Money Makes the World Tilt
She focused.
Silence stretched on for a long while.
How many minutes had passed?
The two of them didn’t look shocked so much as disbelieving.
Maybe there were things they could believe no matter what, but this wasn’t one of them.
Then again, this was the kind of thing that only happened in dramas. Even there, these days, writers were always saying they didn’t know enough about chaebol families or some such thing, and scenes like this had practically vanished.
Once you experienced it yourself, of course it wasn’t easy to believe.
In the end, they forced awkward smiles and wrote it off as a joke.
“Haha, that’s a..”
“Yeah.. just like Ha-eun said, it’s a joke, right..? This is just too ridiculous. There must be, what, more than ten cars parked out there just in plain sight..”
“Doyun, even if you live in a nice house, there’s no way I can believe this.”
“Why not?”
“Just the cars we can see are probably worth tens of billions of won?”
“..”
I was so dumbfounded I couldn’t even speak. Only then did it seem like they thought their argument had to be right.
As if.
I wasn’t speechless because they were correct. I was speechless because the whole situation was absurd.
Cars worth tens of billions of won were hard to believe?
And the house was worth over thirty billion?
“You do know I bought this place, right?”
They were shocked all over again. Their eyelids actually trembled from how startled they were.
“I-it’s not a rental?”
“No way..”
“Th-that place looks insanely expensive..”
“Seriously.. this is Seoul, so it could easily be worth tens of billions.”
“It’s worth thirty billion won.”
When I said a three-billion-won house was worth only tens of billions, the words came out of my mouth almost reflexively.
This was ridiculous.
“..”
“..”
The two of them, who looked like they couldn’t possibly be any more shocked, were still standing there with their mouths hanging open.
Only then did they slowly start to accept it.
That the line of supercars really was mine.
To make sure they understood clearly, I opened the box of car keys I’d brought from the house.
“Pick whichever key you want and take that car. Use it comfortably while you’re in Seoul. No drunk driving, though.”
“Who do you think I am? I’d never drunk drive!”
“Right, but even sober, I feel like my hands would be shaking like crazy.”
“So.. these really are your cars, Doyun?”
“Here, look.”
They still couldn’t believe it, so I took one of the keys, walked up close, and unlocked the car.
That was when they finally accepted it.
After wandering around and checking out several cars for a long time, they answered hesitantly.
“I think this one is pretty..”
“Me too, this one is..”
Both of them had picked Ferraris.
As expected, Ferraris were popular with women.
Men seemed to prefer Lamborghinis.
I handed them the key.
“Go ahead, start it up.”
They carefully took the key and stood in front of the door with flushed faces, trying to open it.
“I’ll help you.”
I helped them because they didn’t know how to open the door. I even helped them start it.
Bwoooaaang.
The engine roared to life the instant it turned over.
They wore dazed, blissful expressions.
Honestly, it was becoming increasingly clear to me that women really did like supercars a lot.
Maybe even more than men did.
They clapped both hands over their mouths, eyes shining with excitement.
They sat there for a long time, touching everything within reach.
I wondered what there was to inspect when they weren’t even driving, but I supposed it made sense to them.
It was such a familiar sight to me now.
If I’d seen it for the first time, I would’ve reacted the same way. In fact, I had.
They even took a ton of photos.
I couldn’t help wondering how eyes could possibly sparkle that much.
It was only after quite a while that they finally got out of the car.
Their eyes were full of reluctance.
They looked like they could actually sleep inside that uncomfortable-looking car for a day.
***
We went back upstairs.
The two of them had only taken a quick look around before heading down to the parking lot, but after touring the house in detail, they were even more shocked than before.
The Signiel Penthouse was far more impressive when you looked closely than when you first saw it from the outside.
“It’s really huge..”
“How do you even clean the ceiling..?”
“I’ve never done it myself, so I wouldn’t know.”
“Well, if you live in a house like this, there’s no way you’d clean it yourself. You’d lose a whole day just doing housekeeping.”
“Feels like it would take more than a day, though..?”
“I’m suddenly feeling like my younger brother has really made it big.”
They admired everything for a while.
Then came the envy.
“I don’t think I’ll be surprised by anything else now. I never dreamed you’d succeed this much in Seoul.”
“Since Ha-eun didn’t seem to have changed all that much, I just thought she was living hard, that’s all..”
“Thanks to you, we got to have an experience most people never will.”
“Exactly. Even on the way up here, I never imagined something like this would happen.”
“I just got lucky.”
“What are you talking about? How could luck explain something like this?”
It was true that saying it was all luck didn’t really cover it.
At first, the luck had been real.
My mother found the USB, didn’t throw it away, and called me about it.
Then, right when I happened to hear the news about Bitcoin, I hurried back down.
Up to that point, yes, I’d been lucky.
But after that, the investing—
It was hard to call that luck alone when I had made the decisions myself and lived with the results.
Up to around one hundred billion won, maybe you could still call it luck.
After that, it was fair to say it was my own talent.
Hmm.
I shrugged with a little more pride than usual.
I’d become so successful that even I thought I was impressive.
Of course, I didn’t say that out loud.
As they kept looking around the rooms, their feet eventually led them into the room where I kept my accessories.
“Wow.. what are all those watches?”
