Chapter 10

“Goodness. We were a little, uh… awkward when we first met, weren’t we? Haha.”

Where had the intimidating team leader from their first meeting gone?

The man who had radiated such a fierce presence back then was now looking at me with eyes as gentle as a lamb.

“I think I was like that because I was exhausted and couldn’t sleep. I was too sensitive. I’m sorry.”

“Not at all, Team Leader. And please, feel free to speak casually with me.”

“My goodness. What a broad-minded young man. You’re on a completely different level from a petty guy like me.”

I’d thought he was frightening because he’d gotten so angry before.

Apparently, he’d simply been exhausted and on edge at the time.

Despite his appearance, he seemed like a very kind person.

“……”

Team Leader Cheon Do-ah, who had been watching the two of us, suddenly let out a small snort of laughter.

“Ahem. W-why are you laughing?”

“It’s nothing. So, you’re getting contract offers?”

“Yeah. Five institutions have already signed, saying they’re going to entrust all their investment funds to us. I’ve never seen contracts go this smoothly before. All thanks to someone.”

Team Leader Lim glanced at me from the corner of his eye.

“Because the semiconductor sector fell this time, right?”

“That’s right. The institutions initially ignored the report Intern Kang selected. But who could have known that a factory in the Netherlands would catch fire? Because of that massive fire, the good news got swallowed up by bad news.”

I’d been incredibly surprised when I heard about it too.

The stock market had briefly risen on the good news that a semiconductor supercycle was coming, only to completely collapse because of that one piece of news.

“I know it sounds ridiculous, but did you somehow know this would happen? About the Dutch factory catching fire, I mean.”

“No.”

How could I possibly have known that a factory in a distant country would catch fire?

However, my unusually sensitive sense of smell seemed to have predicted it.

Otherwise, there was no way I would have picked the only report among all those reports that was related to a decline in the semiconductor sector.

Is this really some kind of superpower?

Being able to tell which report was correct using nothing but my sense of smell.

What the hell was this…?

“So you’re saying they’ll entrust everything to us without even asking about the detailed investment strategy?”

“That’s right. Hard to believe, isn’t it? Usually, these guys make our lives miserable with all sorts of picky demands once they entrust us with their money.”

A discretionary wrap account.

Normally, money was entrusted to an asset management company, but in this case, an institution would choose a specific securities firm as its partner, open an account, and entrust the entire process, including the actual trading, to that firm.

“There isn’t a better kind of contract for a securities firm. When institutions sign contracts, 50 billion won is usually the minimum.”

Fifty billion won was the level for small mutual aid associations or medium-sized asset management firms.

Pension funds, insurance companies, and banks started at around 100 billion won.

“It seems the institutions were pretty shocked too. We were the first to predict the supercycle, and we were also the only ones who predicted the semiconductor decline based on the report we showed them during the individual meetings. If I were them, I’d entrust us with my money without hesitation too.”

I’d never even handled money in the hundreds of millions of won before, so hearing figures like 50 billion and 100 billion tossed around so casually gave me a strange sense of disconnect.

“We shorted the semiconductor stocks according to the report Intern Kang recommended, you know? And we made a huge profit right away. The institutions were practically speechless when they saw that. That’s why they’ve been asking about additional contracts. This time, though, they’re not interested in semiconductors. They want to invest in other sectors.”

That was precisely why Team Leader Lim had come to see us today.

“I am in charge of the semiconductor sector, but since I’m the one communicating with the institutions currently signing new contracts, they suddenly started asking me to look into other sectors too. It’s giving me a headache.”

“So that’s why you came? To get help from our Intern Kang?”

“Help me out, Team Leader Cheon.”

“You’re not expecting him to do it for free, are you? Even if he’s an intern.”

“Oh, come on. What do you take me for? Of course Intern Kang should get a share of the incentives. And he’ll get the largest share.”

