Aggro? That's My Specialty
Ring!
As the phone blared, a man frantically snatched up the receiver. As the call dragged on, his face drained of all color, turning deathly pale. Before long, the line went dead. His lips trembled as he looked at Mayor Kang Minwook, who sat before him with his head bowed.
"M-Mayor... PS Securities is demanding we deposit additional margin immediately... today..."
The man couldn't even finish his sentence. Mayor Kang Minwook's complexion already looked more like a corpse's than a living man's.
"...And if we don't?"
Gulp.
The man's Adam's apple bobbed at the mayor's hollow question. He wet his parched lips with his tongue.
"They said they will execute a forced liquidation tomorrow..."
A chilling silence descended upon the mayoral office. Mayor Kang Minwook's hands shook uncontrollably. He had never even considered the possibility of defeat. He believed he held the winning card, and because of that, he had let his guard down.
No, even if he hadn't let his guard down, did he ever stand a chance to begin with?
Kang Minwook pictured Kim Sung-woo in his mind—probably raking in mountains of cash right now, a twisted smirk plastered across his face.
'A monster... That bastard is a monster.'
Everyone had predicted Kang Minwook's victory. And why wouldn't they? A tactical bombardment of short-selling volume, backed by guaranteed bad press, was not something a mere gaming company could ever hope to withstand. That was why he had launched the assault without a second thought.
So how on earth did things end up like this?
"If we get force-liquidated now... we won't just lose our principal. We'll be liable for the additional losses on the difference. We have to deposit more margin somehow to buy us some time..."
Slam!
Kang Minwook struck his heavy executive desk, cutting the man off. The only sound left in the room was the ragged, uneven panting of the mayor.
"Margin... How the hell am I supposed to get more margin?! Where do you expect me to pull that kind of money from?!"
Kang Minwook shrieked, his face flushed a violent crimson. The subordinate watched the mayor panting for breath and calmly continued.
"Mayor. The brokerage said that even if they force-liquidate us right this second, the additional losses we have to cover—excluding our principal—amount to forty billion won."
"Ha... Haha..."
"But if we deposit more margin, push back the settlement date, and buy more time, another opportunity is bound to come."
"..."
"If we can just secure the funds..."
"It's impossible."
Mayor Kang Minwook clutched his hair, muttering in a hollow, defeated voice.
"There is absolutely nowhere left to pull funds from... I even liquidated all the donations from my wife's foundation to invest in this. What do I have left?"
"Then..."
"Yes. It's already over."
Malicious stock manipulation using short selling was strictly illegal. Of course, he had made sure there were absolutely no traces linking back to him. He had mobilized every single cent he could get his hands on. And since even that wasn't enough, he had used CFDs to leverage his position tenfold. He had even brought in other short-selling cartels to scale up the operation. Everything had been going perfectly.
"The naive kid who didn't know how the world worked... it wasn't him. It was me."
If they had profited from the short sale, he could have simply cut his ties and watched the aftermath from a safe distance. As long as he kept his mouth shut, the fact that he was the mastermind would never have surfaced.
But the short-sellers' unprecedented, catastrophic defeat had already become a laughingstock for the public. If rumors started spreading that the Mayor of Seoul, Kang Minwook, was bankrupt on top of that, what would happen?
The whole story would spread like wildfire through the media, and it would only be a matter of time before he became the nation's public enemy number one. After all, no profession had more enemies than a politician.
"...It feels like I'm dreaming."
He had envisioned himself making a fortune from this operation. It was a dream. A wildly delusional dream. Was he still trapped in a nightmare? If this was a nightmare, he wanted to wake up right this instant.
Drip. Drip.
Tears of irremediable regret rolled down Kang Minwook's cheeks. The sharp, stabbing pain in his chest with every breath felt like a harsh demand, screaming at him to finally wake up.
The boundary between dream and reality crumbled.
Kang Minwook woke up to his grim reality.
"It went exactly as you said."
"Didn't I tell you? I promised I'd make you at least three times your money."
I leaned back on the sofa, chatting away on the phone with my granduncle. He must have been incredibly satisfied with the profits this time, because his voice was dripping with an almost excessive amount of affection.
"Haha, are you still completely uninterested in the management succession?"
