The University Festival
Nine in the morning.
At the Hankuk University Stock Club, the same ritual played out every single day.
"God."
"God!"
They gathered in the center of the club room. Members sat in a circle, heads bowed in prayer.
Clap.
The man in the middle pressed his clasped hands together and recited the prayer with desperate sincerity.
"God, please grant us permission to be righteous thieves again today."
That was how it looked, at least. But these people were about as far from devout Christians as you could get.
"GAZUA!! Eat and run!"
"GAZUUUAAA~~!!"
It was about stocks, after all. The man's shout set the club room roaring to life.
Ugh.
Faith had nothing to do with any of this. Sora knew exactly what kind of prayer this was.
Gambling. No — day trading.
The notifications blaring from every corner of the club room said everything.
They're treating stocks like a casino.
Nobody here was investing based on a company's actual value. They hunted stocks with wild price swings and chased the spread. Broadly speaking, there were two types: moonshots and bottom-fishers. The latter was unofficial slang she'd only picked up recently from stock communities — buying something that had already crashed hard, hoping to catch it at the floor.
"Ah, fuck!"
"What?"
"I'm bagholding…"
"Idiot. You should've waited for it to drop more, haha."
Of course it came with massive risk. It was the financial equivalent of catching a falling knife barehanded.
"Shit!"
"You got bagged too, huh."
"No, how the hell does it keep falling this far…"
If you got lucky and it stopped? Congratulations — you'd bought low. But there was always the chance it would keep plunging past whatever "bottom" you'd imagined.
Just like that famous line from the movie Operation. And in reality, beneath the basement you had bedrock, then the mantle, then the inner core.
Sora swallowed hard.
A falling stock always fell for a reason. Someone had decided it wasn't worth holding and sold. Sometimes that reason never even made it to the public market — institutions with faster information simply dumped their positions onto retail investors.
Haa… seriously.
Once Sora understood the ecosystem of the Korean stock market, she'd grown far more cautious. A cheap stock looked like it would go cheaper. An expensive one looked like a short candidate.
Once you recognized the danger, day-trading stocks you barely understood looked like pure insanity.
"Hey, what are you doing by yourself?!"
"I'm watching the order book."
"Why the hell are you looking at the order book?! Just buy something already. Money's free to copy-paste!"
"Yeah, yeah~."
"If you'd bought SillaJen just now, you'd already be up five percent!"
Whether he knew what she was thinking or not — she was pretty sure he did.
He'd egg me into buying, then mock me the second I got bagged.
He was doing it on purpose, winding her up. Most of what Chan-wook said meant nothing at all. The sharp stuff only came out when he felt like being sharp. The rest of the time, he was completely useless.
"You should get over here and do the Ruru-pang already!"
"What the hell is a Ruru-pang."
"Ruru-pang! Ruru-pi! Ruru~ yap! You've never even seen Angel Girl Netty?"
"What is that, you weeb."
She flipped him off. Listening to this guy all day would give anyone a mental illness.
Or brainwash them.
The club members took him at his word, though — and for good reason. Day trading paid them decently enough. Realistic money. A hundred bucks, two hundred bucks — a full shift's wages earned in thirty minutes. Hard not to get hooked.
"What do I do, I'm stuck…"
"It's not a loss until you sell!"
The members who'd tried to copy him. Some had made money. The overwhelming majority were in the situation above. Day trading was undeniably seductive — the idea that you could pocket a lump sum in less than a day. The matching risk always came with it. It was gambling in everything but name.
"I'll just wait for the bounce tomorrow and get out."
"Didn't you say that last time? You're still bagholding that one, aren't you?"
"Shut up."
Of course, Sora knew the world was wide, and plenty of people had all kinds of talents. There were real experts out there who made money day trading on pure instinct alone.
Maybe they read something in the charts and the order book…
That was why she was staring a hole through the order book herself, even though she had no intention of buying anything. If other people could do it, couldn't she?
Sora had been studying practical stock investing from every angle she could find. And the more she studied, the more of one thing she accumulated.
Haa…
Doubt. Ignorance. Every new piece of knowledge made everything she thought she already knew look different, and that process just uncovered more things she didn't know. Information piled up faster than she could process it — pure overload. Translating theoretical knowledge into real-world application wasn't one or two obstacles. It was a wall.
"Sora, you're not buying anything?"
"I said I'm not!"
"Oh. My bad."
"Sorry."
"Have you been getting kinda snippy lately, Sora?"
"…"
It was Hye-ri. For reasons Sora still couldn't fully parse, Hye-ri had joined the stock club — and not just joined. She was running the place as president.
"It's because of that guy…"
"Chan-wook?"
"He keeps pissing me off. Hasn't he done anything to you, Hye-ri?"
"Hmm… if he has, maybe he has."
"?"
Hye-ri's eyes slid away, and Sora couldn't begin to read what was going on behind them. But one thing was clear.
"He has good sides too!"
"He does?"
"That Daeryong Capital pick he recommended last time went way up!"
So he just wouldn't tell her. He was freely teaching the other members all kinds of things. He'd even handed Hye-ri an outright pick. Sora had done similar things herself, so she couldn't really complain — but still.
