Unbelievable
For Han Seonhwa, Signiel meant something very different.
Among all the people who had flocked to Seoul in search of success, Signiel was the kind of place only those who had finally seized it for themselves could afford to live in.
Even if it was only a rental, from the perspective of ordinary people there was no doubt that anyone living there had made it.
At this rate, we’re talking tens of millions of won a month...
The monthly rent alone ran into the tens of millions. On top of that, you needed a security deposit worth hundreds of millions.
Then there were maintenance fees that climbed into the millions as well.
Just being able to say you lived in Signiel on rent meant your fixed monthly expenses were already in the tens of millions. How could anyone call that person ordinary?
So I’d wanted to see it for myself at least once.
I was curious what the place looked like where the people at the very top of Seoul actually lived.
What the hell is he really?
The more we talked, the more confusing it all became.
He said he’d been working part-time not long ago, but the place I was headed to now was the very Signiel I’d always been so curious about.
He claimed he’d recently made a fortune in crypto, but then said he’d made enough to buy Signiel outright, and that was hard to believe no matter how I looked at it.
And it wasn’t something I could easily dismiss as illegal, either.
If you make money illegally, I don’t think you can buy property with it.
A rental, maybe, people could understand that. But buying it outright was another matter; it would be hard to pull that off with dirty money.
Putting the tangled thoughts aside for the moment, I decided to enjoy the tour first.
I pressed 70 on the elevator.
Was Signiel really on the seventieth floor of a place like this?
I vaguely remembered hearing that you had to transfer somewhere along the way, but maybe I was mistaken.
Still, the resident would know better than I would, wouldn’t he?
The elevator stopped at the seventieth floor.
The corridor led only to the home of that rich jerk’s brother.
So this is what a pricey house is like. It really is different.
I opened the door.
“...”
I was speechless. They say when someone is too shocked, even an exclamation won’t come out.
That phrase fit the moment perfectly.
I couldn’t possibly put this surprise into words.
So I replaced it with a question instead.
“H-How is a house this big...?”
I honestly couldn’t believe it.
Even the windows I could see looked like they covered more space than my entire house.
And it wasn’t just the windows. The house itself was like that.
How could you not even see from one end to the other? You could use this place as a sports field.
Just one of these countless rooms would be enough to rival my whole house.
And the view outside the windows...
So Seoul was this kind of city...?
It was only because it was always blocked by tall buildings that I’d never realized Seoul could look like this.
The buildings that had once towered over me now seemed beautiful when I looked down at them from far above.
I walked along the windows for a long while.
You could even jog here...
It was even a duplex.
I had never even seen a place like this in a drama.
After looking around enough, I made my first request to the rich jerk’s brother.
“Oppa.”
“Yeah?”
“Please, let’s be friends.”
“I’m fine with that, but didn’t you say you weren’t going to see me?”
“Please forgive this humble one’s past sins.”
“Haha, very well. I shall forgive you.”
He looked completely different to me now.
Maybe he really was a shallow money grubber after all...?
No, wait, anyone would want to be friends with him if they saw this place.
I forced myself to rationalize it.
But that aside...
What does he actually do?
The question still hadn’t been answered.
***
After seeing the super penthouse, Seola changed her posture.
Then she decided to speak a little more casually, and after staring out the window for a long time, she finally left the house.
“Sniff... If it were up to me, I’d stay and look around a little longer...”
“It’s already been two hours, hasn’t it?”
“That still isn’t enough.”
“Then who told you to schedule a broadcast today?”
“It’s the fate of a female streamer, I guess. You know I’m having dinner with Oppa today, so imagine if I were late. Ugh... just thinking about it makes me dizzy.”
She honestly looked like she wanted to stay longer.
Today might be the only chance she got to come here, after all.
There was nothing to be done.
She had already posted a notice on the broadcast board saying she was going out to eat dinner with me.
Even now, she was a little late.
On days like this, she needed to go live earlier to reassure the viewers.
That was why she’d posted the notice in the first place.
Besides, I wasn’t just any viewer.
Once you added the Star Balloons I’d sponsored during Excel Broadcast, I was the one who had taken the chair position by an overwhelming margin.
She couldn’t help being even more sensitive about it.
“Want me to take you there?”
