The Club
2025, New York, Wall Street.
Whoa…… so this is the famous Wall Street.
Myungsoo, freshly arrived in America for the first time, stood overwhelmed by its sheer, crushing presence. Mountain-high buildings packed the skyline shoulder to shoulder.
Skyscrapers like these existed in Seoul, of course. Busan had them too. These days even Sejong City was supposedly deep in development. But the meaning was different. As a single man of finance, the feeling hit him fresh and hard.
The center of global finance, huh.
Wall Street—the place that came to mind the moment anyone said “finance.” It led the American markets, and America alone accounted for a full seventy percent of the world’s stock markets. Even by raw proportion the importance was impossible to ignore. Put bluntly, every other market was just a side dish. The money of the entire planet was pouring into this one stretch of American pavement.
He swallowed hard.
And he was one of the traders who would be touching that money. Myungsoo had landed a job at a fund right here on Wall Street. It felt like a dream. Every finance professional aspired to this. Working on the Street was the highest honor a trader could claim.
I’ve watched The Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short at least five times each.
Movies set here weren’t rare. Every one of them was a masterpiece, a roadmap for life. One of the reasons he had aimed to become a trader in the first place. Maybe he was just another extra in the background—but that was enough.
No—it had become enough.
The company he would work for was none other than a Korean firm.
CW SECURITIES
Damn, that building is huge! A Korean company sitting right in the middle of Wall Street.
This was one of the most expensive patches of land on Earth. Even on a two-hundred-million-won salary the rent alone could eat a hundred million—that was the legend. And yet here stood a massive building. Proof of just how well the firm was doing, how thoroughly it had succeeded. A Korean sat as CEO. Plenty of Korean staff worked inside. The capital itself was Korean capital.
Hell yeah—this is why people chase that national pride high!
National pride. An emotion he had always kept at arm’s length out of embarrassment now flooded through him. Because he was a trader, because he was a man of finance, he understood exactly how enormous this was. Working here, he would raise Korea’s standing. Pride as a Korean swelled in his chest—until the words that reached his ears shattered the fantasy completely.
“Anyway, just NTR the hell out of her and fuck her raw.”
“Nooo, you can only borrow her for three months. Even if you pound her the whole time, you still can’t train her properly.”
The reality waiting inside the office was nothing like the dream. The moment he stepped through the door, conversations he could barely believe were already floating through the air.
They’re just… talking like that at the company? Is that allowed?
Even charitably it was idle chatter. Rationally it was pure dirty talk. Not the kind of conversation you held proudly in public. That much was certain. Anywhere in the world it would be the same. Even in America, common sense couldn’t be that different.
“See? NTR is the answer.”
“Haaah……”
“While you’ve got her borrowed, just fuck her senseless. Pound her until she can’t think straight and she’ll spread her legs on her own—don’t you know that?”
Even after the workday officially began, the atmosphere never changed. Myungsoo looked around again just to confirm: this was still Wall Street, and he was still standing inside the offices of CW Securities.
Is it because this is America? Is the vibe just… freer here?
CW Securities had a headquarters and branch offices. Myungsoo had worked at the Korean branch, earned recognition for his results, and been transferred to headquarters. Naturally he had carried fantasies with him. Headquarters staff were elites among elites. Simply working on Wall Street already put you beyond ordinary people. CW Securities’ performance was staggering. He had expected titans who could hold their own even on this street—yet the talk continued without pause.
“Ah, damn, the supply just won’t stick.”
“That’s why you dump her after one fuck.”
“He’s pure-hearted.”
“Bullshit. She’s already a used-up rag.”
No matter how he turned it over, he wasn’t the one in the wrong. During work hours they kept right on with the dirty talk, the endless talk about women. His unease deepened. When Myungsoo kept glancing over, the speakers finally noticed his gaze.
“What, new guy?”
“Yes…… Park Myungsoo. Transferred from the branch.”
“You should’ve said so! Anyway, welcome.”
They didn’t seem the least bit embarrassed. They slipped naturally into the role of seniors. He was effectively an intern. For a while he would have to adapt to the company and learn the changed work.
“Around here performance is everything. Fail to deliver and you become a Pokémon trainer.”
“Sorry? A Pokémon…?”
“You don’t know Pokémon?”
“No, I know Pokémon, but……”
Adapting turned out easier than expected. They were Koreans. Even on the opposite side of the planet the work environment felt familiar. The only thing that still made no sense was the constant dirty talk. Even in the land of freedom there had to be some baseline of common sense.
“Ahhh~~!”
“It’s just… so different from how it was in Korea……”
“No! No! No! You’re right.”
“We were just talking the way we always do among ourselves.”
“Is it because America is open-minded enough that people freely discuss their sex lives?”
“No! It’s work talk.”
His common sense had not been wrong. You did not discuss private sex lives at the company—especially not during work hours.
Don’t tell me.
But if it was work talk? Myungsoo had heard of it. Traders used certain coded expressions among themselves.
“Is that what this is?”
“Yeah.”
“Pretty much.”
“I kept hearing lines that sounded like they came straight out of a Hitomi video.”
“……”
It was still hard to believe. But when the proud seniors themselves insisted it was true, he could hardly call them liars.
So that’s why.
