The Third Pick
At first, I thought the Team Leader was about to chew me out.
Something along the lines of: you still can't even work a printer?
"So you're telling me this was all a coincidence?"
"Ah, yes, sir. I suppose I just got lucky."
"Twice in a row, no less?"
"……"
Honestly, I had no idea what was going on either. I only learned the leisure sector stocks had crashed through the Team Leader himself.
"It wasn't luck, was it? You've got your own intelligence network in China, don't you? You knew the thawing of the Hallyu ban was nothing but a rumor."
"M-me?"
"You don't have to play dumb with me. I already know that Kang Suho is no ordinary intern."
So the Team Leader had known all along how I'd gotten this internship.
"What exactly is your relationship with Director Geum?"
"That's……"
How was I supposed to explain this? That I'd happened to join a hiking club where I met the Director, and while looking for a job, I somehow ended up with a shot at an internship here? The Director had told me not to breathe a word about it…
"Ah. I'm sorry."
Just as I was frantically searching for the right words, the Team Leader beat me to an apology.
"That was an unfair question. I should have pretended not to know."
"I'm sorry. It's just… difficult for me to go into detail."
There was no way I could bring myself to say, I caught the eye of the hiking club president and became an intern.
"Anyway — this was all a coincidence, right, Suho? No intelligence network, no brilliant analysis behind it?"
"Yes, sir."
To be perfectly accurate, it had been the smell. I picked the reports that smelled good, and they just happened to be right — how was I supposed to say that out loud?
"……"
The Team Leader studied me for a long moment, then let out a short breath.
"Understood. Get back to work."
Even after leaving the Team Leader's office, the question wouldn't leave my head. What on earth was happening to me?
It has to be some absurd coincidence, right?
That thought lasted all of a second.
"Suho! What is going on!?"
The Senior Associate appeared out of nowhere and smacked me hard on the shoulder. If anything, I was the one who wanted to ask — how could something so brutal come out of those tiny little palms?
"The leisure sector stock you picked is actually crashing right now!"
Apparently realizing how loud her own voice was, she flushed and offered an embarrassed smile.
"Oops. Sorry, everyone. Was I being too loud?"
We moved quietly back to our desks, but the team's strange, lingering gazes wouldn't leave me alone.
"Suho. I'm sorry."
"Sorry? For what?"
"I honestly thought you'd just picked reports at random without thinking. The reports, I mean."
She wasn't wrong. I hadn't chosen them for any reasoned reason, after all.
"But in fact, you analyzed them in your own way and selected those reports, didn't you? That's it, right?"
"I just got lucky, that's all."
"Wow. Modest to the very end."
"……"
Our dear Senior Associate appeared to be operating under a truly colossal misunderstanding.
"I'm not being modest. I genuinely just got lucky."
"They say predicting the market takes analytical skill, sure, but what matters most is instinct, right? Some people politely dress that instinct up as 'luck' — but in this business, even that counts as skill."
Instinct.
Come to think of it — had smelling that stench been some kind of 'instinct' my nose possessed? The foul-smelling ones were the reports I shouldn't touch, and among them, the single one with a pleasant fragrance was the right choice… something like that?
Oh, come on. No way.
Fine, my nose was sharp, but that didn't make it some supernatural power.
I snorted a laugh to myself.
"What's that laugh supposed to mean? See — you acted humble, but you were actually certain your prediction would be right, weren't you? So you deliberately played the clueless newbie."
"……"
It was going to take a while before that misunderstanding wore off, I could tell.
When the Chinese government revealed that the rumored lifting of the Hallyu ban was false — and went further, announcing it would tighten the ban even harder — the leisure sector was annihilated. Utterly wiped out.
"And yet no one saw this coming."
The securities firms had been aware the story might be a rumor. What none of them anticipated was that the Chinese government would move this fast — and issue an official statement directly, no less.
"Except one person."
Intern Kang Suho, that is. How on earth had he known and picked accordingly?
In this industry, traders and analysts alike each had their own proprietary algorithm — and they never, ever shared it with anyone. Think of it like a famous chef's secret recipe.
Which meant that if someone made the right call, that was the end of it.
"The process doesn't matter."
Only results did. And if you hit on a call nobody else saw coming — hit it twice in a row, no less — your evaluation climbed even higher.
"The problem is, nobody knows about it, though…"
That was the one real shame. If the reports the parachute hire had picked had simply been uploaded as-is, it would have won the clients' immense trust.
But what lunatic in this world picks reports on an intern's word?
Still — once someone proves their ability, building the platform beneath them is a supervisor's job. Some people say you should keep subordinates in check the moment they outshine you, but Cheon Doa didn't see it that way. Backing your people up. Lifting them up. That had always been her idea of what an ideal Team Leader should be.
"Shall we give him a chance, then?"
So what if he was a parachute hire from some powerful family? Right now, he was Cheon Doa's subordinate.
"Suho. What have you been staring at so hard for the past ten minutes?"
I'd been squeezing my eyes so tight at the Senior Associate's question that I had to rub the dryness out of them.
"Just looking over some reports."
"Without so much as unfolding them? Stacked up like that?"
"……"
I knew perfectly well I looked insane. But after hitting the mark twice in a row, I'd started wondering whether there might be something to this, so I'd decided to run a test.
Except it's not working like it did last time.
Was there some kind of activation condition? Back then, a stench that could knock me flat had rolled over me — but now?
"Suho, the Team Leader says the afternoon meeting is starting soon. He wants you ready."
"Ah, yes, ma'am!"
The Operations team normally held two meetings a day. The morning meeting finalized which reports would be uploaded that day; the afternoon one vetted the reports scheduled for the next day — that way they could reflect overnight developments in overseas markets before making any calls.
