Force Versus Force

Dream Girls, Episode 4.

What unfolded was nothing short of shocking.

The newly arrived contestants from the Big Three agencies put on a display that left everyone reeling.

The gulf in class was so vast that even viewers who knew nothing about music or dance could feel it in their bones.

For the people actually standing on that stage, it was something far worse.

Jang Min-seo—the girl everyone had been calling the existing ace—watched her expression freeze solid.

"Min-seo."

"Yes."

"You've been a trainee since you were barely a teenager, right?"

"Yes, that's correct!"

"So what exactly have you been doing all this time?"

The judges' scathing remarks poured down without mercy. A famous celebrity was telling her, to her face, that she had been nothing more than a frog in a well. The intent was probably to spur her on, to make her dig deeper. But before any of that even mattered—

The impact burned itself into the viewers' minds. Chaos erupting across every community was inevitable.

There had been a sky above the sky all along.

Overnight, the entire evaluation of the ordinary contestants flipped one hundred and eighty degrees. And that shift fed straight into fan loyalty. Cruel as it was, Dream Girls ran on a merciless competitive system.

Even inside the fan clubs themselves, the same slaughter was happening. A contestant whose survival odds had plummeted got crushed in the fan wars. Oil had already been poured on the fire. Public opinion toward Jang Min-seo had been rotting ever since the recent 3M contract scandal.

The finishing blow. She had lost even the one identity she had left—her skill. Her fandom was hemorrhaging strength by the second.

It hit the stock price too. The shares that had ballooned on the contract rumors deflated like a popped balloon.

Ah, fuck.

At the JP Morgan Korea Branch, trading-team member Kim Geun-seong could not stop fretting. He had loaded up heavily on 3M only days earlier. He had thought easy prey had just wandered into the slaughterhouse.

Which fucking bastard was waiting for exactly this moment.

The trades had seemed to go exactly the way he wanted—until the final second, when a bomb of sell orders dumped salt all over everything. For a moment he thought a major shareholder had dumped. No. If that had been the case, the algorithms he had set would have handled it.

It was his pride and joy—a short-term Korean stock system designed from years of experience and knowledge. It could handle almost any situation and still have room to spare.

Is this guy actually insane?

Massive sell-offs. Program selling. It reacted to either dumping huge volume in one go or to repeated sells measured in sub-milliseconds. In the modern market, a trader's real skill lived right there—in writing algorithms that were finer and more precise than anyone else's.

Boom!

And that pride had just been publicly dismantled. He told himself it was coincidence, yet rage still boiled up. Pride. It felt like he had lost a duel of spear versus shield.

"Mr. Kim."

"……Yes, Boss."

"Something good happen? You were setting off fireworks all by yourself."

There was something more urgent than that. Branch Manager Smith never spoke to him without a reason.

He's fishing for an answer.

This month's performance. Honestly it wasn't bad. At a Korean institution he might even have been called an ace. But this was a Wall Street investment bank. Even the Korea branch ran on pure meritocracy.

Gulp.

Every single month they audited results. Even if you were in the black, two consecutive months in the bottom 10 percent meant forced Fire.

I have to get out of this 3M position somehow.

The current situation was definitely a crisis. Of all times, he had gotten stuck right before the end-of-month performance review.

—Buy order filled!

—Sell order filled!

If a little turbulence like this rattled him, he had no business calling himself a Wall Street trader. His real target wasn't the Korea branch anyway.

I've roughly got the flow figured out.

Bigger waters. Trading never succeeded 100 percent of the time. A trader's true skill showed in how he recovered from mistakes. Kim Geun-seong had that down to an art. Even a stock that had completely wrecked him could be dragged back into profit territory if he put his mind to it.

—Short-sell order filled!

By playing the main gun. Buying and selling over and over, lowering his average cost, vacuuming up massive volume in the process.

And then the short selling. The retail ants had no idea. They thought foreign buying was bullish news.

