After inhaling two full bowls of “farmhand-level” food, I returned to my room.
When I helped with the dishes, Mom got startled.
She told me not to say nonsense like, “People change when they’re about to die.”
That’s how much of an unfilial son I’d been in my previous life(?).
I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
I couldn’t tell her that her son would die screaming on a street in Seoul a dozen years from now.
The room I returned to was, once again, a complete wreck.
“God damn—look at this smell.”
After breathing in the crisp outdoor air, the inside of my room felt suffocating—thick with raw, heavy male hormones.
First, I opened the window and the door to circulate the air.
I took the clothes and blankets covered with the murky impurities I had expelled thanks to the Celestial Dragon Divine Lord, dumped them in the washing machine in the yard, and turned it on.
Then I cleaned the room with a rag.
The brief cleanliness spirit I had once possessed right after being discharged from the military flickered back to life.
Meanwhile, Mom took a nap in the inner room.
Her stamina was poor, so she couldn’t do anything under the blazing midday sun.
After tidying up, I checked my own situation.
“Even if my head is stuffed full of stock information, what’s the point? I’ve got no capital.”
Dad had gone to Nonghyup Bank about the loans.
Around this time, the rice paddies were set to be seized for overdue payments in a few months.
This was when our family’s collapse truly began.
Dad grew organic apples, using no pesticides and no chemical fertilizers.
Of course it didn’t work.
It wasn’t yet the era when organic produce was popular nationwide.
Hardly anyone paid good money for organic apples.
And our apples weren’t even good.
Bruised, tiny apples… even I didn’t feel like eating them.
I felt sorry for my father.
There was a time when Dad had been considered the brightest young talent the village had produced in decades.
He was accepted into Goyeongdae University’s Department of Electronics, and Grandpa threw a village-wide feast to celebrate—an almost legendary story.
But he had become one of the unfortunate souls of the era, unable to survive the waves of the IMF crisis and forced into early retirement.
After Grandpa passed away, Dad returned to his hometown to farm with just Grandma left alive.
The wounds he received from society upon being forced out were deep.
Grandma, too, passed away three years ago.
All we inherited was a small orchard and two patches of rice fields.
The loans were maxed out.
As the eldest son of a family with four sons and two daughters, he had no savings left.
I didn’t know much about Mom’s side. They were effectively estranged.
I never learned what sort of family my maternal relatives were.
It was a forbidden topic in the house.
Dad’s siblings also rarely visited after getting married.
Our family and the uncles and aunts weren’t on good terms.
Our relatives were the type who liked getting free food from a country family they looked down on.
Rice, vegetables, side dishes—they demanded them shamelessly.
For a long time, Dad silently fulfilled the duty of the eldest son.
Grandma wanted it that way, and he endured the hardship.
But after everything was collateralized and he couldn’t endure anymore, he finally reached out to his siblings.
He asked them to help—just a little.
After that, they stopped coming altogether, as if it were magic.
Not even on Grandpa’s or Grandma’s memorial days.
I still vividly remember Dad breaking down in Mom’s arms, crying as he emptied the memorial ritual’s cup of soju in despair on Grandma’s memorial day.
That was when I learned the truth: without money, you don’t even have siblings.
“Money really is the problem. Money!”
The stock market charts flickered across my mind.
If only I had investment capital, the stock market would be ripe for the taking, begging for me to devour it.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember any winning lottery numbers.
But the graphs of the jackpot stocks I had seen in the past floated up vividly.
I’d only seen them once or twice, but they were crystal clear in my mind.
My god, I craved stocks so badly it drove me insane.
There was no investment in the world more certain than this.
“Did my brain get better? Or what is this?”
I wasn’t a genius.
Just a normal guy of this era with average IQ and effort.
So the fact that I could recall every graph was absurd.
Actually, it made sense.
My regression itself was the final boss of all absurdity.
I scanned the room.
My head felt clearer than in the past.
Even the game I usually enjoyed after meals didn’t appeal to me.
I wasn’t the idiot who’d come home to find the family collapsing and choose to game instead.
“No loan shark is going to lend money to a minor in exchange for a bodily-harm waiver. And part-time jobs won’t earn much at all. And it’s not the situation to ask my parents for seed money…”
There weren’t many things more precious than money in the world.
Even familial affection was evolving into something determined by money.
The old man in my dream told me, when he sent me back:
Live happily and freely as much as I want.
Having lived and died, I realized life really was short.
After living for over 30 years and then dying, I understood that youth wasn’t long at all.
“The only financial tool I can use right now… is that thing.”
