Two weeks into the one-month, 7kg mission.
In that time Kim Taeseong’s world had grown simple. Wake up, office, gym.
Creak...... creeeak!
The recumbent bike carrying Taeseong’s considerable weight was shrieking at regular intervals.
Beside it stood Kang Pilgeun, working Taeseong over with tireless passion.
“You are not pedaling right now, sir! Right now you are trampling your slothful past!”
The drill instructor — no, Trainer Kang Pilgeun — shouted with his eyes blazing.
His voice drove through the gym’s blaring EDM and hammered into Taeseong’s eardrums without pause.
‘The slothful Kim Taeseong of the past! I’m so fucking jealous of him!’
The old Taeseong would be lying on the sofa by now, watching NewTube and picking a delivery order.
Why had he not known back then that that was happiness, that that was life?
Taeseong pushed the pointless daydream away and worked the pedals.
Sweat ran past his eyelids and burrowed into his eyes.
His vision went cloudy, as if pickled in brine.
But Kang Pilgeun’s whip did not stop.
“Can you hear it? The sound of your thigh muscles screaming! Excellent! That is the sound of fat converting into a new asset called muscle! Is it not beautiful?”
Kang Pilgeun was a madman who had mastered the art of grinding people down in a remarkable variety of ways.
‘Why did I do that? I never should have provoked this lunatic.’
He should never have asked for help covering 3km in under 15 minutes.
Hearing that, Kang Pilgeun had said ‘You have spoken magnificent words,’ and had been force-marching him through this hellish cardio course ever since.
“Every drop of sweat you shed now becomes your future confidence, and every pain you endure now becomes the hammer that strikes off the shackles of your past! Now, the last minute! Push yourself to the limit!”
Confidence, shackles, whatever and so forth — he had no idea.
What kept Taeseong going was not those righteous speeches but plain, intuitive numbers.
Trader that he was, Taeseong was quick with figures if nothing else.
When the hellish forty minutes of cardio ended, Taeseong was dragged straight to the leg press machine.
“Now, time to convert the fat stored in those thighs into a fortune called muscle! Have a seat!”
Taeseong let out a long sigh and settled his body into the machine.
At the end of the second set, his legs shook like aspen leaves and he could not push the weight any further.
“Khh...”
“One more! Push here and you can push out the Kim Taeseong of the past! Bid farewell to your feeble self!”
‘The Kim Taeseong of the past was lying around after work with braised pork and soju. I don’t want to say goodbye to that guy!’
Longing for the happy self of yesterday, Taeseong wrung out the last of his strength.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Along with the crash of iron came a beastlike groan.
When the hour and a half of PT was over, Taeseong collapsed spread-eagle on the locker-room floor.
Every muscle in his body trembled violently, each one asserting its own location.
He staggered up, showered, and stepped onto the scale in the corner of the gym with his body still damp.
The number darted up and down before settling in one place.
[147.8 kg]
Down 3.2kg in two weeks.
Remaining to target: 3.8kg.
Taeseong looked at himself in the mirror.
It was still an enormous body, but the eyes that had been full of sloth and pessimism now looked rather serviceable.
“Good work. Go eat well and rest well. Eating and resting are both part of training.”
“Yes...”
It was 9 p.m. when he got home from the hellish workout.
Taeseong’s days had acquired a routine.
5 a.m., rising like a zombie to the alarm and starting the day by weighing out 150g of chicken breast and 200g of brown rice.
At the office he wrestled with an order book that changed by the second, and when quitting time came he headed to the gym with his heart in his throat.
Then, after being ground into the dirt, he arrived home.
He showered and lay down on the bed and fell asleep at once, just like tonight.
Muscle pain twenty-four hours a day, a soulless meal plan.
Taeseong’s life read like the diary of a monk’s well-organized penance.
‘What glory am I chasing, doing this to myself.’
He was, in fact, chasing glory.
Glory worth 10,000,000 won a month, at that.
***
The next day.
Before work, Taeseong pulled out a shirt he had shoved deep into his wardrobe and tried it on.
He had bought it a year ago to wear to a fellow new hire’s wedding, then given up on it because the buttons would not close.
Taking a deep breath and tensing his stomach, he fastened the last button.
Click.
The button...... closed!
He looked like a stuffed sausage, but every button was fastened.
Taeseong stood before the mirror and looked at himself.
“So I have lost a bit?”
A very faint, almost invisible smile touched the corner of his mouth.
At the office, in a shirt for the first time in ages.
As Taeseong was drinking water in the office kitchenette, Associate Kang came over with a startled look and spoke to him.
“Oh my, Assistant Manager......!”
She studied his face for a moment, then said with her eyes gone round.
“You’ve really lost a lot of weight, haven’t you? Your jawline looks more defined than last time... you must be training seriously.”
For a moment, Taeseong went blank.
At the gym all he heard was Kang Pilgeun bellowing ‘Belly fat! Slay it!’, and at home all he saw was his own enormous self in the mirror.
Kang Hyeona was the first person to recognize his effort.
“Ah, is that so? I’ve still got a long way to go.”
He scratched the back of his head, embarrassed.