“No! On a day like today, we have to be even more careful. There’ve been stalker issues lately too... I think it’d only stir things up for no reason.”
“You have stalkers?”
“Most female streamers probably do. The law is weird, so unless there’s clear damage, it’s hard to punish them. Anyway, today we absolutely can’t give anyone a reason to nitpick.”
She’d gone that far to say it, so insisting on taking her anyway would’ve been strange.
After sending Seola off, I went back into Signiel.
With the chief of staff.
“Chief, if we’re not running late, could I use one of the rooms as an office?”
“Certainly. I’ve already given instructions along those lines.”
“Thank you. And please arrange a meeting with a famous chef as soon as possible. Also, I’d like some well-known books on investing.”
“...I’ll have everything settled at the earliest possible date. It should take no more than two days.”
Only a few days ago, I’d been unemployed, so I didn’t think I’d be especially good at investing.
That would be arrogance.
Still, I felt the need for it.
The money I had wasn’t a trivial sum.
I didn’t want to keep all of it tied up in real estate alone.
From this point on, I planned to study.
For now, I was going to try both crypto and stocks in parallel.
Bitcoin might struggle for the next year or two, but I didn’t think it would ever vanish into history.
Somehow, I had the intuition that one day it would break past 100 million won.
If anyone heard me say that, they’d laugh.
If I said that anywhere else, everyone would mock me.
Right now it had fallen to 10 million won, and the decline was still getting worse.
100 million would be ten times that. Who would believe it?
At 1 billion won, it’d be 100 times 10 million.
Thinking about it again, it did seem a little unrealistic.
Still, my instincts insisted the possibility was there.
“It’s all right if I stay in one of the finished rooms, right?”
“We rushed to finish the second floor first so we’d have a temporary place for you to stay. For now, we only moved the furniture in.”
“That’s more than enough.”
More than enough, really—it was almost excessive.
The furniture was top of the line, and the room itself was large enough to be compared to my aunt’s house.
I’d rest a bit before going.
I hadn’t even been working part-time, but I’d gotten up early in the morning, so I was a little tired.
I headed to the room on the second floor.
It was supposed to be temporary, but the room was so comfortable it could have been permanent.
More than that, it felt like a luxury hotel.
Even though I’d never actually been to one.
I lay down on the bed.
“Wow...”
So this was why furniture prices varied so wildly even when they looked like the same thing.
When I slept at my aunt’s place, I used to toss and turn forever before I could drift off, but now it felt like I could fall asleep right away.
Before I knew it, my eyes were closing.
“...What time is it?”
This was insane. I had fallen asleep without even realizing when.
And not only that.
All the fatigue in my body had vanished.
So beds could be this good...
I checked the time on my phone beside me.
It was already evening.
When had so much time passed?
Wondering whether Seola had gotten back safely, I logged into America TV.
On the notice board, there was already a proof photo saying she’d arrived on time to reassure the viewers.
She’s really diligent.
I entered her broadcast.
I joined without logging in because I wanted to see what she was doing.
If I logged in, the atmosphere would shift too much toward me.
Just then, they were talking about me.
Seola hadn’t hidden the dinner date with me in the first place, so it seemed everyone had become curious.
The proof photo also included a note saying she’d come back after finishing dinner with me.
The guesses about me kept coming.
There were all kinds of theories.
Among them, one person had even guessed the right answer.
I figured logging in now wouldn’t really ruin the mood, so I signed in.
“Eeeek! Rich Jerk Oppa! This makes me feel way too pressured!”
Seola looked different when she was having dinner with me and when she was broadcasting.
That made it even more fun.
The Seola who seemed her exact age in person looked at least a little more mature when she was on air.
Maybe it was because she was so professional in her own way.
While I was enjoying the broadcast, the viewer count suddenly started climbing.
Seola was flustered.
“W-Why is everyone suddenly saying things like that? Oppa isn’t that kind of person.”
I was flustered too.
If Seola was panicking, I was just wondering what these idiots were spouting off about.
I got it.
So that was what this was about.
Had these bastards lost their minds?
For now, I started by calming things down.
After repeating it a few times...
I was able to calm the chat down.
More than that...
I understood the rough outline, but...
First I’d have to figure out exactly what was going on.
It wasn’t that I was angry. It was just absurd.
Because I knew better than anyone that I was a legitimate rich bastard.