Chapter 15: The Drop After the Drop
The market went down the next day.
Not a lot—one point three percent, barely a tremor in the grand scheme of things—but enough to turn Daniel’s 4,320,000 won investment into 4,263,840 won. A loss of 56,160 won in twenty-four hours.
He stared at the number on his phone screen during second period, hidden behind his textbook, and felt something that surprised him: panic. Real, physical panic. His pulse quickened. His palms went clammy. The rational part of his brain—the part that knew, with absolute certainty, that this was the bottom and the recovery was coming—was drowned out by the animal part that saw a red number and wanted to run.
This is how it feels. This is why most people sell at the bottom. Not because they’re stupid. Because the fear is physical. It lives in your chest and your hands and the back of your throat, and it doesn’t care about your spreadsheets.
“Daniel.” Soyeon’s voice, low and sharp, from two rows back. “Your hands are shaking.”
He looked down. She was right. His hands were trembling against the textbook. He pressed them flat against the desk, hard, willing them to stop.
“I’m fine,” he whispered.
“You’re not fine. You’re having a panic attack in Korean History.”
“It’s not a panic attack. It’s just—” He swallowed. “The market dropped.”
“By how much?”
“One point three percent.”
He heard a sound that might have been Soyeon suppressing a sigh. “You invested your entire savings and you’re panicking over one point three percent? That’s within normal daily volatility.”
“I know that intellectually.”
“Then tell your body to listen to your brain.”
“My body and my brain are not on speaking terms right now.”
“Cho Daniel!” Mrs. Park’s voice sliced through the classroom. “Is there something more interesting happening behind that textbook than the Goryeo-Mongol wars?”
“No, ma’am. Sorry.”
“Then perhaps you could share with the class what the Three Courses to Peace were?”
Daniel’s mind, which had been fully occupied by stock prices, snapped back to a different timeline—the one where he was a seventeen-year-old in a history class. The Three Courses to Peace. Mongol demands to Goryeo. He’d known this once. He’d studied it in his first life when researching Korean diplomatic history for a trade negotiation with—
“Move the capital to the mainland, send the crown prince as hostage, and submit a census of the population,” he said.
Mrs. Park blinked. “That’s… correct. All three. Most students only remember two.”
“The census is the one people forget. It was the most strategically significant because it gave the Mongols information about Goryeo’s military capacity.”
The class was staring at him. Mrs. Park’s expression had evolved from annoyance to something like cautious amazement.
“Very good, Daniel. Very… comprehensive.”
Behind him, he heard Soyeon’s pen tap three times. Her thinking rhythm. He could practically feel her adding another data point to the growing file in her head labeled THINGS THAT DON’T ADD UP ABOUT CHO DANIEL.
The market dropped again the next day. And the day after that.
By Friday, Daniel’s portfolio was down 4.7 percent. His 4,320,000 won was now worth 4,116,960 won. A paper loss of 203,040 won.
He knew—he knew—that the bottom was here. That March 9th had been the true floor, and the subsequent drops were just aftershocks. That by the end of March, the market would begin its recovery, and by June, his portfolio would be up twenty to thirty percent.
But knowing didn’t help at 2 AM when he was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, calculating his losses in real time.
203,040 won. That’s sixty-seven tutoring sessions. Three months of work. Gone in a week.
Not gone. Paper loss. Unrealized. It only becomes real if you sell.
But it feels real. It feels like someone reached into my pocket and took two hundred thousand won.
His phone lit up. A text from Minho, sent at 2:17 AM.
“Can’t sleep. Portfolio down 5.2%. Tell me again why we’re doing this.“
Daniel typed back: “Because in six months, you’ll be up 50%. In a year, 100%. Don’t look at the numbers.“
“You told me not to look. I looked.“
“I know. I’m looking too.“
“We’re both idiots.“
“Probably. Go to sleep.“
“You go to sleep.“
“I can’t.“
“Me neither. This sucks.“
“It gets better.“
“Promise?“
“Promise.“
Daniel put his phone down and pressed his palms against his eyes. The darkness behind his eyelids was absolute and comforting.
You promised him. You promised your father. You promised Soyeon. If you’re wrong—if somehow, impossibly, the timeline has changed enough that the recovery doesn’t come—you’ve destroyed the trust of every person who believed in you.
But you’re not wrong. You can’t be wrong. March 9th, 2009, was the bottom. The S&P 500 closed at 676.53. The KOSPI closed at 1,024. These are facts. They happened. They’re happening right now.
The recovery starts this month. It has to.
He fell asleep at 3 AM and dreamed of numbers falling like rain.
The first sign came on March 23rd.
Daniel was in the library with Soyeon, pretending to study English while actually tracking the market on his phone, when the KOSPI ticked upward. Not a lot—twelve points, a little over one percent. But the feeling was different. The buying wasn’t panicked or hopeful. It was steady. Methodical. The kind of buying that happens when institutional money decides the sale is over and it’s time to go shopping.
“Something’s happening,” Daniel said.
