SK Asset IV
President Lee Gukjin stared at the laptop, and his eyes wavered, flooded with horror and reverence at once. He was looking straight at it, and still he couldn't believe it.
New articles were going up before a minute had even passed. Then his phone rang. Choi Seonggi.
"President Choi…… we hit the jackpot!"
"You're getting worked up over that? ……What price should we close it out at?"
"Hard to say. The way this mood is running, I think it'll fall to around twenty thousand won."
"Then let's do it that way. I'll leave it in your hands, President Lee."
"Don't worry! I'll unwind it cleanly."
"Yes, understood. And don't forget what I said — this stays a secret."
"Of course, don't worry! Let's grab lunch together one of these days."
"Sure. Take care, then."
The call had already ended, and still Lee Gukjin's eyes wouldn't settle. It felt as if he had finally met the genius he had been waiting for all this time.
The Korean coverage said so, and so did the pieces out of the United States: the semiconductor supply contract between Tisola and Yujin Semiconductor had been all but ninety-nine percent certain. They had even secured a firm OK on test-sample production.
And yet Tisola had declared the deal dead. That meant the seventy-five percent yield Yujin Semiconductor had claimed was a lie. By Lee Gukjin's own information network, Tisola would have signed even at a sixty percent yield. Yujin's price was that competitive against what Saengsong and SG were charging. Hadn't someone said it wasn't even half?
Which was exactly why Lee Gukjin had thought Choi Seonggi's short sale was madness.
"How much is this?"
They had gone short in the eighty-thousand-won range. If the stock fell into the twenty thousands and they covered there — 240 billion won? 230 billion? In a single stroke he would have an enormous sum in his fist.
The market was already looking at GJ Asset, the firm that had shorted Yujin Semiconductor, with different eyes. A phenomenal investment house blessed with an uncanny instinct — or a criminal enterprise that had quietly obtained inside information and used it. The latter didn't matter. There was no evidence, and it wasn't true anyway.
Who could have imagined that a contract ninety-nine percent certain to close would break?
"Let's see. What's the profit?"
He had been guaranteed three percent, so Lee Gukjin himself stood to pocket close to seven billion won. Yujin Semiconductor, which had been oscillating around eighty thousand won, was already down in the low sixty thousands. Give it a few days and it would collapse into the twenty thousands.
Lee Gukjin called Jeong Byeonghwan. He needed someone he could share this staggering, unbelievable fact with.
"Hey, President Lee. What's going on?"
"That President Choi Seonggi. What kind of man is he?"
"That guy…… I don't really know him either! Why? Did something happen?"
"He's no ordinary man! Where on earth has he been, and what has he been doing?"
"Why? What happened?"
"It's……."
The moment he tried to say it, his mouth refused to open. There was an unwritten rule on the investment side — a superstition that if you ran your mouth before the profit was real, you were finished. The tape was clearly running toward a windfall, but he hadn't turned it into cash yet.
"You were right! That man is a truly frightening one!"
"As I thought…… If even you are saying so, President Lee, then Choi Seonggi really must be no ordinary figure."
"I'm having lunch with President Choi soon. You should join us."
"Yeah. All right……"
Even after he hung up, his hands would not stop trembling.
"They said I'd meet a benefactor. So it was this man all along."
He didn't realize it himself, but the eyes of Lee Gukjin, president of GJ Asset, were glittering with greed.
On the second floor of the Yangpyeong Mansion, in the living room, Choi Seonggi and Cha Yohan sat facing each other. From a seat set well apart, Na Dohyung watched the two of them talk.
"If you're going to trade Korea and the U.S. both, when do you plan on sleeping?"
"It's fun. I'm doing both!"
"And if you wreck your health that way, then what?"
"…"
"You're still twenty-two. Your twenties are when you exercise, build a body, and live off it for the rest of your life. You have to sleep enough or the health doesn't hold!"
"I am sleeping."
