Surely a Coincidence
The Research Operations Team began every dawn steeped in anguish and pressure.
Which reports to upload. Which sectors' analyses could be trusted. What the competition was pushing out to clients. The list of things demanding their attention never ended, and a single moment of misjudgment could chip away at the firm's brand value, dragging down returns for both their clients and their own traders.
And so the team agonized, and agonized, and agonized again. But today, Team Leader Cheon Doa found herself tangled in an entirely different kind of torment.
"What is this supposed to mean?"
She stared down at the report lying on her desk.
Report on the Upside Outlook for Korea's Leisure Sector
She read it through once, with all the patience she could muster.
"..."
Page after page of rambling bullshit. Anyone could see it for what it was — an analyst scribbling down whatever came to mind to fill their quota.
"The real problem is that he's the one who picked it. That parachute hire."
Kang Suho. The person of interest who'd walked in as an intern that very morning. Against all expectations, his first impression had been excellent.
She could see he was genuinely trying, and watching him listen carefully and take notes during the meeting had honestly moved her — a little. Just a very little. It almost felt like her fixed assumptions about the Royal Family were cracking. That was exactly why she'd deliberately let him pick a report, intending to give him feedback and teach him herself.
"It's not like he couldn't know the leisure sector has been blown to pieces."
She had said it plainly in the meeting, too: the leisure sector wasn't going anywhere for a while. And the reason was China's Hallyu ban.
Casinos, resorts, hotels, airlines, duty-free shops. Bundle them all together and you had what the market called the leisure sector.
When the Chinese government enforced the ban, it purged Korean culture from within its borders and barred group tourism on top of it. The leisure sector had taken a staggering blow as a result.
"And knowing all that, he still picked this—"
It was an unmistakable statement of intent. A silent warning: don't you dare presume to teach me.
"Am I reading too much into it?"
Except she had said it, again and again, in that very meeting — the leisure sector was struggling. And that intern, cool as you please, had gone digging through that entire mountain of reports and fished out the leisure sector one anyway.
"...I'm the idiot for expecting anything in the first place."
The Royal Family was the Royal Family. They were a breed that simply lived in a different world. Best to tune it all out and get on with her day.
"All right. You gather up everything we settled on in today's meeting and upload it. You send the client emails out at the same time. Not difficult, right? The client lists are all saved on the server, so all we do is click. Except—"
"Except...?"
"You must never, ever go past eight o'clock."
"And if I do?"
"Hmm~. Honestly? Nothing much."
My senior associate flashed a smile, and then her voice turned dark as a rain cloud.
"You just... have a one-on-one with the Team Leader, write up an incident report, get a lousy performance review. Things like that."
"Th-that doesn't sound like nothing much at all."
"Exactly. So you must never, never, never be late!"
Finish the upload before eight o'clock, even if the sky split in two. I wrote it out in big letters in my notepad and circled it several times over.
There really is so much to learn.
I hadn't been able to keep up with their pace in the meeting earlier, either. It was enough to make me wonder whether I could ever match these people's tempo, even if I stayed for a long while.
"Suho, have you had any coffee today?"
"Sorry? No, I haven't."
"Perfect. We've finished our uploads, so let's go get some coffee."
My senior led me off to the office lounge. True to a major corporation, the lounge was impressively well appointed.
Hiss— The espresso machine hummed to life, and the fragrant aroma of coffee spread through the lounge. With practiced hands, she produced two Americanos in no time.
"Here you go. Drink up."
"Oh — thank you."
"Then — a toast to your first day on the job. Cheers~!"
Clink.
For this one moment, at least, it was the finest coffee in the world. Sorry, Sis.
"You've barely been on the job and it's already brutal, isn't it?"
"Honestly? ...Yes, it is."
"That's okay. I was exactly like you on my first day. My mentor back then chewed me out for being clumsy and forgetful — you have no idea."
"Someone scolded you?!"
How could anyone yell at a person this adorable — a hamster in human form?
"So don't let it get to you. You were thrown off by the Team Leader after the meeting earlier, weren't you?"
"Ah..."
During the meeting, the Team Leader had suddenly told me to pick a report, which flustered me at first — and then the foul stench rising off the pile left me even more hopelessly rattled.
I couldn't bring myself to touch the reeking ones at all, so in the end I'd simply grabbed the most fragrant of the bunch.
"Still, picking the leisure sector was a bit much, even so."
"Y-yes, it was?"
"Mm-hm. The Hallyu ban has hit Korea's tourism business hard right now, so the leisure sector is completely dead in the water. Even the report you picked only forecast a very slight rebound. Analysts always pre-write two versions, you see — one negative, one positive."
She meant that they drafted those contingency scenarios in advance, in case of an emergency.
"I was so flustered that I must have grabbed the wrong one."
"It happens. If my Team Leader had sprung that on me on my first day, I'd have picked something completely off the wall."
Was a person even allowed to be this kind? She seemed like an angel who could embrace every single one of my mistakes.
"Still, no repeating the same mistake. We did say in the meeting that the leisure sector wasn't in good shape. If you go and pick it anyway, from the Team Leader's perspective it looks like you weren't paying attention in the meeting."
"...She must have written me off completely, huh?"
"It's fine. You're still an intern, come on. But no second time, all right?"
"Yes, ma'am! I'll study hard and make sure it doesn't happen again!"
