So, Now What?

So... now what?

Jihoon, who had been wailing like a madman with his mouth clamped shut like some beast, suddenly choked on the tears and snot sliding down his throat and erupted into a convulsive fit of coughing.

"Koff! Koff-koff! Hkk, kuh...!"

He coughed until it felt like his lungs would tear apart, scrubbing at his eyes with the heel of his hand, and even as he gulped down ragged breaths, his eyes never once left the smartphone screen clutched in his fist. As his wildly thrashing heartbeat settled by the smallest degree, a thoroughly practical calculation—the kind that had been lurking behind all that ecstasy—began to flicker through his mind.

"Then again... just how much is the final payout going to come to...?"

Jihoon swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing visibly. His heart began hammering like crazy all over again.

South Korea's lottery payout system was no romantic arrangement where hitting first place meant a fixed sum—10 billion, 20 billion won—handed over on the spot. It was a viciously capitalistic, brutal structure: a first-prize pool ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠carved out of total ticket sales, then divvied up in a precise N-way split depending on how many winners there were.

"Damn it... don't tell me a whole flood of people hit first place this week...?"

A sudden chill ran down his spine—because he remembered the draw once dubbed the worst in lottery history. That week, the numbers had come out in some freak pattern, and catastrophe struck: no fewer than fifty first-place winners came pouring out at once. Fifty people who'd hit the jackpot dreaming of turning their lives around fell straight into the N-way-split trap and were left clutching a pathetic pre-tax prize of barely 400 million won apiece.

And what if dozens of winners popped up this week too? No matter that he'd matched five games—if first place paid only 400 million, all five tickets combined would come to a mere 2 billion. Of course, 2 billion was a fortune he'd have been grateful for in his current semi-basement circumstances, but it was a far cry from the 'super-rich' life he'd been fantasizing about only minutes ago.

Jihoon started to swipe the screen with his trembling fingers, then stopped, gritting his teeth as yet another grim reality came to mind.

"And then there's the goddamn taxes! Agh, seriously, the more I think about it the madder I get."

South Korea's lottery tax rules were as merciless as they come.

A first-place prize was guaranteed to sail far past 300 million won, which meant that, in practice, a clean 33% of his winnings would be handed over to the state—written up as a "contribution," collected as outright plunder.

"This tax money of theirs—always tearing up perfectly good sidewalk pavement and frittering budgets away on make-work while bleeding ordinary people's hard-earned cash dry like there's no tomorrow, I swear? Last I heard, Japan or somewhere doesn't tax lottery winnings a single won, but this country's a goddamn den of thieves who'd give the most notorious pirate in history a run for his money!"

The bottled-up indignation of a dirt-poor nobody with nothing to his name hit the subject of taxes and came boiling out as pure rage. But before long, Jihoon remembered how, mere minutes ago, he'd been wringing out tears and snot while wailing for his ancestors, and a hollow laugh escaped him.

"Ha... God, look at me. Greedy to the core, huh, Kim Jihoon. You hit first place five times over—you should be bowing to the heavens before anything else, not whining about the taxes already. Even in the absolute worst case where they carve off half, you still won, didn't you... Jeez. Human greed really is a sly, cunning thing—and it doesn't even wait until you've tasted it."

He scratched his head and talked himself down. Time to quit the pointless worrying. First things first: confirm with his own two eyes exactly how much had been tallied.

Jihoon drew a long, deep breath.

"Phew... okay. Here goes..."

He stretched out a trembling index finger and pressed down hard on the button marked View Draw No. XXXX Results on the app screen. The single second it took the page to load stretched out like a year. Flash. The display changed, and this week's first-place prize and winner count appeared in crisp detail.

"Twelve winners...! 1.46 billion pre-tax...!"

Not the worst-case scenario, then. But no jackpot draw either—just a thoroughly ordinary, average sort of prize. 1.46 billion won before taxes.

"Let's see now... 22% off the first 300 million, then 33% off the remaining 1.16 billion..."

Even as he ran the numbers in his head, he tapped the after-tax settlement option on the app, and up popped the actual take-home amount—every tangled deduction applied, the exact sum destined to land in Jihoon's bank account.

"So almost exactly 1.012 billion won after tax..."

1.012 billion won per game. Jihoon swallowed hard and multiplied that figure by his number of wins: five.

"Which means the total winnings come to... 5 billion... and 60 ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠million won..."

