When Everyone Cheers, Sell
Two weeks later.
November.
The brief autumn had ended, and winter was settling in by degrees.
The LK Telecom marketing campaign with Han Yojung had cleared its budget review and was finally taking real shape. It was our team's project, but I simply did the work in front of me, and none of it felt particularly hard or overwhelming.
Of course, that was a personal thing. One look at Junior Associate Kim Seungho and Staff Member Kang Bitna — both of them looking distinctly hollowed out — made that clear enough.
Ideas still came to me while I worked, sharp and useful ones, but unless they were genuinely necessary I let them pass. Being bad at your job is a problem. Being too good at it can become one just as easily.
Kim Seungho and Kang Bitna had already clocked how fast I processed things, and now they clung to me all day long, endlessly bothersome.
Even while showing up to the office, I never stopped investing in myself. I kept reading. I kept training. One wall of the apartment was starting to disappear behind stacks of books, and my body was growing denser, harder. Reflexes and raw strength both felt more than twice what they had been. Sometimes I caught my reflection in the bathroom mirror, studied the muscle, and quietly marveled at it.
So this is why people look in mirrors.
My eyesight had improved just as dramatically. Glasses and contacts were gone; I didn't miss them at all. The headaches had stopped coming, and my head and body felt light as feathers. I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt this clear. I took the medicine packets I'd shoved into a corner and threw them straight into the trash.
Meanwhile, Exco — the stock I'd bought at 41,000 won — had climbed, in a single month, to a startling 96,500.
Return: roughly 135.37 percent.
I'd bought 480 shares. Current valuation: 46.3 million won. Starting from 20 million, that was about 26.3 million in profit.
Twenty-six point three million in a month. Not the steepest climb imaginable, but a real surge all the same. After the spike, trading volume had started to feel like it was easing off. It hadn't dropped yet, but the fine grain of the flow was already leaning that way. On top of that, Exco news was everywhere. Television, YouTube, community boards — people had suddenly decided this was the ticker to watch.
My target price had been left in the dust long ago. Exco's atmosphere still looked ready to punch through the ceiling. But the moment everyone starts urging you to buy is the moment I decide to sell.
Scale out in pieces? Set an automatic sell if it drops a certain percentage? Pull the principal and hold the rest?
After turning it over, I chose a full exit. Every data point on the chart was pointing down, so I sold without hesitation.
Profit realized.
Forty-six point three million won.
When the balance lit up on the screen, the money finally felt real.
As if on cue, a five-year savings account came due. Monthly deposits of one million won, sixty months, three percent annual interest. After tax, the maturity payout came to nearly 64 million.
Put together, my account now showed more than a hundred million won.
A hundred million.
Having a lump sum land all at once left a strange taste in my mouth. Like being full without having eaten.
But I had no intention of stopping here. One of the reasons I'd pulled everything out of Exco was that I'd already found the next prey.
I'd been watching the name for a while, holding myself back, waiting. Undervalued conglomerates, future-theme plays, rumored M&As, new-business momentum — I'd looked at every angle. The answer turned out to be somewhere else entirely.
Electric vehicle fires had become a hot issue in the news, and no one had produced a real solution yet. Automakers and battery companies were fretting over it. At the same time, as AI advanced, the cooling problem for high-performance computers was starting to surface.
That was when I found a company called A-Tech Solution.
A-Tech Solution was developing a solid-liquid composite that changed state with temperature. When heat rose, it expanded like a gas and absorbed thermal energy; when it cooled, it contracted like a solid and released it. The core of the technology was autonomous circulation — the ability to direct heat flow inside a system without external hardware. With that, a supercomputer could use AI algorithms to detect overheating points in real time and disperse the thermal flow before anything failed. Applied to electric vehicles, the same system could sharply reduce fire incidents.
Given A-Tech Solution's current technical level, the odds of success looked solid. And even if it didn't fully succeed, the stock would almost certainly surge on quiet rumor alone before any results came out. Stocks feed on dreams and hope; that is how they grow.
Still in development, still low-profile, the share price sat near its floor in a deep trough. In short: a perfect moment to scoop it up.
The math was already done. I moved at once.
Ticker: A-Tech Solution. Current price: 77,100 won. I put in a hundred million and bought 1,300 shares.
How far could I take this?
In case the brain awakening vanished as suddenly as it had arrived, I needed to pile up assets as fast as I could.
The first real work on the LK Telecom marketing campaign with Han Yojung had begun.
Because of the world star's packed schedule, we had to extract as much as possible in a very short window. Today we were shooting two different commercials — one in the morning, one in the afternoon — and at five there was a children's welfare campaign promo combined with a fan meeting. A day with no room to breathe.