"That's a great attitude. If there's anything you don't know, ask me anytime, all right? You've got to make it from intern to full-time employee, Suho."
"Yes, ma'am!"
There was probably only one mentor like her in the entire world. And now I had one more reason to become a full-time employee, no matter what.
"Good morning, Team Leader."
"Morning. Section Chief, did you see the report Shin Kwang Securities put out yesterday?"
"Ah, yes. Some of it came out the exact opposite of ours, particularly on the bond side."
"Check it over again. And confirm where the semiconductor sector is heading while you're at it."
"Yes, ma'am."
At a securities firm, everyone's hours were different. The people covering overseas markets came in during the afternoon and worked into the night, while the Research Center arrived in the small hours to comb through domestic and foreign news. They also had to track what reports the competitors had published and how their own house view diverged from the competition — there was no room for dragging their feet.
"Team Leader! I brought your coffee!"
"Oh, thank you. Just leave it there."
"You got it!"
Cheon Doa started her day with a heavily shot-loaded coffee. The fatigue had piled up, but she drowned it in caffeine and forced herself into a state of alertness — because she knew that otherwise, she would never get through the day's work.
"Team Leader, these are the documents you mentioned yesterday, and these are the reports you asked about earlier."
"Thank you. And the meeting starts soon — have everyone gather up. There's a lot to get through today."
"Yes, ma'am."
The moment the Team Leader's call went out, the team members scrambled to gather everything that needed to be discussed. Cheon Doa had assumed she would be the first to arrive at the conference room — instead, two people were already inside, setup finished. Associate Kim Sujin, and the intern in question.
...
She stole a glance at Kang Suho, then snapped her head away. Hadn't she extended her goodwill after watching him work so diligently, only to be stabbed in the back? Since then, she had simply been ignoring him.
"Everyone's here? Then let's start with overseas. What's the word on Europe?"
"Going by the reports that came out yesterday, the Brexit impact still looks significant. The problem is that the standoff between Britain and the other European countries shows no sign of letting up. The new Prime Minister promised a hard-line Brexit, but now that the moment's actually here, it doesn't look easy."
"Still, the German market closed up 0.3 percent, and manufacturing PMI did come in below expectations. The other European markets are holding steady for now, too."
"Then we hold on Europe, per our original report?"
"Yes. Sitting tight and watching for now seems the wiser play."
And so one agenda item closed. The meeting, however, had barely begun.
"Next, this quarter's Big Tech earnings estimates. As of right now—"
"We have the minutes from the Fed's meeting — you'll want to review those as well—"
Such was a day in the life of the Operations Team. With so many events unfolding in a single day, the information never stopped pouring in.
They sorted through it all the previous day, but events overseas landed in the small hours, Korean time, so most of it had to be rushed through in the morning.
"That's everything, then?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"What a relief. We'll just barely make the upload deadline. Ms. Kim — get the upload done quickly, please."
"On it, Team Leader!"
And with that, the war-like stretch of hours came to an end, and a short breather opened up.
Glug—
Instant coffee in a paper cup. Call it a small gift to herself for a job well done. The sweetness filled a mouth gone bone-dry to the brim.
Mmmh— Then a long, luxurious stretch of the back, and at last it felt like the day had properly begun.
"Another chaotic one today."
Before long, fresh reports came pouring in from every direction. Reading them for the rest of the day was, quite simply, the Operations Team's job.
And yet she never once disliked the frantic routine. Someone might ask whether it didn't get dull, but she had come to the Research Center precisely because she found this side more fun than trading.
"Team Leader."
The short break over, she was wading back into the flood of reports when a team member rushed inside.
"What is it?"
"The money in the domestic market is flooding into the leisure sector. Right now."
"I'm sorry? No — suddenly? We said the money was rotating into biotech today, didn't we?"
The domestic market didn't behave like the overseas markets. Rather than spreading evenly across sectors, the money had a strong tendency to pile into one corner, then swing to another.
It was the phenomenon known as sector rotation. Which sector the money would pile into today was the single greatest point of interest for the Research Center and the traders alike.
"Yes, that was the original forecast, and the money did pile into biotech for a while. But a rumor started circulating after lunch today, and the whole picture flipped."
"What rumor?"
"That China is about to lift the Hallyu ban."
Cheon Doa jolted upright.
"The Hallyu ban? Is that confirmed?"
"No way to know if it's true, but the rumor is spreading fast."
Whether the rumor was real or fake didn't matter. It was spreading through the media right now, and on that wave of expectation, the leisure sector was climbing. That was simply what stocks did — price was expectation, made visible.
"Tell the leisure sector team to draw up a report. More detailed information, too. Now!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
Cheon Doa's hands flew across her keyboard, hunting down the information — then froze.
"Wait."
The leisure sector... why does that ring a bell?
Then it hit her — the meeting a few days ago. Ah. The report the parachute hire had picked!
"Wasn't that report about the leisure sector rallying?"
No one in the company — no one at any other firm, for that matter — looked kindly on the leisure sector. And yet the only person who had predicted its rise was that parachute hire?
"C-coincidence. It has to be a coincidence, right?"
Cheon Doa forced her racing heart to settle. Right. It was a coincidence. There was no way that parachute hire had called a shot nobody else saw coming.
And yet — the face he'd worn when he picked that report. How to put it. It had been the face of a man in complete command of his conviction.
"...It really is a coincidence... right?"