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### Chapter 3. The Terminally Ill Pushover Investor
Thud…!
Tsk.
I knew this was going to happen.
My wife, who had been setting the mood to the fullest(?),
immediately planted her face into the bed.
Judging by how strongly she smelled of alcohol,
she must have drunk quite a lot.
‘Gam Dasan, you pushover bastard!’
Bang!
I smacked myself on the head.
Well, when a wife who was fifteen years younger suddenly comes at you wearing sexy clothes,
I was shaken for a moment.
This was exactly why I could never escape being a pushover.
Even after dying, I still hadn't come to my senses.
‘Sigh…’
And that wasn't all.
When I thought about everything that was going to happen from this point onward,
my stomach started boiling with anger.
My young wife had appeared so unexpectedly
that I'd been caught off guard for a moment.
If I had my way…
‘Forget it.’
Out of basic human decency,
I covered my scantily clad wife with a blanket.
I don't think I ever made enough money to afford all the missing fabric from her clothes.
‘Was this what she used to seduce that chairman?’
Humans could really be this stupid.
After dying once and coming back,
everything was so obvious.
How had I not realized it back then?
And even at this point…
‘I suppose you can't really change a person…’
Right now, she looked harmless because she was completely drunk
and was happily enjoying herself.
But when she was sober?
Even at this point in time, she would constantly make my life miserable.
“This is all because of you, Oppa!”
“It’s because you’re incompetent.”
“It’s because of my broadcasting. Why can't you understand?”
“I’m just managing my fans. Seriously, you're so annoying.”
“If you don't like it, then make more money!”
And I had been putting up with all of that.
Even this broadcasting outfit was like that.
I'd told her not to wear things like this.
Yet here she was, half-naked again because she was broadcasting.
Remembering all of this made me irritated all over again.
Tap, tap.
Ji Ye-eun tapped my arm with her finger.
Perhaps she'd woken up slightly in her sleep, because she didn't even properly open her eyes as she mumbled.
“Oppa, just lend me ten million won…”
This was unbelievable.
She said ten million won as casually as someone asking to borrow a thousand won.
Where was all the money she made from broadcasting going?
“I don't have any money.”
And I genuinely didn't.
How much could a newly appointed PD at a broadcasting station possibly make?
“Ah, that's annoying. Just take out a loan.”
That was probably the worst sleep-talking I'd ever heard.
Then.
“Uweeeeegh!”
“Ah, seriously!”
She shoved her head beside the bed and vomited!
Seriously, why did I even live like this?!
Just as a surge of irritation was about to explode inside me,
something appeared before my eyes that sent a chill down my spine.
【Synchronization complete.】
【A quest for adjusting causality will begin.】
【⚠ Warning: You will die if you fail to clear the mission!】
【Quest: Become an Angel of Charity】
Conditions:
⊙ Accumulate a total of 100 million won in donations: 0/100,000,000 won
Rewards:
⊙ Settlement of 1 bad karmic thread
⊙ Life extension
Time Limit (Remaining Lifespan):
7 days 0 hours 0 minutes.
---
What… was this?
“A quest? A mission?”
It was absurd.
Right before my eyes,
even though I had traveled back in time,
a translucent hologram-like screen had appeared
over the extremely realistic scenery of the bedroom.
Inside a white rectangular box were the words.
“A game…?”
It felt completely out of place.
Still, I could roughly understand the situation.
Before I traveled back in time,
in other words, at my funeral,
I'd met my immortal ancestor.
And he'd said:
“If you go back, causality will become tangled and things will become more difficult! But since this is the second time, you should be able to do it, right?”
So this was what he'd meant by things becoming more difficult because causality had become tangled!
“Wait, I really die?!”
It hadn't even been twenty minutes since I'd come back to life.
And suddenly a window saying I was going to die had appeared in front of me.
What kind of fate was this?
┌─────────┐
│Time Limit (Remaining Lifespan);
│6 days 23 hours 58 minutes.
└─────────┘
Meanwhile, the timer was already counting down.
Wow.
This was enough to drive a person insane.
“I can't die like this.”
It was unfair!
Oh, damn.
Now that I thought about it,
wasn't this woman the reason my life had started going wrong in the first place?
“Damn it!”
Rumble, thump!
I yanked the blanket out from underneath Ji Ye-eun with all my strength, practically snatching it away from her.
