The Spirit Called Coin

"What in the world…."

Faced with a phenomenon he could not begin to understand, Kim Taeyoung lost the power of speech.

What was this? Why had it appeared? Was it dangerous?

The questions crashed in all at once, and fear came with them. Even so, he did not run. This was his home—the one place in the whole of South Korea where he could actually rest.

"A portal? A gate? Is that what I'm looking at…?"

Minutes passed. In all that time the black-hole thing only shimmered. It did him no harm. It neither sucked anything in nor spat anything out, and that was enough for Kim Taeyoung to crush his fear down and get his reason back.

"Something's definitely connected through there."

He straightened a thin wire hanger and jabbed at the whatever-it-was—portal, gate, black hole. The hanger slid through to the far side without the slightest resistance, and when he drew it back it was exactly as it had been. Next he tied a pillow to a length of string, hurled it in, and hauled it out again. It returned undamaged. After that came a selfie stick with his phone mounted on the end. He started a video and fed the stick into the gate.

That was when it happened. Kzzzt! A violent spark leapt from beyond the gate. Startled, Taeyoung yanked the phone free, and black smoke curled up off it in thin ribbons.

"Shit! Haah…. So it really was dangerous."

His heart slammed in his chest. The phone was ruined, but relief outweighed the loss. If it had come through intact, he would have tried putting his hand in next. Better a dead phone than a dead hand.

I ought to report this to the police, shouldn't I?

"Huh…?"

With the phone wrecked, contacting some government office seemed like the sensible move. This was plainly supernatural. There might even be a reward in it. Didn't nations and scholars love poking at things they couldn't explain?

He was still thinking it when the gate rippling in empty air shrank ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠all at once. It dwindled to the size of a grain of millet and vanished from his room completely.

"What…."

A hallucination? Had he been so worn out lately that he was seeing things?

"Fuck. What the hell was that…?"

What had it been? He turned the question over along with the broken phone in his hands. So that was it, then—he'd gotten tangled up in something bizarre, and all he had to show for it was a ruined phone….

"Then why is this working?"

The phone was running perfectly. Black smoke had poured off it like mad, and yet the screen lit without a hitch, and there wasn't a crack anywhere. Was he really just that tired?

Even as he thought so, the screen changed of its own accord. At first it was black. Then color bled in and some kind of background formed, and letters he could not read slowly resolved into ones he could.

"Coin Gate…? I never installed an app like this."

What the hell. This was terrifying.

Fear welled up thick and fast as one incomprehensible thing followed another. And when a mechanical voice came out of the phone, he was so startled his heart seemed to stop.

"AAAAAAAH!"

He snatched up the phone and hurled it. It struck the ceiling and dropped back to the floor.

"What the hell! What are you! A hack? It's a hack. Fuck. I knew something was off!"

"Get out! I said get out, you bastard! I don't have any money, so go bleed some other sucker dry!"

The aggression was a defense mechanism. He was that frightened. An ordinary voice-phishing call, an ordinary hack, and he would have laughed his way through it—his account was empty anyway. The problem was the impossible thing that had happened before the mechanical voice ever spoke.

Taeyoung kept spitting sharp, aggressive words, and the mechanical voice kept stating its own intent, over and over. A few minutes of that, and the parrot-like repetition drained the panic out of him.

"So what. What do you want from me? I told you, I don't have money. If you're running a scam, go find some rich bastard."

"Dying? A coin? No—before ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that, what even are you, talking like this? Did a coin grow a mind of its own?"

"A spirit of coin…?"

That's insane. How is that even possible?

He wanted to throw the question back in its face. But he had already lived through something that made no sense at all, and so a part of him was ready to accept it.

"All right, I understand that much. But I don't think I can help you. I don't have any money. Saving you sounds like it would take a fortune, and one Bitcoin is a hundred million won right now. I can't even afford a single one."

The terms were so good he couldn't help being suspicious. All he had to do was spend money? And not a little of it—hundreds of billions of won, or trillions, poured out like water. If the other party had been human, he would have refused on the spot.

"Couldn't you just help me with that? You hacked my phone. You could hack an exchange too, couldn't you?"

"Wait! Hey! Hold on! I've still got a ton of questions!"

The strength was draining out of the mechanical voice. It held a perfectly even tone, and yet somehow he could hear it fading. He couldn't have said how.

Kim Taeyoung clutched the phone and shouted. No voice came back.

"Haah…."

Scratching his head, he looked the phone over. The Coin Gate app was gone. In its place sat a coin-wallet app. He tapped it. There was almost nothing to the thing—just a wallet address and a password, stranded alone on a white background.

He knew a fair amount about crypto himself. When the boom had hit a few years back, he'd taken a few swings at investing. He hadn't lost money, thankfully, but he hadn't made any either. Thin capital and a cautious streak: he'd come away about two million won to the good and called it done.

On his computer he opened a site where a personal wallet could be viewed, entered the address from the app, and then the password. The wallet opened, and the number of coins inside appeared.

"Sh—…. Holy shit…."

He learned today that if the shock was great enough, your voice simply would not come. 1,004,248. More than a million Bitcoins sat in the wallet. The going price was somewhere between eighty million and a hundred million won apiece. At the low end, that was more than eighty trillion won.

"Haha…."

The sum was so far past real that laughter leaked out of him. The first thoughts to arrive were I'm rich now and First thing, I quit that job.

"Hahaha."

The laughter would not stop. He couldn't have said how long he laughed. When he came back to himself, it was already close to three in the morning. He ought to sleep if he meant to go to work tomorrow. Kim Taeyoung did not.

It said to be careful about selling on an exchange.

The Bitcoin in his wallet was forgotten money. List it on an exchange and it would be easy to trace, so he needed some other way to cash it out. He knew one method of laundering Bitcoin: KoreaTV donations.

Not long ago, KoreaTV had begun accepting donations in cryptocurrency, Bitcoin included. That had kicked up plenty of talk—that it was soliciting illegal sex, that it was facilitating money laundering. KoreaTV had shoved ahead anyway. The platform itself, after all, wasn't breaking the law.

He started a broadcast under his own ID. With no camera, the feed went out as nothing but black. He clicked the donate icon at once.

He moved from the Moon Balloon donation window into the crypto gift window. Sending cryptocurrency meant donating straight to a wallet address, so there was no need to pass through an exchange. It was possible only because K-Coin—CoinCash—was a coin KoreaTV had created and listed itself.

It was an extremely safe method. The donor's identity never surfaced. It had one drawback, though: from the moment you sent the gift until the Moon Balloons actually popped, about a minute had to pass.

It worked. The Moon Balloons had come through properly. A bright smile tugged at the corner of Kim Taeyoung's mouth.