Chapter 10

“Is it time for self-reflection?” Jonathan was deep in thought, and I greeted him with those words.

“Yeah, absolutely,” Jonathan immediately replied as he raised his head. His sad gaze went back to the now useless investment draft which only covered the period up until when the baht exchange started to dip.

▼June 2nd

Jonathan highlighted the date with a red pen as he had failed to take advantage of the opportunity.

“How could you know the date, but not the trends?” he questioned.

“Calculation,” I replied.

“Will you show them to me in the future?” his eyes shone.

“I'll tell you what ingredients I used,” I said.

The hedge funds were making a counterattack by borrowing the Japanese yen, which had a low-interest rate. Since it was already known, there was no necessity to mention it again.

“Only the ingredients? What about the recipe?”

Jonathan had completely changed his attitude in just a few days, and acted like a young man in his prime rather than a successful financial manager in Wall Street. I could only understand and let him be since I didn’t know what he was like when he was younger. I smiled silently, and Jonathan stopped asking as he still held onto his stoic pride as a manager.

“I still don’t know your name, which makes no sense,” Jonathan glanced at me.

“Seon-Hu,” I said.

“Sun. Who. Oh, that’s a good name. Can I call you Sun?” Jonathan smiled as he made eye contact with me.

In the past, there were only two occasions where I’ve seen Jonathan’s bright side. The first time was when he bragged about his prime in 1997, and the other one was when he finally cleared a dungeon after surviving to the end. Other than those moments, he seemed to be a wounded beast. He drank whenever he had no work, and often called out his dead daughter’s name. Compared to that, young Jonathan still retained his bright personality. Since I remembered how he looked the last time I saw him in my past life, I liked seeing him smile now.

“Jonathan and Sun Investments,” Jonathan said suddenly as he thought about the name of the company we were about to establish.

“The shares are fifty-one to forty-nine, so mine is higher. Well, there would be nothing wrong to call it my company,” he said with confidence.

“Please take my name out of it,” I said.

“Aren’t you too old to be coy?” Jonathan wondered.

“I don’t care about the company name. How much are you thinking about for capital?” I asked.

“Sun, you’re too cunning, and that’s why you could succeed in this crazy deal. I will fund the capital and hand you forty-nine percent of the shares,” he said as if he was offering me a gift.

“I should get fifty-one percent,” I said.

“What?” he was startled.

“I guess if you don’t like that, you can provide less funds for capital,” I maintained.

“Even though it’s ten thousand dollars?” He was still in shock.

“It’s up to you,” I said.

“Where did you get this confidence?” he asked.

“Are you good with ten thousand dollars then?” I ignored him and continued with the deal.

“No way,” Jonathan held out four fingers and continued on, “Four hundred thousand dollars. I wish I could’ve scraped more, but that’s all I have.”

Since I had a fifty-one percent share, it meant that I earned two hundred four thousand dollars for doing nothing.

“Do you have any funds to help, Sun?” he leered at me.

“If I did, I wouldn’t have called you to Korea,” I answered.

“But why was it me? How did you know me?” He was curious.

“From the website,” I replied.

“...Just a website? You didn’t care who it was as long as you could establish an investment firm in North America?” He was astounded.

Investment firm in North America? If it was possible, I wanted to start from a tax haven. However, considering Jonathan’s savings, I couldn’t.

“Are you disappointed?” Jonathan asked.

“No, I’m just thinking that this opportunity came at a strange time. It never came when I needed it the most,” I replied.

It never came when I desperately needed one.

Those words felt like deja vu. When Jonathan opened the master box with points he gathered by risking his life and nearly dying several times, he was in despair. He originally had a grand plan to never open any box below the level of the challenger box until he had racked up enough points. However, there were a series of incidents that concerned him mentally, and he ended up opening a master box.

He wished the master box would give him items or seals instead of traits or skills. Considering what he said at the time, he was probably going to sell them and live like crazy in the red-light district until he died.

However, a miracle happened to him. A skill that would be at the level of a challenger box came out of his very own master box despite how low a chance it was to get it. That was the second time that I had seen something of a higher level come out of a lower level box. Just twice. Even the luckiest people wouldn’t be able to pull this off.

That was the day when Jonathan had walked away to seek his revenge even after I dissuaded him. That was my last memory with him. I heard only rumors about his death afterwards.

***

“Why are you looking at me like that? Are you honored that I considered you as an ‘opportunity’? From what you have shown me, you are definitely my opportunity, Sun. You are my chance. I only need one since I’m ready for it,” I saw Jonathan’s face full of excitement after coming back from my memories.

