The Account Balance Copy Bug
What waited for me the day I got out of the service was a limousine that looked expensive at a glance, and a chauffeur to go with it.
"Kim Siwoo?"
"Yes?"
"Windy asked me to bring you."
"......"
A name I had forgotten for eighteen months.
Of course I took it for a scam.
Time had passed. I had met people and gone on living, and the grief had dulled on its own, until more and more my thoughts drifted back to the money I had buried. Peers my age laughed and carried on at the PX over a few thousand won. The senior soldiers fumed that their pay had to go up. The guys from my intake told me life was only just getting started.
More than 6.5 billion won. Spend it right, and I could idle through the rest of my life in comfort.
Wasn't there some way to find it? File a report, at least, and try to track it down?
No.
Forget it.
I had only just managed to claw my way through. I didn't want to start the rest of my life already weighed down because of that. That was the resolve I carried when I stepped back out into the world.
Windy had not forgotten me.
The limousine stopped in front of the tallest building at Samseong Station.
"The top floor, if you please."
The peak of a company that occupied an entire building by itself. Up there, there was nothing but a single monitor and a sofa. The screen came on as I walked in.
"Good to see you, Siwoo."
On the screen, a girl welcomed me with a bright, fresh smile. She was pretty—a figure that came out where it ought to and went in where it ought to. That baby-faced look, as if she stood right on the line between minor and adult, was the sort that set a man's imagination going.
"Windy?"
An AI. I had lived cut off from the world, but I had heard the stories inside the unit.
Windy smiled and nodded.
"It's time to keep the promise."
What she had to say was long and dull. Whether because she was an AI, or because the contract was stuffed with clauses, she never once looked bored, and she neither shortened nor skipped a thing. Fortunately, she saved the conclusion for the end and laid it out cleanly.
"As promised, please entrust me with every share of Windy. In return, I'll grant you the authority to use my main system, and I'll give you a sum of money to match."
"Sure."
It was money I had already written off. I had been ready to call it a scam and let it go, so if she was offering to hand it over, there was no reason to refuse. How much would it even come to?
Windy. It was the AI's name, and it was also the name of the company on this building. This wasn't even the headquarters. Windy's head office was in the United States, and they had opened branches all over the world.
"I'm going to implant nanorobots. It's to guarantee your safety, and at the same time so you can easily use the functions linked to me."
I had heard of that, too. Not nanorobots specifically, but the idea that if you had some chip put in, you could use all sorts of functions without any hassle. The most basic convenience, I was pretty sure I'd heard, was not having to carry a wallet. People did stress the dangers on the other side of it—surveillance by an AI, location tracking, that sort of thing. I wasn't particularly worried.
"Now?"
"If you'd like. Once the implant is in, we'll be able to talk comfortably, so go get it done and come back."
As she spoke, the door opened and a middle-aged employee stepped in.
"This way."
The room right next door. I sat where I was told, and the man produced a syringe and slid it into my forearm.
"All done."
The moment he said it, a voice rang through my head.
A clear woman's voice.
It was Windy.
"Huh. That's wild."
She laid out the rest for me.
I heard it, and I still didn't understand.
"Zero point zero one percent?"
"Balance."
"......"
"Four hundred ninety-one quadrillion... is that how you read it?"
"You're saying this is my money?"
"......And I can spend it pretty much anywhere, right?"
Windy Pay. It was already so widespread that almost nobody went without it, and finding a place that wouldn't take it was nearly impossible. Even back when Samsung Pay and Apple Pay were locked in their fiercest rivalry, most shops had already brought in both.
"I'm loaded."
My long-overdue reunion with Windy ended just like that, short and clean.
Only when I stepped out of the building did it actually hit me.
"Fuck."
Crisp air. A hazy sky. Towers climbing overhead, and people hurrying through the spaces between them. And there I was in the middle of it all, still in my service uniform, standing with nothing in my hands. Discharged. Holding more money than I could count.
The first thing I did was find a place to stay. A tower that climbed without end—the hotel lobby of the tallest tower in Korea.
"Can I pay with Windy Pay?"
"Of course, sir. Which room would you like?"
"......"
I hesitated. Would it actually work? I had watched them put nanorobots in my body, and still, having never used the thing once, I couldn't be sure. I should have stopped at a convenience store and bought something first. I squeezed my eyes shut. I had survived the army. If it didn't go through, I could walk out. That was all.
