A Bomb Rolls into the Trading Division
"It's worse than usual today."
Maybe it was the fine dust in the air.
Breathing felt harder than ever this morning. The commute was always like this. A mask usually kept it manageable, but on days when the air quality turned sour, the stench and grit stabbed straight into my nose and tormented me the whole way in.
"Honestly, the commute is the worst part of the job."
It wasn't that I didn't want to go to work. It was the getting there that wore me down.
But the moment I hurried through the entrance—
"……!"
Every foul odor vanished, and an intoxicatingly fragrant scent of money washed my polluted nostrils clean.
"Hoooh."
I might have looked like a strange one, but breathing in the crisp air of our company this way was something like standing on a mountain summit and drinking in the pure mountain wind. If I told anyone that the reason I loved our company was simply that I could breathe here, they'd all stare at me like I'd lost my mind.
"Suho!"
At the familiar voice behind me, the corners of my mouth were already curling up. The Senior Associate waved cheerfully and came trot-trot-trotting over.
"Perfect timing, Suho. I was just about to grab coffee at the company café. Want to come with me?"
"Sounds good."
"Then let's hurry. I'll buy you a cookie too."
Truly, our company was the best.
"Starting tomorrow, Intern Kang, you'll be reporting to the Trading Division—not the Research Center."
Cheon Doa studied Kang Suho's expression carefully. His face had gone completely stiff.
Not out of panic, it seemed. More like—
the feeling of something inevitable finally arriving.
"You'll be a full-time employee soon enough, but there are company rules to follow. Interns aren't meant to stay in one place—they rotate through several departments to build experience."
"So…… after my time in the Trading Division, I'd come back to the Research Center?"
"That depends entirely on your own initiative, doesn't it, Intern Kang?"
"I'm sorry?"
Playing innocent when she clearly knew everything. She was putting on a naive face, but there was no fooling Cheon Doa's eyes.
"You delivered strong results here in the Research Center, so next you simply show them in the Trading Division. That's what you want, isn't it?"
"……."
"Unlike our operations team, the Trading Division demands decisions in real time, one after another, without pause. It's nothing like digging through data at length, analyzing it, teasing out the fine differences, and drawing a conclusion from there. It may not suit your temperament at all."
Kang Suho said nothing. He had the look of a man who had already made up his mind.
"If it doesn't, I want you to know you can always come back to the Research Center. I couldn't care less about office politics, but…… right now I'd say the wind is at your back. The people in our office feel the same way."
Cheon Doa had no interest in whatever scheme Director Geum Gaho and Kang Suho might be cooking up together. All she remembered was the diligent young man who had shown himself to be nothing like a typical parachute hire.
People in the office had warmed to Kang Suho for reasons that went beyond his results. It was the way he'd carried himself all along that made everyone like him.
All of it could have been an act. But Cheon Doa believed it was genuine. She didn't want to believe even that could have been a performance.
"It won't be easy, but spread your wings there too, Suho. I'll be rooting for you."
Click.
I closed the Team Leader's office door behind me and stepped out.
"……."
If I had to sum up my condition in a single word—
Mental breakdown.
What was this, a bolt out of the blue? They wanted me to go to the Trading Division? Wasn't I supposed to stay in the Research Center?
I know absolutely nothing about trading.
That was hardly a place where I could sit back and browse reports at my leisure. That was where actual money got moved—by me.
Not that they'd hand an intern serious money, of course.
But what if I made some blunder there and my full-time offer got rescinded? I'd already told my family everything! And above all, I'd only just gotten close with the people in this office—now I was supposed to go work in some unfamiliar place all over again?
"Suho, what's wrong? You look pale."
The moment I saw the Senior Associate, I felt close to tears.
"Yes—! Really? No, I mean, out of nowhere like this?"
By the time I'd explained the whole story, her already large eyes had grown even wider.
"Come to think of it, that does make sense. Other companies rotate their interns through different departments too. I had no idea our company did the same."
"Neither did I……."
"Why didn't you tell the Team Leader you wanted to stay in the Research Center?"
"Well……"
Partly because the news had knocked me flat when I first heard it. But mostly because I couldn't possibly refuse that terrifying Team Leader to her face.
Think about it. I was still an intern—hardly someone with a formal appointment. I had no standing to defy a company directive. When the office says jump, you jump. Isn't that the very definition of a salaried worker?
"Fair enough. It's not like you had a choice, Suho."
"Those are the company rules, so what can I do?"
"Oh no. We've only just gotten close, and now you're leaving?"
"……."
That was the part I regretted most, too.
"But the Team Leader did say I could come back to the Research Center."
"Well, that's a relief, but—remember what I told you before? All my cohort fled the research side for the Trading Division. Guess how many came back?"
"Half?"
"Not a single one. Most of them put up poor numbers, lost their desks, and got pushed out. A few barely hung on by a thread."
I swallowed dryly. So that place really was a battlefield several times more brutal.
"Well, I'm still an intern, so maybe I'll be fine. They won't exactly trust me with money in the hundreds of millions."