“Will you bet everything you have if I tell you to go all-in?” I asked.

“All-in?” Jonathan smiled with meaning.

“Just because I changed the investment products doesn’t mean that I stopped being a trader. I invested in you, Sun. All-in? That’s nothing,” Jonathan put his 007 bag on the table.

Thump.

A load of documents poured out from the bag. They were needed to establish the investment firm, and he had already signed wherever he needed to. Jonathan had to be the initiator and the CEO since he was an American citizen. Now he was asking for the Korean government’s official documents that would prove my identity, something like a copy of my resident registration certificate.

Jonathan furrowed his brows as he looked over them, and stared at me in confusion. I kindly pointed at my name.

Na Seon-Hu (850228 - *******)

“This is the only document I can use to prove my identification. This is me, and these are my parents,” I said.

“What do the numbers mean?” Jonathan asked.

“They are like social security numbers, and they are called resident registration numbers in Korea. I’ll send you a copy of my passport as soon as it’s issued,” I replied.

“But Sun, these numbers…That’s not your date of birth, right?” he frowned.

“Yes, it is,” I answered.

“85 doesn’t mean 1985, right?” he asked in shock.

He opened his mouth and said nothing for a while.

“Thirteen? You are thirteen?” He asked as his mind was trying to process this unbelievable realization.

He was shocked on two accounts: the fact that his co-founder was thirteen and that I had looked like an adult rather than a teenager.

Jonathan covered his face with his hand like the day we first met, but the eyes peeking through his fingers were different this time. Actually, his face was filled with a greater thrill than his anger at the time.

“I knew it. You…you are an Asian genius,” he looked at me with astonishment.

***

Jonathan highly appreciated my preparedness and tenacity, but now, he praised my genius the most. In his mind, I was the young Asian financial genius. He looked at me like a westerner traveling to Tibet and Japan with Asian fantasies in his mind. In the past, I would have punched him in the eyes for looking at me like this, but I responded with a date in mind instead of my fist.

“The second week of June, from the ninth to the thirteenth,” I said. When I told him the actual date, he changed his posture.

“I’m certain that stocks will fall by ten percent during that period,” I was confident.

“Do you think Bangkok will surrender during that week?” Jonathan leaned towards me, and quickly erased the excitement in his eyes.

“It will take a while for them to surrender,” I replied.

“Then what about the second week of June?” He asked.

“Do you remember what I told you before?” I questioned him back.

“That Thailand would be just the beginning?” He answered.

“The battle between the hedge funds union and Thailand has come to a situation where no one can predict the outcome. As of yesterday, most people are biased that Thailand would be able to successfully defend themselves,” I said.

“However, we don’t think they can,” Jonathan used the word ‘we’.

“If Thailand’s stock price drops over ten percent during the second week, it will be a turning point. The atmosphere will change, and the fear will spread,” I said.

“People will panic,” he looked at me.

“Reinforcements will support the hedge funds union that is attacking the baht, and, of course, the fear will spread throughout Asia. The hedge funds union will move their battlefields to harvest as much as they can, and their ultimate goal is…” I stopped there and waited for Jonathan to answer.

“Hong Kong,” Jonathan replied without hesitation like he had been thinking about this for a while.

“No, you’re wrong. It’s South Korea,” I said. Jonathan frowned.

“Is that because it’s your country? Korea is in a completely different situation compared to Thailand. The attackers cannot strike at the foreign exchange of this nation. What’s the matter?” he was disconcerted.

“That’s true. They cannot disturb Korea’s foreign exchange because they are blocked from bringing in military funds into Korea,” I answered.

“Yes,” he nodded.

“But the hedge funds union’s funds are not the ones that will attack Korea. It will be the fear across East Asia that now Korea has to face. Jonathan, the hedge funds union is creating the fear that can withdraw all the foreign investments in this country,” I said.

Jonathan became quiet. He seemed to be imagining how the financial crisis from Thailand would storm through Asia and destroy Korea. It would be quite a sight for someone on Wall Street. Jonathan’s fist was tightly clenched now.

“So you want to stop it, Sun? An individual like you? You are very patriotic, but this is not my country,” he shook his head.

“It’s the same for me. All the devotion and love from people like us are only for ‘money’,” Jonathan neither laughed or smiled. He silently nodded as he waited for me to tell him the conclusion of this long tale.

“The hedge funds union will fight the war, but after the end of the war, they will know who has benefited the most. They will be in for a surprise,” I said.