Buy! Sell!
The moment I stepped into a surging stock, I understood.
This place was hell.
No other word fit a runaway ticker so cleanly. Human greed and despair, braided together in one pit. Hell.
As a test, I put in only five million won. The instant the buy went through, a chill crawled up my spine.
If I only look at the chart, it feels like this thing is just going to keep climbing...
On the one-minute candles, the price was already ripping higher the second I bought in. Up 6.3 percent already. It looked as if those red pillars would stack forever, but I trusted the instinct.
"Sell!"
And the moment my finger hit the button—
The notice popped up. At the same time, the price fell.
The blue down-candles seemed to carry the investors' screams. No—gamblers, if I'm being exact. They lost their money, and the moment that blue candle hit minus fifteen percent, the market stopped.
"Huh? What just happened?"
I flinched, genuinely thrown. Trades stopped filling, and buy and sell orders began piling up in a frantic heap.
Ah... so this is that daily limit-up and limit-down thing?
Was this as far as the runner went today? I was about to pull up another name when—
KRAAANG!!!
A sound that had no business coming out of a monitor seemed to explode from it anyway. I stared at the screen, startled.
A pillar of fire, exactly the same size as that mad blue column, was driving straight for the top of the chart.
I only learned it later. Unlike Korean stocks, U.S. stocks have no daily ceiling and no daily floor. Instead, every time a name swings fifteen percent, something called a circuit breaker trips and dams the investors' frenzy for a very short while.
"...They're actually insane. Every last one of them has completely lost it."
In that single brief instant, the lives of at least tens of thousands of people—maybe hundreds of thousands, maybe millions—were ground down. Someone lost fifteen percent. Someone else gained fifteen percent.
Was I scared?
No. My heart was hammering like a madman's. Because I had the answer key.
"Buy! Buy! Buy!"
When I felt it had finished falling, I went in.
"Sell! Sell! Sell!"
When the chill hit, I dumped it without a second's regret and ran.
Evidence? Analysis? I didn't need any of it. The only thing worth trusting was instinct.
At first I had no feel for the entry. I'd take a loss the moment I got in, startle, and bail—then watch it climb again the second I was out and feel like an idiot. It wasn't long, though, before I had a method.
"Leave a single share, and go in the moment the chill breaks."
A scout, in other words. I sent one soldier ahead—one soldier worth less than a dollar—and sacrificed him to read whether the stock would keep falling, or whether the turn had finally come.
The less money I put in, the weaker that bad feeling gets. But this way I can still read the rough entry.
Maybe it was because one share felt like money I could afford to lose. Set beside the sensation that hit when it was time to sell several thousand shares—tens of thousands, if I put the whole stake in—the chill on a single share was far fainter. Still, it was good enough to catch the general timing. At the very least, I knew the price would rise in the moment after the chill vanished.
This was a gambling den. On this runner, at least, not a single thing I had learned from YouTube was any use. Up or down. A one-in-two chance. That alone was the truth that decided winners and losers.
And I could know, with certainty, the instant it would fall. I already held every card in the house's hand.
So I threw myself into that hell of my own free will.
Buy! Buy! Buy! Sell! Sell! Sell!
Click. Click.
Again—buy, buy, buy. Sell, sell, sell.
I poured every nerve I had into the screen, my fingers, and the line of my spine. The room made no sound at all except the tapping of my mouse.
Buy. Sell.
Click.
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!!!
The alarm jolted me. I had been facedown in front of the computer, and I jerked upright, eyes flying open.
"Ugh, I'm stiff... What time is— Gah! Seven! No! I'm late!"
Wondering why the alarm hadn't gone off, I grabbed my phone. It had done its job faithfully. I was simply the one who had failed to hear it for two hours.
When I unlocked the screen, the messages had stacked up.
"The first one is... yikes. Of course it's the department head."
I sighed and scrolled through them.
I hurried through my replies, then tilted my head at the last one.
Mom? What's she calling about?
There was no time to sit with the question. I was unmistakably late. I pocketed the phone, threw myself together, and flagged a taxi—the kind I usually skipped because it cost too much—and rushed for the office.
"Driver, please hurry."
I dropped into the seat and leaned back, and only then did yesterday come back to me.
Right. I kept trading until I'd sold everything, and then I just passed out at the desk.
Somewhere in the middle of it my head had spun, and I'd dropped straight into sleep. I opened the brokerage app, turning it over.