My eyes landed on the old, noisy future-technology computer flaunting itself in front of me.
Manual labor? Too dangerous.
And the payout wasn’t worth the effort.
If my parents found out, they’d only worry themselves sick.
“Stocks are perfect for me…”
I smacked my lips.
The frustration doubled.
Knowing the information but being unable to use it… only Hong Gil-dong himself would understand this feeling.
Like how he couldn’t call his father “Father,” I couldn’t even call stocks “stocks.”
A minor couldn’t freely open a stock investment account.
And credit trading was, of course, impossible.
To make money fast…
A flood of money-making schemes flashed and disappeared in my mind.
“Ah! Right!”
A brilliant idea brushed past my head.
A foolproof method—anyone could make money with effort.
“Hehehe… my apologies, Author Jang Hee-jae.”
I hurriedly turned on the computer.
Back in this era, whenever I had pocket money, my friends and I pooled it to borrow books from rental shops.
We rented and exchanged interesting comics and novels.
And when we had no money, we used a website called “Panpia” where you could read novels for free.
It was the era when reading novels slowly shifted from bookshops to the internet.
For a new writer, serializing online was the fastest route.
If you became popular, publishers would offer a book deal immediately.
I had once dreamed of becoming a writer, but writing talent didn’t come easily.
Not everyone could be an author.
The gap between reading and creating was like heaven and earth.
One of my friends even became a serialized writer for a short while.
He couldn’t write many volumes and crashed, but he said he earned some pocket money.
“The title is <Cloud Warrior>!”
My heart pounded when the title came to mind.
“First publication: January 2007. Author: Jang Hee-jae. And the ending… still unfinished in 2020! Author Jang, I’m sorry. But come on—14 years of serialization isn’t really writing for 14 years!”
I sold my conscience.
And I didn’t feel a shred of guilt.
<Cloud Warrior> was known as one of Korea’s two great “magic-engineering” novels, along with Bingroedo.
By 2020, it had 59 volumes—and still wasn’t finished.
I read it to the point of enlightenment, beyond love and hate.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say it accompanied my entire youth.
The fun was guaranteed to the end.
But I died before Author Jang Hee-jae finished it.
That is unacceptable!
Now it was time to return the blade of mixed love and hate that every reader carried.
“The title stays the same: <Cloud Warrior>! First come, first served!”
I opened a new Hangul document and typed the title.
My focus sharpened like lasers shooting from my eyes.
The protagonist’s name is Red! The heroine’s name is… Joo Ye-rin! After the death of their father, the family is ruined. Loan sharks inherit the debt, and the protagonist earns money through gaming, only to have it seized by the loan sharks! To send his starving twin sisters to school, the penny-pinching Red accidentally connects to an artificial game… the story is killer~.
The synopsis came out flawlessly.
To my shock, I remembered every detail of the entire novel.
Not a single particle was missing.
Tatatatatatata!
My fingers danced across the keyboard.
Then I began writing like a madman.
Thanks to my regression bonus, the contents of Cloud Warrior were recreated perfectly on the screen.
The beloved masterpiece was being reborn under my hands.
There was nothing to fix—it was already a masterpiece.
“Hehehe, this is fun! So fun!”
Korea’s iconic game-fantasy novel retained all its quality even when rewritten(?).
As the writing progressed, I couldn’t stop smiling.
The protagonist—miserable yet lucky, pitiful yet comedic—was exactly like me now.
Letters rapidly filled the screen.
I forgot how time flowed.
It felt like a carefree divine pastime.
Soon, two full chapters’ worth of serialized content filled the monitor.
I never knew writing could be this easy.
It was as if a dormant author’s blood was flowing in me.
“First, I’ll upload it to the free-serialization board! And then—bam!”
I knew too well how desperate readers felt.
I logged into Panpia.
Compared to 2020, the interface was hilariously outdated.
I entered all the info.
Looking at the serialized works, I saw a few titles I remembered from the past.
I could distinguish the hits from the flops.
Seeing the novels that had once sucked me in during my youth washed me with nostalgia.
“They were so damn good…”
I smacked my lips and created an ID.
ID: GoldRiver.
A golden river flowed through my imagination like a dream.
Click.
My mouth curled into a grin.
“Ahhh, this is satisfying. So this is why people become writers!”
I knew I was plagiarizing Author Jang Hee-jae’s masterpiece from the future, but my chest still overflowed with excitement.
I remembered Red’s famous line from the novel.
“Money has no eyes! Whoever grabs it first owns it! Puahahahahaha!”