The Intern Who Reads the Future
"Suho. Isn't it time to get up?"
I jolted awake at my mother's voice.
So it really was a dream!
"You were so happy last night you even had a drink. I knew that would happen."
Ah. Thank goodness—it wasn't a dream.
I let out a sigh of relief.
When the Team Leader had told me I'd become a full-time employee, I'd been so flustered I hadn't even had time to be happy. But on the way home, it had slowly begun to sink in, and I'd ended up downing a drink even though I could barely hold my liquor.
"Come on, get up. I made some bean sprout soup."
"Oh. Really?"
Sure enough, the savory aroma of bean sprout soup was already tickling my nose from outside my room.
"Is everyone up already?"
"You have to get to work, don't you?"
"Why do securities firms start work so early? You've got me waking up at the crack of dawn too."
My sister, who'd been sleeping through the noise, stirred awake as well.
"You get in this early, but you come home insanely late. You're still an intern, aren't you? Aren't they working you way too hard?"
At that, my mother's lips curled up at the corners.
"Suho isn't an intern anymore."
"Huh?"
"He called me last night all excited. Said he's becoming a full-time employee starting next month."
"What!?"
My sister shot me a doubtful look first.
"Suho, it's Daesung Securities, right? Not Daesang Securities?"
"What are you talking about?"
"I mean, you've barely been working there a minute, and now you're a full-time employee next month? That makes no sense."
Frankly, even to me, it did sound implausible.
"Well... I got a bit lucky."
"You can be lucky, but isn't this too lucky?"
That was true.
Everything I touched these days seemed to work out.
"Looking at your face, I guess it's real."
"Would I lie about something like this?"
"Unbelievable. So my little brother is actually a full-time employee at a major corporation? At Daesung Group of all places?!"
My sister looked me up and down rapidly.
"Suho, you look kind of cool today? Is this the aura of a big-corporation employee?"
"Fine, fine. When my paycheck comes, I'll buy you something."
"There he goes, quick on the uptake as always."
"Stop teasing your brother and sit down too. Time for breakfast."
My mother set a bowl of soup in front of me, piled high with bean sprouts.
"People at Daesung Group clearly know talent when they see it. Our Suho takes after his father—he's got so much ability."
...
My memories of Dad had grown hazy by now. He'd passed away before I even became an adult.
Ever since then, Mom had worked night after night at her diner, raising the two of us on her own.
And still, for her son, she'd gotten up before dawn to ladle out soup with her own hands.
...
My chest ached.
"Mom."
"Yes?"
"I'm going to make it big someday. I'll give you the good life."
"You sound exactly like your father."
Mom smiled and gave my cheek a gentle pinch.
"Suho. Can't your big sister get the good life too? I raised you on my back, sob sob."
"For you... I'll think about it."
"Why, you little—"
My sister's fist thudded into my shoulder, but somehow it didn't hurt the way it usually did.
I have to work even harder.
I didn't need anything else.
I just wanted my family to be happier and more comfortable than they were now.
I wanted Mom to finally rest and take all the trips she'd never been able to take.
I wanted my sister to chase new dreams of her own.
Maybe that was why my ambition kept growing.
The ambition to succeed.
"Hee hee."
"W-what is it?"
"What do you think~"
Juim Han nudged me with her elbow.
"It's because you didn't get cut, Suho! And on top of that, you're a full-time employee starting next month! This is really wonderful."
"You kept going on about that all day yesterday..."
"No amount of saying it is enough! Do you know how on edge I was thinking you might leave!"
"Really?"
"Of course!"
For a moment, a thought crossed my mind.
Our Juim Han, with her angelic heart and beauty—could she possibly be... interested in me?
"If you leave, everything I've so faithfully taught you goes to waste, and I'll have to go back to being all alone at the bottom of the totem pole, miserably preparing meetings by myself. That's why!"
...
Ah. That would be why.
A brief spring breeze brushed past my cheek and was gone.
"Oh! This is a present I prepared~"
Juim Han pulled out a small cake.
"I picked it up at the café out front. It's seriously delicious? I've been dying, dying to eat it, but I was afraid I'd gain weight, so I held off. Plus it's expensive for its size."
It looked like a Choco Pie blown up to about three times its size.
"You bought it not because you wanted it, but to celebrate me. Right?"
"Hehe. Two birds with one stone. Eat up, quick!"
I gratefully took a few bites—or, no, was it two?
The cake was already gone.
"Whew. The size really is a shame. Such a shame."
"Your hands moved so fast I couldn't even see the cake going in, Juim Han."
"You're imagining things."
...
So she says.
Still, sharing a treat she could've eaten all by herself—who else would do that?
"Oh, Team Leader. Good morning."
"Yes. Everyone, a moment of attention, please."
At the Team Leader's words, the team members stopped what they were doing.
"This morning's meeting will be replaced by the email I sent out. Junior Associate Kim, I've written up which reports need to be submitted in there, so please file them as instructed. And Intern Kang?"
