Chapter 1: A 2,500-Fold Return
Chapter 1: A 2,500-Fold Return
I had come to realize that living diligently didn't guarantee financial stability.
“Just lend me ten million won. I’m telling you, this one’s a sure thing. Don’t you trust your old man?”
“Father, you haven’t paid back any of the money you’ve borrowed all those times.”
“What’s that between a father and son? I raised you, fed you all this time. And if I hit it big this time, I’ll pay you back double.”
After my mother passed away, it was just my father and me.
Drinking, gambling, fighting.
To put it nicely, my father had lived the life of an adventurer.
The only good thing about him, who usually stumbled home in the dead of night, was that he wasn't violent.
He was just a man who lived thinking only of what he wanted to do.
He had little interest in his son.
Whether the rice ran out at home, or we had no money.
I had to figure it out myself or starve.
‘I will never live like my father.’
To avoid becoming like him, I studied hard through middle and high school without ever signing up for a private academy, and I worked part-time jobs all through college.
Effort, effort, and more effort.
You can’t afford to be lazy when you’ve starved because the rice ran out.
To save even a single penny, I had to put in the labor.
“There’s a freshman get-together. Let’s go.”
“Sorry, I have work.”
From my first year, I started working part-time to pay for tuition.
I only ever saw my classmates after lectures when I was working at a PC bang or a pub.
When we did meet, we’d exchange awkward glances, but I’d soon ignore them.
‘The money I’d spend drinking with you guys could cover my living expenses for two weeks.’
The bliss of ten thousand won.
I’d buy a single sausage, slice it thinly, and make it last for two or three days.
On the rare occasion I desperately craved meat, I’d buy pork hind leg during a closing sale and grill it.
The feeling of bliss when even a small piece of meat entered my mouth.
‘The world is a decent place to live.’
It’s fine if you don’t have money, as long as you don’t compare yourself to others.
I could still find romance in life.
It was lonely being by myself, but solitude and loneliness are not diseases.
“Here, kid. I’ll give you extra.”
“Huh?”
“The hind leg is tough. I’ll give you a bit more.”
I wondered if the ladies at the market could tell my circumstances just by looking at me.
Perhaps it was the single pair of tattered jeans I wore through spring, summer, fall, and winter during my college years.
Or maybe it was the thin, faded autumn jacket I wore even in the dead of winter.
Thanks to that, I got a few extra dozen grams of meat, so it was a gain.
“Hey. Making money is good and all, but there’s a certain romance to college life, you know. You should come to the gatherings from now on. We’ll help you if you don’t know something, and we’ll pull you up and give you a push when we get out into the real world. Huh?”
“Yes.”
I would nod whenever the upperclassmen spoke to me, but I’d ignore them as soon as I turned my back.
When you’re struggling to survive day to day, what does a senior-junior relationship even mean?
After finishing my first year and completing my military service, I became a true loner.
The freedom of a returning student, whom no one dared to approach unless they were left alone.
I attended classes alone, worked, and earned money.
Back then, I had severely underestimated the man who was my father.
“Shin. Your old man’s hungry. Could you spare 200,000 won?”
200,000 won.
An amount as large as my clothing and transportation budget for an entire year.
Hearing that my father was hungry, I gave it to him without hesitation.
I found out later that he had blown all of it at a casino.
“We have a rotating savings group meeting. It’s my turn to collect soon. Just give me 500,000 won. I’ll pay you back 700,000 in two months.”
“Your grandmother is sick. We’re short on the hospital fees right now. Help us out a bit.”
“You know my teeth aren’t great. I think I need to get an implant. Someone I know said they’d do it for cheap. Is there any way you could help?”
He was a man who would try to take the very liver from a flea.
I saved money from part-time jobs and poured it into my father time and again.
I kept telling myself I should stop, but I was fleeced for one reason or another.
It was the result of not being able to turn away the only family I had, having lived with him since I was a child.
And this time, he was asking for ten million won.
It made me realize what a pushover I had been all this time.
They say there are those who earn money and those who spend it.
Whenever I managed to save some, he would take it for various reasons. I was sick and tired of everything I had endured.
“What are you going to do with ten million won?”
“I’m going to make some money.”
“Money? Are you starting a business? Or is it for gambling again…”
“I’m not going to blow it at a casino. I’ve come to my senses. This time, I’m investing with a solid source. I’ll even sign up in your name.”
“Sign up? You’re not trying to sign me up for something strange, are you?”
“There’s this thing called ‘coin.’ I’m going to invest. I can’t invest in my own name since I owe money to so many people.”
I had some money saved up to increase the security deposit for my studio apartment.
Knowing I was probably being fooled, I decided to give my father one last chance.
I resolved to change my phone number if he ever asked for money again after this.
About six months later, I received a call from the police.
“Is this Kim Shin? This is the Namyangju Police Station.”
“What is it about?”
I received the call while working my part-time job at an ice cream shop.
I instinctively knew it had to be about my father. Otherwise, there was no reason for the police to call me.
“There was a major traffic accident. Mr. Kim Seong-tae passed away at the scene.”
“What?”
“He was riding his motorcycle and slipped on a wet road.”
My father’s death.
It wasn't a collision with a car, but a solo accident on a rainy road.
My only family was gone, but in that moment, I felt a mixture of sadness and liberation, as if a shackle had been removed.
“You must be going through a lot, handling this big event.”
“Thank you for coming all this way, Manager.”
