I Said It Would Drop, Didn't I?
After the meal, Assistant Manager Kim checked his account and nearly burst into tears.
Already down three percent...
Had it been a mistake to short on nothing but Assistant Manager Chae's word? He did his best not to let it show, but inside, moment by moment, he was burning dry.
Damn it. The post made the recommended list.
The short-proof he'd put up on the forum before going to eat had picked up recommends, been nailed to the recommended board, and was getting mocked in real time.
Should I just sell, even now...?
He read every jeering comment straight through, letting the cuts pile up, and then the thought arrived.
...Right. I have to look at the numbers and nothing else. The Chinese factory that shut its doors wasn't NIHEO, it was Samsung... And they say NIHEO's earnings are still coming in fine...
Even as his finger drifted toward sell, the account was melting in real time.
3.2 percent... 3.4 percent...
It looked like nothing. To a man who had bet everything he owned, it looked like this.
The moment the loss cleared four million won, the world went dark in front of his eyes. In the space of a few minutes, a month's salary had vanished.
N-now. I should cut it now, even now...
And if the short had been his judgment alone, he would have sold every last share that instant.
But a heartbeat before his finger pressed sell, words flickered through his head.
...Should I trust him a little longer???
Assistant Manager Kim closed the trading app and searched for something else.
And even while he was searching for a thing like that, the numbers in his account kept changing in real time.
For a moment, the numbers only shivered.
3:00 p.m.
Quitting time was drawing near, and faces ought to have been bright, but the office felt strangely heavy.
People had crowded around Assistant Manager Ryu and would not stop talking. Only after the department manager, unable to stand it any longer, finally gave them a piece of her mind did the crowd break up. Manager Kim from Architecture, a different section entirely, couldn't endure the facilities department manager's sharp glare either and had just been driven off.
Damn it, why did it suddenly drop three percent?
Manager Kim had bought the underlying shares of the stock Assistant Manager Ryu recommended. He was still sitting on a gain in the eight-percent range, and yet—
This morning it was up as much as 1.8 percent!!!
The stock that had been climbing the way it always did suddenly printed a towering blue candle—the color a falling price wears on a Korean chart—flipped negative in an instant, then crept lower until it was down 1.2 percent. Panicked, he searched the internet for articles and ran to Assistant Manager Ryu to ask what on earth was going on.
Not a single article. And Ryu just said it was a temporary dip, so don't worry.
And that was when it happened.
Whew... back to about minus 0.6 percent.
Manager Kim had heard that Assistant Manager Ryu was good with stocks and, through a quiet chain of connections, gotten himself into the group chat. Nine people in the room. A chat run by Assistant Manager Ryu.
At first I thought, who pays a hundred thousand won a month for somebody to run a stupid thing like this.
One look at the account, and that thought vanished clean.
Heh heh heh...
It was money a confirmed bachelor had pinched and scraped together across forty-three years of life.
The second this hits three hundred million, I'm marrying Hye-ji.
He'd been seeing someone lately, and he was already thinking as far as the wedding.
Once it prints three hundred million, even if I just park it in an index fund, the wedding money's covered!
And so Manager Kim pocketed his phone and started wrapping up his work.
Tap, tap.
Clerk Lee Ji-hye typed a quick reply into her phone, then opened the trading window again.
Whew... it's climbing again. Thank god.
She had bought two-times leverage on the stock Assistant Manager Ryu recommended.
I'm riding with Assistant Manager Ryu and nobody else!
The older woman who had married Assistant Manager Ryu and Ji-hye herself, it turned out, were alumnae of the same university. The Ryu that woman described was thorough and certain about everything, so Ji-hye had decided the savings she'd so carefully put aside were worth investing.
I paid off my student loans and pinched every won I had left to get this far.
The number 19.2 percent looked solid just sitting there.
She'd been lucky enough to land a job at a big company. Her paycheck vanished into student-loan payments the moment it arrived, and yet even after that there was still money for living expenses and a savings account. Even so, stacking deposits little by little, she couldn't see when she would ever scrape together ten million won that way—when she would buy a pretty bag, when she would take her boyfriend on a trip to Japan. The thought alone had felt impossibly far off.
That was when Assistant Manager Ryu urged her into stocks, and Ji-hye had boldly invested the three million won she'd so carefully saved.
I even added on the way up!!!
Money she'd saved by letting her boyfriend pay for meals on their dates—she'd put in another whole two hundred thousand.
If it just keeps going like this... five million, and if I roll that five million into something else, ten million won't take any time at all...
A Chanel bag seemed to shimmer in front of her eyes.
Assistant Manager Ryu is a god!
Clerk Lee Ji-hye worked her phone and opened a different app. Her new hobby was bragging about her returns on social media.
Hide how much I actually made... crop it down to just the percentage...
This is it. This is it. Hehehe...