His heart pounded again, though not enough to require the angina pills.
Apparently his health had improved a little too.
Two weeks later. The day of reckoning.
It was Friday night.
Taeseong stepped onto the scale with a solemn heart.
The number on the display came to a stop.
[144.0 kg]
“......Haaah!”
He had done it. Target achieved.
Taeseong sank down where he stood and let out a wheezing little laugh.
The past month of suffering flashed by like a panorama.
At that exact moment.
A chime rang out from his phone along with a lustrous glow.
[Monthly mission complete!]
Right after it came an alert from the Minguk Bank app.
[10,000,000 won has been deposited into your account from ]
Once more he looked at the number on the scale, ‘144.0’.
A month ago it had been unimaginable.
He looked at himself in the mirror.
The body was still enormous, but standing there was a man who had accomplished something — a different creature from the listless pig of a month ago.
‘I did it. Me. Under my own power.’
Scanning the app with a hollow smile, his eye fell on the activated bonus mission.
[Bonus mission: Run 3km in under 15 minutes.]
- Reward: 7 days of future stock information
‘I should take a shot at this too.’
An excitement and confidence he could not name welled up.
‘If I feel like this right now... maybe I can do it.’
The sense of accomplishment in that moment, having endured a month of pain and hit his target, flipped a switch in Taeseong’s brain.
Laughing like a madman, Taeseong wrestled his workout clothes back on and went outside.
The nearest Han River park track.
Taeseong started the stopwatch on his phone, took one deep breath, kicked off the ground, and began to run.
“Kuh! Huk! Hnngh!”
His body was honest, as expected.
Less than thirty seconds in, his lungs felt as if they were on fire, and his legs weighed a ton.
But he did not stop.
There was only one thought in his head.
‘I can do this.’
He pictured the faces of the people who had laughed at him.
And he pictured his past self, drinking alone in an empty apartment over delivery food.
‘I’m not going back to that. Never!’
Roaring, he raised his pace.
His knees hurt as if they would shatter, and his side stabbed as if he had been knifed, but strangely his mind grew clearer.
1km, 2km... the scenery around him stopped registering.
All he could see was the end of the track.
The instant he passed the 3km mark, Taeseong pitched forward onto the track.
His whole body convulsed on its own.
Fighting down the urge to retch, he stopped the stopwatch with a trembling hand and checked the screen.
[14 minutes 58 seconds]
“......Kh... Kwahaha!”
He buried his face in the grass and laughed like a lunatic.
It hurt. It hurt as if his entire body were breaking apart.
But it felt clean.
The most beautiful alert in the world rang out.
[Bonus mission complete!]
[7 days of future stock information will be provided.]
With trembling fingers he tapped the notification.
After a brief load.
On his phone screen, like verses from a book of prophecy, the events of the coming week began to appear in print.
[Future information: October 7–13, 2023]
10/7 (Sat)
Hamas’s surprise attack raises the curtain on the Israel–Hamas war.
The market will fix its attention on the value of oil and defense.
10/8 (Sun)
Israel formally declares war.
Western support follows, and the value of defense grows firmer still.
10/9 (Mon)
Defense and refining stocks surge at the open.
Every eye in the market turns there.
But the biggest wave is beginning beneath a sea no one can see.
10/10 (Tue)
War-risk premium insurance begins to be levied on tankers and merchant ships passing through the Red Sea.
For now it is no more than a small item of news.
10/11 (Wed)
International oil prices spike 4% and the market convulses.
But the real wave has not yet broken over the market.
10/12 (Thu)
The world’s number one and number two shipping lines announce a provisional suspension of Red Sea route operations.
The container freight index rises.
10/13 (Fri)
The market’s protagonist is not defense and oil.
“......!”
Having read down through all of it, Taeseong forgot even to breathe.
The crushing exhaustion of a moment ago had vanished without a trace.
“What is all this? A war is really breaking out?”
This was on a different plane from the Fed rate-hold information last time.
If the last information had belonged to the realm of well-constructed economic forecasting, this felt like a book of prophecy written from a god’s vantage point.
That said, the final Friday entry was shorter than the others, as if it lay just barely outside the 168-hour window.
‘Hamas... surprise attack... declaration of war...’
Tens of thousands of pieces of information began recombining in Taeseong’s head.
Everything he had built over five years as a trader fused with the absolute future information Wopora had thrown him, and the synergy was terrifying.
‘Defense stocks, refining stocks. These are bait. Sweet bait to lure in every retail investor in the market on Monday morning.’
Taeseong’s eyes flashed.
‘The real information is hiding behind them. A wave that starts beneath the sea, insurance premiums, and a suspended route.’
The puzzle pieces fit together.
‘If war seals the Red Sea, logistics risk climbs. Then defense and refining have no choice but to stall too, and freight rates have no choice but to explode.’
Taeseong shut off his phone screen.
As the display went black, it reflected a face brighter than it had been a month ago.
‘The biggest name to surge in the market in the final act of next week is.’
Looking across the Han River at the forest of buildings in Yeouido, Taeseong murmured under his breath.
“Shipping, obviously.”