Just Be a Pokémon Trainer
Silence.
The barbecue restaurant, built for fifty, fell so quiet it might as well have been empty.
Sizzle. Sizzle!
The only sound left was the pork belly cooking, fat popping and spitting in the pan.
Even as everyone else lost the ability to think straight—
"Look at the time. I paid the participation fee, so I'm heading out first."
He had to move fast.
That was the nature of being an investor. Whether buying or selling, only the ones who moved first survived. His exit timing had been perfect. All he needed was to get out of the restaurant before anyone recovered their wits.
"Wait a second!"
That airheaded bitch.
The one with the absurdly huge chest. At least her milk jugs were worth looking at.
Miss, those milk tanks of yours are quite to my liking.
When she shot up from her seat, the laws of inertia took over. They bounced right back into place — plenty of spring in them.
"Was that just now directed at me?"
"Sorry, I'm busy."
"I heard you perfectly clearly. Something about an airheaded bitch wanting to be a trader."
"..."
Her head, though, seemed a little short on bounce. She could have just let it slide, but no — she had to pick at the scab and make a whole scene.
Five seconds passed.
Only then did the others start to grasp what was happening. Eyes locked onto him and the airheaded girl.
Talking back to her senior like that?
Should he give her a taste of the tables turning? No matter that she was the top freshman, pretty-faced, with massive milk jugs — Korea was still a country of seniority.
"Wait, who's that guy?"
"Not one of us. He's older."
"I heard he's class of '12."
"Class of '12 and he still hasn't graduated?"
"..."
Under ordinary circumstances, sure. Unfortunately — or rather, inevitably — he had zero contact with anyone in the department.
Why would I hang around with airheads like these?
Hankuk University was a prestigious school, that much was true. But that was not synonymous with actual ability. Let's be honest — they just got in on their test scores. People who lived for other people's opinions were worthless.
"You're a senior from our department... right?"
"That's right, you little shit."
"Excuse me?"
"No — I mean yes, I am."
That was the mindset every investor needed. In that sense, she showed a little promise.
Why would a girl who wants to work at a securities firm come here?
And after all that careful thought, she'd chosen economics? From an industry insider's perspective, it was absurd enough to leave you speechless.
"Senior or not, I think you've crossed a line."
"Maybe I have."
"Maybe you have...?"
Light makeup. Even so, her features were sharp and striking — a genuine beauty. And that flat, unremarkable outfit was almost a crime against a body that developed.
"I honestly don't understand. If I'm lacking, explain exactly where and how."
"I have to explain that too?"
"Yes. Or apologize."
She really did just want to study hard, exactly as she'd been insisting. Which made it all the more pitiful.
I'm getting the urge to give her career counseling.
She'd make stable high income as a camgirl. He couldn't understand why she'd aim for trading, which was basically gambling.
"Sorry. I accidentally let my true feelings slip out."
"Alright, then apologize—"
"You're not supposed to call an airhead an airhead. But listening to you, it was such pure airheaded nonsense I couldn't hold it in. You'll understand."
"???"
His mouth was a bit foul, that was true. People in this industry all had massive egos and believed they were always right. But they didn't invent things that weren't true. He'd only said it because what he heard was so absurd he couldn't help himself.
Just understand and move on.
This was annoying. Why was he sitting here explaining anything?
"You're partly at fault too. Mutual negligence. Let's just call it even and move on."
"What kind of psycho logic is that?"
"What? Come on, you know. Coming to the economics department to get into a securities firm is pure airheaded nonsense."
"...What?"
Who even used an economics degree? This wasn't some 1988 securities firm making money on coin flips. Everything he'd said was based on common sense—
"What's wrong with a securities firm?"
"Don't traders make a lot of money...?"
"Because it's brutal! The competition there is insane."
"I don't think that's what that senior meant, though?"
Some people's common sense was different. The wallpaper extras in the back. Listening to their muttering in silence made his head throb.
...Wait a second.
Common sense.
common sense(noun)
Knowledge that people ordinarily know or ought to know. A concept that members of a society come to accept as basic cultivation through repeated culture and shared knowledge.
So it could differ. The common sense of someone who'd spent decades grinding on Wall Street versus the common sense of economics freshmen with zero practical experience.
"Aren't you being way too harsh?"
"Calm down a little."
"Do I look like I can calm down right now?"
"Why are you getting angry? Why is a person this angry?"
Her body temperature must be nice and warm. This wasn't the time for random thoughts like that. The situation might be more complicated than he thought.
