Chapter 16: Green
April came with cherry blossoms and rising numbers.
The KOSPI climbed through 1,100 in the first week. Then 1,150. Then 1,200. Each morning, Daniel checked his portfolio with the careful ritual of a man tending a garden\u2014not pulling at the sprouts, just watching them grow.
Samsung Electronics, bought at 490,000 won, was now trading at 580,000. Hyundai Motor had jumped from 42,000 to 51,000. POSCO was up fifteen percent. Samsung SDI was up twenty.
His portfolio, which had been 4,320,000 won on March 9th, was now worth 5,467,000 won.
A gain of 1,147,000 won in five weeks. Twenty-six percent.
Daniel sat in his room on a Saturday morning, staring at the numbers on his phone, and felt\u2014nothing. Not the euphoria he’d expected. Not the vindication. Just a quiet, bone-deep relief, like a man who’s been holding his breath for six months and finally exhales.
It’s working. Of course it’s working. It was always going to work. But God, it’s good to see green.
His phone buzzed. Minho.
“MY PORTFOLIO IS UP 28%. TWENTY. EIGHT. PERCENT. I AM A FINANCIAL GENIUS.“
“You’re a financial genius who put in 850K because I told you to.“
“I STILL MADE THE DECISION. That counts. I’m going to put this on my resume.“
“You’re seventeen. You don’t have a resume.“
“I’m BUILDING one. Starting with ‘28% return in five weeks while still in high school.’ Try to top that.“
Daniel smiled. Then he texted Soyeon.
“Portfolio update: up 26.5% since March 9.“
Her response took four minutes\u2014long enough for Daniel to know she was running the numbers herself before replying.
“Consistent with the KOSPI recovery curve. Your Samsung position is outperforming the index by 3.2%. Hyundai is underperforming by 1.1%. Overall alpha is positive. Not bad.“
“Not bad? I’m up a million won.“
“You’re up 26%. Hedge funds charge 2 and 20 for that kind of return. You should start charging Minho a management fee.“
“I don’t think he’d appreciate that.“
“Appreciation is overrated. Performance fees are not.“
He could almost hear her dry delivery through the text. Kim Soyeon, seventeen, already thinking in terms of alpha and management fees. In another life\u2014a different configuration of the same universe\u2014she would have been terrifying on Wall Street.
Daniel waited until dinner to tell his parents.
Not because he was being strategic\u2014okay, partially because he was being strategic. The dinner table was the Cho family’s parliament, the place where important information was exchanged between bites of rice and under the watchful mediation of kimchi jjigae. It was also the place where his father was most relaxed, one beer in, guard partially lowered.
“The investments are up,” Daniel said, setting down his chopsticks with the deliberate calm of a man delivering a quarterly earnings report.
His mother’s hand paused over the side dishes. His father’s chewing slowed. Minji, who had developed an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the family’s financial discussions, set down her phone.
“How much?” his father asked.
“We invested 4,320,000 won on March 9th. The portfolio is now worth approximately 5,470,000 won.”
“That’s\u2014” His father did the math. Daniel could see him doing it, the mental gears turning behind his steady expression. “Over a million won.”
“One million, one hundred and fifty thousand. Give or take.”
The kitchen clock ticked. The jjigae bubbled softly on the hot plate. Outside, the Bupyeong evening settled into its routine of distant traffic and barking dogs.
“In five weeks,” his father said.
“In five weeks.”
“One million won.”
“One point one five million.”
His father set down his chopsticks. He picked up his beer. He put it down again. He rubbed the back of his neck\u2014his tell, the gesture that meant he was processing something that didn’t fit into his understanding of the world.
“That’s more than I make in two weeks at the factory,” he said quietly.
The words hung in the air. Not as a complaint\u2014Cho Byungsoo didn’t complain\u2014but as a fact. A fact that rearranged the relationship between father and son in ways that neither of them was entirely comfortable with.
“It’s paper gains,” Daniel said quickly. “We haven’t sold anything. The actual money is still in the stocks. It could go down tomorrow.”
“But it could also go up.”
“Yes. And I believe it will. Significantly.”
“How much more?”
Daniel hesitated. He’d been careful not to make specific predictions that would be impossible to explain if they came true with too much precision. But his father was asking directly, and the man had earned an honest answer.
“If we hold for a year, I think the portfolio could reach eight to ten million won. If we hold for two years, twelve to fifteen million.”
His mother made a small sound\u2014not a word, just a breath, the kind of sound a person makes when a number exceeds the scale they’re used to thinking in. Fifteen million won was their entire annual household income. The idea that this amount could materialize from numbers on a screen was, to Kim Soonyoung, roughly equivalent to alchemy.
“And all you do is… wait?” she asked.
“All we do is wait. And not sell when the numbers go down, which they will sometimes. The key is patience.”
“Patience.” His father nodded slowly. “I know patience. I’ve been patient for thirty years at that factory.”
“This is different, Dad. This patience pays compound interest.”
“Everything pays compound interest if you wait long enough.” His father picked up his chopsticks and resumed eating. “Your mother’s kimchi, for example. Gets better every year. That’s compound interest.”
His mother blushed. “Byungsoo.”
“What? It’s a compliment.”
“It’s comparing me to a bank account.”
“A high-yield savings account. Very flattering.”
Minji groaned. “Can you two not be gross at the dinner table?”