As he said that, Team Leader Lim handed the reports directly to me instead of Team Leader Cheon.

“We’ve narrowed down a few candidates. Want to take a look?”

[Outlook for the Secondary Battery Market]

[The Revival of K-Bio]

[The Bubble Theory Surrounding Entertainment Stocks]

The documents contained several major, eye-catching titles.

“You brought only the hottest sectors after semiconductors, didn’t you?”

Team Leader Cheon, who received the reports after me, seemed to have already grasped their main contents.

“Yeah. There’s already so much money pouring into semiconductors that putting even more money into them doesn’t seem like the best idea. It might be better to invest with a medium- to long-term goal in mind.”

“Considering the current situation, that does seem reasonable. However… we should hear Intern Kang’s opinion first, shouldn’t we?”

“Exactly. Intern Kang’s opinion is the most important. I only heard this from Team Leader Cheon afterward, but apparently Intern Kang was the one who predicted the supercycle in the first place? At this point, are you sure you’re not a shaman or something?”

Both team leaders looked at me expectantly.

“Oh. If you don’t like any of these strategies after looking through them, feel free to say so. The employees on my team and the strategy team are both waiting. They’ll be able to immediately write new reports as soon as they get the call.”

No.

There was no need to go that far.

“These are the biggest contracts we’ve had in a long time. Even the center director is practically grinning from ear to ear. You know how much it hurt his pride that Daesung had been losing to the research teams of our competitors. And these guys know they can make a huge amount of incentives if things go well, so they’re all sharpening their knives.”

Hearing that made my shoulders feel as heavy as a thousand pounds.

The center director, followed by all the employees involved in this matter, were all waiting to hear my opinion?

I’m just an intern!

“……”

Still, I had to do what I had to do.

I nervously began examining the reports.

First, the secondary batteries…

A pungent smell of exhaust immediately hit my nose.

I was startled and quickly moved on.

Then bio?

As I started looking through the bio-related stocks, Team Leader Lim spoke as though he’d been waiting for me to ask.

“Bio is the sector we’re watching most closely after semiconductors. Clinical trial results from several major overseas biotech companies are due soon. If they’re successful, the domestic biotech companies connected to them will surely rise as well.”

“Ah…”

But the bio reports were filled with the disgusting stench of a sewer.

“……”

I barely managed to suppress the urge to vomit.

The problem was that the next report wasn’t suitable either.

And neither was the one after that.

Am I really going to make all those employees waiting outside work on reports all night, then sit here until they finally produce one that works?

Just as I was beginning to think that—

“……!”

The signal came somewhere around the latter half of the reports.

This is…

If I had to describe it, it was like the gentle aroma of espresso made from the finest coffee beans.

“I’ll go with this one.”

“Oh. You picked one? Which one?”

The two team leaders looked curiously at the section I was pointing to.

“This one… That’s unexpected.”

“Redhall? Isn’t that a game company?”

Both team leaders tilted their heads.

“There is a saying that you shouldn’t invest money in game companies. You read the report, didn’t you? There’s a lot of talk that entertainment stocks are all bubbles right now. Game-related companies used to perform incredibly well, but now they’re considered severely overvalued.”

His words brought back memories of playing games from childhood all the way until now, flashing through my mind like afterimages.

We had lived through the golden age of K-Games.

Hadn’t countless companies grown into major corporations during that period?

But now, a period of transition had arrived.

“Numerous games were released one after another, but eventually they all shut down, didn’t they? These days, whenever someone announces a new game, people even joke that it’s probably a scam.”

“……”

“And yet, if you chose this one despite all that, you must have some kind of conviction about it, right?”

Team Leader Lim seemed to ponder for a moment before standing up.

“Fine. Let’s proceed with this.”

It was a decision made without the slightest hesitation.

I’d expected him to at least reconsider it.

Is this really okay?

I’m genuinely just an intern who knows nothing.

