The Basement Beneath Rock Bottom
"Buy. Full leverage."
Click.
The snap of the mouse cut through the damp, stale air of the internet cafe. On the monitor, a fat bullish candle was rocketing upward like it had lost its mind.
The Bitcoin market of 2014. To everyone else it was still little better than a casino, but to my eyes there was no safer asset on earth. I had ten years of charts stamped into my skull.
Return:+350%
Unrealized P&L:19,250,000 won
Four hours. That was all it had taken. The 5.5 million won I'd scraped together by draining my housing deposit and every last bit of emergency cash had swollen to nearly 20 million before I could blink.
"Ha... this is insane. Unreal."
A laugh slipped out of me before I could stop it. In my last life I'd broken my back on day-labor sites and spent nights as a designated driver just to clear 3 million won a month. I'd pinched every coin of that money and shoveled it into crypto, only to watch the whales turn it into toilet paper overnight — again and again.
This time was different. I was the whale. No. I was a god sitting on top of the whales' heads.
I knocked back a mouthful of cup-ramen broth and stared the chart down. It still wasn't enough. If I wanted to buy Choi Yura — if I wanted to snap that proud little nose of hers and put her on her knees — this kind of pocket change wouldn't even scratch the surface.
The bankruptcy her father was about to trigger ran into the tens of billions of won. Not that I had the slightest intention of paying that debt off for her. What I needed was squeeze money: enough pressure to seal every airhole she could breathe through. And bait money: enough to make her mine.
"One week."
One week to make 1.5 billion. It looked impossible. I was certain anyway. Tomorrow's Mt. Gox news. The regulation leak out of China. A crash was coming. When everyone else panicked and dumped, I would ride a short position all the way to the floor and scrape it clean.
"Just wait, Choi Yura."
I looked at the SNS page I'd parked in the corner of the monitor. Glamorous hotel buffet shots. Luxury unboxing videos. Hundreds of likes and a comment section dripping with envy. I knew exactly how fragile that sandcastle really was.
The next day, campus.
The front of the Business Administration Building was as loud and crowded as ever. I sat in the last row, laptop open. The professor's voice was background music. Every nerve I had was locked on the chart and the number in my account.
I'd cracked 50 million in a single day. Time to start the real work.
The lecture-hall door opened and Choi Yura walked in. Same polished look as always — to anyone else. My eyes caught the hairline cracks. Dull skin. Dark circles she'd spent real effort hiding. And more than anything else: the Chanel bag she'd been carrying like a trophy yesterday was gone. In its place, a plain canvas tote hung off her shoulder.
She's quick on the uptake.
Calling the bag a fake must have landed harder than I'd expected. She kept her head down, slipped into a cluster of friends, and sat. On any other day she would have planted herself dead center like the star of the room and talked over everyone. Today she found a seat in the corner.
I took out my phone. She hadn't tried to reach me again since I'd ignored her call yesterday. Pride, most likely. The question was how long that pride would last.
I opened a new message.
Send.
I watched her phone buzz on the desk. She checked the screen, frowned, and looked back at me. I grinned and flicked my fingers toward the door. Let's go. She turned her head and ignored me.
Not desperate enough yet.
I clicked my tongue. I needed to tighten the screws.
Class ended. Lunch hour. The student cafeteria was packed wall to wall, not an inch of floor to spare. Choi Yura stood at the meal-ticket machine with her friends.
"Hey, Yura. It's pork cutlet today. Let's just eat here."
"Mm... yeah, okay."
She pulled out her wallet, slid a card into the reader.
The machine's voice carried. Students behind her started to murmur.
"Huh? What was that?"
Choi Yura flushed and shoved the card in again.
"Ah... what's wrong with this card? The magnetic strip must be fried."
Her face had gone scarlet. The excuse came out thin.
"Don't you have another one?"
"Uh... this is the only card Dad puts my allowance on, so..."
She rummaged through the wallet in a panic. A few thousand-won bills. That was it. The gold-spoon goddess, humiliated in front of a lunch line. The guys waiting behind her started getting loud.
"Hey, can we hurry it up? We're starving back here."
Choi Yura's face looked ready to burst. That was when someone reached past her shoulder and slid a card into the reader.
"For two."
Me. I pulled two meal tickets and held one out to her.
"Oppa's treating you. Eat up."
She stared up at me. Shame, relief, and raw anger all fighting for space on her face.
"Who... asked you to pay?"
She spat it at me.
"Then throw it away. It's four thousand won — be a shame to waste it."