Managing her schedule and being on site for all of it fell to Marketing Team 3. Then a request came in from Han Yojung's side: she wanted to designate her own dedicated staff member.
That person was me.
During a short break in the morning shoot, I was checking whether the commercial was landing on the concept we'd planned. She walked straight up to me and asked, without preamble,
"So is the rumor true?"
Every pair of eyes among the nearby crew swung toward me.
"Excuse me?"
I looked up from the pad I'd been scrolling through, as if I hadn't quite caught the question.
"That video," she said, a little more insistent.
So she saw it after all.
I knew exactly which "video" she meant. I just hadn't expected her to bring it up like this. Strange, really. I'd watched her performance clips on YouTube more times than I could count — the idea that she'd watched one of mine felt almost inverted.
Han Yojung propped her chin in her hand and looked at me with one eyebrow slightly raised. A playful smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.
"CPR on the subway, then at the airport… pulling a kid out of a crowd. Were you really special forces? Rescue team? Secret agent?"
She'd clearly read the comments too. The whole thing left an odd feeling.
"You look like you're in good shape, too. Do you take care of yourself regularly?"
The questions just kept coming. This much interest?
"I finished my full term as an army infantry soldier. It just… happened that way. And exercise is a hobby."
I answered flatly. She nodded.
"Ah, I see. But that 'just happened that way' ends up on video, the views explode, thousands of comments pile up… You're something else. Really."
The tone was light, but I could feel something more complicated mixed underneath it.
"But… was that scene pure coincidence? Or a little bit of calculated performance? You know — there are a lot of those YouTube things these days. It kind of looks like LK Telecom is pushing Assistant Manager Noh pretty hard…"
Han Yojung smiled sideways and let the sentence trail off.
Well, well. She's testing me. And it's almost cute.
Somewhere between rivalry, jealousy, suspicion, and curiosity. Half joke, half serious. Had she been trying to provoke a reaction?
I'd heard women sometimes act the opposite of what they feel. Was a global pop star actually interested in me?
I didn't have much interest in her. The worlds we lived in were too far apart.
Okay — that might be getting ahead of myself.
I finished the flicker of thought, huffed a quiet laugh, and opened my mouth.
"Who knows."
At my unhurried answer, her brow tightened. A reply that was neither yes nor no — had it only sharpened her curiosity, or bruised her pride?
I met her eyes without flinching. I had nothing to feel small about.
The air between us was turning strange when two bottles of water suddenly appeared in the space between us.
"Have some water. It's really dry on set. You'll wreck your throat."
Kang Bitna. She smiled brightly and held the bottles out. The interruption seemed to deflate Han Yojung; her answer came out curt.
"I don't drink plain water. It tastes flat."
"Then shall I bring you a drink instead?"
Kang Bitna didn't lose the smile.
"We're in the middle of a conversation. You don't seem to read the room very well."
"Sorry. I'm not really the type who lives by reading other people's rooms."
Kang Bitna said it with complete composure. Han Yojung's gaze moved back and forth between the two of us, then her mouth curved as if she'd found something entertaining.
"Is that so? Then maybe you're doing it on purpose."
"Excuse me? On purpose? What is that supposed to mean?"
The atmosphere was sliding somewhere it shouldn't. Should I step in?
"We're rolling again~"
The assistant director's call cut through — break over. Kang Bitna frowned and had no choice but to step back.
Hopeless. Absolute firecracker.
I clicked my tongue and shook my head. The world of women.
After the afternoon commercial shoot wrapped, the planned MZ-generation ad campaign and the fan meeting ran at the same time.
She had every right to look exhausted, but Han Yojung never let it show — bright smile, full attention for every fan. That was the difference. Pros were pros.
Hundreds of fans packed the art hall. Roughly twenty bodyguards ringed her so tightly nothing could slip through, and they were shoving approaching fans back harder than necessary. Not a good look.
In the second half of the fan meeting, a special event was set for the stage. A fan drawn by lottery would come up, talk with Han Yojung directly, and receive a gift.
A male fan was drawn. As he started toward the stage, two bodyguards moved in fast to crowd and watch him — until Han Yojung gave a small gesture that it was fine. She must have remembered what we'd said before the event: better to plant a good image than look heavy-handed. The two guards reluctantly eased off and gave him space.
But the man who climbed onto the stage looked off. Unnatural. His eyes wouldn't hold focus, his hands trembled in fine, continuous shakes, and his walk was unsteady. He was holding it together as best he could — enough that no one else seemed to notice — but my instincts didn't miss it.
Something's wrong.
Then it happened.
"Yojung… I finally get to meet you… I've always dreamed of this. Now that we're face to face, there's something I've always wanted to say…"
The man standing in front of her muttered something under his breath — and put his hand into his pocket.