Are they really going to invest that much money based solely on my decision?

“But what kind of game does this company make? Let’s see. An FPS where 100 users gather and fight each other. The game’s name is…”

Team Leader Lim narrowed his eyes and muttered.

“Battle Island?”

“I’ll go organize the materials, then.”

After Kang Suho gave a polite bow and left, Cheon Do-ah finally said what she’d been holding back.

“I thought you’d oppose him, but you followed Intern Kang’s opinion without a single complaint.”

“Team Leader Cheon gave me a warning, didn’t you? Besides, Intern Kang isn’t an ordinary intern.”

“That is true. His status is different from ours.”

“That’s not why I’m saying it.”

“What?”

“Team Leader Cheon, aren’t you curious how Intern Kang predicted this semiconductor disaster?”

Of course she was curious.

But wasn’t Suho the kind of person who wouldn’t answer even if she asked?

“No matter how lucky someone is, how can a person repeatedly predict both good news and bad news purely through luck? It’s not as though he’s in some movie where he gets a jolt of electricity every time he touches something and receives a signal.”

“He must have his own method of analysis.”

“Exactly. But I’m incredibly curious about what that method is. So this time, I looked into the Dutch fire in detail.”

Cheon Do-ah frowned.

“Are you suggesting Intern Kang committed arson?”

“Hey! What are you talking about? Of course not. Apparently, the factory that caught fire had undergone a safety inspection two months ago.”

“And?”

“Some of the equipment was judged to be so outdated that it needed to be replaced soon.”

“But they didn’t replace it?”

“Right. As you know, the semiconductor industry hadn’t been doing well for quite some time. The same was true there. Replacing the equipment was expensive, so they kept postponing it with one excuse or another…”

“And then orders suddenly started pouring in?”

“Exactly. An unexpected flood of orders came in. They hadn’t anticipated that a semiconductor supercycle would suddenly return either.”

At that point, the situation began to make sense.

“Even after the orders exploded, they should have operated the machinery within reasonable limits. But perhaps that factory wanted to make up for all the business they’d lost during the downturn, so they pushed the machines too hard. Eventually, one of the machines broke down and caused the fire.”

“So you’re saying the disaster could have been avoided if they’d replaced the machinery earlier?”

“That’s right. It was entirely preventable.”

If they had properly replaced and maintained the aging equipment, the fire could have been prevented.

It’s always complacency—the attitude of This should be good enough—that ends up bringing disaster.

“Wait. The reason you’re suddenly telling me all this is…?”

“What if Intern Kang Suho knew about this inspection report beforehand?”

What if that was how he’d predicted the disaster?

“!?”

“Are you starting to get the picture?”

Cheon Do-ah suddenly felt as though her mouth had gone completely dry.

“You know what they say. Every incident begins with a small warning sign.”

There was something called Heinrich’s Law.

It was a statistical principle stating that every accident is preceded by warning signs.

“Intern Kang may be obsessively searching for those tiny warning signs. The kind of signs even veterans like us overlook.”

If that were true, it meant he was researching an enormous amount of data by himself, storing it in his mind, and calculating the cause-and-effect relationships between all of it.

“C-could someone really do that?”

“Geniuses always seem to possess abilities we ordinary people can’t understand.”

“A genius…”

Only then did Cheon Do-ah understand why Kang Suho had never explained his method of analysis.

Why he had never told them the reasoning behind his conclusions.

Because I wouldn’t understand even if he explained it to me.

No matter how much a genius with a completely different way of thinking talked, ordinary people simply couldn’t comprehend it.

Knowing that, Kang Suho had chosen not to explain himself.

Instead, he had simply shown them the results.

“Isn’t that exactly the kind of method that can simultaneously convince and overwhelm the other person?”

Overwhelm.

That word felt right.

She had already acknowledged that he possessed a certain level of ability.

But now, she was beginning to feel as though there was an immeasurably high wall standing between them.