A Brother's Arrival
I have four family members.
Father, Mother, a younger sister, and a younger brother.
I've cut off contact with my father. With my mother, I still talk on the phone some evenings. With my two younger siblings, we only trade the occasional halfhearted text.
It isn't that we aren't close. But after we became adults, the calls and messages really did grow sparse. Why?
Because I was too busy just trying to survive.
Father used to run a kitchenware-parts factory until the economic slump and cheap Chinese imports forced him to shut the doors. After that, he lived permanently soaked in alcohol. That was probably when things between us went wrong.
From then on, Mother became the head of the household and kept us fed. At first she worked as a restaurant server. About ten years later, when the owner could no longer work because of health problems, Mother steeled herself, took out a loan, and took over the place. She opened a snack shop.
After that she ran the shop on almost no sleep, and to this day she still runs it alone. She doesn't make a fortune, but enough to get by. I send her living expenses, yet that money is nowhere near enough to cover the shop loan, the monthly rent, and feeding Father and my two siblings.
The one bright spot is that my younger sister recently landed a job at a mid-sized company in Cheonan, and my younger brother is also preparing for employment. The problem is that my brother says he wants to work in the big leagues and is coming up to Seoul. To my two-room apartment, no less.
That was why Mother had called. Over the phone she asked me to look after him. Seoul's rent would be too much for him to handle, and she was clearly worried about the youngest. So she was entrusting him to me.
For the record, my brother and I are six years apart. Four years with my sister.
On the way home after my walk, a text arrived from my younger brother.
Once I got home I switched off the phone screen and headed into the bathroom to shower. The phone kept buzzing with new messages; I ignored them. Under the warm stream of water I turned Mother's words over in my mind.
The youngest wanted to become a chef. He wanted to work at a famous restaurant in Seoul. The good news was that he had already collected various cooking certifications. So he was serious about it. Something I hadn't even known.
Have I been that uninterested?
A twinge of guilt did surface. But I had thrown myself into working life early because of our difficult circumstances; it had been unavoidable. Or rather, that was how I had always told myself to see it. These days, though, I finally had a little breathing room, and my field of vision was starting to widen.
After the shower I looked around the room once.
"Way too small for two people."
I muttered it while scratching my chin. The two-room I currently lived in was fifteen pyeong, with a monthly rent of eight hundred thousand won alone. Layout: one small bedroom, a living-room-slash-kitchen, and a tiny veranda for the washing machine. Only possible at this price because it sat on the outskirts of Seoul. Plenty of space for one person — two was a different story.
If my brother planned to stay any length of time, moving would be better. And honestly, moving had been on my mind for a long while already. Eight hundred thousand won a month in rent felt far too wasteful. The problem was that even small-floor-area apartments on Seoul's outskirts carried terrifying price tags. In the past I wouldn't have dared consider it. Now my thinking was different.
I opened the LK Securities app and checked the A-Tech Solution stock.
Current trading price: 100,100 won.
Only a few days earlier the stock had been sideways around the 80,000-won mark. The catalyst was a government support project. Under government leadership, among the companies selected for the Eco-Friendly Energy Efficiency Technology pilot program, A-Tech Solution had been named the top-priority firm for the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy's Thermal Management Innovation Project and would receive twenty billion won in national R&D funding. A government official calling it "core to next-generation EV and AI supercomputer cooling" had been the decisive trigger.
I held a total of 1,300 shares. Average cost basis: 77,100 won. It had climbed nearly thirty percent. One hundred million invested, roughly thirty million earned — in about a week. More importantly, this was only the beginning. Barring some special variable, A-Tech Solution's share price was expected to rocket as high as 500,000 won.
Several reasons backed that forecast.
First, the authenticity of the technology. A-Tech Solution's tech was not mere idea-stage vapor; they had already finished prototype production and live demonstration. There was even data showing a thirty-seven percent energy savings versus existing cooling systems in pilot application tests.
Second — and more critical — was its position dead-center in the hottest themes. Electric vehicles and AI. Few industries on the planet were drawing this much global attention. Battery explosions and AI heat generation were not mere inconveniences; they were existential risks that could decide whether future companies survived. Firms that actually possessed a fundamental solution could be counted on one hand. A-Tech Solution was one of them — perhaps the only one in Korea.
Finally, the circulating float was thin. Total shares outstanding were not large, and most of them sat with institutions or insiders. In other words, very little stock was free-floating on the market. If someone started buying hard, the price could go vertical. The moment demand outruns supply, a stock price goes insane.
All I had to do was wait for the big money and the institutions to arrive. If the price hit 500,000 won, the return would be roughly 558 percent. Total profit: 549.7 million won. No need to punch a calculator or build an Excel sheet. Every number, formula, and graph was already fluctuating in real time inside my head.
Who would believe it? A brain that worked like a computer.
"Yeah. Once the stock rises a bit more, even an aging apartment would be fine — get in and cut the useless fixed costs."
