One Shot at Life
Stock prices.
They rise and fall according to the direction of a business and the market's good news.
Anticipate them correctly, and you can rake in a fortune.
And it played out exactly as expected.
Of course it did—he already knew the future.
Haaah…
That didn't mean the stock was going to skyrocket, though.
Which was exactly why stocks were so damn hard.
Program buying.
The institutions, confirming the catalyst had dropped, piled into Wizen Energy.
And they were dumping even harder than they were buying.
The Force intended to drive the price down.
They won't even be able to stand looking at it.
Selling had already been happening before this.
They'd decided the government wasn't going to support solar.
And then this?
A multi-tens-of-trillions policy locked in, and the stock actually looked ready to climb.
The Force was dumping its remaining shares.
Deliberately crushing the price.
A stock this small…
…was completely at the mercy of people's psychology.
Why the hell is the price falling?
It's the end of the run.
Already priced in.
Every negative thought came flooding in.
Retail investors who couldn't stick together.
They could crash the price just by doubting each other.
I have to hold the 2,000-won line.
On the chart and in the psychology, it was the Maginot Line.
If it broke, everything reset to zero.
This stock used to sideways-trade in the 1,000-won range.
People would start imagining it going right back there.
And in the stock market, when enough people share the same imagination, it becomes reality.
He had to hold it. No matter what.
02120−10−697482
Balance: 0 won
Fuuuuuck…
Not a single damn won left.
He'd already thrown every last bit into buying the stock.
Capital shortage.
Having once moved serious money, he knew exactly how suffocating this felt.
If he'd bought alongside that just now…
…he could have shaken the psychology of all the ants still sitting on the sidelines.
If I just had fifty million won. Just fifty.
For the floodgates to open and money to pour through, someone had to crack the dam first.
Cracking that dam took capital.
He had none.
Benched out in the outfield, all he could do was watch the price war helplessly.
Ding-dong~♪
The doorbell rang.
A delivery—or maybe Hye-ri.
I'm busy as hell right now.
Normally he would have welcomed it.
But the situation was complicated.
He'd recommended it to Hye-ri too.
Told her to get into Wizen Energy.
Rationally, she should sell right now.
But if she sold now, the price might collapse—that was the problem.
Just tell her to sell, and cut my own losses too?
Sometimes you had to compromise with reality.
With every thought spinning through his head, he opened the front door—
and outside stood Sora.
"Senior!"
"…You?"
Her face was written all over with complaints; she clearly had something to say.
Why does this girl always have so many questions?
He could barely keep his own body upright right now.
Facing one situation after another, the strength drained out of him.
"You must have it really rough too."
"Excuse me?"
"Carrying those around all the time… looks exhausting."
"Have you lost your mind?"
He was getting sentimental.
Even the sorrow of that chest—which usually only registered as lewd—made sense to him in this moment.
Everything comes empty-handed and leaves empty-handed…
Why had he clung so hard to money and lust?
When you hit a situation you truly couldn't control, a person went desireless.
Non-possession.
He was just starting to understand why Monk Beopjeong had given away tens of billions in royalties when—
"Hey! You got eight million won?"
"Huh?? What are you talking about all of a sudden."
"Do you or don't you!!"
Well… I mean, I do, but…
He grabbed Sora by the shoulders and shook her.
No time to even appreciate the way her chest bounced along.
He was fifty million short.
He'd already bet everything he could.
So he'd just bet someone else's.
"I'm borrowing your life for a second."
"Again?"
Just for a little while.
The operation.
The Force moved the price however it wanted.
The ants who took the bait were supposed to cry blood—
No, fuck, how does this even make sense!
Even those Forces couldn't move the world itself.
Kim Min-gu simply could not believe the sudden news flash.
A policy the government had only been reviewing.
Now a concrete plan had dropped saying they were actually going to do it.
Are you fucking insane, why dump fifty trillion into this!!
He'd been certain they wouldn't.
Rationally, scientifically, it was obvious.
To pull it off you'd have to carpet an entire province—Gyeonggi or Chungcheong—in solar panels.
This country doesn't exactly have land coming out of its ass.
Back during the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, Kim Min-gu had traded the related stocks and knew the dirty details of solar cold.
The technology wasn't there.
Before that, it was simply impossible in Korea.
The deep knowledge he'd prided himself on had become the noose around his neck.
What the fuck is this now?
Another flash right on top of the last.
No more coal plants would be built in Korea, and ten existing ones would be shut down.
After nuclear, coal was the next biggest power source in the country.
If they strangled coal right after nuclear—
"Unless they're planning to jack electricity prices two or three times over…"
It felt like getting cracked over the skull with a hammer.
Like having common sense itself denied.
Half out of his mind, Min-gu's eyes caught yet another flash.
Even Min-gu, who'd been clinging to his mental state by his fingernails, had to let go.
It's over.
Pandora.
