Selling Cure-Alls
Time slipped by without either of them noticing.
"Senior, where did you go? You're only getting back now!"
"Were you looking for me long?"
"No."
That was the whole point — making sure she wouldn't notice.
Sora had been so thoroughly absorbed in gambling that she only realized he was gone well after the fact.
Not exactly rare.
Casinos were built that way. No clocks, no windows — everything designed to erase your sense of time.
"Oh… no wonder I lost track of the hours."
"Well, part of that is you being an idiot."
"Hey!"
Customers who never figured it out spent entire days gambling and fattening the house's margins. Sora had become one of them. He'd been planning to keep an eye on Kangwon Land's quarterly numbers, too.
"So how much did you drop?"
"I didn't."
"What do you mean, you didn't?"
"Heh. Brace yourself."
Sora's face lit up with smug triumph. Those absurdly large breasts bounced upward from the recoil.
Definitely not Korean breasts.
How a body that skinny managed to hold onto that much flesh was a genuine mystery.
"I won three hundred thousand won."
"Not bad."
"Right? I think I finally get why people gamble."
It wasn't a huge sum, of course. But considering the betting limit on a regular table was three hundred thousand won—
Which idiot dealer handed her that money?
That was a write-up waiting to happen. Then again, he had a pretty good idea. There was a kind of superstition that circulated through casinos.
"Looks like your first hit paid off."
"First hit?"
"Beginner's luck, basically."
"Oh, that."
A jinx. First-timers walk away winners. An extension of beginner's luck.
In a way, it's grounded in reality.
The more predatory casinos deliberately let newcomers win early — just enough to hook them.
"I'm not an idiot, you know."
"Wow."
"I set a hard limit at a hundred thousand. If I lost that, I was going to walk away."
Handled properly, gambling could be decent entertainment. Casinos had a certain romance to them.
If you can actually stick to the rules, that is.
Walking out a winner was pure bliss. Stocks and gambling shared that same truth. Realizing it was commendable enough — but she was still missing the important part.
"Ah, shit."
"There's a guy lingering."
"Fuck… isn't she gonna keep playing?"
Even after she'd left the table, spectators still hovered around Sora.
"You had a crowd watching you play, right? You know why?"
"Because of my chest."
"Well, that too."
"Or because I was winning."
Utterly shameless. She was convinced the attention came from her skill, her presence. A little pocket change and her confidence was scraping the ceiling.
"There's a thing at Kangwon Land called the broke-hook."
"What's that?"
"Well…"
He leaned in and murmured the explanation into her ear. She swallowed hard — properly rattled.
Because it's not actually a joke.
A body like Sora's was more than worth targeting. For every person kicking empty cans, there were people with serious money.
"You should have told me that first!"
"Then you wouldn't learn anything."
"Senior… are you fine with something like that happening to me?"
Sora pouted, hands clasped over her stomach, lips pushed out in a sulk.
As a major shareholder with a twenty-percent stake, he couldn't exactly leave her standing there. He pulled her into the car.
A soft wet sound.
She melted into him like she'd been waiting for it. If anything, Sora was the one who kissed him first — aggressively.
Pineapple and unripe peach, with a drizzle of honey over a fresh green apple underneath.
One bite and the clean mineral brightness hit. A sweet, roasted-pineapple-and-apple fragrance rose up.
Another soft wet sound.
Her thick tongue, the warm saliva heated between them — like drinking whipped cream studded with dried fruit. Sweet, but restrained. No excess sugar.
And the taste further down always scales with the kiss…
He was very much looking forward to it. The option of a further acquisition was always on the table.
"Senior."
"Hm?"
"Is your dick broken?"
"…"
The company was showing promising signs. Sora casually groped at his crotch, bold enough to slip her hand inside.
Under normal circumstances, this would have been a welcome development.
"Huh? That's weird. Why won't it get hard?"
"Ahem. Your man isn't that easy to get going."
"Then how do I make it stand up?"
"You have to turn me on."
"Ugh… then I'll try harder."
He had a guilty conscience. She worked her tongue, smacking wetly, and stroked him inside his underwear — and still nothing.
I did just finish pounding someone thoroughly before I got here.
He felt bad watching Sora blame herself. He pulled her into a firm hug, soothed her, then gently peeled her off.
"Should I start doing yoga?"
"Why?"
"To work on my body. And watch porn while I'm at it… learn how to do that stuff."
"Absolutely not."
"?"
He'd already broken through once and still wanted to break through again. He talked her out of packing any more raw sex appeal into that body.
The car eased to a stop.
This was the real reason they'd come to Kangwon Land today.
"It's just… downtown?"
"Just?"
"Wait… now that you mention it."
Sora caught on. Downtown near Kangwon Land. Rural enough that there wasn't much to look at — except one industry that stood out in absurd numbers.
Pawnshops. Massage parlors.
He wasn't here to teach a gifted student the latter.
"There aren't just one or two pawnshops. Isn't this way too many?"
"That many customers."
"Ah."