“Holy crap.. the ones scattered down there look like Rolexes..”
“R-Rolexes..? Then what on earth are the watches spinning around in the display up there..”
“Damn, there’s a ton of Cartiers too.”
“C-can I take a picture of this?”
“Of course.”
“If I posted this on MuTube, it’d probably get over a million views for sure.”
Was it really that much?
To me, it was just an everyday sight by now.
After they finished touring the house,
they unpacked and lay down on the guest room bed.
For such an expensive bed, it was soft enough to make their bodies go limp.
Thanks to that, the two of them were trying very hard not to fall asleep.
They were afraid that if they closed their eyes for even a moment, they’d drift off completely.
Instead, they lay there looking out the window at the scenery outside, and even took photos while stretched out on the bed.
“Won’t you run out of storage? Aren’t you taking too many pictures?”
“Don’t worry. You don’t know this, but women take thousands of photos in a single day.”
“..”
So the life of a woman really was vast and sprawling.
“Doyun, can I post these pictures to my story..? I’ll say you’re an acquaintance’s little brother.”
“I don’t mind.”
“You can speak casually if you want.. Back then, toward the end, we dropped the formal speech, remember?”
“It’s been a while, so I got mixed up. Go ahead and post them comfortably.”
“Thanks!”
Her expression brightened.
My older sister narrowed her eyes and looked back and forth between me and Yeonwoo noona.
She tilted her head.
“No way, right?”
“No way what.”
“I was wrong. I shouldn’t have been telling Yeonwoo to be careful—I should’ve been telling you to be careful.”
“H-Ha-eun. What are you talking about.. I told you, um.. Doyun and I are..”
“Oh? Why aren’t you finishing your sentence?”
“Th-that.. back then, we were just close like an older sister and younger brother.”
“Back then..? And now..?”
“Who knows?”
“You little—!”
“Eek!”
My younger sister climbed onto Yeonwoo noona in mock outrage.
At that moment, her shirt rode up, and I caught a glimpse of her bra.
White.
I confirmed it.
I stored it in my head immediately.
I could see her hips too. And underneath, white as well.
For a split second, I confirmed they matched.
I don’t think I’d ever cheered for my younger sister as hard as I did in that moment.
“I-It’s ticklish.”
“Hah.. deal with it yourself.”
“Come on, it’s not like that.”
Maybe it was because I hadn’t seen Yeonwoo noona in a while, but she was not only pretty—she was cute too.
“When do you want to go to the department store?”
“Not sure.. I heard if you want to look around the famous brands, you have to wait in line for an hour or so.. Maybe we should get going soon?”
“Is there a brand you want to see?”
“Wait.. this is one of those things only in dramas, isn’t it..”
“You can make a reservation, at least.”
“Amazing! My little brother is..”
“How am I supposed to handle this.. if I keep going like this, I’m going to fall for him.”
“Hey, you little brat!”
They bickered again, then told me which brands they wanted to see.
I called the employee in charge at the department store, and they said that as long as I let them know our arrival time, they’d make sure the schedule was handled without any issues.
We could just go whenever we had time.
Thanks to that, we rested a little longer.
Then we left the house and headed to the department store.
“If you really live this close to a department store.. isn’t that basically paradise?”
“No, Ha-eun. Paradise only works if you have as much room to breathe as Doyun does. For people like us, wouldn’t it be hell?”
“Yeah, probably. My paycheck would vanish in less than a week.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Anyway.. let’s steel ourselves this time. We already went to the department store, so it’d be unbearably embarrassing if we got shocked like before.”
“Right. We came all the way from Gwangju to Seoul to sightsee—we don’t need to make a big deal out of it.”
The two of them made solemn vows to each other.
This time, no matter what happened, they swore they wouldn’t be surprised.
Of course, that vow didn’t survive contact with reality.
When we arrived at the department store—
“Chairman, we’ll take you and your companions inside.”
“Thank you.”
There were three employees waiting for us.
Not one, but three.
That alone had the two of them opening and closing their mouths in disbelief all over again.
They were so shocked they even hid behind me.
“What do you want to look at first?”
“..”
“..”
“Chairman, if you’d like items from our high-end brands, we can escort you to a private lounge and let you choose the brands you want in comfort, right there on the spot..”
“Just a moment.”
“Yes, Chairman.”
The two of them were still reeling.
They’d clearly said earlier that there wasn’t anything left to be shocked by. That they’d gotten used to it.
But the two people I was looking at did not seem used to anything at all.
They looked more shocked than ever.
So women really did love being treated specially at department stores.
Even if they didn’t know exactly what they liked, I could tell that this was more than just pleasant for them—it was astonishing.
And apart from the shock, their eyes were brighter than I’d ever seen them.
“D-Doyun, what is going on here..?”
Yeonwoo noona, hiding behind me, was so stunned that she had a tight grip on my arm.
She was clinging to me.
I could feel her chest against my side.
Pass.
“I’m buying these for you, so just tell me which brands you want to see.”
“..”
“..”
How much annual performance had piled up by now?
Since even before a full year had passed, I had already been awarded a top-tier rank that only the top 777 people could receive.
At the very least, I’d crossed several billion won without breaking a sweat.
Probably more than ten billion, too.
Any more than that was no more than a firefly before the sun.
I focused all my attention on her arm.