Chapter 4: The First Hustle
Daniel’s first student was a disaster.
Her name was Yoo Jieun, a junior from the class next door who had scored a 34 out of 100 on her last English exam and whose mother had cornered Daniel in the hallway after hearing from Mrs. Park that “the Cho boy has suddenly become quite bright.”
“Thirty thousand won per session,” Daniel had told Mrs. Yoo, keeping his voice low enough that the passing students couldn’t hear. “Two sessions a week. I guarantee improvement within a month.”
Mrs. Yoo had looked at him the way adults look at children who use words like “guarantee”—with a mixture of amusement and skepticism. But her daughter was failing English, the hagwons in Bupyeong charged twice as much, and this boy had the unsettling confidence of someone much older than seventeen.
“One month,” she’d said. “If Jieun’s grade doesn’t improve, we stop.”
“Deal.”
That had been the easy part.
The hard part was sitting across from Yoo Jieun at the Bupyeong Public Library’s study room, watching her stare at a page of English text like it was written in ancient Sumerian.
“Okay,” Daniel said, pointing at the first sentence of the reading passage. “‘The economic impact of globalization has been debated by scholars for decades.’ Can you tell me what that means?”
Jieun blinked. “Something about… the economy? And… global things?”
This is going to be a long session.
“Close enough. Let’s break it down.” Daniel circled the word ‘impact.’ “What does this word mean?”
“Like… hitting something?”
“That’s one meaning. But in this context, it means ‘effect’ or ‘influence.’ The effect of globalization on the economy. See? One word changes the whole sentence.”
Jieun wrote ‘impact = effect’ in her notebook with the careful penmanship of someone who was genuinely trying. That was something, at least.
“Now, ‘debated by scholars.’ Who are scholars?”
“Smart people?”
“Professors. Researchers. People who study things for a living. So the whole sentence is saying: professors have been arguing about whether globalization is good or bad for the economy.”
Jieun’s face lit up. “Oh! That’s actually not that hard.”
“It’s not. English looks scary when you see it as a block of foreign words. But every sentence is just people saying normal things in a different language. Your job isn’t to translate—it’s to understand the idea behind the words.”
“My hagwon teacher never explained it like that.”
“Your hagwon teacher gets paid whether you learn or not. I get paid only if your grades go up.”
Jieun laughed—the first genuine laugh Daniel had heard from a student in what felt like decades, though technically it had only been a few days since he’d started existing as a seventeen-year-old. The sound was bright and startled, like a bird that didn’t expect to be let out of its cage.
Okay. Maybe this won’t be so bad.
By the end of the first week, Daniel had four students.
Jieun for English. Park Donghyun, a sophomore who could solve math problems in his head but froze during exams, for test-taking strategy. Lee Yejin, a senior whose Korean History was strong but whose writing skills were “like a robot trying to be human” (her mother’s words), for essay composition. And Kwon Hyunwoo, a freshman who was simply failing everything and whose parents were desperate enough to hire a seventeen-year-old tutor because nothing else had worked.
Four students. Two sessions each per week. Thirty thousand won per session.
Daniel did the math on the back of his notebook during lunch, ignoring Sangmin’s ongoing cafeteria food review (“Today’s kimchi jjigae is a solid five. I’m being generous because I found an actual piece of pork”).
Four students × two sessions × 30,000 won = 240,000 won per week.
That’s 960,000 won per month. Almost a million won.
Not bad for a high school student.
But it wasn’t enough. Not for what he needed. The financial crisis was nine days away, and he needed every won he could get before the markets hit bottom in March.
“You’re doing math at lunch again,” Minho observed from across the table, chopsticks paused midway to his mouth. “Since when do you do math voluntarily?”
“It’s not school math.”
“What kind of math is it?”
“The kind that makes money.”
Minho’s eyes sharpened. It was subtle—a fractional narrowing, the kind of thing you’d miss if you weren’t looking for it. But Daniel was always looking for it now.
“Making money?” Minho set down his chopsticks. “What are you up to?”
“Tutoring. I picked up a few students.”
“You’re tutoring? Cho Daniel, the guy who slept through every English class last semester?”
“I’ve been studying.”
“Studying.” Minho leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. He was smiling, but it was the curious smile, the one that Daniel had learned to read as I’m interested and I’m not sure if I should be. “How much are you making?”
Daniel hesitated. In his previous life, this was exactly the kind of conversation that had planted the seed. Minho had always been drawn to money—not in a greedy way, exactly, but in the way that some people are drawn to fire. Fascinated. Unable to look away. Eventually burned.
“Enough,” Daniel said. “Why, you want to tutor too?”
“Me? Teach someone? God, no. I’d be a terrible teacher.” Minho laughed and picked up his chopsticks again. “I’m more of a… middleman kind of person. I connect people. You know, like a broker.”
Like a broker. Like the kind of broker who sets up shell companies in the Cayman Islands.
Daniel pushed the thought away. Minho was seventeen. He was talking about being a middleman the way teenagers talk about being astronauts or rock stars—as a concept, not a plan.
“If you find me more students,” Daniel said carefully, “I’ll give you a referral fee. Ten percent of the first month.”
Minho’s grin widened. “Now you’re speaking my language.”
“But only referrals. No touching the money. No collecting fees. I handle all the payments directly.”