"Phew. Still, I can't help worrying. Everyone gets blinded by those incentives and stops thinking about anywhere but the Trading Division—or anywhere else at all. But you will come back, won't you?"
"I'll be back without fail."
I felt like a knight riding off to war. If I returned alive, I'd confess to her…… or, well, maybe not.
"Still, it'll be a real education. The view from the trading desk and the view from research are completely different. At this rate, Suho, aren't you on your way to becoming an all-rounder?"
"An all-rounder?"
"Someone who's mastered both fields—research and trading. Doing research and trading at the same time. I hear Wall Street has a few of those all-rounders now and then. Never heard of one in Korea, though."
Someone who worked both sides of a divide—research and trade, split into separate worlds. It sounded like a story for someone far beyond me.
"What does Research have to say?"
"They're sending that intern over to the Trading Division starting tomorrow, sir."
"And which team are they putting him in? Have you at least cleared a seat for him?"
"Yes, Division Head."
The Division Head nodded with a satisfied look on his face. One thing had surprised him: that ferocious Research Center Director had handed over the intern without putting up any fight at all.
"His retirement's coming up. Maybe he just doesn't feel like fighting anymore."
If they had refused to give up the intern to the very end, he'd been ready to march straight into the president's office. Now there was no need.
"Who'd let a young talent that capable gather dust in the Research Center?"
"You're absolutely right, sir. We had to bring him to the Trading Division, no question."
They said the Research Center was a training ground for becoming a great trader. The Division Head thought there was truth in that. It was merely a stage on the way—only the cowards stayed holed up in their offices writing reports. A man with real ambition and real skill had to come out onto this battlefield and prove himself in live combat.
The global financial markets. This, and nothing else, was the Valhalla forged by the greed of this world.
"Then again, sir—even the hotshots Research brags about tend to wash out the moment they arrive at the Trading Division, don't they?"
"That's true enough. Talent can bloom to its fullest in research, and the Trading Division is still an entirely different arena."
If the young man turned out the same way, they could simply send him back to the Research Center—or take away his desk. Unlike the Research Center, the Trading Division put employees on individual performance contracts from day one, full-time status notwithstanding. Miss your numbers, and you were out on your ear.
"Sir, the HR Team Leader is here to see you."
"Hmm? HR?"
Because of the intern? He wasn't even a full-time employee—HR should have no business here.
"Team Leader Kim. What brings you all the way here?"
"Division Head, is it true that the intern from the Research Center is being transferred to the Trading Division?"
"Yes. Don't tell me you came all this way over that? He's not even a full-time employee—there's nothing complicated on paper. And the company rules say interns rotate through departments to build experience anyway."
"That's true, but……"
Yet Team Leader Kim stood there, lips bone-dry, clearly at a loss.
The unexpected reaction finally told the Division Head that something was off.
"What is it? What's this about?"
"That intern, sir. He's…… the truth is, he was placed there by Director Geum Gaho."
"What? B-by whom?"
"Director Geum Gaho, sir."
At the sudden reappearance of a name he'd long tried to forget, the Division Head jolted in his chair.
"D-Director Geum personally? Wh-why on earth?"
"I don't know the details myself, sir, but…… might it be a family connection?"
"!?"
He was Royal Family?
The Division Head smacked his forehead.
I got played!
Now he finally understood why that Research Center Director had gone out of his way to stroke people the wrong way at the company dinner, singing the intern's praises like that.
"Of course. That old fox was never going to hand him over just because I asked……! Which is why giving him up so easily felt strange."
There was a reason for everything. The Research Center—those bastards had all been in cahoots, playing the Division Head for a fool.
All to shove that ticking bomb of an intern into the Trading Division!
"If something like this was going on, you should have told me!"
"I apologize, sir. Director Geum Gaho instructed us to keep quiet about it. You understand, don't you? It's not just anyone—it's Director Geum issuing direct orders. There was no refusing that……"
He could understand it. Who exactly was Geum Gaho?
Once the man who had stood closest to the chairman's seat. Thorough, cold, and relentless as a bulldozer pushing work through to completion—that was the kind of man he was. Though half withdrawn from the company these days, his influence within the group was still not something to be brushed aside.
"Did the Center Director know about this?"
"Yes."
"So he knew, and he still had the nerve to pawn the little bastard off on me. Didn't want to babysit their own bomb."
"……."
To be fooled like an idiot. He should at least have been suspicious.
It had been strange, hadn't it? A mere intern making pinpoint predictions on everything from semiconductors to gaming stocks. And the entire Research Center betting its judgment on the forecasts of a lowly intern like that.
"It was a lie from start to finish."
They had all credited the intern with the results on purpose, then subtly flattered the Division Head—dressing the intern up as some preternaturally gifted prodigy so the Trading Division would snatch him up.
"Those con artists!"
"So what should we do, sir? Should we send him back……"
"The transfer's already agreed and finalized. How do you expect me to back out now? And if word of that reached Director Geum's ears—can you imagine what would happen to us?"
"……."
It was the fool who had blindly taken the bait dangled by the Research Center Director who would have to answer for it.