Five billion. An astronomical sum that, even if he'd worked himself to the bone his entire life, he could never have touched—never have so much as glimpsed from a distance. If he sprinted to the bank's main branch tomorrow morning and collected it, this was money that would carry him out of this godforsaken semi-basement and let him live off the interest for the rest of his days without working another hour. The numbers that had leapt straight out of his fantasy of Yevgenya had conjured ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠up a genuine miracle.

And yet, as Jihoon stared holes through the figure 5,000,000,000, an unexpectedly deflated sigh slipped from his lips.

"Hah... fuck... how does this even make sense?"

Because the market prices of Seoul's Gangnam apartments—ones he'd idly skimmed on a real estate app a while back—had suddenly surfaced in his mind. The new towers along the river in Banpo had blown well past 4 billion won even for the standard family-sized unit, while the slightly larger floor plans, the rebuilt apartments of Apgujeong, and the luxury villas of Hannam-dong casually cleared 7 and 8 billion—an era when they quoted prices in the tens of billions.

"Wait... so I beat odds lower than getting struck by lightning—matched five first-place tickets by hand, at the same time, through sheer insane probability—and I still can't buy a prime Gangnam penthouse or a decent-sized apartment without taking on debt... What kind of country is this?"

Even having mustered the energies of the entire universe to achieve the miracle of hitting first place five times in a row, the bare face of capitalism—sculpted by insanely soaring inflation and the real estate bubble—bit down to the marrow of a man who'd just become worth 5 billion.

"Haaah... five first-place wins and I still can't comfortably buy a single Gangnam apartment... this world is one fucking terrifying place."

Jihoon scratched the back of his head with a bitter smile. But that mood lasted only a moment before the overwhelming relief and dopamine that the number 5,000,000,000 delivered wrapped around his whole body once more. Sprawled flat on his back on the worn mattress, he grinned up at the mold-stained ceiling.

Then, all of a sudden, a very fundamental, very practical question surfaced in his head.

"So... now what?"

Jihoon blinked blankly at the ceiling. You'd think winning the lottery jackpot would flip the world upside down on the spot—wahahaha! trumpets blaring, a limousine idling at his semi-basement door—but reality was stubbornly, painfully silent. His smartphone clock was quietly pointing to a Sunday morning that had barely just begun.

And of course, the main branch where he'd collect his winnings didn't open on weekends. For now, that 5 billion won existed only as a barcode on a thin, rustling scrap of paper. Struck by a bolt of money from the blue, and all he could do was lay that barcode slip atop his heart, hold his breath, and wait for Monday morning to dawn.

"Haaah... why won't time move? I'd honestly rather it be Monday already."

Jihoon rolled around on the mattress, muttering irritably. For the old him, it was an unthinkable, treasonous thing to say. The weekend that began on the Friday-evening commute home had always evaporated at the speed of light; the moment the sun started its slow descent ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠on Sunday, he'd be seized by the dreaded Sunday scaries, breath catching in his throat at the thought of marching back into that chicken-coop office hell the next morning. Every time he watched that yellow sponge character—the one who lived in a pineapple under the sea, hollering "I love Mondays!" while grilling up hamburger patties—he'd curse under his breath: what a deranged psycho bastard.

But for this one moment, at least, he was yearning for Monday more fiercely than that yellow sponge ever had. Every single tick of the second hand felt like an eon. A maddening impatience parched his blood—the frantic wish that the sun would race across the sky and be done with it, that it were already nine tomorrow morning, when the shutter in front of the main branch would roll open.

"Oh, right. If I'm going to the bank tomorrow, I need to file for a day off first."

Jihoon picked his smartphone back up and logged into the company groupware app. On any normal day, so anxious about the team leader's mood that he'd type and delete a single leave request dozens of times over, the man he was now was utterly without fear.

He coolly typed in just those few words—nothing more—and pressed down hard on the approval button.

"Fuck it—what are they going to do, say no? The bastards cut this month's paycheck in half; if they've got a shred of conscience, they won't dare run their mouths about a day off."

If anything, he practically owed them a thank-you: their wage theft had handed him a perfectly legitimate pretext to announce a weekday off with his chest out.

Jihoon, request submitted and thumb moving to switch off the screen, froze mid-tap once more.

"Ah... right. The day off was never the real problem, was it? In for a penny, in for a pound. Better get my resignation letter written up in advance, too."