Today, though, the afternoon meeting had started earlier than usual.
"The mood in the domestic market is ugly right now. Everyone's heard the news, right? The leisure sector took a brutal hit, and the damage spilled over into other sectors too."
When one sector falls, money rushes into another — that was the essence of rotational trading, the beating heart of the domestic market. But when money fled as violently as it had today, sell orders spread like a plague, and every sector bled at once.
"Right. Who could've guessed the Chinese government would come out swinging like that? The sudden announcement spooked the institutions and the foreigners so badly they dumped everything they were holding."
"So which sector should we be throwing our weight behind?"
"Probably autos? Kanghyun Motors reports earnings next week, remember?"
The meeting was underway, and on the screen up front, the sectors drawing attention — and the ones best left on hold — scrolled past in a steady list.
"A forward-looking commentary report would probably pull decent views. The real question is how long the Hallyu-ban shock drags on."
"Anything notable in the other sectors?"
"Autos look like the safest bet right now. Semiconductors… nothing exciting there at the moment."
"Phoenix and Gwangmyeong Electronics are both talking about production cuts."
"So DRAM prices could sink even lower, then?"
"That's the outlook from our own semiconductor research staff."
I listened quietly as the Team Leader and the team traded views. Newcomers like me didn't get a voice in these rooms — and honestly, I didn't have much to say anyway.
"What a year for white-knuckle nerves. Oil prices in free fall, the Bank of Japan throwing the market into chaos with negative rates, we thought leisure stocks might finally have their day — and now the Chinese government steps in and flips the whole table."
Just hearing it laid out like that was enough to make the domestic market feel suffocating.
"Semiconductors are out, then. Let's put our weight behind autos. There's been a lot of talk about secondary batteries lately too — have the research staff dig up more material and build reports around that as well."
"Yes, Team Leader."
"Let's wrap it up here. If anyone spots a new development or has an opinion, report it to me directly."
"Yes, sir."
When the meeting ended and the others filed out, the Senior Associate and I stayed behind to tidy up our desks.
"Associate Kim."
"Yes?"
"Step out for a moment, please. I have something to discuss with Intern Kang."
"Ah — of course."
Once she'd gone, an awkward silence hung in the room for a beat.
"You know why I asked you to stay, don't you?"
The Team Leader gestured with a tilt of his chin at the reports sprawled across the table.
"Pick one more. I'm curious what your take is."
Truthfully, it was intimidating. Those first two really had been pure luck.
And I'd already run my test just now — no stench, nothing like before, not even the faintest—
Ugh!
Right at that moment. A nose that had been perfectly fine seconds ago was suddenly slammed by a violent stench, a smell that rattled me down to the marrow.
You ignored me then, but now you just pull this out of nowhere?
Stay calm. It's only a smell. The first two times I'd panicked and flailed; this time I'd steady myself, control it, track down the source like a pro—
—like hell.
My head's swimming.
Unless you'd smelled it yourself, you could never know. How vile these stenches truly were.
There was one mercy this time, at least: I didn't have to rummage through the pile hunting for the one fragrance that could cut through all this filth.
That one.
I snatched up the report sitting right on top of the stack and handed it straight to the Team Leader.
"……"
What could she even say? Was the man hopelessly consistent, or what?
I told you in the meeting, plain as day, that this sector's outlook is terrible right now.
But either the parachute hire had let the entire meeting wash over him like background noise, or he simply didn't care — because this was the one he'd picked.
The Semiconductor Super Cycle
Fine. Someday, the cycle would come. That was why they called it a super cycle — because it turned, and turned again. But analysts wrote reports on a one-to-three-month horizon, and not a soul alive expected a super cycle inside three months. Whoever had written this thing had simply sketched out one hypothetical scenario among many; they didn't truly believe it would play out exactly as written.
Unbelievable.
She had actually planned to upload Suho's pick this time. This was the man who'd called the leisure sector's rise and its collapse, back to back. She'd meant to showcase that gift to the world by uploading the report he chose with her own hands.
But the super cycle? Really?
The country's two flagship semiconductor companies already had production cuts on the calendar, and semiconductor-related stocks were crumbling into dust because of it. Every forecast in the building said the dark ages would last at least three months.
And Kang Suho had handed this report to Cheon Doa.
And with a face full of absolute certainty, no less.
He hadn't hesitated for even a heartbeat. It was as if he'd been staring at that one report from the very start.
Maybe I should have asked him why.
And yet, in that moment — how could she put it — she'd felt overwhelmed by him. That unshakable expression, even the way he'd extended the report toward her. Something wordless and immense had seemed to close around her like a hand.
Tap-tap.
Cheon Doa drummed her fingers against the desk.
"Upload it, or don't."
Originally she'd intended to upload Suho's pick herself that afternoon — she just never dreamed he'd choose that one, and now she was mired in deliberation.
"However many times I turn it over, it's a report that makes no sense."
But then, by that same logic, neither had the leisure sector.
"Hoo."
She nudged the mouse toward the upload button and hesitated one last time. There was really no need to agonize this much.
"Right. It's not like uploading one report flips the whole company upside down, and nothing catastrophic is going to happen."
It might raise eyebrows — institutions and clients wondering, why on earth did they publish this? — but it would soon be washed away by the endless stream of reports that followed.
"Just once. Let's give it one shot."
If she'd decided to give him a chance, she had to actually give him one, didn't she?
Click.
Cheon Doa pressed the upload button after all.
"…Well. I've done it now."
Regret came flooding in almost instantly, but the arrow had already left the bow.