“We’re not being gross. We’re being financially literate.”
“That’s the grossest thing you’ve ever said.”
The table dissolved into the kind of warm, overlapping argument that healthy families generate like body heat. Daniel sat in the middle of it and ate his rice and felt the 5,470,000 won in his brokerage account like a heartbeat\u2014steady, growing, alive.
After dinner, his father found him on the balcony.
It had become their place\u2014the narrow strip of concrete where the jade tree lived, where the laundry dried, where father and son had their conversations that were too big for the kitchen table. The April evening was mild, the air carrying the faint sweetness of the cherry blossoms that had erupted across Bupyeong like a conspiracy of optimism.
“I have a question,” his father said, leaning against the railing.
“Okay.”
“If you’re right\u2014if the portfolio grows the way you think it will\u2014what do you do with the money?”
“Reinvest. The more I invest now, the more it grows. Compound interest.”
“That’s the business answer. I’m asking the real answer. What do you want the money for?”
Daniel looked out at the Bupyeong skyline. The apartments, the streetlights, the harbor in the distance. The same view his father had looked at on New Year’s Eve when he thought no one was watching.
“I want to start a company,” Daniel said. “Not now\u2014later. After college. A technology company. The kind of company that builds things that matter.”
“What kind of things?”
“Software. Artificial intelligence. Things that don’t exist yet but will.”
“You sound like a science fiction movie.”
“Give it ten years. It won’t sound like fiction.”
His father was quiet. He picked a dead leaf off the jade tree\u2014his one plant, his one concession to something living that wasn’t a family member or a factory machine.
“When I was your age,” he said, “my father told me to get a job. A real job. Something with a pension and a union. He said the worst thing a man could do was depend on himself, because yourself is the person most likely to let you down.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I believed it for thirty years. I got the job. The pension. The union. And now the job is cutting my hours, the pension is shrinking, and the union can’t do anything about it.” He turned the dead leaf over in his fingers. “So maybe my father was wrong. Or maybe he was right about most people, and you’re not most people.”
“Dad\u2014”
“I’m not done.” His father’s voice was firm but not harsh. The voice of a man who had something important to say and was going to say it in his own time. “I don’t understand what you’re doing. The stocks, the predictions, the way you know things you shouldn’t know. It doesn’t make sense to me. Maybe it never will.”
“I know.”
“But I understand results. And you’ve produced results.” He flicked the dead leaf over the railing. It spiraled down into the darkness, five stories of empty air. “So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to add two million won to the account.”
Daniel’s breath stopped.
“Two million. From the family savings. The emergency fund.”
“Dad, that’s\u2014”
“It’s everything we have beyond the mortgage. I know.” His father’s jaw was set. The look of a man who had made a decision and was already regretting it and was going to do it anyway. “Your mother and I talked about it. She’s scared. I’m scared. But you’ve earned the right to be trusted, and if we don’t trust you now, when you’ve shown us what you can do, then what’s the point of being a family?”
Daniel’s eyes were burning. He blinked rapidly, turning his face toward the breeze so his father wouldn’t see. The Cho men didn’t cry. That was the rule. But the rules were having a hard time holding tonight.
“I won’t let you down,” Daniel said. His voice cracked. Not the teenage voice crack\u2014the other kind.
“You already haven’t.” His father put his hand on Daniel’s shoulder. Three seconds. The standard duration of a Cho-family physical affection event. Then he removed it and turned toward the door.
“Your mother wants you inside. She made hotteok.”
“Dad.”
“Hmm?”
“The thing you almost asked for. At the bank. When you said washing machine and sneakers and then stopped.”
His father was still. The balcony light cast his shadow long and thin across the concrete.
“What was it?” Daniel asked.
A long pause. The kind of pause that contained thirty years of factory work and unfulfilled wants and the stubborn refusal to ask for anything that wasn’t strictly necessary.
“A fishing rod,” his father said quietly. “There’s a rod at the sporting goods store in Incheon. Carbon fiber. I’ve been looking at it for two years.”
“How much?”
“Three hundred thousand won. It’s stupid. I fish twice a year.”
“It’s not stupid.”
“It’s an indulgence. Indulgences are for people who can afford them.”
“When the portfolio hits ten million,” Daniel said, “I’m buying you that rod. And we’re going fishing. Together.”
His father stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the kitchen light. For a moment\u2014just a moment\u2014the silhouette smiled.
“Hotteok’s getting cold,” he said, and went inside.
Daniel stayed on the balcony for another minute. The cherry blossoms were just visible in the streetlight below, pale and fragile and stubbornly alive.
Two million won. He’s giving me two million won of the family’s emergency fund. The man who’s never taken a risk in his life is risking everything because his seventeen-year-old son asked him to.
I will not fail him. I will not fail any of them.
He went inside. He ate hotteok. His mother had made too many, as she always did, and the extras sat on the counter in a stack of golden, sugar-filled circles, warm and sweet and excessive in the best possible way.
Total portfolio after his father’s addition: approximately 7,470,000 won.
But that number\u2014as large and green and growing as it was\u2014was nothing compared to what it represented.
A family that had decided to believe in something it didn’t understand, because the boy who asked them to had never lied about the things that mattered.
That was worth more than any portfolio. And Daniel knew, in both of his lives, that he would spend the rest of this one making sure it stayed that way.