A disaster movie about a nuclear plant explosion.
The president watching it carried a lot of meaning.
It had symbolism.
It was a firm declaration of will to push eco-friendly policy.
And now the ants' psychology would—
—come in with absolute conviction.
And not some tiny ant, either. A Big Hand.
…
A hundred million won swept through at market price.
Another fifty million followed, and the sell wall completely collapsed.
The ants who'd been watching for cues scrambled after it in chase buys.
A sharp price surge took hold.
You fucking piece of—#^#@#$@!
He'd dumped every share he held.
He'd even borrowed more just to push the price down.
Short selling.
After playing with Wizen Energy for so long, he'd been confident.
Now he was the one getting played.
Short selling was a double-edged sword.
If the price didn't fall—
Hand over the shares. You gonna hand them over or not?
—you had no choice but to buy them back at a premium.
But people willing to sell a stock that was rocketing—
—didn't exist.
What sat on the order book was scraps.
And even those got snapped up in the blink of an eye.
Fuck, if this thing hits the daily limit…
Even a Force moving tens of billions had to shake with terror the moment they got stuck.
After agonizing over it again and again, Kim Min-gu made the call.
Short Squeeze.
Buying the stock back fast, eating the loss, just to stop the bleeding from getting worse.
The result.
A stock that had been spiked down to −20% reversed all the way past green into +17%.
No—he knew it would climb further.
Son of a bitch.
Getting out at this level was already lucky.
It might not just reclaim the previous high—it could blow right past it.
He'd caught his breath, at least.
But escaping the immediate crisis didn't make the bone-deep pain of a bad call any softer.
Every won he'd made running the operation, he'd spit right back out.
This month he'd be lucky to take home base pay, never mind a bonus.
Which bastards were those? The ones who swept it at market.
Not a judgment ordinary ants could make.
All Min-gu, already thoroughly screwed, could do was spit curses.
Risk and return.
They had to be proportional—that was the law of the stock world.
"Whew…"
"See? It's going up. Holy fucking green candle sex launch lmao!"
The flow of the price had flipped.
The limp buying pressure reversed in an instant.
All thanks to Sora.
She'd helped, she'd made money—and for some reason she was still clutching her chest and catching her breath.
"We're done, right? Then I'm selling now."
"What? Why? Feels like it hits the limit at least through tomorrow."
Was it because they were too big?
Maybe just too heavy to keep carrying around.
27,520,211 won
+19,129,697 won (+227.99%)
Margin and credit.
The last-train ant's ultimate technique: risk high enough that the return was monstrous.
"You just made twenty million and you're making that face?"
"It wasn't my skill that earned it, so I don't think it means much."
"Hmm."
"What."
"Good mindset."
Which was exactly why it was so easy to get tempted.
People used leverage to claw back losses.
Nine out of ten ants who go completely broke do it that way.
That danger.
If she understood it well enough to stay in control even after making money, it made him wonder why he'd lent it to her in the first place.
"Because you looked desperate, Senior."
"Wanna co-sign my loans too?"
"I did it because I figured I'd treat it like debt!"
She snapped, flaring up.
Doing something that thoughtful and then getting mad about it only made her look cuter.
Maybe it was just his mood, but she seemed different from usual.
Her cheeks were flushed a soft red—almost sultry.
"You catching a cold?"
"No."
"You turned on?"
"I am not! It's just… my chest is pounding."
Looking closer, she was flushed all over.
In heat?
That wasn't it.
"You might do this kind of thing all the time, Senior, but it's my first, okay?"
"What about you isn't a first."
"I'm talking about the rocket stock!"
Investing.
Real money moved.
The weight of what was on the line couldn't compare to a game.
And she'd used leverage on top of it.
Lucky she won—if she'd lost, she might have genuinely ended up working off the debt in a room salon.
You have to experience this kind of thing.
Hardship of a moderate degree only ever gave moderate experience.
Sooner or later you had to do it all.
She'd just learned it a little early.
For Sora right now, it must have felt like she couldn't tell dream from reality.
"I really don't know whether I should be angry or what."
"Why?"
"Well… I did make money."
She glanced at her phone, and the corner of her mouth ticked up just a little.
Probably checked her MTS account.
What investor ever feels bad looking at green?
She tried hard to manage her expression and failed completely.
Turning her head so she wouldn't look at him was the best she managed.
Then their eyes met and the laughter spilled out.
Apparently even she found the situation funny.
"What do I do?"
"About what."
"Can I spend this money?"
"It's your money. Of course you spend it."
"I've never touched this much money before."
A lot of things were firsts.
But for a brand-new twenty-year-old college freshman, it was also a heavy profit—that was true.
Making money mattered; spending it mattered just as much.
Pile it up with no purpose and you just turned into a Japanese old man.
"What is that? Why the sunglasses?"
"Let's go."
"Where?"
"You made money. Time to enjoy some luxury."
Time to flex.