She rolled off the bed like a naked gimbap that had lost its seaweed wrapping
and landed right on top of the vomit she'd left beneath the bed.
“Ugh… Eugh…”
Half-asleep and covered in both her skimpy clothes and her own vomit,
Ji Ye-eun groaned painfully.
Hoo.
That felt a little satisfying.
---
『Hey, Gam Dasan. Are you really completely out of your mind? You actually took a day off?』
『PD-nim. Oh PD-nim is seriously pissed off. How about coming to work even now??』
『The atmosphere on set is really bad… Can you handle this later, PD-nim?』
Those were the messages that had arrived on my phone.
Wow.
What?
“Can you handle this later???”
Was it for real that even the youngest writer was sending me crap like this?
‘Gam Dasan. You really lived your whole life being treated like a pushover, didn't you?’
Well, at this point, I was a newly appointed PD.
It seemed I'd been working there for about a year.
‘I am a newbie, so I guess I deserve some of it.’
But still.
I was a PD.
They were treating me like a soccer ball,
kicking me around from every direction.
The back-and-forth was incredible.
Good grief.
“Anyway, I have to survive first.”
This wasn't the time to waste on broadcasting-station work.
I needed to put out the immediate fire first.
One hundred million won in donations within a week.
That was the quest!
‘I could probably solve it to some extent by taking out every possible loan and dumping it all into donations.’
What if I scraped together everything I had?
Would it reach 100 million won?
Or not?
At the very least, I should be able to get several tens of millions.
The problem was that there was a high chance this wouldn't be the end.
‘What if I need another 100 million next week? And another 100 million the week after?’
I couldn't blindly pour all my starting capital into donations.
Donating was essentially buying my life,
so I had to do it.
But if I wasn't going to live for just one week before dying,
I couldn't throw everything into it.
“I need to grow my starting capital too. And I need to set aside 100 million won within a week!”
For an ordinary person,
there was absolutely no way to do this.
Unless, of course, they had been born with a silver spoon in their mouth.
‘My life is fucking expensive!’
One hundred million won every single week.
Sigh.
The only thing I could rely on was my ability.
My superpower!
‘It came back with me too, right?’
It was an ability I'd possessed even in my previous life.
When I held an object,
I could see the future related to that object.
If I touched an object and saw a bright, rosy future?
Then the stock related to that object would also soar.
‘Thinking about it, the connection to stock prices had been strangely strong.’
The closer the moment of a sharp rise became,
the more spectacular, intense, and vivid the vision had been.
If I could make use of this…
“I can definitely find a stock that's guaranteed to surge within a week!”
Before I came back,
in my original life, I'd realized this superpower far too late.
So even though I'd returned fifteen years into the past,
I couldn't remember which stocks had skyrocketed around this time.
“I do know that Bitcoin will explode if I buy it.”
But I'd die before I could wait for that to happen.
So in that case?
First, I needed starting capital.
“Your credit loan should be available up to 30 million won…”
“Do it.”
That's stingy.
Really stingy.
Still, considering I worked at a broadcasting station,
what was my salary at this point?
About three million won a month.
And my savings?
My main bank account connected to the debit card I used.
Balance: 35,130 won.
‘It can really be this empty?!’
My bank account was as clean as a model home.
As if someone had gone over the balance with a feather duster and swept away every last bit of dirt.
Actually, more importantly.
‘Why was I giving my salary to Ji Ye-eun?’
I couldn't understand it at all.
Wasn't I a fairly smart guy?
Getting into a broadcasting station wasn't easy.
Did I really have enough intelligence to pass the PD exam,
only to hand my entire bank account over to a wife who earned money through internet broadcasts?
“Hahaha.”
Whenever my friends called me a smart idiot,
or asked why I lived like this,
I'd scold them instead.
“Hey! The only way to have peace in a family is to live like me!”
“You have to entrust your bank account to your wife if you want to be a real man.”
“Do you guys even know what a stable family atmosphere feels like?”
“Ah…”
My head throbbed.
I'd actually made comments like that fairly often while drinking.
Well,
the guys had kept criticizing me, so those words had simply come out while I was arguing back.
But looking at them now,
they were truly priceless.
It was enough to make me wonder how I hadn't realized it back then.
Was this what the younger generation called getting your brain finally screwed back into place?
‘Family peace, my ass…’
My temples throbbed.