And so Clerk Lee Ji-hye did no work at all and sank into a social-media trance.
Park Chae-eun, department manager of the facilities team, had not liked Assistant Manager Ryu lately.
Not working. Staring at stocks all day again.
She hadn't let on, but none of it escaped her eyes.
Assistant Manager Kim at least goofs off while he works, and Assistant Manager Chae just puts his head down and does the job well...
Ryu had ability, but he'd been slippery even before his leave, and since coming back he spent all day chatting with the other sections and sneaking looks at his trading window.
...He barely gets the work I gave him this morning finished by quitting time. Does that make any sense?
Give Assistant Manager Chae one task in the morning and he finished the whole of it; give him something else in the afternoon and he brought that back done too. That was the baseline. Of course, Park Chae-eun wasn't entirely unable to sympathize. She hadn't told anyone, but she was in the market herself.
Rather than staring at a trading window all day, he'd be better off investing safely, the way I do, and focusing on the work.
And then the clock pointed to 3:47.
The mood in the office changed at a stroke.
"Huh? Hey—hey!!!"
Chief Baek, from the electrical section beside them, shot up out of his chair and shouted.
"Everybody, check your phones! The group chat!!!"
So it's started.
As the office erupted into noise, the hands I'd been drumming across the keyboard stopped dead.
That bad feeling from earlier.
I picked up my phone and checked the account.
The office went rigid.
"Everyone, calm down! It's just a brief panic sell!"
"Hey! Assistant Manager Ryu! What the hell is this! It just dropped four percent out of nowhere!"
"It's nothing. A block of sell orders hit into the close. It's the weekend, so people are taking profits."
Assistant Manager Ryu sounded calm. The others did not.
Fair enough. From the high, it was down 6.4 percent by the end of the day.
Chief Baek, especially, looked ready to cry.
"What! Sell orders into the close? You call that an explanation!"
"Please calm down, Chief Baek. You're still in the green, aren't you."
"What? Do you even know what four percent of my seed is before you open your mouth?"
Chief Baek was raising his voice right there in the office, scolding Assistant Manager Ryu, but the department manager, unusually, stayed quiet, and so the argument went on.
"Chief, this really is temporary. Just trust me and hold—"
"Chief, you should take the profit now. It could fall further, couldn't it?"
I turned only my head from where I sat and said it looking at Chief Baek.
"M-maybe? That is the right call, isn't it? But still, like Assistant Manager Ryu said, the bounce..."
The chief's eyes wavered as he turned it over.
"Haah... Assistant Manager Chae, you made a little money on a short and now you're insufferable, I see... This is only temporary. I'm telling you, it goes right back up."
We'll see.
Watching my return climb through that and stamp ten percent, I spoke to Chief Baek one last time.
The time was 3:57. The market closed at four.
Assistant Manager Ryu shouted, urgent.
"No, Chief Baek! You know it isn't a loss until you sell!"
He said that. Even so—
"Agh! I'm not at a loss even now! I'm selling."
Chief Baek hit sell, and hearing him, one or two of the others sold as well.
"Assistant Manager Ryu... I believe in you!"
Clerk Lee Ji-hye had appeared at some point and piped up, but Assistant Manager Ryu's face had gone stiff.
And at last, 4:00. The market closed, and with it the workday.
"All right, everyone, let's head out!"
The moment the clock struck four, the department manager rose sharp as a blade, clapped, and cleared the air. Some stood with regret on their faces. Others stood looking sour and uneasy.
I was getting ready to leave myself when Assistant Manager Ryu sidled over and dropped his voice.
"Assistant Manager Chae... You have no idea how nerve-racking it is to sit on a short all weekend, do you? Dumping it the second the market opens Monday won't save you."
I let out a short breath of a laugh and answered him.
"The whole company's off on Monday, so I'll see you Tuesday, Assistant Manager Ryu. Thank you for your work today."
"......"
"I'll be heading out first."
I left it at that and went to Assistant Manager Kim's desk, meaning to head home with him—and unintentionally caught the screen of Assistant Manager Kim, who was sitting there grinning from ear to ear.
(Account screenshot flashing an 11% gain)
You long-monkeys come to your senses yet???
"......"
"......"
An awkward silence hangs between us.
"Thank you for your work today."
"...Oh, Chae. Have a good weekend, see you Tuesday. And, um..."
Assistant Manager Kim closed the forum, looking painfully awkward as he spoke.
"Yes. The moment it's time to sell, I'll call you right away."
"Right. You said you were visiting your parents this weekend? Get there safe, Chae."
We left it there, and I headed out of the company. Another hectic week had come to an end.
Completely different from a week ago, though.
The hamster wheel of office life had changed completely, and with today's gains folded in, my account held nearly four hundred million won.
It was time to head up to the family home in Incheon and see Mom.