Over the past few days both Seonggi and Na Dohyung had often seen Yohan hunched in his chair. That, it turned out, was him snatching naps.
"Do you have any idea how bad it is when day and night get flipped? There's such a thing as a biorhythm! It breaks. Sleep matters that much."
"I know. I sleep seven hours every day."
"Since when do you sleep seven hours?"
"From three in the morning until eight…… and from three-thirty in the afternoon until six-thirty…… minus the hour in between for eating and walking Moneyball."
Seonggi and Na Dohyung both stared at Cha Yohan in surprise. Everything he had said was true — but more than that, it was the longest stretch of speech they had heard from him since the day they met. Was it possible for someone to improve this much in a few days?
"Ordinary people work eight hours a day. You're staring at a laptop for sixteen. It's bad for you."
"…"
"Let's do it this way. I saw you in the U.S. pre-market from six-thirty in the evening — that session before the regular market opens. Give it up! If you're going to trade, start at eleven at night, when the market officially opens, and be done before three in the morning."
"…"
Yohan said nothing. He only glared at Seonggi, his face tight with anger.
"Futures."
"What kind of present? Say the word! I'll buy you whatever you need."
"Then let me trade futures!"
"The futures you mean — don't tell me it's that kind. Futures trading?"
Cha Yohan nodded.
"This kid is seriously scary. Secretary Na, you heard that just now, didn't you? Yohan says he wants to trade futures."
"Yes, sir. I heard."
Even if you pulled leverage on stocks, you almost never lost more than your principal. Futures could blow a hole past your principal in an instant. You could multiply a profit several times over, even tens of times — and you could multiply a loss by just as much. On the futures market, even veterans worn smooth by the years got wiped out in a single blow all the time. Seeing the future was never easy, and there were too many variables.
"Absolutely not! Out of the question!"
"I'm the uncle! You're the nephew! Listen to your uncle!"
"What?"
Choi Seonggi's mouth fell open. He had taken the boy for a fool who knew nothing — no. Brilliant, yes, but not in his right mind, not with that illness. And yet he knew. He knew all of it.
"Uncle or whatever else you are — futures are absolutely out!"
Was he trying to blow every won they'd scraped together in a single shot?
"Yohan earned money! Yohan will use that money."
"You seem to have forgotten. That money belongs to SK Asset. Cha Yohan only takes a ten-percent incentive."
"Swindler!"
"Swindler? Excuse me?"
Seonggi flared.
"I feed you, I house you, I brought Moneyball here, I give you pizza, I let you have fun…… and I'm a swindler? Where do you find a company that pays a ten-percent incentive?"
There were plenty of such companies, of course. How would Cha Yohan know that?
"Crooked boss. Bad nephew! Bad guy."
Seonggi glared right back, unwilling to yield. He had thought the boy a simple fool, and the boy knew everything worth knowing. On top of that he had the genius to pull in day-trade profits no one could even imagine.
"Fine! Do as you're told, and if you keep making money without taking losses, I'll consider letting you trade futures."
"When?"
"One month! I'll be watching for a month."
"Acknowledged!"
"But no all-nighters. Sleep as much as I said, and for one meal a day eat the food Madam Go prepared instead of pizza. Three walks a day, and thirty minutes of strength work."
Futures — if he simply capped it at a small amount, what was the harm? Even a loss would be a small one. And this short had already brought in something like 240 billion won, so there was room to spare. Wasn't that gathering, The Meeting, due to open again? For Seonggi, who could tell truth from lies, it was a gold mine.
"Acknowledged!"
Cha Yohan answered without letting the anger leave his face.
"Secretary Na!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Uncle Yohan — ugh, I have to call that guy uncle. I'll just call him Yohan. Do you know anything about Yohan's mother?"
"As I told you before, it happened long before I began working as a secretary, so I don't know much either."
"Isn't there anyone who would know?"
"Hard to say. Chairman Cha Jinpyo would…… but asking him would be dangerous."
"The inheritance is already settled. What's dangerous about it?"