If someone asked me now,
I could finally give them a proper answer.
Family peace doesn't come from handing control of the household finances over to your wife.
Then where does it come from?
‘It comes from making sure your wife doesn't cheat on you.’
“Whew…”
Why did it feel like I'd been sighing more often since returning to the past?
Anyway, let's stop thinking about it for now.
I needed to act!
If I messed up, I would really die.
At least, perhaps as the last mercy fate had granted me,
Ji Ye-eun hadn't yet taken out huge loans in my name.
‘I think it was just about to happen.’
She'd said something about loans last night.
I'll skip that for now.
What next?
I needed to search for objects.
“I have no choice but to go primitive!”
I headed straight to a large shopping mall.
I touched all kinds of objects.
I mean really primitive.
“Come on, Ancestor. Couldn't you have given me a slightly better superpower?!”
If the superpower could activate just by looking at related documents online,
I wouldn't have to go through all this trouble, would I?
The fact that I had to touch an actual ‘object’ related to a stock that was going to skyrocket for the ability to activate…
Was this really a superpower optimized for the twenty-first century?
‘I should have taught my ancestor how to use the internet.’
The more I thought about it,
the more ridiculous it seemed that this superpower had so many restrictions.
For some stocks,
I wouldn't even have a chance to touch a related object!
‘What about biotech stocks?’
Would I have to somehow get a chance to touch the reagents used in clinical trials?
‘What about IT stocks? Do I touch a server?’
The easiest field was ultimately manufacturing.
Even so, manufacturing stocks weren't necessarily unrelated to sudden surges.
There could easily be stocks that suddenly became famous for a particular reason.
‘Some manufacturing companies had even been political stocks.’
It wasn't uncommon for the stock prices of manufacturing companies associated with politicians to shoot through the roof before crashing just as quickly.
If I could find one of those,
that would be enough.
I started with the floor lined with branded clothing.
Using my superpower was simple.
“Are you looking for something in particular, sir?”
“No, I'll just have a look around.”
I would grab the edge of a piece of clothing like this,
focus on it while staring intently,
and calmly exhale.
‘Nothing.’
There was nothing.
I went through all the floors where clothes were displayed like this,
then went around the golf-wear section,
and even touched golf clubs.
I searched through practically everything.
“Nothing. There's nothing, damn it!”
Had my superpower simply disappeared?
Clothes, IT devices, bedding and sofas, medicines at the pharmacy…
The ability didn't activate on any of them.
“Am I really going to die like this?”
Sigh.
A sigh escaped me.
In the end, even after searching through the food section in the basement,
I had nothing to show for it.
“Fuck…”
I was troubled.
The one-week time limit,
the 100 million won target,
both were already overwhelmingly burdensome.
And now finding an object that my superpower would even work on was like searching for a needle in a haystack.
“…Should I have a drink at lunch?”
With that kind of feeling,
I grabbed a can of beer from the supermarket.
“Huh…?”
Flash.
Something had faintly flashed the instant my fingertips brushed against it.
A drink can?
No.
More precisely,
it was a beer can.
“Dokdo Beer…?”
I paid for it and sat on a bench near the supermarket.
I opened the beer and took a drink.
“Not bad… Oh!!”
Flash!
In an instant, a spectacular vision unfolded before me.
At first, I saw Dokdo standing above a crystal-clear sea.
Then I saw hands everywhere sweeping cans of Dokdo Beer off display stands.
And above all else,
“I made two million won from that Dokdo Beer!”
“Wow, that's incredible. It really makes money?”
“It's totally hip these days, you know? Its stock is doing incredibly well too!”
“It's insanely popular among young women!”
“If this is how things are going, why even bother working for a company~? I should just invest in stocks!”
“Hahaha, Manager, you should learn some financial management too!”
“Anyone who doesn't invest in stocks these days is an idiot!”
“…Aha.”
The vision and light were extraordinarily powerful.
Within the vision,
I saw people bragging excitedly about making money from Dokdo Beer stock.
The future of Dokdo Beer stock was plainly visible.
‘So that's how it works?’
Hehehe.
This was very good.
“Let's go all in.”
That very same day,
there was a change in my stock account.
┌─────────────┐
│ Dokdo Beer
│ Purchase Amount: 30,000,000 won
│ Valuation: 34,500,000 won (+15%▲)
└─────────────┘