Value
Value.
Stocks.
The act of making money through investment.
But from a third party's point of view, that isn't how it looks at all.
Easy money, printed at will.
Enjoying unearned income off the single fact that you have "skill."
It doesn't make sense.
What's so special about them, anyway?
On the surface, you have to nod along. Everyone around you says so. And because you don't have the confidence to do it yourself, you live with that reality.
Why, why, why!
People are good at different things. She had been born with a neat appearance and a personality adults found adorable. She was good at studying, too. Within Hankuk University she could have been a top-tier campus goddess, soaking up the spotlight.
Wham!
What waited for her was ordinary reality. Haeri flung the mouse in her hand however she felt like flinging it. It smashed into her cosmetics stand with a clatter. It was the only mouse she owned, but she didn't go pick it up.
Why is it only me? It could go up for just one day!!
She wouldn't need it anyway. She couldn't even stand looking at her own account glowing on the monitor.
Stocks.
She had never once wanted to do them. Why would she bother with something that annoying?
The trigger had been Sora. She had bought the stock Sora recommended just so she could show her the price going down.
Every pick Sora makes just sits there and goes up no matter what.
The result, of course, was profit. She had been forced to say things she didn't mean, and all she had done was widen Sora's standing inside the department.
What am I even worse at than that bitch?
You think you're the only one who's special?
In secret, Haeri opened a second account and bought stocks on her own will—not Sora's recommendations.
If she made the same profit, no, if she made more—
Hers goes up if you just wait, right? How long am I supposed to wait for mine!!
What waited for her was a brutal reality. Not profit—losses. The more they piled up, the more impatient she became. To claw it back she reached for higher-risk plays, and the results came back as even bigger losses, cycling over and over.
…….
A stock that had done nothing but climb. The moment she bought it, it dropped like it was cursed, and instead of recovering it drifted farther and farther away. All she could do was average down. Part-time wages, allowance, living expenses—anything she could throw in, she threw in.
Even that was hitting its limit. If it had recovered—if it had even gotten close—she wouldn't be like this. It only ballooned like a snowball.
This is so annoying!!
The truth was, she knew. She had no talent for stocks. Buying companies she barely understood had been a mistake. She had lived a life where throwing tantrums still got her what she wanted, and she had never doubted university would be the same.
But then there was Sora. From the moment she walked into the freshman welcome party, Haeri had felt that she was no longer the main character.
"I came to school to study."
That single line had stripped away what little identity she still had. Sora stayed quiet and composed; Haeri couldn't very well stand out against that.
Rrrrk!
She yanked the cord like she was reeling in a line, and the mouse came sliding back up. The toppled pile of cosmetics that had fallen with it came back into view too.
…….
Looks. She had cared about them since she was little. No—for her, it had simply been natural. Wherever she went, people called her pretty, cute. Wanting to lean into your strengths is human nature. At the same time, you want to be different. Unlike everyone else, she had been born pretty without even trying.
Then she learned that people like that actually existed. She had always shrugged it off with well, celebrities are celebrities—
You still have to wash off your makeup, do skincare, a whole mountain of annoying crap.
As a fellow woman, she knew. Sora was a real beauty who glowed even without makeup. Meeting her had cracked Haeri's self-esteem in half. She had started doing heavy makeup every day—something she never used to bother with.
Inferiority. Jealousy. Every ugly feeling in the book. From the day she entered university, she had been miserable.
Ding-dong~♪
A KakaoTalk from Haeri.
The contents were nothing new. Of course they weren't—he got messages like this all the time.
Because I go around spreading the gospel of stocks.
A few incidents had drawn attention and built trust. Calling them converts wouldn't have been an exaggeration.
Some people reached out privately, too. The ones who usually pretended not to care.
The ones who claim they don't care about money are always the greediest.
No—nobody turns down free money. Stocks especially get treated like "unearned income." Money you make without working. At least, that's how people who don't know stocks think of them.
They were the type he hated most. There was no reason to catch fish for someone who refused to work.
Ding-dong~♪
But Haeri was different. They had a rapport. From the first time they met, she had come on warm and friendly.
Ahem. And she's A-rank.
Sora overshadowed her, sure—but among ordinary people, her level was solidly high. If she was interested in stocks, there was no reason not to teach her.
Except that wasn't what this was.
"You're here?"
Atmosphere. Honestly, he wasn't great at reading it. People told him he had no social radar all the time. But when it came to stocks, that changed—even outside his own specialty.
"Is it your period?"
"Out of everything you could say, why would you lead with period? That's why girls can't stand you."
"If it's not that, the only other option is that stocks wrecked you."
"That one's right."
A bright, pink-pink girl's room. Against that backdrop, the tone of her voice made it impossible not to notice something was off.
Different from usual, too.
It wasn't that she was especially close with him. The accurate description was that she was close with everyone in the department. A mood-maker. The type every group has one of—the person with good social connections.
"I figured you weren't interested in stocks."
"You're right. I'm not."
"So you were interested in the version of yourself that makes money off stocks?"
She whipped her head around like he'd hit the bullseye. In Korean society, it wasn't even that rare.
When other people start doing well, you get restless for no good reason.
