Sleeping on More Than Ten Billion Won
More than ten billion won was sleeping inside that old drive.
Jaehun, the older guy I worked part-time with, held out his phone and showed me a photo of a camgirl.
“Whoa… She’s seriously unbelievably pretty, isn’t she?”
“...She is pretty, yeah.”
Whenever I looked at pictures like that, I always had just one thought.
I want to date a girl that pretty, too.
It was practically impossible. Why would someone making millions of won a day settle for a dead-average nobody like me?
Hah. I’d come up to Seoul with nothing but the determination to succeed, but less than a year later, even that resolve was starting to crack.
How was I supposed to save up money and become successful at this rate?
A decent place in Seoul cost over a billion won, and if I was just some part-timer, when the hell was I supposed to buy my own home?
These days, I was painfully aware that even owning a place of my own wasn’t success so much as the bare minimum for being a proper Seoul citizen.
“Man, if I could sleep with a girl like this even once, I’d die happy.”
“Ah, hyung.”
“Why are you acting shy now? If there’s anyone with even the slightest chance, maybe Jihyeon?”
“...Jihyeon? With us?”
“...I’m just saying. At least she’s a little closer to us than the others, since she’s a part-timer too.”
“A part-timer like us...?”
“Hah... This is really wrecking my self-esteem. Fine. I give up.”
Just because we were part-timers together didn’t mean we were the same kind of part-timers.
By that logic, celebrities were people too, so they’d be the same as us as well.
Jihyeon looked so gorgeous she could probably have streamed as a camgirl without anyone blinking an eye, and I didn’t think she’d ever have anything to do with the likes of us just because she happened to work part-time here.
Even the boss was trying like crazy to win Jihyeon over, so how were the rest of us, who were even lower on the ladder, supposed to have any chance of sleeping with her?
She really is pretty.
Still, I couldn’t exactly mock my hyung for thinking that way.
I’d caught myself wondering more than once whether I wanted to date Jihyeon, even if only once.
“Hey! You idiots, stop chatting and get to work! You came here to make money, so quit thinking about goofing off—”
“Sorry!”
We’d gotten too absorbed in our conversation and hadn’t noticed the boss walk up behind us.
That old bastard was going to seize on this and nag us all day.
It was one of his favorite ways of trying to impress Jihyeon—by showing her he was different from part-timers like us.
Before I knew it, the workday was over.
“Jihyeon, why don’t all of us grab a drink together?”
“I already have plans today.”
“Then I’ll drive you home.”
“A friend’s coming to pick me up.”
That guy really was giving it his all. Apparently he’d just bought a Genesis, and this was his way of showing it off.
A little while later, a Mercedes pulled up in front of the store.
“Oh, he’s here. I’m heading out then.”
“...”
The three guys left in the shop watched their self-esteem get crushed yet again.
I had no idea why Seoul was full of so many rich people.
And on top of that...
He’s handsome too.
He looked about my age, and he was handsome on top of it.
Total defeat.
***
I got home.
“You’re back?”
“I’m home. Auntie, I think I’ll have enough saved for the deposit soon.”
She wasn’t my real aunt.
When I’d said I was moving to Seoul to make something of myself, my parents in Gwangju had told me they wanted to make sure I had somewhere to stay.
Since I hadn’t managed to save much money, I’d shown them the shabby semi-basement place I was staying in, and my mom had reached out to her close friend’s younger sister to ask if I could stay there for a while.
The person burdened with that rather unreasonable request was the auntie standing in front of me now.
I hadn’t expected it to take several months, though.
“Oh, don’t rush it. You can save up slowly. Besides, you have no idea how reassuring it is just having a man in the house.”
“Haha... Thank you.”
“Goodness, you little thing. I mean it. Besides, you don’t know how much of a help it is when you go out to meet my daughters if they come home late.”
“Then I’ll take my time and prepare properly.”
“Good. I told your mother not to worry, so if you move out too fast and make things too tight, what am I supposed to say?”
I could tell she wasn’t just being polite.
Honestly, if I had my way, I’d have liked to live here forever.
The auntie standing right in front of me was beautiful enough to be an actress, and her two daughters, who had inherited her genes, were gorgeous enough that calling them idols would still somehow undersell them.
She’d divorced years ago, so I really was the only man in this household, and I liked that fact too.
And yet I wanted to move out anyway, because the women in this house were so beautiful that I spent all my time being self-conscious and trying to manage a mood that wasn’t mine to manage in the first place.
I wanted to play games and watch camgirl streams freely during my breaks, laughing like an idiot, but since I worried they might think badly of me, I had to pretend I was working on self-improvement while secretly watching camgirls on my phone.