“Of course. Get some rest. Come back to work when you’re ready.”
The staff from the shop where I worked part-time came to the funeral.
In contrast, my father’s acquaintances came early and just drank.
“Hey. We’re back again, Shin.”
A man who had been drinking until dawn came back around noon to drink some more.
It seemed he regarded my father’s funeral as a place for free booze.
“I know this isn’t the place to say this, but your father owed me some money.”
Quite a few people introduced themselves as his creditors.
As a man who loved gambling and drinking, he must have borrowed from here and there.
I shook my head.
“My father owed me a lot of money too. But now that he’s gone, I guess I won’t be getting it back.”
“No. You’re his son, so you have to pay it back.”
“Was he even a father, when he never once cooked a proper warm meal for me? And of course, I’ll be renouncing the inheritance.”
“Renouncing the inheritance?”
“Yes. You’re well aware that my father left no money behind.”
“Damn it.”
Since my father had no credit to speak of, he had borrowed from many places, but the amounts were never large.
After the funeral, I graduated from college and worked diligently at a company.
Life alone was peaceful.
I was able to save a good amount of money from my job and picked up several hobbies.
Playing mobile games without spending money, or watching travel videos on YouTube.
The beggar’s mentality was so ingrained in me that even after becoming a professional, I never once went to a ski resort.
“Assistant Manager Kim, there’s some work in Daejeon.”
“Of course. I should go.”
I worked in Seoul, but business trips to other regions were always welcome.
I stayed in a hotel in Daejeon, and in my spare time, I visited various famous restaurants.
I took a warm bath at the Yuseong Hot Springs.
The corporate card truly held a magical power.
‘This world is a great place to live, if you just have money.’
It was a shame I couldn’t enjoy this wonderful world in my teens and twenties.
But this was a life I had earned through effort.
‘I’m glad I lived diligently. I’m being rewarded, after all.’
Then, I grew close to a female employee from the company’s support department.
We met for work, and I helped her with her tasks. As a result, we spent a lot of time together.
“Oppa. Do you want to go out?”
“Really?”
We got married six months after we started dating, but the joy of having a family was fleeting.
We divorced after just one year of marriage due to irreconcilable personality differences and the disdain from my in-laws, things I hadn’t known before we lived together.
“What a life…”
A semi-basement room, damp throughout all four seasons.
How absurd must it have looked to the landlady, seeing me return just one year after leaving to get married.
Fighting back the feeling of wasting money, I cracked open a bottle of soju in my room.
I had tried it a few times while working, but it never suited my taste.
“Kuhh.”
Soju with homemade tofu kimchi.
Wallowing in pathetic misery, I drank, one glass at a time.
It was sad to be left alone in the world after the divorce, but what could I do about what had already happened?
I had walls around my heart.
I was wary, suspicious.
I wasn't the type to easily embrace others, and she was the type to get extremely irritated over trivial matters.
Our time together had been hell, so I thought it was a relief that we separated early.
‘Living alone isn’t so bad. They say it gets lonely in your fifties. But living quietly without leaving anything behind in the world…’
I just had to enjoy the solitude and loneliness.
In other words, I could live freely, unbound by anything.
Sleep, eat, and rest whenever I wanted.
Learn new hobbies, watch YouTube videos.
Then, a memory from several years ago suddenly surfaced.
The ten million won my father had borrowed.
I had forgotten about it because he had never returned any money he took.
After my father’s death, I had been too busy managing my graduation credits, finding a job, and navigating office life.
Honestly, I didn’t want to recall the events of that time, so I had forgotten about it for a long time.
“He would have signed up in my name…”
Rummaging through my memory, I accessed the overseas website again.
“The site is still up.”
It had been about six years, so it was a relief it hadn’t gone bankrupt.
I entered the ID and password, intending to withdraw whatever was left of the ten million won.
“…What is this?”
The number on the monitor was so large that I couldn’t take it all in at once.
What he had bought six years ago for less than $2 a piece was Bitcoin.
Now, a single coin was worth over $5,000, and it had been on a continuous rise since the beginning of the year.
A 2,500-fold return.
It was an astronomical sum I had never even dreamed of.
“My God.”
My body started to tremble the moment I saw the valuation.
The buzz from half a bottle of soju vanished in an instant.
I immediately locked the door, closed the window, and drew the curtains. Then I checked the computer again.
“That’s right. What my father bought was Bitcoin.”
My father had blown money on all sorts of things, so I had no trust in him. I hadn't even remembered it properly, but to think it had grown into such a colossal sum.
‘This is a financial asset.’
Working part-time and studying hard in college was all to earn labor income.
I had to sweat to earn enough to survive.
How many times had my seniors at work or business associates talked about the importance of investing?
“The apartment I bought recently went up by over 300 million won.”
“Did you buy it with a tenant?”
“Yeah. That’s how you maximize the return.”
They commonly invested in apartments.
“My father has some land in Gyeonggi province. They say Pangyo is expanding…”
“Did the price go up?”
“I heard it tripled this time.”
“You should sell it, then.”
“Why? It’ll go up several times more if I just hold on to it.”
I had heard conversations about investing in land.
It all felt like a story from another world, and I had thought about buying some blue-chip stocks if I ever had a little extra money.
But the coin my father had bought had now gone up 2,500 times.
They say even a broken clock is right twice a day.
It was a rate of return unbelievable even in the volatile stock market.