Risk
The place Minjae and Minju took me was a high-end wine bar in Gangnam. I had never touched wine in my life, so from the moment we stepped up to the entrance, everything felt new.
"Say hello. This is the owner — and the hyung I told you I'd introduce you to. Hyung, this is Dalya."
"Well now, good to meet you. I've heard a lot. Minju came along too, I see."
The owner was a bear of a man, and he had come all the way out to the door to wait for us. I nodded to myself.
"Approved."
"Hm?"
"Ah — nothing. Just zoning out."
His rough-hewn face had dragged the thought out of me before I could stop it. Fortunately Minjae stepped in, and we slid past the moment without any damage.
"Let's not stand around in the doorway. You've got a room, right?"
"Of course. Come on in."
The owner led us inside himself. I took in the unfamiliar interior and turned to Minju.
"Have you been here before, Noona?"
"Yeah, once or twice, when I was meeting Oppa's people. The wine list here's pretty solid."
"Oh?"
I had no idea what "solid" was supposed to mean, but the thought of trying something new put me in a good mood all the same.
We were shown into a hidden room — a private space that looked like it had been lifted straight out of a movie. "Sit over here," the owner said. It wasn't planned, but Minjae and the owner ended up on one side, with Minju and me across from them. Given the age gap, there wasn't much to be done about it.
The owner, for his part, seemed intensely interested in me. His eyes never left my face, and sure enough, the instant I sat down he put a question to me.
"Dalya-nim, do you like wine?"
"Ah, this is awkward — just drop the formalities. I'm Kim Dojun."
"You sure that's all right? Haha. I'm Yoo Gangmo."
"Yes. I'll call you Uncle."
Calling him hyung would have been a stretch given how far apart we were in age, so Uncle it was. Even giving him the benefit of the doubt, he had to be late thirties — forty, being generous. Around my father's age.
"Dojun, you drink much wine?"
"I've never tried it, so I wouldn't know."
"That so? Well, you're twenty this year — that tracks. Hold on. I'll bring something decent."
For a man built like a bear, Yoo Gangmo had surprisingly particular tastes. The moment the conversation turned to wine, his eyes went deadly serious. A short while later he came back carrying a bottle of white.
"Domaine Leflaive Puligny-Montrachet Premier Cru Clavoillon, 2019 vintage. Happens I've got a good one on hand."
I could barely parse what he was saying, but the moment the food was set out and the wine hit the glass, I understood. This was nothing like anything I had ever drunk.
"How's the nose?"
"...It's nutty. Wait — how is that even possible?"
The instant I put my nose to the glass, a rich, toasty aroma bloomed that soju could never have produced. While we had been waiting I had glanced at the wine list and seen that the bottle ran well over seven hundred dollars. I couldn't shake the thought: Yeah. You get what you pay for.
"Shall we have a glass, then?"
And so the evening began, carried along on very good wine. I drank and talked with everyone in turn, and in a short span of time I picked up a few things.
The first was that Yoo Gangmo belonged to the same coin circle as Minjae. The way he kept casually working the group into conversation made his intentions plain enough. It was neither good nor bad news for me, so I let it wash past.
The second was about Minju — and this one actually startled me. My voice jumped the moment I heard it.
"Noona, you're at Seongun for economics?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"...Because I want to go there too."
She was Jieun's upperclassman. I knew, on instinct, that this was an opportunity. Minju was, at a glance, the insider's insider — which meant she would know the rumors and the weather inside that department better than anyone.
If I used Minju as an informant...
I could find out exactly which bastard had his eye on Jieun, and just how much of a dirtbag he was — the kind of departmental dirt no outsider would ever hear. I made up my mind to get close to her.
"What's your number, Noona?"
"What? You're seriously applying to our school?"
"Of course. I'm interested in Seongun — and in the economics department specifically."
The interest was not, strictly speaking, academic. But there was no way Minju could have known that.
I was in the middle of making contact with my future informant when Yoo Gangmo made an unexpected proposal.
"How about we play a game?"
"A game?"
I had not expected a man in his forties to suggest a drinking game. Honestly, it was so dreary I didn't want any part of it. What, does he want us to start bouncing in our seats? Still, for all that it made me uncomfortable, there was something almost admirable about a man his age trying to stay young. I couldn't quite bring myself to refuse.
"Sure. What did you have in mind? Baskin-Robbins?"
After a moment's thought I offered up the old counting game — harmless enough, even for the grown-ups. Apparently that was not the game he had in mind, because Minju, sitting beside me, burst out laughing.
"Puhahaha — Dojun, what are you even saying?"
"Huh?"
I looked back at Yoo Gangmo, lost. He was wearing a dry little smile.
"Baskin-Robbins is ice cream, isn't it? I wasn't talking about that. I meant coins."
"Coins?"
Unless he was about to suggest we all go to a karaoke room, there was only one thing that could mean.
"It's a little embarrassing to say this in front of you, Dojun, but Minjae here and I both trade a bit."
