Investment Advisor
Bar.
"Excuse me? If you're here to disrupt business, kindly leave."
It may not quite match the image people hold of a place like this. A tall, good-looking bartender was openly threatening a customer.
Looks like the rage veins are popping on his forehead.
He was thoroughly pissed. He must eat a lot of instant food on a regular basis.
"What the hell are you talking about all of a sudden?!"
"Me?"
"Well it's you, you bastard."
Sora looked pretty pissed off herself. I wondered if she was still scarfing down cup ramen alone in her room these days.
Even the bartender looks shocked.
Fair enough — a girl who looked that delicious dropping f-bombs would startle anyone. Sora had also picked up the habit of speaking nothing but the truth.
"This is becoming a problem."
"Your boyfriend seems quite drunk. Please take him out quickly."
Under normal circumstances, he would have thrown us out far more roughly. He was putting on airs because there was a woman present.
Guys who do dirty work.
Just because I was dressed sharp in a suit, they figured I was some upstanding small-business owner. Looks like I needed to give them a reality check.
"Glenlivet 13."
"Excuse me?"
"Old Forester 1920. Samaroli Bowmore. Foursquare 1998. Ezra Brooks 15. Karuizawa 15."
"Th-those bottles…"
"Quite a few hard-to-find bottles, aren't there?"
"……"
The bartender and the owner. Their faces froze solid in an instant. All I'd done was list the names of some whiskeys.
Looks like something hit a nerve.
They knew what those bottles had in common. Their attitude suddenly became appropriately deferential.
"I hear those never went through official customs clearance. You managed to get your hands on them somehow."
"Please — have a seat first."
"If the owner can't quite recall, I could always ask a friend of mine who works at customs."
"…Let's talk this through, sir. Talk."
Korean liquor tax law. Restaurants and bars can only purchase alcohol through licensed liquor wholesalers.
But the prices are high.
And the selection isn't great either. Rare and aged bottles are essentially impossible to get that way. So they bring them in through other channels — hitting places like Namdaemun, importing directly, that sort of thing.
"Which makes it illegal."
"I get that, but—"
"What?"
"You don't have to say it right to their faces."
"Hmm."
Alcohol sales aren't just hit with liquor tax — additional taxes pile on top. There's a reason soju at restaurants runs five thousand won a bottle.
How much tax do you think is on that?
And if you skip out on those taxes? It all becomes pure profit. Whiskey is hit especially hard, because it's taxed ad valorem rather than by volume. The more expensive the base cost, the more astronomical the tax.
"A hundred-thousand-won bottle overseas becomes two hundred fifty-five thousand once it hits Korea."
"That's a massive markup."
"Commercial stock gets wholesale margins on top of that, then income tax at the establishment."
"The tail's wagging the dog, isn't it?"
Sora had it right. Bar owners think the same thing. Just skip those taxes and look at the margins!
And that leads straight to tax evasion.
Over ninety percent of bars in Korea engage in tax evasion, directly or indirectly. This place was one of the worse ones.
"They're selling whiskey by the bottle, too."
"Looks that way."
"Some of that is tax-evaded stock as well. They call it bottle-swapping in the trade…"
You can tell just by looking. As someone in the industry, the instinct kicks in. And sure enough—
Clack!
I wasn't wrong. The owner, who'd been watching quietly, set down a tulip-shaped nosing glass.
"…Macallan 1997, twenty-five years. I'd appreciate it if you could keep your voice down a little."
"I'll do that."
Service. Hush money, essentially. There were only a few other customers in the bar.
If word got out somehow…
They wouldn't be looking at a slap-on-the-wrist tax bill. Even from an industry perspective, it would be poking a hornet's nest. The main revenue stream for Korean bars wasn't actually alcohol and food sales — it was tax evasion.
"I don't really get it."
"Get what?"
"You seem weird, and a bar that does tax evasion doesn't seem normal either…"
That reality. Sora couldn't quite accept it. Her head seemed thoroughly scrambled.
You need this kind of impact for it to stick.
And it wasn't just bars. Most restaurants use tax evasion as a side income stream. Taking cash under the table was the mild version. Beyond that, the bizarre methods piled up like a mountain.
"That's how the real world actually works."
"Do I really need to know this?"
"You need to be able to look it in the eye."
Even just limiting it to the food service industry. Other sectors got more complicated.
Not a bad place to start.
The other side of the coin. Definitely uncomfortable. There's a reason people prefer comfortable lies. But if you're an investor, you can't look away. Because it exists, plain and simple.
Click. Click.
How that industry actually operates. You have to catch even the small details and factor them into your investments.
"You're making a highball, right?"
"Can't you tell by looking?"
"Ugh! It's different from the ones I made at the festival, okay?"
The bartender was making a highball — the same drink she'd mixed until her wrists nearly fell off at the festival.
Good for easy drinking.
