The Professor Gets Cocky
Nine in the morning.
To an investor, a time more precious than anything else in the world.
And they want me at school when the casino opens!
He had to go to class. A student's duty. He had plenty of complaints about that damned spoon-fed education system.
This was the Economics Department, wasn't it? Then from freshman year they ought to be spinning the casino floor at full speed and teaching kids that life was a live trade. The casino—no, the KOSPI—is open, and they want me sitting in a classroom?
And of course the goddamn major courses were always scheduled in the morning. If this was Economics, they should respect gambling hours and put lectures in the afternoon. Korea's education system was a write-off. Economic education needed to start young—raise national talent with a touch of the gambling prodigy about them.
Rattle—!
He arrived while still lost in thought. The back door of the lecture hall was built so that no matter how carefully you opened it, it still made a sound.
"When the price rises, the quantity demanded falls. We call this the law of demand…"
Fortunately, the professor was locked into his lecture. All he had to do was sit down as if he'd just come back from the bathroom.
"Could you sit somewhere else?"
A voice that sounded vaguely familiar. Cold air rolled off her in waves; she did not look happy.
And what am I supposed to do about that?
He'd already scanned the room on the way in. Anywhere else put him in the painfully conspicuous seats right in front of the professor. He ignored her and sat down.
A friend's seat? Holding a seat for someone was only acceptable up through MapleStory.
"I said don't sit there!"
"Who are you supposed to be?"
"Um… you don't remember me?"
In MapleStory, hunting on someone else's map got you a guild kill order and a full-blown riot. That wasn't what this was about.
I don't remember hitting a room salon yet.
She was pretty. And she was large. Even under a thick sweater, her presence refused to be hidden.
"Ah. The Pokémon trainer."
"I am not!"
Her reaction was magnificent, as if he'd hit a berserk button. But even small sounds carried in a lecture hall.
"Quiet back there!"
The professor barked at them, pointing a piece of chalk squarely at their location.
"This is your fault again…"
"You've got a lot of anger in you. A lot."
"You think I was born not to get angry?"
The girl who'd announced her career aspirations at the freshman welcome party. Apparently she held a serious grudge.
"Damn. Even Pallet Town isn't easy."
All he'd done was cheer on her dream of becoming a Pokémon trainer. He hadn't expected an enmity to form over it.
"If the price of paper goes up, demand for complementary goods like printers might fall, wouldn't you say…"
The professor's lecture. It didn't even enter his ears. There was nothing worth hearing in the first place.
In every field, the people who teach are the ones who washed out of the real world.
They didn't even measure up to people who'd simply run away. Living corpses with nothing but dead knowledge stuffed into their skulls.
"You there!"
"…"
"You! Wake up the person next to you."
"Should I… do it?"
Lukewarm, watered-down talk, looping like a broken radio. If this were his company, he'd have fired the man on the spot.
Ah. She smells good.
Something warm and soft pressed against him. His cheek tickled—hair brushing past, maybe.
"Hey."
"Huh?"
"Wake up. Now."
A shallow sigh. And a gaze he could somehow feel.
It's been a really long time.
Nodding off in class used to feel roughly like this. A situation he both missed and didn't miss at all.
"I'm sorry."
"There's nothing to be sorry for—"
"Your lecture was so stale I fell asleep, Professor. If it had been fresh, I wouldn't have."
He'd always wanted to say something like that. If you don't like it, make your lectures interesting.
This country cares way too much about whether other people are sleeping or not.
A society obsessed with other people's business. Even from a macro perspective, it was bad education. Responsibility. If you sleep through a lecture, the one whose life goes to hell is you—and you ought to figure that out yourself.
"…Fall asleep one more time and I'll mark you absent. Understood?"
"Yes~."
He didn't care if his life went to hell. Get kicked out of Hankuk University and Wall Street would take him.
"I can't believe he's letting that slide."
"He's actually letting it slide."
"He must be an actual psycho. A psycho."
He had no idea why everyone was so invested in other people's business. Voices tearing into him rose from every direction.
"So you were a psycho all along?"
"This is a perfectly normal reaction. Even the professor isn't saying anything."
"He was probably too stunned to speak."
"Don't talk during lecture."
"…"
Sleeping through lecture was fine. Talking was not.
Kids these days really lack common sense.
Education had gone badly wrong. That was probably why the system kept mass-producing idiots who were only smart in the head.
Kids these days… their bodies grow just fine, though.
He couldn't sleep. So he decided to take an interest in his classmates instead. He might not remember their names, but—
Faces and figures, he catalogued with absolute certainty. For all his faults, he was the affectionate type.
If not now, when else am I going to meet kids this fresh?
Pretty women. Young women. Money could get you those. But unspoiled purity was not something money could buy. In this life, he didn't want to leave any regrets.
"Why do you keep~"
"No reason."
"Seriously! I'm going to poke you too."
Damn. She's got a boyfriend.