"Even so. He cares a great deal about the honor of his house. He won't want it known."
That sounded right. Seonggi himself had been ready to let the matter sink.
"Then look into it, and keep it from getting out if you can."
"Yes, sir. I will."
"And this."
Seonggi held a bag out to Na Dohyung. Na knew exactly what it was. He was the one who had withdrawn it from the bank.
"What is it?"
"I put about five hundred million won in there."
"I don't need it. You've already raised my salary a great deal. And there's what Chairman Cha Wonseok set aside for me."
"I know. Take it anyway!"
"Sir, you shouldn't spend money like this…… When employees get full, they start thinking of other things."
"If you get full, Secretary Na, are you going to start thinking of other things?"
"I would never."
"I'm giving it to you so you won't. From now on, on a regular — no. I'll cut you equity in the investment firm we just founded. You're the most important person I have, Secretary Na. I have to look after you. If I take care of you like this, do you think a few coins from some other bastards would turn your head?"
"Then let's say I'm buying the equity with this money."
"You can't buy it with this! What do you think I'm going to make SK Asset's shares worth, that you'd buy in with pocket change? Don't make me talk all day — take it! Give your younger siblings plenty of spending money. And later, grow it properly as your retirement fund."
"Then…… I'll leave it in SK Asset."
"What?"
"Because I trust you, sir. SK Asset is going to grow the money, isn't it?"
"Ha…… Secretary Na. That's a wise choice."
Seonggi broke into a delighted cackle.
Just then, Na Dohyung's phone rang. The moment he saw the caller, his face went hard.
"I'll step out and take this."
"Sure. Take your time."
Na Dohyung came down from the second floor, opened the front door, and only answered once he was outside.
"Yeah. What is it?"
"Yes, sunbae. I looked into something…… so I called."
There was a reason he had come outside to take it. The caller was Ham Sangtae, his junior at the National Police Agency.
"All right. Tell me."
Even as he spoke, Na Dohyung drifted toward the trees, walking as if he were only out for a stroll.
"One of the seniors I know is former HID. He says there's a strong chance Bridge Trading is an NIS front."
"You told me that last time."
"From there…… this isn't confirmed, but…… you remember six years ago? The list of our NIS black operatives got exposed through China. Most of them made it out of China during that incident…… but some stayed behind to clean up, and with the sea routes and the air routes both sealed, they went overland, across Xinjiang and the Uyghur region, into Afghanistan."
"Why go that way?"
If they were going overland, Southeast Asia would have been the better road.
"Because there was someone China's MSS and Russia's SVR were both hunting. They'd already blocked every escape route they expected, so he went that way."
MSS. SVR. Na Dohyung had heard the names at least once. Intelligence services of China and Russia, cut from the same cloth as America's CIA.
"Have you ever heard of Black Mamba?"
"What's that?"
"A legend, they say, among intelligence operatives and the special-response units. I don't know the details either…… They say he led five people out across that whole distance. Think about it. Fighting the Chinese military and Afghan fighters, running thousands of miles on foot."
He was busy, and the man on the phone was telling him a story that belonged in a novel. Na Dohyung was just about to snap.
"In the end two of the five died, and Black Mamba took bullets in the side and the thigh, but he got the other three out safely. Because of that, he said he wanted to live in peace, took off the uniform, and applied to become a civil servant — after handing every bit of the money the government gave him to the families of the colleagues who died. Isn't that the man you asked about, sunbae? If he worked at Bridge Trading and he was a civil servant, it seems to fit……"
"No. He isn't from that world. That's enough — stop digging! I'm busy. I'll see you later. Thanks, Sangtae!"
Even after he hung up, he stared blankly at the phone.
Black Mamba?
The gunshot wounds on Choi Seonggi's side and thigh. Torn muscle that no gym could have made.
"Yeah. It figures."
No wonder the man had dressed him down so hard — five whole minutes to fight five people over that Family Love Loan, and he'd even gotten himself hurt.