A week had passed since the fires of war swallowed the Middle East.
Kim Taeseong’s account had grown fat and healthy on that gunpowder.
Having taken profits on the defense and oil names at the right moment and converted every won of it into cash.
He was printing a new high, the first in five years as a trader.
But.
“......Is this thing broken?”
Standing on the bathroom scale before work, a groan escaped Taeseong.
The number on the digital display was cruelly solid.
[144.0 kg]
He had genuinely lived like a madman.
Up at 5 a.m. for fasted cardio, surviving lunch on greens and chicken breast.
In the evening, squatting until Coach Kang Pilgeun had shaken out his very soul, then coming home and dropping unconscious.
And yet.
This damned scale was showing him a number that had not shifted by a single character since the first time he hit 144kg.
“There’s no way. I went to bed without a mouthful of water.”
Taeseong stepped off the scale and flipped it over.
He opened the battery cover and swapped in fresh batteries.
Then, with a solemn heart, he stepped back on.
Beep.
[144.0 kg]
“Aaaargh!”
Taeseong clutched his head.
Identical down to the first decimal. Not even 0.1kg gone.
The so-called ‘diet plateau’.
His body had sensed a crisis in the rapid weight loss, and the curse of homeostasis — desperately clinging to its fat and refusing to let go — had begun.
‘Losing weight is a hundred times harder than making money. Stocks at least go up if you wait; weight only goes up if you wait.’
Taeseong glared at himself in the mirror.
His jawline seemed very slightly, faintly visible, but his belly still sloshed like an inner tube.
The problem was Wopora’s mission.
This time the grade of the reward information changed with how much weight he lost.
Lose only 1kg and it was a measly 1,000,000 won in cash.
3kg was B-grade, 5kg A-grade, 10kg S-grade.
‘A million won? Are you joking?’
To a Taeseong who was about to earn serious money in incentives, 1,000,000 won was a pitifully disappointing sum.
What he wanted was information.
Judging by how it had called the outbreak of the war last time, his expectations for S-grade ran high.
To get it he had to lose 10kg — and he had run into a wall at the starting line.
“Haa......”
Taeseong let out a deep sigh and left the bathroom.
His managed funds were performing at 1.6 billion won, and his heart was as poor as an ant investor holding an empty can.
***
His steps on the commute weighed a ton.
His reflection in the subway window looked more enormous than usual today.
When he reached the office, the air had shifted in a curious way.
Where before there had been nothing but the invisible-man treatment and dismissive looks, now sticky gazes mixed with envy, jealousy, and awe followed his back.
‘They say he hit it big on the war stocks.’
‘I heard his managed profit passed 1.6 billion?’
The murmuring reached him, but Taeseong sat down at his desk without a word.
“Assistant Manager Kim. Step into my office a moment?”
Department Head Park Geonil cracked open the door of his office and called him.
His voice was a tone lower than usual, and the effort to seem authoritative was obvious.
Taeseong picked up the ‘Shipping Stock Investment Analysis Report’ he had been assigned last week and stood.
“You called for me, sir.”
Taeseong stepped into the office and held out the document.
Department Head Park cleared his throat and took it.
He adjusted his reading glasses and skimmed down Taeseong’s report.
At first his eyes were hunting for something to nitpick.
But as the pages turned, Department Head Park’s eyebrows twitched.
[Analysis of the correlation between Red Sea risk and global supply chains]
[Historical movement of the freight index (SCFI) during past Suez Canal closures]
[Fleet operating status of HMM and Noah Shipping, and projected earnings under a war surcharge]
The report was flawless.
It was not on the level of ‘there’s a war, so it’ll go up’.
It laid out, in logical order and grounded in figures and data, exactly what impact the shipping industry’s structural problems would produce once the variable of war locked into them.
‘...... Kim Taeseong actually wrote this?’
Department Head Park Geonil was inwardly appalled.
Of course, Kim Taeseong had always had decent analytical ability, but he had been a trader who could not dream of bold predictive investing for lack of information.
This report was different.
It was full of the conviction of a man who had gone and seen the future, and the grounds supporting that conviction had no gaps in them.
The simulation of vessel supply shortages caused by the detour route in particular was enough to make him click his tongue in disbelief.
‘What trick did he use to get information like this? Whose line did he get on? Even the research center hasn’t pulled analysis to this level yet.’
Department Head Park glanced at Taeseong.
That fat assistant manager standing there with a blank expression suddenly looked unfamiliar and enormous.
He was afraid.
An instinctive sense of danger flickered through him — that this man might threaten his own position.
But he was a Department Head.
He did not want it known that he had felt the least bit cowed by a subordinate.
“Hrm. Well, not bad.”
Department Head Park tossed the report onto his desk.
A studied performance of indifference.