They probably think they're making smart investments.

The fate of ants who didn't know their place was already written. The work was already proceeding smoothly. Recovery was only a matter of time. But what he wanted was profit. Since he was spending the time anyway, he intended to extract labor costs.

Tap, tap!

He had already mapped the entire sector. He had come in for short-term trades, but long-term operations still required analysis.

Sora, huh……

Catalyst. Kim Geun-seong was a Korean-American—one of the so-called black-haired foreigners. That didn't mean he ignored Korean culture. After being posted to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the Korea office, he paid even more attention. He lived here, after all. He didn't watch every episode of Dream Girls, but the broad strokes stuck in his memory.

Reading the report made it even clearer. Han Tae-min from the intelligence team had contacted him through company channels.

Hmm…… so that's how it's developing?

The intelligence team was different from trading. Pure Koreans. Their job was local information. Their intel network was top-tier—things ordinary people could never know, and things they absolutely should never know, all within reach.

Industry insiders. Unreleased information. Turning that into money was his job.

Ah, from the latest unaired episode?

Something had happened in a round that hadn't broadcast yet. Contestant Sora had started drawing real attention.

Even to his own eyes her visuals were the best on the show. It wouldn't be strange at all if she blew up.

If I'm thinking that……

Then the market was thinking it too. And institutions had the power to shove that narrative forward.

Floating one or two tabloid pieces was nothing. Wall Street. In America you couldn't pull this shit. But—

This is Korea, heh heh.

Regulations were loose. Even if an investigation came knocking, a casual "nah, not us lol" usually made it go away. That kind of market. The ants who fell for it only had themselves to blame.

Geun-seong smiled the smile of a man who had just found his winning hand.

A market overflowing with liquidity. The best part was how instantly it reacted to good news.

"I'm really doing every weird thing imaginable because of you."

"You'll be doing even more from now on, so don't worry about it."

"Fuck."

Agent Sora was faithfully carrying out her mission. She had casually leaked which agency she wanted to join.

She was so nervous she only did it indirectly, but still.

That alone was enough. After the Jang Min-seo disaster, the market's attention had swollen. The direction of the contracts. People had finally realized it could become a catalyst for stock prices.

It was already reacting. Looking closer yielded even more information.

Judging by when it started climbing……

Accumulation had begun before any articles even dropped. They were clearly planning to lift it hard.

"Whoa, we made over three billion."

"Money's literally just copying itself……"

"Can't we sell our Sora one more time?"

He had deliberately let it break its 52-week high. He judged the accumulation was strong enough to push it even further.

Thanks to that we ate well.

Full position with leverage stacked on top. He had methodically taken profits near the top and locked in roughly three billion won in capital gains.

—Foreigner-nim is going completely berserk!

Double kill!

Triple kill!

Quadra kill!

Once ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠again they were a beat too slow. The foreigners were only now dumping their shares. Truly a tragic sight.

If it were up to me I'd have run thirty-times leverage.

Controlling the price. Milking it up and down was far more delicious, and it made trading feel worthwhile. He simply couldn't. Korea was harsh on retail.

Still, he had thought the results were more than satisfying—

Live Music Net!

Episode 5 was airing. In the stock market that counted as catalyst exhaustion. That was why the foreigners were rushing to dump.

"Sora's on!"

"We get to see more of Sora?"

"She said so herself, so it must be true~."

Exactly as my sharp prediction had said. But the market—investing itself—didn't always follow the script.

Just as Sora had claimed. The moment she started singing, the judges' faces turned deadly serious. They had planned to push her from the beginning. Her visuals were absurdly stacked, after all.

She's more than worth pushing on broadcast.

That was honestly what I had thought. The club members agreed. She was someone we actually knew. The idea that she would suddenly become a star just didn't land.

Maybe it was time to revise that thinking.

"Hey. Buy."

"Huh? We don't have anything left to sell."

"Not sell—buy. Buy the stock."

This one was going higher.