I'll Never Let You Go
A massive high-rise stood in the heart of Gangnam. Precious few people could claim ownership of a building this size in a place where every square foot was worth its weight in gold. Anyone living in South Korea knew what Gangnam real estate cost, and not many could afford to carry a price tag like that. Jeong Siyun, Guild Master of Seongwolhoe, had more than enough wealth to take the entire tower and make it Seongwolhoe's alone.
In a spacious office on one of the upper floors, Siyun sat in her chair, receiving Hyunji's report. For someone of her means, the room was relatively modest. Relatively being the operative word.
"He's not coming?"
"No. But there's still plenty of time left on the offer, so… I'm planning to talk to him a bit more."
Hyunji was the only agent under Seongwolhoe's management who was permitted to speak with Siyun one-on-one. That was a testament to how thoroughly her abilities had been proven and recognized — but it was also a courtesy, a mark of respect for someone who had stood by Siyun since the days when Seongwolhoe was still a nobody. Dropping honorifics with her was one of Siyun's own ways of showing that Hyunji was special. It meant she didn't look at her as a purely professional subordinate.
"What reason did he give?"
"At first he said it was too much of a hassle. Then we brought up S Hospital — the one we're partnered with — and he actually seemed interested, so I thought we had him. But then all of a sudden he turned around and said he didn't want to join after all…"
"Is that so? No other reason?"
"No. If I had to pick one, it seemed like he didn't want to terminate his contract with his Operator."
"…His Operator?"
Siyun had been listening, but she hadn't been looking at Hyunji's face — her eyes had been on the stack of documents on her desk. Only now did she turn her head and actually look at her.
"Yes. He said he wouldn't join right after that came up. But as you know, Master, we couldn't exactly bring in someone who hasn't even been assigned a Hunter rank and put them to work as an Operator, so…"
"…"
Operator. She means that yellow-haired girl with nothing going for her except those ridiculously huge tits?
Siyun's brow twitched.
He was refusing to join the guild over a girl like that? Seongwolhoe was a name every Hunter in South Korea coveted, and he was turning it down for the sake of one person?
"I'll continue attempting to re-recruit him. We haven't even discussed salary yet, and given how he hesitated when we mentioned the hospital, I think a little more persuasion would bring him over. Better that than sitting on our hands and watching another guild snatch him up…"
"No."
"…Excuse me?"
Hyunji stared at her, startled. Siyun could be high-handed at times, but she rarely cut people off mid-sentence.
"It's fine. I'll handle the recruitment myself."
"Ah… Yes. Understood."
Inside Seongwolhoe, at least, the Guild Master's word was absolute. Hyunji didn't press the matter. She simply took the order as given. Not doing what you were told not to do was the secret to surviving a long time in this business.
"Ah, right. Hyunji."
"Yes?"
"On your way out, tell Woohyeok to come see me."
"Hunter Cheon Woohyeok, you mean. Understood."
Siyun dropped her gaze from Hyunji again.
"Alright. You can go. You've worked hard, Hyunji."
Hyunji bowed her head deeply.
"Not at all. I apologize once more for failing to complete the assignment perfectly. I'll take my leave."
After Hyunji left the office, Siyun pulled a thick bundle of papers from her drawer. Everything they had on Hyun Jisu — personal details, background, the works. Compiled through Seongwolhoe's information network.
I'm never letting you go, Hyun Jisu. I'll make sure that girl doesn't even cross your mind…
Even if she had to torment him to do it, she would make him hers. She swore it to herself as she traced her fingers over his photograph.
One idle afternoon, as Jisu was browsing the charts on Bitstorm, Lynx showed up again and started calling the market.
Lynx is back.
Jisu pulled up the Bitstorm site on his computer and listened.
Lynx threw in a little promotion for the paid room, then got down to business.
Man, he sure loves dragging it out over nothing.
People had their complaints, but he kept giving them the right answers, so nobody in the room voiced them too loudly. Bit by bit, that was how Lynx was gathering the absolute trust of a growing, faceless crowd.
Close… what?
Same as always. Lynx showing up with coins nobody had ever heard of. Jisu pulled up the charts immediately.
They're not going up, they're not going down. I don't even know what I'm looking at.
Even so, he diligently logged the charts, the way he always did.
Things had clearly changed a lot since the early days, when Jisu had first started following Lynx's calls. Back then, even accounting for the occasional mention of a bear market, it had been a honey of a run in hindsight — everyone was making money, the paid room had fewer members, and nobody nitpicked the free-room intel. The fact that Lynx was talking like this now meant the market really was that bad.
Five times, huh.
A 5x was not something you sat out. The market had been ugly lately, which made it all the more correct to grab whatever a high-accuracy signal room was serving and eat first, ask questions later.
So then… what do I buy?
Lynx had pointed at two coins and that was it — no other information whatsoever. He'd said 5x or more, but he hadn't said a word about when to sell to maximize the take, or when to buy to catch the bottom. In practice, it wasn't much different from investing blind. The track record he'd built up so far made the intel trustworthy enough, but with two coins in play, there was a real risk that one stat would get demolished while the other shot up to an absurd degree, just like before.
That didn't mean he could go all-in on just one of them, either. If he got lucky and it pumped, fine — but thinking about what happened if it didn't, the risk was too high. The memory of getting pelted with rocks and hurting so badly he thought he'd lose his mind still made his stomach drop even now.
Splitting it fifty-fifty is the move again. No matter how I look at it, going all-in isn't it.
Spreading the risk beat going all-in and getting wrecked — that was a fact Jisu had a decent handle on by now. Of course, there was a chance both coins tanked, but that wasn't a problem Jisu needed to consider. He had to invest in coins to use his ability in the first place.
Alright. What goes where?
Faced with the two coins, Jisu sank straight into thought. The question was which stats to put into which coin. How to split the stats themselves — that part he'd already decided. Strength and Agility in one pair. Stamina and Mental Strength in the other.
If Stamina and Mental Strength dropped, he could still fight as long as Strength and Agility were intact. If Strength and Agility dropped, he could still endure as long as Stamina and Mental Strength held. He'd divided them according to those two conditions.
Well…
There were only two answers, anyway.
If I had to pick, Stamina and Mental Strength matter more.
No matter how strong you were, no matter how fast your body got, one clean hit could still kill you. And the cheaper the coin, the larger the percentage that applied to it, proportionally. Ten percent of 300 was 30 — but 30 out of 700 wasn't even ten percent.
So he put Stamina and Mental Strength into the relatively safer Midnight Rainbow, and Strength and Agility into Close Canvas.
If this one pans out, I should join the paid signal room.
Money wasn't a concern anymore, so sitting in on Lynx's paid calls as a way to study charts and the coin market seemed worth it. The important thing was not to get chained to the guy the way the fanatics in the chat had. Unlike the bagholders in that signal room — whose very concept of thinking had already tried to decentralize itself right out of their brains — Jisu had not let go of the thread of reason.
Not long after he finished investing, a text landed on his phone with almost suspiciously good timing.
"Huh?"
Jisu checked his phone, read the message, and went blank for a moment. About a minute passed before he looked at it again.
A letter of challenge?
What the fuck is this bullshit supposed to be?