Soyeon looked up from her vocabulary cards. “What?”
“The market. It’s up one percent.”
“It’s been up one percent before. Dead cat bounce.”
“No. This is different. Look at the volume.” He tilted his phone toward her. “The trading volume is three times the daily average. That’s not retail panic buying. That’s institutions.”
Soyeon took his phone—something she’d never done before—and scrolled through the data. Her eyes moved with the rapid, focused precision of someone who had spent two months learning to read market data the way she read academic papers.
“The buying is concentrated in blue chips,” she murmured. “Samsung. SK Hynix. Hyundai. The foreign investors are net buyers for the first time in—”
“For the first time since September.”
She looked up at him. Her expression was the one she wore when a hypothesis was being confirmed—not joy, not relief, but the steady satisfaction of evidence aligning with prediction.
“This is it?” she asked.
“This is the beginning of it.”
“You’re sure.”
“Ninety-seven percent.”
“You’re impossible.”
“You’ve mentioned that.”
The KOSPI closed at 1,084 that day. Up 5.8% from the March 9th low. Daniel’s portfolio was no longer in the red.
He texted Minho: “Check your portfolio.“
Minho’s response came in seven seconds: “WE’RE GREEN BABY!!!! GREEN!!!! I NEVER DOUBTED YOU FOR A SECOND“
“You texted me at 2 AM saying you couldn’t sleep because you were panicking.“
“That was STRATEGIC CONCERN not doubt. Totally different thing.“
“Right.“
“Don’t ‘right’ me. I’m celebrating. Let me celebrate.“
“Don’t sell.“
“I’M NOT SELLING. I’m going to hold this until I can buy a car.“
“You’re seventeen. You can’t drive.“
“DETAILS. UNIMPORTANT DETAILS.“
That evening, Daniel brought the news home.
His father was in his chair, watching the evening news. The anchor was reporting on the market’s unexpected rally with the cautious optimism of someone who’d been burned too many times to trust good news.
“…the KOSPI rose 5.8 percent today, the largest single-day gain in four months, led by strong buying from foreign institutional investors…“
His father looked at Daniel. Daniel looked at his father.
“How much?” his father asked.
“We’re up about 180,000 won from where we bought.”
“In two weeks.”
“In two weeks.”
His father nodded. Once. The nod of a man who was processing information that didn’t fit his worldview but couldn’t be denied. Then he turned back to the television.
“It could still go down,” he said.
“It could. It will, some days. Markets don’t go straight up. But the trend has changed.”
“The trend.”
“The direction. We were going down. Now we’re going up. It’ll be messy. But the overall direction is up.”
His father was quiet for a long time. On the television, the anchor moved on to a story about cherry blossoms blooming early in Jinhae. Spring arriving ahead of schedule.
“Your grandfather,” his father said—and Daniel felt a familiar tightening in his chest, because every time his father mentioned his grandfather, it meant something heavy was coming—”lost money because he trusted a person. Not a system. Not data. A person who smiled and made promises.”
“I know.”
“You’re not that person. You showed me the data. You made specific predictions. You were right.” He paused. “But you’re still a person. And people make mistakes.”
“I know that too.”
“So if it goes down again—if it drops below what we paid—”
“We hold. We don’t panic. We don’t sell.”
“That’s easy to say when the numbers are green.”
“It’s easy to say because it’s the right thing to do. The investments are sound. The companies are real. Samsung isn’t going anywhere. Hyundai isn’t going anywhere. The crisis was about fear, not fundamentals.”
His father turned to look at him again. In the bluish light of the television, his face was a landscape of hard lines and soft shadows—a face built by thirty years of factory work, shaped by responsibilities he’d never asked for and would never set down.
“You talk like a man,” his father said. “Not a boy. A man.”
Because I am a man. A man in a boy’s body, carrying a man’s mistakes and a boy’s hope.
“I’m just prepared,” Daniel said.
“Nobody is this prepared at seventeen.” His father’s voice was quiet, thoughtful. Not accusing. Wondering. “But I’ve stopped trying to understand how. I’m just… watching.”
“That’s all I’m asking.”
The news ended. His mother emerged from the kitchen with tteokguk for no apparent reason other than she felt like making it. Minji came out of her room to declare that she’d finished her homework and wanted to watch a drama.
“It’s a school night,” their mother said.
“It’s one episode!”
“One episode always becomes three.”
“I have self-control, Mom.”
“You ate an entire bag of shrimp chips last Tuesday.”
“That’s different.”
Daniel sat at the table and ate his tteokguk and listened to his family bicker about television and snack control, and felt the warmth of the apartment settle into his bones.
The market was up. His father was watching. His mother was making soup. His sister was arguing about dramas.
4,500,000 won in a brokerage account. A number that would grow. Slowly at first, then faster, then faster still, until it became something that could change their lives.
But right now, at this table, with this soup, with these people—this was already changed. Already different from the first time. Already better.
The recovery had begun. Not just in the market. In everything.