This Time, It's You!
“This is……”
“Hmm……”
Thursday.
Midterms were over.
Every student at Cheonghwa High had already gone home. Starting tomorrow, the principal’s discretionary holiday stretched the break clean through the weekend.
Yet the mood inside the teachers’ conference room was anything but festive. The second-year core-subject teachers and the Director of Academic Affairs sat around a single answer sheet, their faces grim.
“This is simply impossible. In the entire history of this school, no student who was sitting at fifth in their class until the previous exam has ever rocketed straight to first place school-wide!”
It was Lee Jangyong, the mathematics teacher. Behind his gold-rimmed glasses his eyes glittered with pure disbelief. He had poured every ounce of cunning into those killer questions, only to watch some unexpected brat smash them to pieces. Not even a top contender—just a kid who’d been fifth in his class. A defeat like that was unacceptable.
“Well… it’s not as if something like this is against the laws of nature, is it?”
Han Yura, the Korean-language homeroom teacher, offered a mild defense. A small protest of her own.
It did not land well.
“Are you covering for him just because he’s in the Reading Club?”
“Excuse me? What kind of thing is that to say—?”
“That little rat definitely stole the answers! He must have gotten into the safe!”
Problems no ordinary high-schooler could possibly solve. Lee Jangyong ran through every hypothesis he could invent and offered his personal verdict with absolute certainty.
“Impossible. The school safe requires two keys to open—mine and the vice principal’s.”
Wang Jindeok, Director of Academic Affairs, glared. As the man responsible for strict key control, he made no effort to hide his irritation. Cheonghwa High’s anti-leak system was state-of-the-art for a reason. A leak would damage not only the school but the entire foundation.
And who were the parents of these students? Figures who moved the political, financial, legal, and medical worlds of South Korea. This was the finishing school for the children of the upper crust. Any scandal would rock the entire nation.
Something of the sort had happened before. A corporate tax investigation had nearly toppled the foundation and the school with it. Since then security had been tightened to an extreme. Teachers signed ironclad nondisclosure agreements upon hiring; a personal leak meant not mere dismissal but full civil and criminal liability.
“So the Director actually believes that kid’s real ability? I refuse to accept it!”
Lee Jangyong finally raised his voice. The mathematics teacher’s obsession with his subject bordered on paranoia, and his distrust burned white-hot.
“……Hmph.”
Wang Jindeok frowned at the outburst. He was in no hurry to concede either. A student of merely average achievement had seized first place—not even a contender who had been fighting for the top two spots. That fact alone tangled everything.
“If the Parent Association President finds out……”
The quiet murmur came from the English-language homeroom teacher.
Wang Jindeok’s face went black. That was precisely the scenario he feared most. The current president of Cheonghwa High’s Parent Association was a name every Korean knew: Ju Miju, second daughter of the Hankook Group chairman—currently ranked inside the top ten conglomerates in the country. Among her siblings she was infamous for the sharpest, most arrogant temperament. In chaebol circles her nickname was “Misery Ju,” earned through a lifetime of absolute impunity under her family’s power.
Bzzzz. Bzzzz.
The Director’s smartphone vibrated. One glance at the screen and his complexion turned even darker. He jabbed the answer button and pressed the phone to his ear.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Director of Academic Affairs!!”
Even without speakerphone the shrill, cutting voice of the woman sliced through the room and into every teacher’s ear.
“P-President, that is—”
“He’s a Sabaeja, isn’t he?! What is that student? Did the school just turn a blind eye so some charity case could cheat? How is something like this even possible!!”
The Parent Association President was already convinced cheating had occurred. Her own son was also a second-year. The real problem was that the boy had never once surrendered first place—an undisputed prodigy. Ju Miju’s fuse had every right to detonate.
Who’s talking shit about me?
My right ear itched like crazy. I had a pretty good idea who, so I didn’t bother scratching it.
The kids who’d spent the entire exam period staring daggers at me could go right ahead and keep staring. From now on I was free to ignore every last one of them.
“Puhahahahahahaha!!”
The more I thought about it, the harder it was to stop laughing.
