Total War on Yeouido
"……You're telling me this proposal really came out of the Special Strategy Operations Team?"
"Yes, sir. They say Team Leader Kang Suho designed the entire framework himself, and his team members refined the details along that direction before submitting it."
In his heart, CEO Kwon Junyong had been quietly worrying about how Kang Suho could possibly respond to the petty chokehold the headquarters had put on him.
And then, this insane proposal landed on his approval desk today.
"HAHAHAHA!"
What started as a dry chuckle erupted into full-throated laughter.
"……"
It was the first time anyone had seen the perpetually stoic CEO laugh like that, and the executives couldn't hide their bewilderment.
"Forgive me. I genuinely couldn't have imagined this approach."
"We feel like we've been blindsided ourselves. With the internal limit frozen, they're going to run a TRS deal with an outside securities firm to pull in 100 billion won. It's… not exactly a conventional way of thinking."
The headquarters had tied Daeseong Securities' hands and feet, so the team simply vaulted over the fence and brought in outside capital. What breathtaking, what audacious boldness.
So that's what the Director meant.
What Director Geum Gaho had said not long ago flashed through his mind.
Kang Suho must be very angry right now.
And sure enough, as if to prove he wasn't going to take it lying down, the young man had marched in with this deranged investment proposal.
But then another thought occurred to him.
Could it be that this kid had actually seen all of this coming?
An investment leveraged tenfold.
Suho would know full well how reckless and dangerous that was.
And yet he had played this card anyway.
As if he'd been waiting for exactly this moment.
"Still, if we're talking about an outside securities firm……"
Kwon Junyong's eyes raced down the partner section of the proposal.
"Shinhwa Securities?"
"Yes. And apparently Team Leader Kang Suho hand-picked them himself. His staff had already narrowed down a solid list of promising domestic and foreign candidates after weighing all the conditions, but he went and pointed straight at Shinhwa Securities anyway."
Shinhwa Securities, of all places.
Kwon Junyong stroked his chin.
Was it just his imagination, or did something about this feel exquisitely deliberate?
The three major financial groups that held South Korea in the palm of their hand.
Ilseong, Daeseong, and Shinhwa.
Yeouido was crawling with heavyweight brokerages, from deep-pocketed foreign firms on down. They could easily have signed with any number of other houses where fee negotiations would have gone smoothly—so choosing Shinhwa, a rival group's securities arm… was there something else hidden beneath the surface?
"CEO. Might I suggest you arrange a private meeting with Team Leader Kang? To ask what his real intention is in bringing in Shinhwa, or what his plans going forward are…"
"That's enough. The headquarters is running roughshod over us, and our own executives can't even manage to act as a single shield. What shame would I have left, interrogating the man over every little detail?"
"……"
"Besides, Team Leader Kang climbed all the way up here borrowing nothing from anyone—on the strength of his own overwhelming ability alone. I'm sure he'll handle it just fine."
Even if he summoned the young man for a one-on-one, there was no chance this impenetrable kid would open up easily. He was no ordinary specimen.
"But, CEO. It's one thing for youthful bravado to square off against headquarters. The problem is that there's no guarantee this investment will succeed."
"Agreed. Looking at the proposal, there's more than one or two causes for concern. For one, this whole plan hinges on the United States imposing crushing trade restrictions on China—and what kind of lunatic would ever go through with that?"
That part did worry Kwon Junyong a little too.
Eccentric as Trumbell was, the man still held the office of the American presidency.
No matter how much he'd rallied votes shouting "America First," going to all-out war with China amounted to an act of self-harm, dealing massive damage to his own economy.
Weren't the Wall Street experts already dismissing Trumbell's violent rhetoric as mere political bluffing?
"If the US and China settle on some compromise and a reconciliatory mood takes hold, Team Leader Kang's position will get force-liquidated overnight. The 10 billion the headquarters put up will simply vanish like dust."
"And when that happens, the headquarters will waste no time holding Team Leader Kang accountable and dismantling the team."
The executives had a point.
Seen through normal eyes, this investment was a leap straight into the fire.
"……And yet Team Leader Kang has staked his own neck on this strategy."
folding his hands on the table, Kwon Junyong continued in a far more serious voice.
"Since the AS Bio episode, Team Leader Kang's predictions have never been wrong. Not once. It was always him who shattered our paltry common sense and seized the profits."
"……"
"He understands the weight of this investment as well as anyone. The moment he loses so much as a single won, everything he's built—his entire career, and the whole team with it—goes up in pieces. Knowing all that, he still threw the dice."
"Then Team Leader Kang is convinced the US-China trade war is certain to break out."
"Yes. Kang Suho is Daeseong's greatest ace and the only all-rounder in all of Yeouido. If we can't trust a prediction from a man like that, then who on earth are we supposed to trust?"
"Then……"
"Announce it to every department. Effective today, we are overhauling all of our investment strategies on the premise that a US-China trade war is about to erupt."
"!?"
The executives jolted upright and began to murmur.
This didn't mean a single team taking a calculated risk—it meant Daeseong Securities, the entire firm, was climbing into the same boat.
"C-CEO. If Team Leader Kang's prediction misses, our firm will suffer catastrophic losses."
No matter how rigorous the risk management, if the whole company went all-in on one strategy, there would be no absorbing the shock.
"For a company to take the next leap forward, there always comes a time when it has to take a risk and make a big bet. And I believe this is exactly that moment."
"……"
The executives swallowed dryly in unison.
If Team Leader Kang's prediction failed, the losses would be immense. But if it landed—
"Then our Daeseong will be the only one left standing in the middle of a pitch-black crash, raising a toast."
The terms of our team's TRS contract were simple.