That fucking bastard.
With her, all he did was mess around. Even when she swallowed her pride and asked him something directly, the answer was either sexual harassment or pure nonsense. So she was figuring it out on her own. And the process was harder than she'd ever imagined. Her head felt ready to explode.
For Sora, drowning in academic overload and a stock-market slump —
Thwack.
— Hye-ri held something out. A cleanly printed pamphlet in bright colors.
"Oh, this is…"
"The festival's coming up! Studying's great and all, but you've gotta come up for air sometimes, hehe."
The university festival. Come to think of it, she had heard something about that. Hye-ri smiled brightly as she talked, saying there would definitely be all kinds of fun things going on during the festival.
Have I been walking around looking that miserable?
Hye-ri was clearly looking out for her. That was exactly the kind of person she was. Sora was still a student. This was a time for learning slowly, not for panicking.
"Maybe I should."
"Yeah, yeah!"
"Absolutely not!!!"
There was always someone around to manufacture urgency. The sudden bellow was all too familiar.
"Who has time for a festival. We've got gambling to do."
"Come on, oppa, you should join in too."
"Gambling's more fun than a festival…"
Chan-wook. His hands were trembling — the unmistakable tremor of a gambling addict.
Ugh.
And she'd been trying to learn from this guy. She had no idea what went on in that head of his.
"Any chance they've got slot machines at the festival? Baccarat works too."
"What kind of university festival has that?!"
"Crazy bastard."
In that man's head, stocks and gambling might genuinely be the same thing. He was the kind of person you could never fully figure out.
I want to smack him upside the head.
Sometimes he seemed like a genuine expert. Other times he was just a freeloading bum. She wanted to crack open his skull and look inside.
"Actually, there is something, sunbae."
"See? He says there is!"
"One of the Hotel Management department clubs is a casino club. Kangwon Land, Paradise — most hotels have casinos these days, right? I've got a friend in that department, so I've heard about it."
Why does that exist?
It was always her head that started hurting. She'd reached the point of questioning her own common sense. One of the members was spreading completely useless information. Fortunately, it went nowhere.
"Then we should run a casino too!"
"That's not happening."
"We're the stock club."
"What's the difference between stocks and gambling?!"
Sora looked down at the pamphlet Hye-ri had handed out. Each club would be setting up a booth.
We'll have to do one too, I guess.
The way the casino club would run a casino. But the stock club…
"Clubs without a special skill usually just run a food stall."
"A food stall? Why the hell would we do that!"
"If sales are good, they give you a bigger activity budget…"
"Lead with that next time."
There wasn't much else they could do. It wasn't like they could start a fund and sell shares.
A food stall, huh…
About as ordinary as it got. But she wanted to try something ordinary. It would make a good memory — putting something together with the club members.
"Then let's do it like a hostess bar. There's that girl with the insane rack over there."
"Like she'd go for that."
Middle finger. Sora wanted ordinary. She wanted something to soothe the exhaustion of her recent daily life.
Even that guy can't cause trouble during the festival, right?
He couldn't do his specialty — stocks — after all. Just thinking that made her enthusiasm for the festival surge.
"No, look — at a room salon, a five-dollar drink goes for thirty. You can absolutely murder the cost ratio…"
"Go suck your own dick."
"Sora."
"Sorry. I think I lost my mind for a second."
She felt like she might actually enjoy herself. Just watching that bastard keep his mouth shut for a while would be deeply satisfying.
Have I been infected by him too…?
The vulgar words had slipped out without her noticing. During the festival, she'd reset her body and mind completely. Her dad had always said mental state was everything in stocks. Nothing worked when your head was a mess.
"So if sales are good, we get a solid activity budget?"
"I'm suddenly very motivated."
"Is there any chance the club could reimburse people who've blown their seed money?"
"Please!"
The members were pretty fired up. Only that one guy sat in the corner, sulking.
1. Makgeolli & Pajeon
2. Tteokbokki and other street snacks
3. Bungeoppang, crepes, and other desserts
4. Suggest something!!!
They debated what food to sell. It wasn't just first-years in the room, so the discussion had some weight to it.
"Makgeolli and pajeon is the classic move, but…"
"Doesn't it feel too common?"
"At least five clubs do that every single year."
Reasonably practical advice started coming out. It was a new club, but it had some older members too.
"More importantly, ETSD is selling that…"
"Yeah, true."
"Aren't they our department club?"
"Yeah. Same major, so their booth will be right next to ours. Sell the same thing and the outcome's obvious."
ETSD. Sora knew them — she'd been invited to join once. She hadn't gone, because she hadn't liked what the club actually did.
I'd buy the blue-chip stock too. Nobody wants the penny stock that can't move product.
The stock club had only just been founded. Zero name recognition. Against that, a major established club had connections everywhere and a much longer track record at university festivals.
"Then how about we try cube steak?"
"Steak? The cost of goods seems high."
"No, no, it's better than you'd think. I'm a huge fan of Baek Jong-won's Food Truck!"
Avoiding a direct collision was the best play. The senior members' advice made sense — but still.