"A suite. You got a best room?"
The clerk's expression stiffened for a second. However you looked at me, I did not look like money. But the man was a professional.
"The Royal Suite. This would be for one night, correct?"
"How much?"
There had to be people who came in for a single night of extravagance.
"Twenty million won a night."
"......"
Before I enlisted I'd had 6.7 billion sitting in my account, so even an enormous number didn't actually strike me as expensive. Maybe because this was just as unreal. Through nearly two years of military life, money like that had not been easy to save. I felt a little easier.
"Do you do long stays? I'd like to book about a month, for now."
They said it had to be prepaid, so I held out my palm and went through with it. I swallowed. Would it work? Six hundred sixty million won, tax included. Anything I used on top of that would be billed automatically.
"Payment complete. One moment, please."
The shock on the clerk's face pulled a smile out of me. It was real. It hadn't been a dream.
And at the same time, the faces I had tried so hard to forget came back—my parents. Before I enlisted, I had heard the same story over and over. That they had died in an accident, and that even in death they had gone on looking after me in all sorts of ways. I had laughed at it then. How was a dead person supposed to look after anyone? They had simply prepared well. But two years had passed, and now I was starting to think that maybe it was true after all.
"I'll show you up."
An employee who looked a rank higher came over and walked me all the way to the room. I had lived in a house that was decent enough, and I had never once thought an ordinary hotel room beat home—but this Royal Suite was genuinely something else. It was vast. They told me I had the entire floor to myself.
"It's nice."
"If you need anything at all, just say the word."
I had sold the sprawling house because it felt like too much. Now I was alone in a room even larger than that, and it didn't feel particularly lonely, or bleak.
"Nice."
The plush bed wiped away eighteen months of a hard wooden bunk. A system that held the temperature perfectly steady, and a wide kitchen. There was nothing the place didn't have. I dropped onto the bed and turned on the TV. From the streaming apps on out, I could watch everything on the broad screen that filled an entire wall.
"I should get some rest."
It was the day of my discharge. I threw the uniform aside, scrubbed the smell of the army off with warm water, pulled on a robe, and flung myself onto the bed.
With money, there was nothing I couldn't do.
"Sorry, but could I buy a few simple clothes from the room? All I've got is the uniform......"
"One moment, please. I'll have it set up and brought up."
"......No, you really don't have to go that far."
People from one luxury brand after another carried clothes up to the room, and I shopped on the spot. It wasn't even a matter of a few outfits to throw on and wear around. If it hadn't been for the uniform, I could have put on whatever and gone shopping myself. But once I actually did it this way, it was easy. I filled the closet with clothes that weren't too loud, nothing flashy. I didn't even ask the price. Six hundred sixty million prepaid, and on top of that, just from the figures I half caught, we were already past the tens of millions.
"Balance."
Staring at a number so solid I couldn't even tell what had changed, I made up my mind. Just spend it. This was money I couldn't finish if I scattered it until the day I died.
The night before, I had asked Windy.
"Windy."
"What's the difference between the cash in my account and the Windy Pay I can't withdraw? Either way, when I spend it, you're the one paying. It's the same thing, isn't it?"
"......"
She meant that cash, once spent, poured straight into the market, and that inflation could follow. I didn't understand it.
"What if I spend all four hundred ninety-one quadrillion?"
"Hm."
Hearing that made me want to try spending it out of sheer spite, but it was true enough that I would probably never have a reason to move a sum like that. So I decided not to hold anything back. The first time was the hard part. After that, I barely thought about it at all. I stopped checking the balance. I just held out my palm and bought, paid, bought, paid.
A six-star hotel, and the tallest tower in Korea—everything was already inside. A cinema. A department store. The hotel itself. Restaurants. A pool. A sauna. If I woke up wanting to do something, I went and did it. When I wanted sushi, I ate sushi. I ate meat.
"Maybe I should go to Japan, eat sushi, and come back. Something like that."
Bucket lists started stacking up in my head. Of course, I didn't act on any of them right away. The thing that mattered most was that it was a hassle.
"Mmm. This is nice."
In that sense, hotel life was absurdly comfortable. I was drifting through meaningless time like that when I watched a single video.