“The logic is plausible, but the market doesn’t move exactly the way you think it will, does it? Isn’t this too optimistic?”
“These are conservative figures. In reality it could be more explosive.”
At Taeseong’s composed reply, Department Head Park had nothing to say.
He was already proving it with results.
Account return: +68%.
An irrefutable number.
“...... Right. Well, you’ve been running a bit lucky lately, haven’t you, Assistant Manager Kim? Don’t get too full of yourself. In the market, luck lasts once or twice at most. It isn’t skill.”
At Department Head Park’s petty sniping, Taeseong snorted inwardly.
He wanted to believe it was not skill.
“Yes, sir. I’ll keep it in mind.”
“By the way. Assistant Manager Kim, once this month’s incentive comes in, shouldn’t you spring for a proper team dinner with it? The mood on the team isn’t great — how about beef? Hanwoo omakase would be nice.”
Department Head Park wore a greedy smile as he casually let his real intention show.
The scheme was to take the credit and fill his belly, all on Taeseong’s money.
Taeseong bowed politely.
“I haven’t realized the profit yet, so I have no cash. And......”
Taeseong paused a beat, then looked Department Head Park straight in the eye and spoke.
“I’m on a diet, so let’s do the beef later. My apologies.”
“What? A diet?”
Department Head Park’s face twisted with disbelief.
Taeseong did not wait for an answer, said “Then I’ll get back to work,” and turned and walked out.
He heard Department Head Park huffing behind him, but Taeseong nearly started humming.
‘Fill your bellies with my money? Not a chance. I begrudge you ten won.’
Back at his desk, Taeseong focused on his monitor again.
He buried himself in shipping analysis.
His portfolio was already stuffed with HMM and Noah Shipping.
But the market was still quiet.
Quiet as the eve of a storm.
A delicate stretch of time where unease and anticipation coexisted.
The morning session ended and lunch hour arrived.
The staff went out to eat in twos and threes, but Taeseong stayed at his desk.
He took a salad lunchbox out of his bag.
Looking at a lunchbox full of nothing but greens, a sigh came out of him on its own.
Eating this and still not losing weight. It was unfair enough to bring tears.
“Assistant Manager, aren’t you going out to eat?”
Associate Kang Hyeona came over with a bright voice.
In her hands were a takeout container from a salad shop and an iced americano.
“Ah, Hyeona. No, I packed a lunch.”
“Perfect! I brought salad today too. Let’s eat together!”
Hyeona naturally dragged a chair over and sat down beside Taeseong.
When she opened her container, an appetizing salad heaped with avocado and salmon appeared.
Compared to Taeseong’s ‘nothing but greens’ lunchbox, it made his look even more miserable.
“Your lunch is...... isn’t it a bit thin? It looks short on protein.”
Hyeona picked out chicken breast cubes, salmon, avocado and the rest from her own salad and shared them evenly into Taeseong’s lunchbox.
“Have these. I brought extra toppings and there’s far too much of them.”
Something tugged at Taeseong’s chest.
In this desolate battlefield, the one colleague who treated him like a human being — no, who sincerely rooted for him.
“Thank you, Hyeona. Though...... I’m getting a little worn down because the weight won’t come off. I really worked at it, and I haven’t lost 0.1kg.”
“Hmm, it sounds like you’ve hit your set point.”
“Set point?”
Having heard out his trouble, Kang Hyeona nodded and spoke.
“The set point is like a reference weight your body tries to hold on to. Because you lost weight quickly, your body reads it as an emergency and holds the line at your current weight, even if it has to lower your metabolism to do it.”
Kang Hyeona rattled off technical terms while chewing her salad.
Taeseong watched her, impressed.
“You’re not a trainer, Hyeona — how do you know all that?”
“Ah, that’s...... a close older friend of mine is a trainer. He helps me out with exercise sometimes. So I’ve picked up bits and pieces.”
Hyeona smiled shyly and stirred her iced americano with the straw.
A close older friend who is a trainer.
If he was a trainer, he would have a good build — and would he be handsome like Trainer Kang Pilgeun too?
A strange feeling came over him.
Sensing that the stray thoughts were running long, Taeseong shook his head.
“So how do you break this set point? Do I just endure it?”
“Enduring is one method, but it takes far too long. In a case like this you have to shock the body.”
“Shock it?”
“Yes. You have to trick your body into thinking, ‘Hey! This isn’t an emergency! I’ve got energy to spare, so go ahead and burn some fat!’ For that, plain cardio isn’t enough — you need exercise that drives your heart rate way up and back down again.”
Hyeona’s eyes sparkled.
“Have you heard of high-intensity interval training? HIIT?”
“No, that’s a first for me.”
“You repeat high-intensity work over a short period. The effect is enormous. But...... it is genuinely hard. Hard enough to make you want to die.”
