerned the recent state of international markets. Even the professor who used to drone on about theory seemed to have changed a little.

People really do change once they get cursed out enough.

Even a broken machine starts working again if you hit it. Would hitting that bitch's chest fix her?

"We'll handle it ourselves, so just don't get in the way."

"You sure you won't regret that?"

"Yes~."

"This assignment seems like my specialty."

She had eaten manners for breakfast and washed them down with attitude. But I had thought that this time, at least, she would desperately need my help.

"Sora's good at this too."

"Sora's going to be a trader later!"

"Ah, right, you said you were going to be a Pokémon Trainer."

Her eyebrows. She didn't even seem to draw them on, yet those long, thin lines twitched. I had known for a while, but—

Can't even take a joke.

Pokémon Trainer was a perfectly respectable profession. Plenty of people were still job-hunting for it right now—specifically Ash, Brock, Misty, and so on.

"What's so great about being a trader anyway. You're basically just a gambler."

"……What did you just say?"

"It's true, you're a gambler! Instead of playing Go-Stop you play stocks. What's the difference?"

The second I provoked her she took the bait. The ice-queen type apparently had traders as her reverse scale.

But real traders really are gamblers.

Illusions about a profession. Those were allowed in student days. You only woke up to reality once you jumped into the field yourself.

"Apologize."

"Why should I?"

"You've been lumping in everyone around me and criticizing them this whole time. Do you have to go that far just to get on my nerves?"

"I simply stated a fact."

Telling her a little early would be good. Ideals and reality could be different.

"Don't fight……."

"Then how about this?"

"What?"

"This assignment is stock research, right? We each research separately, and the one who does worse apologizes to the one who does better."

The other two group members—Hye-ri and Suhyun—had a point. But this wasn't a matter soft enough to be settled that easily.

You don't know until you get your face smashed in.

How barren the road you were trying to walk really was. Nothing beat tasting real combat instead of practice.

"Hmm~."

"What, are you not confident?"

"No."

"No to what?"

"You're going to do fake investing anyway. Is there even any value in me, who does real investing, going up against you~?"

As expected, she reacted. She fought to keep her twitching eyebrows and furrowed brow under control and managed her expression. A small sigh—whoo—slipped out. She locked eyes with me, then spat out only what she wanted to say.

"Fine."

"Suddenly?"

"……I'll invest with my own money too. I'll see just how great you are, the one who insults traders."

She clenched her molars and ignored me. Still, getting a confession after so long felt pretty good.

It'll be different, though? Quite a lot different~?

Paper trading. Exactly what it said—mock investing. Putting real lump sums into stocks from the start was a bit much, right? Most brokerages offered the service for beginners. Practice investing with virtual money.

"But what should I do?"

"Why? Did you come up with an excuse?"

"If you go broke doing real-money investing, my heart will hurt too much."

"Hmph! That won't happen, so you just worry about yourself."

In theory, sure. But life was real combat. My firm belief was that paper trading was completely useless.

You never feel that sensation that your life's about to get fucked.

Only after honing that for decades did the creature known as an investor finally reach completion. Same DNA as humans, completely different thought structure. Still human. Whether a Pokémon Trainer who fell for a simple provocation could even imitate a real trader—

I gave her back a little shove.