Take the 10 billion, leverage it ten times over, and bet everything on the market falling.
To put it bluntly: a short position, backed by our very souls.
Of course, a securities firm shorting the market is as natural as breathing. Far more often than chasing simple arbitrage, firms sell short as a hedge to manage the risk on their existing holdings.
But this time was different in kind.
A strategy that torched the entire 10 billion on a single short.
And not just that—inflating it tenfold on top of everything.
Ordinarily, you'd allocate a percentage to the opposite side as a minimal safety net… but our strategy had no such thing as a "backstop."
It was a battle formation with the bridges burned behind us.
Which is why I fully expected the team to oppose it to a man.
Far from opposing it, they threw themselves into helping me with such zeal that they even drew up a full list of which firms to approach for the most efficient TRS deal and presented it on my desk like a formal offering.
The funny thing was, my nose responded to it with supernatural precision.
Which company we should sign with, how the strategy should be structured—every question.
It divined the answers perfectly.
But the decisive blow came from somewhere else entirely.
"I heard the CEO issued an order to push our Special Strategy Operations Team's proposal down to every department in the firm, and to adopt it as the main strategy?"
Kim Sujin set down the desserts and coffee we'd been sharing since my intern days onto my desk as she spoke.
"The CEO and the executives seem to believe in you completely, Team Leader. I've never once seen upper management broadcast a single proposal across the whole company and order everyone to follow it as strategy."
Normally, every department and every team pursued its own strategies and positions, all of them different.
And yet, after reading our insane proposal—partnering with an outside securities firm to slam down ten-to-one leverage—the CEO and the executive board had gone one step further and made it the strategy of the entire company.
"……"
Hearing that staggering news, one conviction crystallized in my mind.
More than me, more than my team members, the CEO and the executives were the truly deranged ones.
I'd privately assumed the CEO might step in and pump the brakes once he saw us careening off the rails.
Instead, he'd strapped a rocket to our backs.
"I suppose even the people upstairs have recognized that the US-China trade war is entering its final countdown."
Even so, adopting it as company-wide strategy felt decidedly strange.
Come to think of it, Director Kwon used to be our Director Geum's right hand, didn't he?
Only hearsay on my part, but…
Could that be the reason?
To preserve the Director's dignity?
Or an all-in bet of faith in the track record I'd shown him so far?
Whatever the motive, the board had suddenly grown massive.
Knock, knock.
"Team Leader? It's Lee Eunji, your secretary."
"Ah—come in."
Secretary Lee Eunji entered with composed, measured steps, then froze mid-stride.
"……My apologies. I didn't realize we had a guest—I'd only stepped away from my desk for a moment."
The secretary's icy gaze locked onto Sujin—and the snack set spread out beneath her.
"Oh, I didn't realize you were away either, Eunji. I was actually hoping to share some of the snacks with you if you'd been here, but the timing just… hehe."
"Is that so?"
"……"
Sparks crackling between two women with nerves stretched taut as wire—I cleared my throat to break the standoff.
"So, what can I do for you?"
"It's about our TRS contract. We've received responses from the securities firms on our shortlist. Unfortunately, they say they're unable to proceed with this deal."
There had been a formidable slate of candidates vetted by the team, and my nose had ultimately singled out one: Shinhwa Securities.
But in case Shinhwa declined the contract, we'd sent preliminary inquiries to the runner-up candidates as well.
And every single one of them had refused our inquiry.
"All of them?"
"Yes. Every last one, without exception, rejected the TRS transaction request."
"And Shinhwa Securities?"
"Shinhwa says they haven't given an answer yet. But seeing the other firms turn us down one after another, I suspect Shinhwa will…"
Secretary Lee, whose voice was always so poised and confident, let the sentence trail off.
She understood as well as anyone what this situation meant.
Something was off.
TRS deals were commonplace contracts that large institutions struck with each other all the time. The receiving end made their money on fees, and if the collateral ratio turned dangerous, they simply fired off margin calls mechanically—there was almost no way for them to lose.
And yet they'd rejected the TRS transaction outright.
Was the combination of a 10 billion initial margin against ten-to-one leverage simply too provocative, making them flinch?
"Team Leader!!"
At that moment, Team Leader Song burst urgently through the door.
"Forgive me for not knocking—it's an extremely urgent matter…"
"Would this be about the securities firms rejecting the TRS deal across the board?"
"Ah—you've already received the report. But that's not all of it. As it turns out, the real reason they refused our proposal is… pressure from headquarters."
"Headquarters?"
"Yes. Apparently headquarters has cracked down on every securities firm in Yeouido, forbidding any of them from doing business with our Special Strategy Operations Team under any circumstances."
"……"
A hollow laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
Daeseong Group.
Truly a formidable outfit, all over again.
They had set their minds on strangling us in our crib, and they were going to lengths I hadn't imagined possible.
"Daeseong is, after all, one of the three great financial groups of South Korea in name and in fact. Squaring off against Daeseong headquarters would be inconvenient in any number of ways, so they're all watching each other's backs and bouncing our offers on their own."
"T-Team Leader. Shouldn't we overhaul our investment plan right now, then? If no securities firm will accept our proposal, the strategy we've drawn up becomes useless."
By the team's logic, revising the strategy was the sensible call.
No matter how flawless the investment blueprint, without a partner to lay the table for it, it was nothing more than a daydream.
"……"
I opened my desk drawer.
Inside sat the "Plan B" proposal the team had prepared.
The moment my hand reached for it—
"!?"
A stench slammed into me, as if it meant to shred the membranes of my nose.
I recoiled on pure reflex.
There could be only one meaning to this.
My ability was speaking to me, right now.
Telling me that we hadn't been wrong.