Hard enough to make you want to die.
The phrase lodged in Taeseong’s mind.
For the past five years, he had wanted to die every day.
Every time he looked at himself in the mirror, every time he felt the contempt in people’s eyes.
But now he wanted to live.
He wanted to live proudly, in a slimmer body.
“If it comes off, then no matter how badly it hurts......”
Taeseong tipped the last of his sandwich into his mouth.
He had made up his mind.
***
“High-intensity interval training?”
After work, at the Dye-Gym.
Coach Kang Pilgeun’s eyes flew open.
They were the eyes of a child who had found a new toy — no, of a predator that had found new prey.
“I never expected that phrase to come out of your mouth, sir. Honestly, I had it in mind myself, but I worried it might break you mentally instead.”
Kang Pilgeun folded his arms and looked at Taeseong seriously.
“But if you’re the one proposing it, that changes things. Are you prepared?”
“Yes. I can’t go on like this. My weight hasn’t moved in a week. I want to smash through the plateau.”
There was grim resolve in Taeseong’s voice.
Three weeks remained until Wopora’s mission deadline.
There was no time to dawdle here.
“Excellent! That state of mind — I like it very much!”
Kang Pilgeun clapped his hands together.
The sound rang through the whole gym.
“Today you are going to leave here dead. No — you are going to leave here reborn! Let’s begin at once. I’ll show you the taste of hell.”
Kang Pilgeun immediately dragged Taeseong to the free-weight zone.
A single mat lay on the floor.
That was Taeseong’s execution platform.
“First exercise, burpees. Twenty seconds of work, ten seconds of rest. Eight rounds total!”
“B-burpees?”
For a 144kg giant, burpees were not exercise but torture.
Dropping the body flat to the floor and standing back up.
That act of defying gravity was tantamount to destroying every muscle in Taeseong’s body.
“Begin!”
Beep— the timer sounded.
Taeseong dropped down. Thud! The floor shook.
He stood. Crunch. His knees and lower back screamed.
One. Two. Three.
“Faster! Too slow! Your body is comfortable right now! I said startle it!”
Kang Pilgeun bellowed beside him at the top of his lungs.
His breath was jammed in his throat.
His heart felt ready to smash through his ribs and burst out.
“Rest! Ten seconds! Catch your breath! Next is mountain climbers!”
Ten seconds passed in the blink of an eye.
Down again, running with his legs alternating.
His belly sloshed and slapped against his thighs.
Sweat ran into his eyes and he could not see.
His mouth tasted sweet and sour with exhaustion.
“Guaaargh!”
Taeseong let out a beastlike howl.
This was not exercise. It was a struggle for survival.
He would rather take three straight limit-downs.
A limit-down only costs money; this felt like it would cost his life.
“Does it feel like your heart will burst? It won’t! I’ll save you right before it does! More! Faster! Burn the fat! Burn the sloth!”
Kang Pilgeun was a devil.
But that devil’s whispering was what kept Taeseong moving.
The final exercise, an all-out sprint.
On the treadmill, Taeseong ran like a lunatic.
HMM’s limit-up chart hovered before his eyes.
No — a slim version of himself in the low 100kg range hovered there.
Calling 100kg slim was a little odd, but.
In any case!
“Last ten seconds! Nine! Eight!...... Three! Two! One! Stop!”
Taeseong collapsed onto the floor beside the treadmill.
The ceiling spun in circles.
His lungs felt ready to tear, and sweat poured from every opening in his body.
But strangely.
It did not feel bad.
A desperate but electric pleasure, one only a man who has poured out everything can feel, circled through him.
“Good work. You really did well today.”
Kang Pilgeun handed him a towel and gave him a thumbs-up.
Taeseong had no strength to answer and only twitched his hand.
***
The next morning.
Taeseong opened his eyes but could not get up.
It felt as if someone had beaten him all night with a baseball bat.
Muscle pain severe enough to make lifting a finger difficult.
Getting his body up off the bed alone took five minutes.
“Ughhh......”
A groan came out on its own.
He half crawled his way to the bathroom.
The scale came into view.
He had been through that living hell yesterday.
There had to be a result.
If it said 144kg again today, Taeseong might genuinely smash the scale.
With a trembling heart he set his foot on it.
The number rocked back and forth quickly.
146...... 145...... 144......
And stopped.
[142.2 kg]
“I...... I did it.”
Down 1.8kg in a single day.
The set point had been broken.
Taeseong clenched his fist.
[Current loss: -1.8kg]
[Current weight: 142.2 kg]
[Time remaining: 3 weeks]
It was possible.
Having to go through a hell like yesterday’s every day was appalling, but either way the road was open.
Taeseong looked in the mirror and grinned.
His face was swollen, but his eyes were alive.