Midterms! Perfect scores across the board, exactly as planned, and first place school-wide locked in. Right about now the teachers who sneered at every Sabaeja were probably huddled together clutching their skulls.
Eat a fat one, assholes.
The summit of perfect scores that a lowly Sabaeja was never supposed to touch—mine.
Today was Thursday, May 12th. Late evening. The moment I had been waiting for had finally arrived.
The moon was torn to shreds as it fell.
Until just days ago Luna had sat at fifth place by market cap, swaggering at a hundred thousand won per coin. That moon had taken a nuclear missile to the face at high altitude and plummeted straight into the dirt. Worth less than a single won. A scam coin born as pure fraud from the start—some “genius” trying to pass a worthless token off as a stablecoin. Everyone who trusted it and jumped in got annihilated.
“Sorry, but…… I ate well!!”
I had begun dumping the short position yesterday. Trading would be frozen soon; holding on after knowing that would have been pure idiocy.
“How are they supposed to scrape together five trillion won? They already decided to kill it.”
To stop a recovery-driven fire sale you’d need at least five trillion. They would never find it. The big players who moved the coin market had already set the board and were shaking Luna to pieces. In an instant it became shredded meat for the hyenas prowling nearby.
I already knew the whole process. I was simply taking a solid cut on a table that was going to break anyway.
“Done!!”
The last of the short was closed. A coin once worth tens of trillions of won in market cap had become worthless digital scrap in a matter of days.
“Delisting starts tomorrow.”
Even though I’d stepped into a game whose outcome I already knew, my heart still hammered. It was only possible because it had already happened in the past. Back when I hadn’t known the future, I’d gotten greedy myself and crashed straight to the bottom.
I finished selling right at the turning point.
And then I saw the number with my own eyes.
“Holy shit……”
I’d roughly expected it, but the figure staring back at me still blew past imagination. I had been liquidating bits and pieces whenever I had free time, cleaning up the position. Twenty billion won short—my fifteen plus Jiwoong’s five. The return rate was……
“Two…… two hundred million USDT……!”
My heart tried to leap out of my chest. It had been a pure short with zero leverage, yet the yield was insane. Even after stripping the messy decimals, the leading number was a clean two hundred million USDT. Pegged one-to-one with the dollar—two hundred million dollars in profit.
Today’s exchange rate: 1,280 won. In Korean won that was more than 250 billion.
I had taken a clean, juicy bite out of a fifty-trillion-won moon.
“This isn’t a dream, right?”
I checked the digits again. Crystal clear. Both fists clenched on their own.
“Grandma…… thank you!!”
The grandmother who had given me a second life and thrown in a bonus ten billion on top. A grandmother I had never even met face-to-face. For a second I could almost feel her ruffling my hair, telling me she was proud.
“Just like you said—I’m going to play this big and loud!”
Without crypto, the future I needed to overturn would have remained pure fantasy.
“Hooo……”
I drew a breath deep into my lungs. Two hundred fifty billion. More money than most people could spend in a lifetime. And still it wasn’t enough. I, who should have grown up with a golden spoon, had been rolling in a dog-shit field instead.
“Haryun!”
One target. The bastards of my so-called family.
I picked up my phone. Next target locked.
“Just in case…… thirty-times leverage……”
Capital secured. Time to start real leveraged trading. Because I already knew what was coming, I dialed the multiplier carefully. Every so often some lunatic would sweep the board up and down just for fun.
“Diversification is standard doctrine.”
I opened overseas exchanges that allowed futures. From the many options I picked only the ones that used rock-solid stablecoins. Three venues total. Two hundred million dollars was no small size. Dumping the whole position on one exchange with leverage would light me up like a neon sign—especially to the big whale brothers. That had to be avoided.
Up through Luna everything had matched the past. But I could no longer completely ignore the butterfly effect I myself was creating. The coin market could still throw variables.
I rifled through old memories. The Luna collapse would rock the entire market for a while. That meant the blue-chip coins—the true market leaders—were the ones to hunt.
I stared at the phone screen. There they were, the plump, well-fattened pigs ready for slaughter.
“Bitcoin and Ethereum! This time, it’s you!”