A-Rank dropped to one. The male classmate next to her was thick as thieves with her—poking her with a pen, all lovey-dovey. They thought no one could see. Everyone could see. He wasn't the only one picking up on it. Those two had already gone past the flirting stage and into the bedroom.
I'm the only one who hasn't gotten a taste of fresh college girls!
The B-Ranks were dwindling too. Even if they paired off among themselves, they could at least leave one for the crows.
Haa~
He let out a deep sigh and drew a breath—and from somewhere, a faint, pleasant scent drifted over. No. Right next to him.
Scratch. Scratch.
She was taking notes. In this day and age, writing the professor's words into a notebook by hand—with a pencil, no less. Peak idiot behavior. But with visuals like hers, it almost looked like a painting.
"You take notes pretty hard."
"…None of your business."
"I used to study that hard once, myself."
"I doubt you ever did."
Had he? Then again, living life itself counted as studying, so it was the same thing.
Ah, she smells good.
Good women gave off pheromones. A captivating scent no perfume could manufacture. Her looks were S-Rank too—he wanted to get close.
"No laptop? Why write by hand?"
"I memorize better when I write it myself."
"Wasting brain cells memorizing that kind of useless junk."
"Use… less junk?"
She'd said she was going to be a securities trader. If she wanted to be a Pokémon trainer, fine—but if it was the former, this knowledge wouldn't help much.
It's not like you're going to become an economics PhD.
Theoretical knowledge like that. Cling to it too hard and it only got in the way of a wider view. There were no straight-A students who were good at stocks.
"All mouth, aren't you."
"I hear that a lot."
"Yes~. Please don't talk to me."
"Don't want to."
Everything in the world starts with experience first.
Armchair theory. Inject knowledge first and the preconceptions only get worse. That was probably why Korea had so few real financial talents it was pathetic.
"When consumers' income rises, the demand curve shifts upward from P1 to P2—and we call that a change in demand."
A living witness. Look at that professor bastard. If he'd ever made money in stocks, would he be flapping his mouth like that?
"What's your name?"
"I don't have a name worth telling you."
"It's written on your eraser."
"…"
"Yoon Sora? Pretty name. I really liked the actress with the same name."
There was an Aoi Sora. An immortal legend of an actress that Japan had produced. Plenty of fans in Korea too.
She was clearly born talented. Pick the right career path and the rest of her life would be a paved highway.
Yaaawn~
A yawn poured out of him. Young people in their prime, who ought to be deep in gambling, were being wasted. Truly a shame.
Yaaawn~
Yaaawn~
Yawns were contagious by nature. All around the lecture hall, people were failing to endure the professor's tedious lecture.
"Are you all sleepy?"
"Yes~!"
"Then shall we try a fun little story? I understand quite a few of you have taken an interest in stocks lately…"
A fun story by a professor's standards. Talking nonsense meant freelancing was allowed, so it wasn't all bad.
"Shall we look at how today's material applies to the actual stock market? You there—the student with his head down!"
His eyes were just sliding shut again. Once more, something warm and soft shook him awake.
Me?
He looked around. In Hankuk University's Economics Department, the only free spirit was him. He had no choice but to answer. The bald professor came in with the initiate like he'd been waiting for this.
"You remember what we covered today, yes?"
"Ah, of course I do, Professor."
"Then a simple question. If per-capita national income in the United States rises significantly, what happens going forward to the stock prices of our country's auto exporters? Please answer in connection with today's material."
Snickers rose from here and there. They clearly thought he wouldn't be able to answer.
This is nothing. Easy.
What did they take him for. He ran the simulation fast. In the industry this was routine—the answer recalculated itself in seconds.
"They tank, obviously."
"Right. The price— wait, what?"
"Shops like Jongpil Morgan short a million shares into it. Those lunatics might even pile on more."
A textbook short-selling setup. Foreign institutions with fast information would never miss it. He'd thought he was giving the textbook answer.
"Why would the price go down? Shouldn't it go up?"
"Yeah."
"Right, right! This one has to go up."
Nonsense floated in from all sides, as if his answer were wrong.
Wait—why?
He felt like he'd become the strange one. Students and professor alike stared at him with puzzled faces.
"Ahem, ahem! The stock price would rise, of course. Income has increased, so purchasing power goes up, and demand for automobiles—which are not essential consumer goods—rises as well."
And then he delivered an answer that made no sense. Students were one thing, but the professor too?
This is exactly why I can't stand this country's professors!
University professors had always been sharp only on theory. And even that theory was woefully inadequate. One-plus-one-equals-two levels of simpleminded thinking. If markets actually ran that way, who would ever lose money on stocks?
"Professor."
"So from now on, please don't sleep during lec—"
"I think you're being too complacent because you're from the Water Rocket generation, Professor. Today's markets are complex systems—they don't move that one-dimensionally."
He was angry. But he had to hold it in. Standing out for no reason never ended well. He recalled the lesson from the freshman welcome party. He'd chosen his words as politely as he could manage.
"Water Rocket?"
"What's a Water Rocket?"
…
It was a word that didn't exist yet.