People who'd lost their money at Kangwon Land. The place they went when they needed cash fast was a pawnshop.
Leave your stuff, walk out with a loan.
The rates, naturally, were nowhere near normal. The desperate party was always the gambler who needed the money.
"Then they must make a fortune, right?"
"Well."
"They don't?"
"It's not wrong, exactly."
An investor's instinct. Sora had learned to set emotion aside and look at the money.
But that doesn't mean emotion is irrelevant.
In investing, psychology was everything.
Right on cue, a middle-aged man walked into a pawnshop.
"D-did you see that just now?"
"Didn't need to."
"His face looked like he was about to drop dead on the spot…"
Inside the casino, there was always a next hand. Always the chance of a jackpot out of nowhere.
At least a little life still moves through them in there.
Step outside, and reality hits. The dead-end of your own situation. The man was gaunt enough to raise goosebumps. There wasn't a scrap of light left in his eyes.
"Hey!! You son of a bitch, I'll win it back and bring it right here!!"
Some of them threw tantrums. Even from a pawnshop a full lane away, the shouting was loud enough to split eardrums.
"Normal people…"
"Don't exist here."
"Yeah, I guess not."
Sora read the atmosphere and swallowed hard. The place itself was wrong.
Now I get why people start fretting over ki and half-baked shamans the second they set foot here.
Not enough ki. Too much ki. Nearly everything got explained by ki. Anyone still thinking rationally couldn't survive. Even the ones who used to be rational went mad in a place like this.
The car rolled on.
He'd wanted Sora to see this. A little farther from Kangwon Land sat a village.
"Where is this?"
"You already figured it out, right?"
"…Yeah."
"I was going to dump you here and leave."
"You fucking bastard."
A little run-down, but from the outside the village looked fine. One look at the eyes of the people walking past, though—
You couldn't miss it.
Not locals. A gambling settlement where people who'd blown their entire fortunes clustered together to live.
"And the ones who can't even make it here end up as casino homeless."
"Why would you…"
"Hm?"
"Why would you show me something like this…"
Sora looked at him like she was about to burst into tears. She didn't need to worry — he wasn't leaving her behind.
If you invest in stocks, you should see this at least once.
Stocks and gambling were a single thin line apart. The end of a failed investor didn't look much different from this. He hadn't come here to preach that kind of philosophy, though.
The real reason they'd come to Kangwon Land—
Tap. Tap.
Before he could finish the thought, someone rapped on the window. A resident of the gambling village had spotted his Audi. These were people living lives with nothing left behind them. It wouldn't have been strange if one of them vandalized the car and ran.
"Young people shouldn't come here. This is where lives end."
A cracked, gravelly voice. But the man behind it still had something alive in him.
"I'm never coming back to Kangwon Land. I'm listening to that man."
"It's fun if you come once in a while."
"People like you are the worst, Senior!"
People weren't required to stay twisted. When they weren't gambling, those same people were normal.
The way someone's normal when they're not playing League of Legends.
He turned the car around and headed back toward Seoul. Gambling, a celebrity meal — a productive day overall.
"Still, it was a fun day, wasn't it?"
"I think I have trauma now."
"Things you don't usually get to see."
"Yeah."
It might not have felt connected to stocks. In reality, this place was the stock market in miniature.
You can see the Illicit Stock Manipulators and the retail ants in the flesh.
A world that usually lived inside a monitor. Pull it out into the open and it looked exactly like this.
"Still, stocks aren't gambling…"
"You asked me once why anyone would touch biotech stocks when they know they're a scam."
"Yeah, I did."
"Starting to get why?"
"Ah."
Gambling and biotech stocks looked a lot alike. You knew the odds were garbage.
And you keep doing it anyway.
Companies listed under the technology special listing system. The idea that those outfits were developing real new drugs wasn't nine out of ten fraud — it was one hundred percent fraud.
People who got rich at Kangwon Land? The gamblers themselves knew better than anyone that it didn't happen.
"But by then…"
"You've already lost something, so you can't walk away. Even when you know starting over would be smarter."
"That's where the capital piles up."
People who traded stocks and people who traded biotech stocks were different animals. Any investor with reason and common sense stayed away from biotech.
"Then why do you…"
"You don't know?"
"I get it. Because you have no reason or common sense."
"Mm."
The reason people touched biotech stocks. That was the principle behind retail investors flinging themselves at the flame like moths.
The principle for making money off it is different.
This was the stock market. Unlike gambling, there was no fixed house edge. Understand how the market actually worked, and you could make money.
Sora swallowed. She at least understood this much now: the bigger the risk, the bigger the money you could pull out of it.
"But isn't that still way too dangerous?"
"What is?"
"If the drug development fails in the end…"
"No. Because you're not investing in the drug to begin with."
"??"
You had to stand on top of the gamblers' heads. You didn't buy biotech stocks because you believed a new drug would succeed.
From ancient times, selling medicine was always about how good the peddler was.
A cure-all didn't actually need to cure anything.