On top of that, the computer was sometimes used by the younger daughter, Sihyeon, so I had to be careful not to leave behind the slightest trace of anything suspicious.
In other words, I was wearing a suit that didn’t fit and living a thoroughly uncomfortable life inside it.
After greeting the auntie, I went into my room.
Lying on the bed, I thought back to what had happened earlier.
A man about my age had come to pick up Jihyeon in a Mercedes. The image wouldn’t leave my head.
Could I ever become someone like that, no matter how hard I tried for the rest of my life?
At this rate, I probably wouldn’t even be able to drive until I was in my thirties.
And there was no chance that car would be a Mercedes.
My dream was to become rich, period. Whether I could actually achieve it was questionable enough as it was, but even if I somehow did, it probably wouldn’t happen while I was still young.
If I only managed success when I was old and wrinkled, how was I supposed to meet a pretty woman then?
“Hah.”
One of the reasons I wanted to succeed in the first place—marrying a pretty woman—was starting to feel impossible by the day as I faced reality.
Tsk.
Since it was impossible anyway, maybe I should just watch camgirls, the women everyone could agree on.
Where else, if not on internet broadcasts, could I talk to girls that pretty and watch them dance?
And sometimes I even got a little vicarious satisfaction out of it.
Plain-looking guys like me would go on to succeed in internet broadcasting and suddenly be drinking with pretty women, and those women would even cling to them.
“I’m jealous...”
God, I was jealous. Those guys probably didn’t have a single money worry in the world.
They played games, drank, went on dates, and made money doing it.
Sometimes even tens of millions of won a day.
To say I didn’t feel jealous watching that would have been a lie.
Just as I was feeling that strange mix of envy and vicarious satisfaction, my phone rang for the first time in a while.
“Yeah, Mom.”
“You doing all right?”
“I’m just working hard, that’s all.”
“Good. You’re doing well. Anyway, while I was cleaning your room, I found something called a USB, and it looked incredibly old. Can I throw it away?”
“A USB? Did I even have something like that? Isn’t it maybe your older sister’s or your younger sister’s?”
“I asked them, and they said it wasn’t theirs. So, should I toss it?”
“Uh, th- wait, hold on!”
I was about to casually tell her to throw it out when a burst of old memories flashed through my head, and I shot upright to stop her.
Only then did I remember.
That USB.
Back in my school days, I’d worked part-time and even dipped into my parents’ wallet a little while spending money on a game account I’d struggled to maintain, and at the very end, I remembered receiving something called Bitcoin.
Back then, I was still a student, so I couldn’t have hundreds of thousands of won transferred into my bank account.
Even if I could have, there was a high chance my parents would find out.
So I remembered getting it in Bitcoin...
Calm down.
At the time, I didn’t know what Bitcoin was, so I’d planned to exchange it for cash once I became an adult.
I’d hidden it somewhere, but when I tried to find it later, it was gone, and I’d ended up giving up on it with tears in my eyes.
By the end of 2017, it was 2018.
Lately, I’d been hearing about Bitcoin again.
What was it? Hadn’t the price shot up insanely high?
People who’d bought early were said to have made at least several times their money back.
The value of the items I’d sold back then was around five million won...
S-so...
Could it really be worth tens of millions now?
“W-wait. I think that’s mine. I’ll come by home tomorrow.”
“Really? Must be important then. I’ll keep it safe.”
I decided to head home the very next day.
Please...
My palms were sweating.
***
The next day.
“Mom! Where’s the USB?”
“Here. You haven’t seen me in ages and you ask about that first...”
“S-sorry. It’s urgent. Long time no see. Where’s Dad?”
“He went to work. Haeun went out to meet a friend.”
“R-right.”
I took the USB from my mother.
It was the same one from my faint memories.
I was trembling.
On the way down here, I’d looked into Bitcoin from around 2011.
That it had multiplied several times over.
I never once dreamed that expression might have been about the people who bought it just a couple of years ago.
Compared to 2011, they said it had gone up by tens of thousands of times...
With shaking hands, I plugged the USB into the computer at home and checked it.
The USB contained several files, along with a file for organizing the games.
My breath hitched, and my hands started shaking violently.
I hurriedly restored the relevant file.
4,231 BTC.
Huh... hhh...
I checked the price of Bitcoin.
25 million won.
“...”
More than ten billion won was sleeping inside this thing.
My breath stopped.
At the same time, I seriously wondered if I was dreaming.
I pinched my cheek.
It hurt.
No doubt about it—this was real.