Chapter 10: Study Sessions
Soyeon’s study sessions had rules.
This was not a surprise. Kim Soyeon’s entire life had rules, most of them self-imposed with the kind of rigor that would make a military drill sergeant weep with admiration. But the library study sessions had their own specific set, printed on a laminated card that she’d produced from her bag on the first Tuesday like a contract.
“Rule one,” she said, sliding the card across the table. “No phones during study hours. If your phone makes a sound, you buy me two hot chocolates instead of one.”
“Fair.”
“Rule two. We study for fifty minutes, break for ten. During the break, you can check your phone, use the bathroom, or stare at the ceiling. But when the fifty minutes start, we’re working.”
“Also fair.”
“Rule three.” She paused here, and something in her expression softened by exactly one degree. “If either of us doesn’t understand something, we ask. No pretending. No faking. I don’t care if it’s embarrassing. We’re here to learn, not to perform.”
Daniel read the card. It was written in Soyeon’s handwriting—small, precise, with the kind of consistent letter spacing that suggested she’d practiced her handwriting the way other people practiced piano.
“You laminated this,” he said.
“Lamination adds authority.”
“It adds something.”
“Do you accept the terms?”
“I accept the terms.” He placed the card next to his notebook like a treaty signed between two nations that weren’t entirely sure they liked each other. “Can I add a rule?”
Soyeon’s eyebrow rose. “You want to add a rule to my system?”
“Rule four: we take turns teaching each other something. One topic per session. Doesn’t have to be academic. Just something the other person doesn’t know.”
“Why?”
“Because teaching is the best way to learn. If you can explain something clearly enough for someone else to understand, you actually know it. If you can’t, you’re just memorizing.”
Soyeon considered this with the seriousness she applied to everything. Her pen tapped against the table—three taps, always three, her thinking rhythm.
“Acceptable,” she said. “I’ll go first. Today’s topic: the Gwageo examination system of the Joseon Dynasty and its parallels to modern Korean college entrance culture.”
“That’s… very specific.”
“I’m a specific person. What’s your topic?”
Daniel thought for a moment. He needed something that was useful, interesting, and didn’t reveal twenty-five years of future knowledge.
“Compound interest,” he said. “And why it’s the most powerful force in the universe.”
“Albert Einstein said that.”
“Einstein was right about a lot of things.”
“He was also wrong about quantum mechanics.”
“Nobody’s perfect.”
Soyeon almost smiled. Almost. The corner of her mouth moved approximately two millimeters before she caught it and returned to factory settings. “Fine. You teach me about money. I’ll teach you about history. Let’s see who learns more.”
“Is everything a competition with you?”
“Everything is a competition with everyone. Most people just pretend it isn’t.”
The study sessions became a rhythm.
Every Tuesday and Thursday, 4 PM to 7 PM, third floor of the Bupyeong Library, table by the window. Soyeon was already there when Daniel arrived—always, without exception, as if she materialized at the table through some process that didn’t involve public transportation.
They studied. They taught each other. They argued.
Soyeon’s teaching style was meticulous. She prepared handwritten notes for each topic, organized with color-coded headers and cross-references. Her explanation of the Gwageo system was so detailed that Daniel—who had studied Korean history extensively in his first life for business context—actually learned things he hadn’t known.
“The civil service exam wasn’t just about knowledge,” Soyeon explained, pointing to a diagram she’d drawn. “It was about reproducing a specific worldview. The examiners weren’t looking for original thinking. They were looking for proof that you’d absorbed the Confucian canon completely enough to become a reliable instrument of state power.”
“Sounds like the CSAT,” Daniel said.
“That’s my point. Five hundred years, and the fundamental structure hasn’t changed. Memorize the canon. Reproduce the expected answers. Get rewarded with a position. The content is different, but the mechanism is identical.”
“So what’s the solution?”
“Who said I have a solution? I said it’s a parallel.” She capped her pen. “Your turn. Teach me about compound interest.”
Daniel pulled out a calculator—the ancient Casio that every Korean student owned. “Okay. Let’s say you put 100,000 won in a savings account with 5% annual interest. After one year, you have 105,000 won.”
“Obviously.”
“But in year two, you earn interest on 105,000, not 100,000. So you get 110,250. The interest earns interest.”
“I know what compound interest is, Daniel.”
“But do you know what it means?” He punched numbers into the calculator. “That same 100,000 won at 5% interest becomes 162,889 won in ten years. 265,329 in twenty years. 432,194 in thirty years. You’ve quadrupled your money by doing literally nothing.”
“That’s depressing. It means rich people get richer just by existing.”
“Yes. But it also means that if you start early enough—like, say, at seventeen—even small amounts of money can become significant. A million won invested at seventeen with a 10% return becomes 45 million won by age fifty-five. Without adding a single additional won.”
Soyeon took the calculator from his hands and ran the numbers herself. She did this with everything—verified independently, never took anyone’s word for it. It was one of the things Daniel was coming to respect about her.
“Forty-five million,” she murmured. “From one million.”
“Time is the variable. Not intelligence, not hard work, not connections. Time. The earlier you start, the more time does the work for you.”
Soyeon set down the calculator. She was looking at Daniel with an expression he hadn’t seen before—not suspicion, not competition, but something softer. Recognition, maybe. The look of someone meeting a person who speaks the same rare language.
“My family doesn’t have a million won to invest,” she said quietly.
“Neither does mine. Not yet.”
“But you’re building toward it. The tutoring, the electronics. That’s what it’s all about.”
“That’s what it’s all about.”