Of course, maxing leverage and keeping the money fully invested wasn't a bad idea either. But I never knew when the ability might vanish, and owning a home had long been one of my dearest wishes.
As I sorted through the thoughts, I suddenly realized I was already cleaning the apartment. Habit had taken over without my noticing. The place already looked as if there was nothing left to tidy. Was this basically OCD at this point?
I decided to cook a simple dinner at home. With cheonggukjang, zucchini, tofu, and clam meat from the mart, I made cheonggukjang stew. Just add water and boil — anyone can do it, and it is both tasty and healthy. Cheonggukjang is packed with isoflavones, vitamin B2, calcium, and other nutrients that strengthen immunity, help prevent cancer, improve vascular health, support gut health, and so on—
Wait. No need to pull all of that out.
While the stew simmered I took out a prepped frozen mackerel, laid it in a frying pan, and covered it with a paper towel. Cooking it that way traps the heat so the fish cooks through and keeps the oil from spattering. For the sauce: a little soy sauce, a pinch of chili powder, a pinch of sugar, a drizzle of sesame oil, minced garlic…
What? Since when have I been interested in cooking?
Just like that, dinner was ready in no time. I tried a spoonful of the finished cheonggukjang stew. The distinctive earthy savor of the fermented beans lingered on my tongue. Why had I hated this so much as a kid?
While I ate I searched my phone for Seoul apartments listed between four and five hundred million won. Surprisingly, a few turned up. I started with places close to Jongno, where the company was. Cheonggye Hills in Jongno, Leona Art in Seongbuk, Hemore in Dongdaemun, Segyeong in Seodaemun, Cheongun Hanra in Jung-gu — quite a few options, all in the mid-to-high four hundreds.
I looked up Cheonggye Hills Town in Jongno, the closest to the office. It was an older complex, roughly thirty years old. But it seemed well maintained; the exterior didn't look bad. Floor plans ran eighteen, twenty-four, and occasionally thirty-four pyeong. An eighteen-pyeong unit had recently traded at 430 million won.
Four hundred thirty million for an old apartment. Truly terrifying. In that case, better just to keep stacking savings deposits?
Ah — no. I couldn't keep living in a two-room with my brother. Eighteen pyeong might feel a little tight, but it would be enough space for the two of us. In the past that sum would have been unthinkable. Now I felt I could actually gather it.
I kept digging through the internet until a kind of thirst set in. The information was woefully thin. Real-estate ads flooded every page, and every interesting headline was pure clickbait. Of course no one put real information on the open web. Information was money. YouTube was the same — anything that looked halfway useful flipped to a paid subscription. I didn't just pull out a card and subscribe. There was no guarantee it would actually help.
That left only one option.
I cleaned up quickly, left the apartment, and headed for the bookstore. It closed at ten, so I still had time. Even at the late hour, a fair number of people were inside.
"Noh, what brings you here at this hour?"
The bookstore owner stopped arranging shelves and came over. Ever since I had driven out that troublemaker, he had grown friendly enough to call me Noh. In truth, stopping by the bookstore had become part of my daily routine. Every time I came he made sure to press something on me — almost to the point of being burdensome. Of course I bought books in return.
"Some new economics titles just came in. Take a look."
"Yes. I wanted to look at the real-estate section today."
The owner regarded me with mild surprise.
"Really? What's the occasion. Real-estate books are on the far left of the economics section."
"Yes. Thank you."
I answered with a small smile and moved slowly along the shelves. As expected, real estate sat under economics. The first things that jumped out were investment and personal-finance titles: how to make money in real estate, gap investing, monthly-rent and jeonse strategies, everything about real-estate auctions — row after row of them. There were also practical guides for first-time buyers, plus specialized volumes on market analysis, statistics, interpretation, taxes, and law. Naturally, real-estate agent exam prep books occupied one corner as well.
I started by skimming the practical guides, then moved into the more technical texts, pulling out anything that looked genuinely useful and stacking them to one side. This was exactly why I came to a physical bookstore instead of using e-books. I could see and judge for myself.
At ten o'clock I left the store with paper bags of books in both hands. I firmly declined the owner's offer to drive me home. The alley up to my place was too narrow and inconvenient for a car. The books must have looked heavy to him — they were fairly thick. But they weren't heavy to me at all. I was more worried the paper bags would tear, which was why I had double-bagged them.
Past ten, the alley home was definitely eerie. Streetlights and security cameras were sparse, with far too many blind spots.
"Hmm…"
Years ago, when I first came up to Seoul and fought to establish myself, I had had no choice but to settle on the poorly secured outskirts. I was used to it, and these days I could drive off most unwelcome visitors. But with my brother coming, my thinking shifted.
I definitely need to move. Should hurry it up a bit.
I got home, switched on the desk lamp, stacked the books to one side, and began reading carefully from the top of the pile. I hadn't saved the money yet, but there was no harm in studying ahead. Effort never betrays you.
The next morning.
I had practically stayed up all night reading and rereading the real-estate books, cramming a wide range of knowledge into my head. And as a result, I had found a way to make money while buying a home.