"Yes?"
"Intern Kang, come with me right now. We'll talk on the way."
"Ah, yes, ma'am!"
I hurried out after her.
"I told you yesterday, remember? Things were going to get busy starting today. Right now I have to meet with the semiconductor sector teams to discuss strategy. Quite a few institutions have been inquiring with our firm."
"You mean you need to discuss how to build the investment strategy?"
"That's right."
"Then shouldn't you be going with someone else instead of me...?"
At that, the Team Leader stopped mid-stride, heels clicking to a halt.
Then she looked at me in silence.
...
Her features were sharp, sure, but when a stunning beauty stared at you like that, it was impossible not to feel the pressure.
"Ah, I see. That's the act, is it?"
"I'm sorry, what?"
"Well, I won't ask what purpose you had in mind when you joined our HR team, Intern Kang. All I need is for you to make good use of that ability of yours by my side. In other words, let's just do what we do best. I have no interest in messy office politics."
"...?"
I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.
She seemed to be under some kind of strange misunderstanding.
"Let's get going."
But with no time to untangle it, we headed for the conference room.
Traders are contracted by the company on an individual basis.
That's why they take a set portion of the profits they generate as an incentive.
In other words, the more money they make investing the company's capital, the more they pocket.
Research staff were evaluated on a different basis, however.
Which reports institutions chose to invest on, and how much in fees that brought in—that was the Research Center's revenue, and its incentive.
When a particular sector caught fire, the analysts covering it beamed at their plump incentives, while the ones stuck in quiet sectors could only suck their thumbs.
"That relative sense of deprivation is why some people change their specialties, and plenty of others just up and leave to become traders."
There were analysts who picked their fields shrewdly, rode the tide of the times, and appeared on TV every week to inflate their own market value.
There were analysts who stayed up all night running analysis and predicted a stock's rise—only for the real money to go to the trader who boldly placed the bet.
An analyst was essentially a salaried worker with a fixed paycheck and bonus, while a trader took a percentage of the profits, which meant the sheer scale of money involved was on another level entirely.
"That's why going from research to trading is called the elite track."
Research analysts were closer to service workers, and most of them spent their days playing the subordinate.
Some institutions would argue endlessly if they didn't like a report; write anything unflattering about a particular company, and you might get barred from corporate visits and cut off from information as revenge.
"That's how the Research Center got reduced to a training camp. A place you study at before becoming a trader—something like that."
"Didn't you say you used to be a trader, Team Leader?"
"I did. I'm a case of walking the same route as my peers, moving to trading, and then coming back."
"Why did you come back?"
"Do you have any idea how suffocating traders have it? If your numbers dip, they pull you right off the desk. I lasted a few months of that before depression and insomnia set in, and I fled back here."
"Ah."
Plenty of people went off to become traders dreaming of a rose-colored future, but only about one in ten actually made it.
The ones who folded under the pressure and quit trading were legion.
"I like it here. When the numbers are bad, I can blame sector rotation for our sector not getting any attention, and when things are blazing hot, I get at least a few crumbs falling my way. Best of both worlds."
"Fair point."
"Still, I never dreamed it would get this busy."
Research had always been demanding work, of course.
But it had been a long time since this much work had piled onto a single sector all at once.
"I thought we'd just lounge around sucking our thumbs for a while, and then out of nowhere—this is a bolt from the blue, I tell you."
Lim Donggeun, the team leader of the semiconductor research team, grumbled aloud, but his face was smiling.
After all, his team's reports were now the center of attention among institutions.
"Though I do wonder what the Operations Team was thinking, publishing that thing."
"You're telling me. Every other team assumed it had to be a mistake."
But it hadn't been a mistake.
The Operations Team had published that scrawled report exactly as it was, and no matter what anyone around them said, they had never once retracted it.
"Well, I can just ask them directly. Oh, speak of the devil—there she is now."
Lim Donggeun greeted her first with theatrical good cheer.
"Well, well. Team Leader Cheon. It's been ages. How does someone in the same center as me manage to be so hard to see? You didn't show your face once at the center dinner."
"Good to see you, Team Leader."
"Mm. And who's this beside you...?"
"This is Intern Kang Suho."
"An intern?"
Lim Donggeun tilted his head.
What business did an intern have here?
Errand duty, maybe?
"Have the reports been prepared?"
"Ah, yes. Several of them. I couldn't even sleep, it was absolute madness. I've compiled everything into this one for now. Pick whichever ones you like, and we'll pass them along to the institutions."
The bound volume Team Leader Lim handed over was a single copy.
"One more, please."
"Huh?"
"For Intern Kang here as well."
"...?"
What could an intern possibly glean from reading this?
But under Team Leader Cheon's imperious stare, he handed a copy of the compiled reports to the intern as well.
...
The two of them pored over the reports with considerable gravity.
Some time passed.
"Intern Kang."
"Yes."
"What do you think? Which strategy looks better to you?"