"Granduncle."
I gave him a mild, chilly warning. Kim Dong-ho chuckled, admitting his slip-up, and quickly changed the subject.
"So, what do you plan to do now?"
"About what?"
"Are you playing dumb? You've caused such a massive stir. For the time being, the eyes of both the political and business worlds will be locked onto you and Leon Play."
"Well, is there really anything I need to do? I'll just live my life as usual."
I meant it. Although I'd had some fun getting tangled up in a series of major incidents lately, my desire for a peaceful, ordinary life was more genuine than anyone else's. Granted, the recent events had threatened to shake my values a bit. When I crushed the skulls of those arrogant bastards who acted like gods with their absolute power, I had felt a strange, subtle sense of ecstasy.
"As usual? That's a very fancy way of saying you're going to lock yourself in your room again and throw your precious time into the trash."
"Ahem..."
Wow, the old man really hit the nail on the head. Caught off guard by this sudden act of violence based on pure facts, a dry cough escaped my throat. But honestly, this kind of life wasn't half bad.
"So, is this life truly making you happy, Sung-woo?"
"Happy...?"
Happy? Of course I was happy. How could I not be happy when I was enjoying such a comfortable life without a single financial worry? But why couldn't I proudly declare that I was happy? What even was happiness in the first place? Having lived so long without it, the very word "happiness" felt incredibly foreign to me.
"A person needs to meet people and have goals to find the drive to live. If you just settle for complacency like this, you'll stagnate and rot away. You'll be no different from a corpse."
Perhaps because we had worked so well together this time, my granduncle and I had grown quite close. A storm of nagging poured over the line every time we spoke, but this unfamiliar feeling of familial affection didn't feel entirely unwelcome. It was annoying, yet warm. Of course, the old man was only laying this groundwork because he wanted me to join the management of Taewung Group.
"Alright, I get it, so stop nagging. Is it really okay for a busy man like you to be glued to the phone for this long?"
"Haha, are you telling this old man to shut up and get back to work?"
"When did you learn mind reading?"
"Tsk, tsk. You cheeky brat."
I chuckled. To be honest, he was the only person in this godforsaken family I could actually hold a decent conversation with. I wrapped up the call after exchanging a few more trivial jokes. Once the call ended, a sudden, inexplicable wave of loneliness washed over me, making my stomach churn.
"Am I lonely?"
I scanned my surroundings. The vast living room with its soaring ceilings, the luxurious interior, and the jaw-droppingly expensive electronics and furniture. Everything I had ever dreamed of had finally become reality, yet looking at this empty house only left me feeling hollow.
"Yeah, I must be lonely."
Now that my financial issues were solved, my biggest problem was boredom. Anyone else would curse me for complaining about such a luxury. Honestly, I agreed with them. I couldn't go on like this.
"What do I actually have going for me?"
Who was I? Kim Sung-woo, an internet ghost with twenty-five years of shut-in experience. If I had to name one single strength, I could proudly puff out my chest and say: drawing aggro. Trolling and baiting people online was undoubtedly one of my greatest talents.
"Fuck."
I really was hopeless. Of all things, my only talent was drawing aggro. Tears of self-pity practically welled up in my eyes. I had tried to find a new hobby utilizing my strengths, only to end up with a deep emotional wound.
"Let's just watch YouTube."
Typical me. I picked up my phone and began hunting for something to watch like a stray dog searching for scraps. There was absolutely nothing good to watch today. After mindlessly scrolling for a while to kill time, a certain video title caught my eye.
Aggro? Trolling? Wasn't that my absolute specialty?
Filming? Editing? Planning? Casting? Haha, why should I worry? There was nothing in this world that money couldn't solve. I could just hire a team of top-tier professionals and call it a day.
And that wasn't all. The greatest advantage of YouTube was its absolute freedom. To put it bluntly, YouTube was a place where I could film and upload literally whatever the hell I wanted. Since I had cash to burn, I would be infinitely more creative and unrestricted in my content planning than anyone else.
And above all else...
"This is going to be so fucking fun."
The more I imagined it, the more thrilling it became. Tens of thousands of content ideas were already swirling around in my head. Yes, my mind was made up.
"What should I name the channel?"
I needed to create a channel right this second.