I'm not sure exactly how much I made, but I think I came out ahead. How much...
And then my thoughts stopped cold.
"Huh?"
"We'll be there in a minute, just hang on~"
The word had slipped out of me, and the driver, thinking I was rushing him, answered. I didn't hear it. My mind had gone entirely to the red numbers.
This... how much is this, exactly?
Three hundred million? And eighty? Was I even reading it right?
My head went blank. Three hundred and eighty million won? The stray digits after that didn't even register.
My annual pay is thirty-eight million after tax.
How much had I made in a single night?
Even being rough about it...
Ten years.
I had just earned ten years of salary overnight.
Even after that, it refused to feel real.
"Assistant Manager Chae, if the work is too much, report it ahead of time. Splitting the load is better than you coming in late and letting everything pile up."
Even while the department head was dressing me down, I was blank.
"Assistant Manager Chae, are you all right? Nothing happened yesterday, did it? You've never been late in your life, and now this... You okay?"
"Ah... I'm fine..."
I answered in that daze, and Assistant Manager Kim gave me a faintly pitying look, then patted my back.
"That's how it goes, Chae. You trade stocks, sometimes you lose. It's all right. You've still got the job, so you earn it back and build it up again. Don't beat yourself up. Get your head on straight."
He offered the encouragement, returned to his desk, and winked at me once. I was blank through that, too.
It simply would not sink in. Three hundred million? Eighty million? Close to four hundred million won, made in a single night. Unable to believe it, I went into the restroom and opened the brokerage app again.
The red figures were still there.
"It was real... I really made it..."
I couldn't believe it, but it was real. I had come into an enormous sum of money in a single stroke.
And it was right then, while I was staring at the phone.
BZZZT!!!
Yikes. A call.
The caller was none other than Mom. I stepped out of the restroom, ducked into a corner, and answered.
"Hey, Mom."
"Mm. You doing all right?"
It had been a while since I'd heard her voice. After I got the job, I made it home maybe once a month, if that. It couldn't be helped. At a construction firm you worked through Saturday as a matter of course, and Sunday was mostly for sleep. Skip even that, and your body fell apart in a heartbeat.
"Yes. Did something happen, Mom?"
"It's... nothing else, but..."
She hesitated for a long time.
"I'm so sorry to ask, but could you lend me a little money? Grandma went into the hospital yesterday, and we're a bit short on the surgery..."
The words hit hard.
"Grandma's sick? Where?"
"Mm... They say it's early-stage cancer. The hospital says it's still at a stage where surgery can take care of it, thankfully. But she's so old she wouldn't withstand a harsh round of chemo, so they have to use a targeted therapy that insurance won't cover, and that costs an awful lot... Could you send just whatever you can spare?"
My memories of Grandma were all from when I was little. I only saw her face when we visited at the holidays. But I understood my mother's heart without needing to think about it. Grandma to me; her own mother to her.
"Yes, Mom. How much do you need? I've got a fair amount saved. I think I can send it."
She was quiet for a long while. Only after some time did she manage to get the words out.
"For now... the first round is about thirty million won. And if we go all the way through the cancer treatment, I think we'll need about thirty million more. If you can send whatever you have room for, even a little would help."
I was freshly grateful for this ability, and for the timing. A little while ago, even if I had sent her every won I'd saved, we still would have been about ten million short.
"Don't worry, Mom. I'll send it."
"All right. Any amount is fine, so I'm asking for just a little. I'll pay you back later, even if it takes me time."
"Don't. Between a parent and a child, what money... I'll send it right away. You rest. You're all right, aren't you, Mom?"
After that we traded a few light how's-your-healths, and I opened the banking app. I hit transfer and entered Mom's account number.
Mom, you wore yourself out raising your son, didn't you? This time the son gets to do right by you.
Something swelled in my chest as I pressed send.
Click.
The startled phone call from Mom, seeing the money I'd sent, was about to come—and didn't. Because this window came up instead.
Right. I saw it on YouTube yesterday—you can only wire the money out two days after you sell.
I called my mother again.
"Yes—Mom? I'll send it in two days. Yes, yes. No, you don't have to worry. Right, right, it's spare money, don't worry. I will. Eat well, and take care getting around. Yes, I'll come by this weekend for the kimchi—make me some kimchi stew. Yes. Yes, yes. I'll let you go, Mom. And don't worry about the money."
The situation was a little awkward. The smile, though, never once left my mouth while I was on the phone.