That was when Team Leader Lim finally lost his patience and barked.
"Team Leader Cheon! What do you think you're doing?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Why are you asking an intern? If you're going to ask anyone, ask me—the expert here! Are you mocking me or what?"
"I'm sorry, that wasn't my intention. It's just that Intern Kang's opinion matters."
"What?"
It was absurd.
The opinion of some intern mattered more than the semiconductor experts sitting right here?
"What was your name again?"
"Kang Suho... sir."
"Right. Intern Kang Suho. Let's hear this brilliant opinion of yours, then."
Lim Donggeun glared venomously at the intern whom Cheon Doa treasured so dearly.
...
How on earth had things come to this?
Everyone had their burdensome stares fixed on me.
Team Leader Lim in particular was glaring at me with the face of a royal official one breath away from ordering my execution.
But the real problem is...
Nothing was coming from the compiled reports.
They contained the coverage of this semiconductor rally, along with strategies laid out for how best to invest in it.
Normally, when Team Leader Cheon told me to pick a report, a switch would flip—the bad smells would surge and I'd be able to choose.
I'd already been right three times using that method, and I'd sensed it myself: something extraordinary was going on with me.
So why is nothing coming this time?
Was this ability only temporary?
Or had it all just been dumb luck all along, nothing more than a naturally sensitive nose?
"Intern Kang?"
"...Ah. My apologies."
"Is it that nothing here catches your eye?"
It wasn't that I meant to belittle their efforts.
Looking at the content alone, I could tell exactly how much sweat had gone into them.
It was only that, unlike before, no response was coming.
"There's really nothing else?"
"I already told you. That's the compilation we barely finished by staying up all night."
"Still. Even rough drafts would be fine."
"No, seriously, looking is one thing, but...!"
Team Leader Lim's gaze darted between me and Team Leader Cheon before he swallowed his boiling anger.
"These are things we scrapped or cut midway. Nothing particularly substantive—mostly just idle speculation. Are you telling me you actually want to look through all this?"
"You never know. Besides, that first semiconductor report we published was this kind of thing too, wasn't it?"
"This and that are different. Everyone and their mother knows semiconductor stocks are mooning right now. That compilation was built around exactly that premise. Or what, you're saying every single semiconductor stock is about to crash?"
And that was the exact moment it happened.
The unfinished reports Team Leader Lim had just handed over began, all at once, to reek.
"!?"
The stench stinging the tip of my nose made me scrunch up my face.
Steady. Stay calm.
A smell meant I had to pull something out from among these.
But I couldn't drag it out too long.
The stench already felt like it was searing my nasal membranes, and my vision seemed to be blurring even as I held my breath.
But if I can find the clean one in here...!
I rifled through the pile of scrawled reports like a madman.
Some of them slipped limply to the floor, but I couldn't stop.
"Hey. What on earth do you think you're—!"
"This one."
Because I'd found the one thing that could save me, cornered on all sides by the stench.
"Th-this one?"
"Yes."
Team Leader Lim checked the report, then looked up at me with eyes full of contempt.
"Are you completely out of your mind?"
Once the whole circus had died down.
Team Leader Lim called Cheon Doa aside.
"Team Leader Cheon. Are you in your right mind?"
"I'm perfectly fine."
"Not from where I'm standing. You should have brought at least a section chief to a meeting like this. Dragging along an intern with zero experience who knows nothing—what kind of embarrassing spectacle is this? And now you want to move forward with what that intern picked?"
Lim Donggeun simply could not accept it.
Because—
"Every semiconductor stock is on the verge of a massive boom, and you're telling me prices are about to fall here?!"
The report the intern had chosen was a scenario bordering on delusion.
The kind of thing you'd find in a pile of rough estimates jotted down with every possibility loosely in mind.
The problem was that its content predicted not a grand semiconductor boom, but a decline.
"Do you honestly think that makes any sense?"
...
Cheon Doa let out a short sigh.
It seemed an explanation was in order.
What abilities this intern had displayed until now, and why, even in Cheon Doa's own view, he was doing something so insane.
But—
"Team Leader. About that intern."
Wasn't there a saying?
Bad answers are pedantic and tedious, and only breed pointless arguments.
"He's not just an intern."
"What? Where did that come from all of a sudden?"
Good answers, on the other hand, are simple, swift—and powerful.
"I mean he's someone who was placed there from above."
"Above?"
Team Leader Lim's eyes, sharpened with anger only moments ago, softened at once and began to curve with bewilderment.
"Above, as in... from the Group itself?"
"Yes."
"Th-then what, don't tell me that young man is some—"
The dizziness of it cut the words off at his lips.
"I'll take my leave now."
With a polite bow, Cheon Doa left, leaving Lim Donggeun standing there in a daze.
...
Staring blankly into empty space, Team Leader Lim watched his encounter with that intern flash past like a revolving lantern.
The things he'd said to him. The expressions that intern had shown him. All of it.
"Wh-what have I done."