I shrugged and pocketed my own ticket. Then I leaned in so only she could hear.
"And your dad's card? The magnetic strip isn't fried. It's been frozen."
"Cards get shut down before the seizures hit. That's just how it works, isn't it?"
Her hands started to shake. She already knew. She just hadn't wanted to admit it — that her glittering little kingdom was coming down around her ears.
"Come with me. We need to talk."
I walked out of the cafeteria. This time, she wouldn't be able to ignore me.
A cafe just off campus. We sat across from each other in a corner booth and said nothing for a long time. Choi Yura chewed the straw of her iced Americano down to a pulp.
"Just tell me. How far did you dig into my background?"
She broke first.
"Background check makes it sound so ugly. I just happen to know a little something about the future."
"Cut the crap. What do you want? Money?"
"I've probably got more money than you do."
I turned my phone around and showed her the banking app.
Her eyes widened, just a fraction.
"That's... a lot for a college student."
"So you get that I have no reason to shake you down for cash, right?"
I took a sip of coffee and got to the point.
"Yura. Did you pay this semester's tuition?"
Silence.
"You haven't, have you? And the late-payment window's almost up."
She couldn't answer.
"What about living expenses? Your cards are frozen. How are you planning to eat? Freeloading off your friends only works for so long."
"I'll figure it out. Stay out of it."
"Figure it out? Figure what out? Your dad can't even come home right now because he's running from loan sharks."
"HEY!!!"
Choi Yura's voice cracked across the cafe. Every head in the place turned. She sat there panting, glaring at me, her eyes gone wet at the edges.
"You really are... a piece of shit."
"I'm not the one who's rotten. Reality is. I'm trying to help you."
I leaned across the table.
"What?"
"I'll cover your urgent living expenses. And the cost of keeping up appearances."
"Are you insane? Why would I take your money?"
"It's not free. Nothing in this world is."
I held her eyes and didn't blink.
"There's a condition."
Choi Yura swallowed.
"What... kind of condition?"
"Once a week. You clean my place."
"Ha... cleaning?"
A hollow little laugh escaped her, like she couldn't believe what she was hearing.
"You want me to play maid? Hey, Park Dohun. I'm Choi Yura. Choi Yura from Business Admin."
"Yeah, I know. The Business Admin goddess who walks around with a fake Chanel bag."
"You son of a—"
"Think about it. Do you know how many hours you'd have to work a convenience-store job to make 3 million won? At minimum wage, that's five hundred hours. Money you could break your back for and still barely hold in your hands."
Time to drive the nail in.
"But all you have to do is show up once a week, run a vacuum, wash a few dishes. That's over a hundred thousand won an hour. Pretty sweet gig."
Her pupils wavered. Her pride was screaming. Reality did not care. A few thousand-won bills in her wallet. Cards frozen. And the thought of her friends finding out she was broke terrified her more than dying.
Cleaning... I can do that much, right? It's not like I'm selling my body. It's just cleaning...
I could practically see the calculator spinning behind her eyes.
"So I just... clean? That's it?"
She asked it carefully, like the words might break.
"That's it. What, you think I'd make you do something else?"
I put on my most good-natured smile and lied through my teeth. Cleaning was only the beginning. Getting her inside my space. Letting her soak in my smell, my routines, until she was broken in by inches. And in a sealed one-room apartment, a man and a woman alone — did she really think it would stop at mopping the floor?
"Want to draw up a contract?"
"Forget it. A verbal agreement is fine."
"Alright. Give me your account number."
I sent the 3 million won right there at the table.
Choi Yura checked the notification, and something in her face went slack. Relief. The sweet narcotic of money — she was already starting to get a taste for it.
"This Saturday. Be there by two. I'll text you the address."
I stood up.
"Oh, and when you come."
I let my eyes travel over what she was wearing. Short skirt. Tight blouse.
"Wear something comfortable. You'll work up a sweat cleaning."
I left her with that and walked out of the cafe. I could feel her stare burning into my back. My mood, though, was perfect.
The first button was fastened. Now she would walk into the tiger's den on her own two feet — no, into my apartment. That place was a different world from campus. A kingdom that ran on my rules.
Look forward to it, Choi Yura. The whole process — starting as a cleaning lady, ending as my personal slave.
I walked, whistling. It was time to send a text to my next target: Seo Jisu.
A password Gang Minho had bragged about, drunk, in a memory from a future that hadn't happened yet. I hit send.
The fuse on the bomb was lit.
A college campus is a vast jungle. And inside it, I was becoming a predator.