The surrounding gazes. The way they stabbed a little sharply wasn't his imagination. They stared at him like he'd committed high treason.
This is why I hate university.
That unique brand of collectivism. The type he despised most — people who only thought the same thoughts as everyone else. If you wanted to work in securities, you had to change that. It was a place where you couldn't survive without somehow thinking differently from the crowd.
"So if I explain and you accept it, you'll leave me alone?"
"Leave you alone? I'm not some piece of gum stuck to your shoe."
"You're not gum, I'll give you that."
"?"
No sense of self. If others said so, she'd just nod along. Without a doubt, she'd swallowed the stories of graduates whole.
She thinks an economics department means she'll do economics-related work at face value.
Vague thoughts of maybe working in finance? That generation of easy-life honey-suckers had ended with the ones above them. The Fourth Industrial Revolution would grind them up immediately. Why hire a human when machines counted better and pulled statistics better?
The securities industry was the same. The era when computer programs started replacing trading personnel was coming.
"It's no longer an era that needs traders. By the time you graduate, they won't even be hiring people."
"You expect me to believe that baseless nonsense?"
"And if you don't believe it, then what?"
"Do you think traders are a joke? How is a computer supposed to replace a trader's work?"
In RPG terms, a macro. Just run the program and it makes money on its own.
Too idealistic.
Does that even work? Research had been going on for quite a while. If it succeeded, labor costs could be slashed dramatically. Each trader took home anywhere from hundreds of millions to the trillions in annual compensation. It was a structure of earning what you made — enormous.
"Right, right!"
"I heard it doesn't work either."
"If that worked it'd be a scam... automatic money printing."
The merits overflowed. Research had been underway since the early 2000s. But the results over more than a decade were—
That it absolutely doesn't work.
The stock market wasn't simply buying undervalued stocks and selling them. It wasn't simple enough for a computer to handle. Human psychology collided there. Greed and desire. Computers couldn't understand those filthy emotions.
"My father worked on Wall Street and currently serves as an executive director at a Yeouido securities firm. He's far more—"
"He went from Wall Street to Yeouido?"
"Yes."
"You must mean he ran away."
"...What?"
That was why computers couldn't replace humans. Paradoxically, that was exactly why demand exploded.
Researching humans. Worth pouring money into, isn't it?
The new hires on Wall Street. Mostly math majors or people in brain science. If human psychology was the problem, then research the psychology itself — that of top-tier traders.
"Are you insulting my father right now?"
"I simply stated a fact?"
"What right do you even have to—"
"I'm a hundred times, a thousand times better than a washed-up guy like that."
"!!"
Computers imitated humans. Traders had to provide a better learning environment. In other words, future traders would compete not with humans but with computers.
If you'd already been weeded out of mere human-versus-human competition—
You pack your bags on your own and go back to your own country.
The bar rose by the day. The mediocre ones fled — from Wall Street, the den of monsters.
"Apologize."
"Apple."
"Do I look like I'm joking?"
"I'm not joking either."
Even the deeply entrenched existing personnel couldn't hold on. Of new hires, 999 out of 1,000 got ground up.
Pretty face, though. Really a shame.
If they'd met on PaprikaTV, it could have been a good connection. He hoped she'd reconsider her career path even now.
"You shouldn't run either — giving up early is also a valid method."
"He didn't run away, and who even are you to—"
"There are other jobs besides securities trader. You know... health trainer, or Pokémon trainer, something like that."
She was tall with a stacked body. Looking into modeling or camgirl work would be an easier, simpler way to make money.
"Pfft!"
"Pokémon trainer, he said."
"She is still a freshman and was being a bit bold."
"Ah, I shouldn't laugh."
That was his career counseling, basically. Some of the wallpaper extras seemed to agree with his thinking.
Trainer, was it?
Her face flushed bright red. Her body trembled, and those milk jugs shook along with it. His eye hadn't been wrong.
"Anyway, work hard as a Pokémon trainer."
"I'm going to be a securities trader."
"Sure. You can't play in Pallet Town forever like Ash."
The atmosphere had turned chaotic. Perfect for slipping out.
He gave the Pokémon trainer a light tap on the shoulder and slipped out of the restaurant.
If this had been stocks, it would have been the perfect dump-and-exit trade. But in reality, in human relationships, there could be some aftershocks.
It's hard for a person to live truthfully, I tell you.
He might have slightly wrecked his return to school after twenty years.