Perfect as a first round. A basic cocktail even a beginner could make, but—
Whoosh~
Click. Click.
When a pro makes it, it's different. He packed ice into a tall glass to chill it. Dumped the ice out. Filled it with fresh ice and poured the whiskey.
"Why throw it away? What a waste."
"Unity."
"?"
The textbook method for making a highball. As Sora said, it did look inefficient.
But there's a reason for all of it.
Chill the glass with ice so that no matter where you pour the whiskey, the temperature drops evenly.
Glug glug glug~
Pour soda water over it. The whiskey, mixed with the meltwater from the ice, dissolves into the carbonation. Finish with a lemon peel — twist it to express the oils, then drop it in as a garnish.
"Your highball."
"Thanks, I'll dig in!"
"You enjoy yours as well, sir."
"I'm the type who never goes hungry wherever I end up."
They were even serving free side dishes of dirty looks. We hadn't ordered any snacks, but they were throwing in freebies — I didn't know what to do with myself.
Gulp. Gulp.
The highball. I took a big first swallow. The carbonation prickled sharply against my throat.
Now this is a highball.
You could taste the whiskey. The lemon peel added an accent as it went down smooth.
"I mixed a ton of highballs at the festival too. But this is on a completely different level from mine."
"So it wasn't meaningless, right?"
"Yeah."
Unity. Not just something mixed together — a proper cocktail had been crafted.
Not a highball — a cocktail that happens to be called a highball.
Just like that famous line from the manga Bartender. Hard to make it like this at a regular establishment. That's why they use tonic water instead of soda — to cover clumsy technique with sweetness.
"I see…"
"Even a knockoff version needs you to know the original if you want to make it right."
"I think I get it."
Market research has to be done by the book. If you don't know the prototype, you're only half-baked.
That's the food service industry for you.
Hit dishes often get copied, or have their ideas borrowed. And that's never easy. There's a reason Cheon Jong-won travels overseas.
"Gin and tonic."
Experience matters. If you just go around putting on attitude, what you end up doing isn't sex — it's jerking off alone.
"Whoa!"
"We used seasonal peaches. Feel free to eat the fruit off the cocktail pick."
"I don't have a pick on mine."
"Must've forgotten."
Next was the gin and tonic. Together with the highball, it ran as one of the two easiest cocktails to make.
Even that, when a pro makes it—
Looked the part. Pretty sliced peaches sat in a wide glass like a wine glass, serving as garnish — adding peach aroma to the G&T, and something you could nibble instead of bar snacks.
"Ham and melon. And this is Maple Story."
"Maple Story?"
"Yes — unlike the dead game of the same name, this one's sweet, content-rich, and highly polished."
"Wow~!"
Different from the original recipe. Bars of a certain caliber pursue their own signature cocktails.
Not bad.
The most traditional of cocktails. They'd probably arranged the IBA version of an Old Fashioned. Drinks were in. Snacks had arrived. Even if a bit strong, a well-made cocktail—
"I was a mage."
"I was a pirate."
"No wonder you're good at committing crimes~."
"Be grateful I wasn't a thief."
It went down easy, gulp after gulp. Before long, Sora's cheeks were flushed red and she was babbling away, completely loose.
Smack!
I took a bite of the snack myself. Those moist, wet lips were delicious no matter when you tasted them.
She's my woman.
Bartenders. A profession well-suited to picking up women. That was probably why he'd been hovering and flirting since earlier. There was resentment in it. And any man who didn't feel something for a woman like this sex machine of a girl wasn't a man at all.
"What was that all of a sudden?"
"Just how I feel."
"Then I can do whatever I want too, right?"
Showing off. Whether Sora had taken it to heart, or simply forgotten where they were—
Smack! Smack! Smooch♡
Her long, slender fingers gently cupped both my cheeks. And she launched into a fierce kiss. Inside the narrow bar, the wet sounds of saliva and tongues moving rang out brazenly.
She's going at it like she's trying to suck the life force out of me.
She'd become a full-blown seductress. No one would ever imagine this was a virgin's kiss.
"Excuse me, customers…"
Even the loudmouthed bartender was bowing at the waist now. The other customers had stopped mid-drink to stare. The place had gone dead silent. Only the owner — past the age of getting it up — quietly came over to intervene.
"Want to take this to the car?"
"Shall we?"
"Call us a designated driver. Quickly."
We'd drunk enough. I linked arms with Sora and handed my card to the bartender. Unlike earlier, he couldn't manage a smile. This wasn't a woman the likes of him could ever pick up.
"Senior, today was so good."
"Yeah?"
"You brought me here because you wanted to fuck me, right?"
I hadn't even gotten to eat yet myself, but— drunk Sora nuzzled her face into my chest.
Should I show her the magic trick where she wakes up and her hymen's gone?
The reason I'd brought Sora here wasn't just to feed her a cocktail. She needed to see how businesses actually run.