“And the stock market crash you keep talking about. You want to invest at the bottom.”
“Yes.”
“And if it works?”
“Then compound interest does the rest.”
Soyeon was quiet. She picked up her pen, put it down, picked it up again. Three taps on the table.
“Can you teach me more?” she asked. “About investing. Markets. How money actually works. Not the textbook version—the real version.”
“Why?”
“Because my mother works double shifts so I can go to a good college. And my father hasn’t taken a vacation in six years. And if there’s a way to turn knowledge into money—real money, not ‘get a good job’ money—I want to know about it.”
Daniel looked at Kim Soyeon. Seventeen years old. Top of her class. Carrying the weight of her family’s hopes on shoulders that were still growing. In his first life, she’d channeled all that intensity into law and politics. But what if, this time, she had access to a different kind of knowledge?
“I’ll teach you everything I know,” he said.
“Everything?”
“Everything I can.”
It was an honest answer. He’d teach her everything he could—which was a lot—while keeping the one thing he couldn’t share locked safely behind the door in his mind labeled DO NOT OPEN.
“Then let’s start now,” Soyeon said. She flipped to a fresh page in her notebook and wrote at the top, in her precise handwriting: FINANCIAL EDUCATION – Session 1.
“Now? We still have twenty minutes of Korean History left.”
“Korean History can wait. The Joseon Dynasty isn’t going anywhere.” She looked up at him, pen ready, eyes bright with the particular hunger of a person who has just discovered a door she didn’t know existed. “The stock market, on the other hand, apparently has a deadline.”
Daniel opened his notebook to his market analysis pages and, for the first time, shared them with someone who wasn’t Minho.
The difference was immediate. Where Minho had listened with the instinctive understanding of a natural dealmaker, Soyeon listened with the systematic precision of an analyst. She asked questions that Daniel hadn’t considered. She challenged his assumptions. She demanded evidence for every claim and footnotes for every prediction.
By the end of the session, she had filled six pages of notes and asked forty-three questions, of which Daniel had been able to answer thirty-eight. The remaining five—mostly about specific mechanisms of credit default swaps—he promised to research and answer next time.
“You’re frighteningly good at this,” Daniel said as they packed up.
“I’m frighteningly good at everything. It’s my defining characteristic.” She zipped her bag with the efficient motion of someone who had timed their packing process and optimized it. “Same time Thursday?”
“Same time Thursday.”
“Bring answers to my five questions.”
“Yes, Professor Kim.”
“Don’t call me that. My father’s surname is enough of a burden without adding a title.” But she was almost-smiling again—that two-millimeter movement that Daniel was beginning to think of as Soyeon’s version of a full grin.
Walking home that evening, Daniel felt something he hadn’t expected to feel: gratitude for a complication.
Soyeon was a complication. She was observant, persistent, and uncomfortably close to asking questions that had no good answers. But she was also the first person in this timeline—other than his parents—who made Daniel feel like he wasn’t entirely alone.
Minho was his partner. His father was his anchor. His mother was his heart. But Soyeon was something else—a mirror. She reflected his ideas back at him sharper than he’d sent them, and in doing so, forced him to think more carefully.
In his first life, Daniel had surrounded himself with yes-men. People who agreed with him because he was the boss, who laughed at his jokes because he signed their paychecks. The only person who had ever consistently challenged him was Minho, and Minho’s challenges had been deceptions—strategic disagreements designed to create openings for theft.
Soyeon’s challenges were honest. Brutally, uncomfortably honest. And Daniel was discovering that honest challenges were worth more than a thousand agreements.
His phone buzzed. Minho.
“Heard you’ve been studying with Soyeon at the library. Every Tuesday and Thursday. Wow.“
“We’re study partners. She’s smart.“
“She’s TERRIFYING is what she is. Last week she corrected Mr. Yoon’s grammar in front of the whole class. The man has a PhD.“
“She was right though.“
“That’s not the point. The point is you’re spending more time with her than with me and I’m feeling emotionally abandoned.“
“Are you serious?“
“No. But also slightly yes. PC bang tomorrow? Just us. No studying. No economics. Just two dudes destroying each other in StarCraft like normal people.“
Daniel stared at the message. Tomorrow was a study day. He had market research to do, two tutoring sessions scheduled, and a batch of electronics to list on Gmarket. His plan didn’t include StarCraft.
But then he thought about Rule #1, the one he’d written in his notebook: The money means nothing if you lose the people.
And Minho—complicated, dangerous, seventeen-year-old Minho—was people.
“Yeah ok. Tomorrow at 4. But I’m going to destroy you.“
“FINALLY. The old Daniel lives. I’m picking the map.“
“Pick whatever you want. You’re still going to lose.“
“We’ll see about that bro. We’ll see.“
Daniel pocketed his phone and walked home through the cold December evening. The streetlights were coming on one by one, casting pools of yellow light on the pavement. From the apartments above, the sounds of families—television, children, the clatter of dinner being made.
Tomorrow he would play StarCraft with his best friend. The day after, he would study with the smartest girl he’d ever met. On the weekend, he would repair electronics and tutor students and add to the growing pile of money that would, in three months, be the seed of everything.
It wasn’t the life he’d planned. It was messier, louder, more crowded with people than the streamlined empire-building timeline he’d imagined. But as he climbed the stairs to apartment 302 and heard his mother humming in the kitchen and his father’s television murmuring through the door, Daniel thought that maybe messy was exactly what he needed.
Three months until March. Three months until everything changed.
But tonight, the jjigae was hot, and his family was waiting, and that was the only thing that mattered.