A society that frets over other people's eyes. The feeling that if you don't do it too, you're falling behind. People jump in with zero preparation. It was a problem across society, and investing was no exception.
"Still, at least you don't look like a total beggar the way some people do."
"Huh?"
"Nothing. Talking to myself. So what do you want?"
She had charged into a missile exchange holding a toy cap gun. If the results had been good, that would have been the strange part.
Still, in a market like this she shouldn't have lost that badly.
A bull market. The whole KOSPI index climbing. Program buying created a trickle-down effect. Sora's case was the outlier—she'd traded recklessly off baseless confidence that she was a real trader.
"Hmm……."
"Well?"
"What do you think? You're fucked."
"Wow~."
"This is your account."
Was he imagining the influence, or was it real? No—she had traded even more recklessly than Sora.
You absolute idiot!
Haeri's account. Even the leading digits looked wrong. No matter how badly you invested, cutting your money in half was rare. Among risk assets, stocks sat on the lower end of the danger scale—especially compared to futures, where you could wake up sixty billion in debt and get dragged into a squid game.
"TwinBalls? What the hell is this dogshit stock."
"Why? Is it a bad stock?"
"You bought it without even knowing what it was?"
TwinBalls. A stock he had traded right after his regression. Familiarity meant he grasped the situation instantly.
[Basically a Rumble ult painted over the entire page.jpg]
"Look."
"What is this?"
"A financial statement. A quarterly report on how much this company makes and how much it spends."
"It's all red."
A classic junk stock. Couldn't make money, and whatever scraps it did earn got eaten by operating costs, so it ran pure losses.
Paradoxically, that makes it perfect for a pump scheme.
Looks like the company's going under? Normal people don't buy it. From an illicit stock manipulator's perspective, that means no interference during accumulation. They had floated a rumor about acquiring a luxury car company and pumped the price. After that, they'd cooked up a few more excuses to push it higher.
"But it went up to four thousand won before……."
"What does the past have to do with anything? You buy stocks looking at the future."
Current value: around a thousand won a share. The price had been butchered down to a quarter of what it was.
Definitely different from Sora.
A mistake beginner investors made constantly. It went up to ○○ won before, so it'll go back up, right? With a blue-chip, there was at least a chance. With a pump-and-dump stock, it almost never happened.
"Looking at the chart, there's a sell wall stacked at the 1,700-won line."
"What's a sell wall?"
"To break through it you need a catalyst big enough to match, and reigniting a pump-and-dump that just finished takes more than a half-baked catalyst."
"What's a pump-and-dump?"
A stock that has never gone up. No one is underwater, so the price is easy to lift. You fire it once, it comes back down, and a sell wall forms. Breaking through again is hard, so a lot of them just get abandoned.
Aigoo.
As an economics student and an aspiring trader, Sora knew at least the basics. You didn't even have to explain the small stuff. Her mistakes were mistakes you could understand. But trading like you were scratching lottery tickets—that wasn't something you fixed by "helping."
"Just take it as a dog bite and cut your losses?"
"Cut my losses?"
"Don't tell me you don't even know what a stop-loss is."
"I know. But…… it could still go up, right?"
She didn't even understand the concept. You can only teach someone to fish if they actually want to catch fish. This was exactly what it looked like when a complete civilian touched stocks. As a fund manager, when you sat people like this down for counseling, most of them were hopeless.
You can't even tell why they're doing stocks.
From a fund's perspective, deposits were good. So you nodded along and took the money.
"Sunbae, you're good at stocks."
"Mm."
"So can't you just… do something somehow?"
"Me?"
But she was an acquaintance. Help her and all you got was a headache, plus the blame either way.
Why would I do something that unproductive.
He had helped Sora because he had seen potential. Young talent who dreamed of being a trader at that age was rare. He had also felt bad about pushing her into it. With Haeri, he had nothing to feel guilty about, and as a trader she inspired zero expectations.
"I'm a little busy today, so……."
"If you help me."
Huh?
"I'll do whatever it takes to make it happen."
She bowed.
Well. It's worth a bow, at least.
There was no reason he couldn't solve a dear underclassman's problem. But the method this time would be different from anything so far.
Honestly, she hadn't expected anything.
Like some cult leader.
Haeri knew. Chanuk gathered students interested in stocks and spun all kinds of talk. He only did it because he had the goods. He might even have real skill.
But her account—coldly speaking—was past the point of salvage. Without a genuine stroke of divine luck, it was impossible.
Huh?
That divine luck landed. After class, Haeri checked her MTS and her eyes went wide.
It went up five percent.
+5%. The four million left after dumping TwinBalls had become 4.2 million. Nowhere near enough to erase the losses. But the fact that she had actually made money mattered.
"O-Oppa?"
"Yes, but……."
"Right now??"
And all in a single day. She had gone to sleep and woken up to an extra two hundred thousand won printed into her account. No need to wait weeks the way she had with Sora's picks. That kind of fast return rate was addictive.
Youngchang Technology…… and next is DY Nature?
Companies she had never heard of. She had no idea what any of them even did. The one thing she was sure of: if she bought them, she made money. That rush was a flavor she had never tasted before. Like someone tasting alcohol, cigarettes, or drugs for the first time in their life, she got hooked fast.