He could guess the origin. Graduates of the Hankuk University Stock Club. Their reputation in the securities industry was infamous. Their language was filthy—and their skill was said to match it in equal measure.
“Just think of it as an easy army-style metaphor. You did your service, right?”
“Ah, yes……”
“It also works as a kind of cipher!”
“A cipher?”
“Yeah. If you’re in finance you know security matters. If real-time trading information leaks even a little, it’s a disaster.”
CW Securities was a young hedge fund. Like every industry, the established players tried to keep the newcomers in check. They could never be free of that pressure. But when you already spoke hard-to-follow Korean and then layered slang on top of it—
“I see. That makes sense.”
“Exactly. On Wall Street, ‘blink and they’ll steal your nose’ isn’t even a proverb—it’s just Tuesday.”
“But……”
“Hm?”
“How did vulgar expressions become the standard? We’re supposed to be finance professionals.”
“……”
Of course it wasn’t common. Finance professionals sat at the very top of the white-collar pyramid—elites among elites. In the liberal arts there was arguably no higher tier. And these were Koreans working on American Wall Street, no less.
How the hell did this happen?
Every thread led back to the Hankuk University Stock Club.
“What is short selling?”
Short selling. Anyone who traded stocks—especially Korean stocks—heard the term constantly. Why is my stock dropping? The reason cited most often was a large short-selling balance.
It’s borrowing shares, selling them, then returning the shares later, right?
The question from a classmate brought the definition up automatically. Sora already knew what short selling was. Put simply:
What is short selling?
1. You decide a certain stock is going to fall.
2. You pay a small fee and borrow the shares.
3. You sell the borrowed shares and wait for the price to drop.
4. When the price reaches the level you want, you buy the shares back.
5. You return the shares to the lender.
If the price falls, you make money.
If the prediction is correct, great—but sometimes the price rises instead. The people who shorted then have to buy the shares back. That situation is called a short squeeze, and the stock can rocket upward in a short time.
That’s right, isn’t it?
The club room. It had only recently been established. Given her interest in stocks, there had been no reason not to join. More than anything, Chanuk was there. He was surrounded by club members because he had promised to teach them about stocks.
“Short selling, in a single phrase,”
“Yes!”
“is a kind of netorare.”
Wh-what did he just say?
Two tables away, Sora had been listening with her ears pricked. She choked. She was certain she had just heard something bizarre. She tried to deny it, to tell herself she had misheard—
“Because the shares you lent out are getting fucked.”
“Ohh……”
“Your woman is being violated by some golden-haired bastard named Short Selling. When she finally comes back, she’s no longer the girl you knew.”
She hadn’t misheard. She squeezed her eyes shut, furrowed her brow, and tried to interpret it as charitably as possible.
Is this guy actually, genuinely, completely insane?
She felt a wave of self-disgust just for knowing those filthy words herself. And for trading stocks at all.
“So that’s what it was.”
“I get it instantly!”
“Short selling = NTR. Noted……”
Why are you writing that down?!
The reaction was surprisingly positive. The male students, of course—and even some of the female students who pretended not to listen were absorbing every word. Nothing about this was normal. Stocks were a noble force that moved the world’s economy.
“I always thought stocks were hard, but when oppa explains it I actually understand.”
“Can I ask something else?”
“Go ahead.”
Yet the positive effect was undeniable. Even though stocks had become trendy at Hankuk University—
Everyone only ever asked whether something would go up or not.
No one had ever shown real interest in stocks themselves. She knew; she had given the most consultations. As vulgar as the explanations were, they made people understand with absolute clarity. That much, she could admit.
“I don’t want to start with big money, so I was thinking of paper trading first……”
“Is paper trading really that different from live trading?”
“Completely different.”
“How different? It still helps, right?”
“If paper trading is masturbation, live trading is sex.”
……
She herself had received help from him, after all. Black history. Trauma. Instant rage button. That was how she had first entered live trading. She had taken Chanuk’s bait and suffered a massive loss. Ironically, the person who had then helped her was also Chanuk. She felt gratitude now—yet complicated feelings still tangled around it.
“Jerking off a lot doesn’t make you good at sex, does it?”
“Ah.”
“I get it right away!”
“Then what about Sora?”
“What’s a Sora? I know Aoi Sora.”
“I heard Sora did a ton of paper trading.”
All sorts of tangled emotions had no choice but to rise. He kept throwing weird jokes her way.
“Severe chronic masturbation addict, that one.”
“Ohh~.”
“Hey!!”
“The chronic masturbator approaches. Run for your lives.”
When Sora shouted, the entire club room stampeded out in a wave. It was a departmental club; with formal approval from a professor they had been assigned a good location. Bodies poured out of the spacious room like the tide going out. A moment later they flowed back in like the tide returning and offered apologies.
Ah, these fucking……
The Stock Club. She had joined thinking she would at least learn something. Instead they spewed an unbelievable volume of vulgarity. That much she could accept. The man had never been normal to begin with. The real problem was that she herself was worse than him.
The fact that she was bad at stocks. Even if she tried not to admit it, the reality in front of her eyes was impossible to ignore. She had learned that knowledge alone was not enough. Sora wanted to go deeper into the world of stocks.