"And?"
"Starting now, we each put money on exactly one coin. No peeking in the middle — we leave it covered and flip it in an hour. Whoever posts the biggest return gets a bottle of wine from me."
"Oh. Is that all."
Now that I understood what he was after, I gave an awkward laugh and ran back over the rules. One hour. No adjusting mid-course.
"What if you come in first, Uncle?"
"Then I save myself the cost of a gift."
It was an interesting proposition. It didn't feel improvised, either — more like a pastime their circle played all the time.
"How much are we seeding?"
"If it's too small it won't have any bite. How about we keep it light — seventy-five grand?"
Seventy-five thousand dollars was not, by any ordinary measure, a light sum. The people drinking seven-hundred-dollar bottles of wine saw it differently. More to the point, you needed real risk on the table if you wanted a real read on someone's skill. A stake that was a little too heavy beat one that was a little too light.
I agreed, more or less, and nodded.
"Sounds good. This should be fun."
I had never played a game like this, but I had no shortage of confidence. Losing did not feel like a possibility. I glanced at Minju beside me.
"You playing too, Noona?"
"I'm a student. Where would I get that kind of money?"
She spread both hands to show she was sitting this one out — and then scooted in close against my side. A dense wash of perfume, the kind you only ever catch off a woman, settled over me. It was distracting. I did my best to ignore it.
"What's the plan?"
"Hmm. Not sure. What should I go with?"
I opened the coin app and scrolled the list, stealing a glance at her. The way she was staring straight through me was more than a little pressure.
"Got anything you'd recommend?"
"...Bradman, or maybe Pazi Coin?"
"Not bad."
I pulled up the two she had named. Both had healthy volume and a decent market cap — not a terrible pair of choices for a set-it-and-forget-it hour like this one.
Still. Not quite.
I wasn't satisfied. Minju's picks weren't bad. They also weren't good. I preferred something with more risk on it.
Biggest return in one hour.
You needed volume, and the smaller the market cap, the better — with the caveat that the second condition came with real danger. Small meant volatile.
There's no such thing as return without risk.
And the reason I never hesitated to take the shot was simple: I had never cared much about risk. I had hardly ever lost. Fear, after all, is something you only feel after you've been hit.
"What if I pick one of Floran or Medici?"
"Aren't those total shitcoins? I wouldn't touch either."
"I don't think they'll drop, though."
She wasn't wrong — both were junk coins. But they were trading below what I thought they were worth, and over a longer horizon I figured they had about ten percent of upside in them.
The problem is that nobody knows what either of them will do in the next hour.
For all I knew, the move I was counting on might land a week from now, or a month. From here on, it was gut.
"...I'll go with Flo."
I put seventy-five thousand on Flo and laid my phone face-down on the table. Minjae and Gangmo finished their trades and did the same. I checked the watch I had been given.
"We can flip them right at midnight."
I had spent so long studying that I had only been spectating the markets, and the old taut, electric tension felt good. The constraints on tonight's round made it even better. What we were doing wasn't really investing. It was closer to gambling.
"So what did everyone buy?"
We killed the wait with a short debate over each other's picks. Gangmo and Minjae had gone for coins in the same neighborhood as Minju's recommendations. Mine was a pure shitcoin. There was no shortage of questions to go around. With that many opinions in the room, disagreement came naturally, and the table heated up fast.
I listened to them talk, and when we had about ten minutes left I put a private worry on the table.
"How do you all handle risk management, anyway?"
The strangest thing about me was that my biggest problem, ironically, was risk.
I have a particular talent. I call it a talent, but it is really closer to luck, or instinct. Both of those matter enormously in this game. You can study charts until your eyes bleed and you still cannot predict the future with any precision. An instinct other people don't have, and the nerve to act on it — if you go by results alone, that counts as skill in this world.
The problem is I have no idea how long it lasts.
I think about it more often than I would like: the possibility that this uncanny, almost supernatural instinct will one day drag me straight to hell. It is only reasonable. Luck has a way of circling back around and settling its accounts. There is no reason I would be the exception.
And when that day comes, I will have to choose — start managing the risk, or walk away from the table before I lose everything. Which way I will go, when the time comes, is a question that worries me more than I care to admit.
"So you actually worry about that kind of thing?"
"Of course I do. What do you take me for?"
"A guy who knows that doesn't drop seventy-five grand on Flo."
Minjae found the worry a little hard to square with the trade, but he answered me seriously all the same. It went beyond knowing a lot about coins. He had the kind of empathy you only get from being a streamer at a major outfit — facing thousands of people every single day is its own profession, and it shows in how well you can talk someone through a problem.
"What else is there? It all comes down to a battle of nerves. Want to hear about what happened to me yesterday?"
I did not let a word of what Minjae and Yoo Gangmo said slip past me. It was advice I had no use for tonight. I figured there might come a day when I would.
And then the hour we had agreed on was up.