Something flickered across Minho’s face—confusion, maybe. Or the faintest trace of hurt. “Obviously. What, you think I’m going to skim off your tutoring money?”
In eleven years, you’ll skim off fifty million dollars. But right now, at this table, eating cafeteria kimchi jjigae, you don’t even know you’re capable of it.
“No,” Daniel said. “I just like keeping things organized. It’s a business thing.”
“A business thing.” Minho shook his head, amused. “Daniel, we’re in high school. Relax.”
“Yeah. You’re right.” Daniel forced a smile and ate a spoonful of rice. It tasted like guilt.
The electronics hustle started three days later.
Daniel’s target was Gmarket—Korea’s largest online marketplace, the eBay of East Asia. In 2008, the platform was growing rapidly but still had inefficiencies that someone with twenty-five years of market knowledge could exploit.
The strategy was simple: buy underpriced used electronics at the Bupyeong Flea Market on Saturday mornings, refurbish them, and resell on Gmarket at a markup. Phones, MP3 players, portable gaming devices—anything small, electronic, and in demand.
The first Saturday, Daniel woke at 5 AM and took the bus to the flea market. The air was cool and smelled like grilled hotteok and engine exhaust. Vendors were setting up stalls in the grey pre-dawn light, laying out their wares on blankets and folding tables: vintage clothing, kitchenware, old books, electronics of varying quality and age.
Daniel moved through the stalls with the practiced eye of a man who had spent twenty years evaluating products.
A Samsung Anycall flip phone, screen cracked but otherwise functional. The vendor wanted 15,000 won. Daniel offered 8,000. They settled on 10,000. He could replace the screen with a 3,000 won part from the electronics district and sell it for 45,000 on Gmarket.
An iPod Nano, first generation, in perfect condition. The vendor didn’t know what she had—she thought it was a “foreign MP3 player” and wanted 20,000 won for it. Daniel bought it without negotiating. On Gmarket, first-gen iPods in good condition were selling for 80,000 to 100,000 won. Apple products were still rare in Korea.
A PSP with a dead battery. 5,000 won. A new battery cost 8,000. Resale value: 70,000 to 90,000 won.
By 9 AM, Daniel had spent 62,000 won—most of his savings—and had a backpack full of electronics that would be worth roughly 300,000 won after repairs and resale.
He sat on a bench outside the flea market, eating a hotteok that burned the roof of his mouth, and felt a small, fierce satisfaction that had nothing to do with the money.
In my first life, I built a company worth four billion dollars. I had a corner office and a driver and a whiskey collection. And right now, sitting on a bench with a burnt tongue and a backpack full of used phones, I’m happier than I ever was.
What does that say about me?
His phone buzzed. Minho.
“Where are u? PC bang tournament at 10“
Daniel typed back: “Busy. Next time.“
“You’re ALWAYS busy now. Bro what is happening to you“
Daniel stared at the message. Then he typed something he hadn’t planned to type.
“Come to Bupyeong station at 2. I want to show you something.“
“?? ok weirdo“
He pocketed the phone and headed to the electronics district. He had repairs to do, and five hours to figure out why he’d just invited the person he trusted least in the world to see what he was building.
Minho arrived at Bupyeong Station at 2:07 PM, wearing jeans and a hoodie that was probably more expensive than Daniel’s entire wardrobe. He found Daniel sitting on a bench near Exit 3, surrounded by small packages wrapped in bubble wrap.
“What is all this?” Minho asked, sitting down next to him.
“Business,” Daniel said. He held up the repaired Samsung flip phone—screen replaced, case cleaned, looking almost new. “Bought this for ten thousand won this morning. Fixed it for three thousand. Listed it on Gmarket an hour ago for forty-five thousand. It already has two bidders.”
Minho took the phone and turned it over in his hands. “You’re flipping electronics.”
“I’m flipping electronics.”
“Since when do you know how to repair phones?”
“YouTube.” Daniel’s go-to excuse. In reality, he’d learned basic electronics repair from the R&D department at Nexus Technologies, but YouTube was a perfectly plausible explanation in 2008.
Minho was quiet for a moment, examining the phone with an expression Daniel couldn’t read. Then he looked up.
“How much are you making? Total. Tutoring plus this.”
“If everything sells? About 1.2 million won this month.”
“1.2 million.” Minho set the phone down carefully. “That’s more than my dad makes.”
“It’s more than my dad makes too.”
“And you’re—what, saving it? For college?”
“For an investment.”
“What investment?”
Daniel looked at Minho. This was the moment he’d been rehearsing in his head—the moment where he had to decide how much to share. In his first life, he’d shared everything with Minho. Every number. Every account. Every password. That trust had cost him fifty million dollars and twenty years of his life.
But keeping Minho completely in the dark wasn’t working either. The more Daniel pulled away, the more Minho noticed. The more questions he asked. And Minho was smart enough that if Daniel didn’t give him some answers, he’d start finding his own.
“I think the stock market is going to crash,” Daniel said. “Soon. Maybe within the next two weeks.”
Minho stared at him. “What?”
“The American housing market is a bubble. There are banks in the US that are leveraged thirty-to-one on mortgage-backed securities. When the housing market corrects—and it will—those banks will collapse. And when they collapse, the entire global financial system goes with them.”
The words hung in the air between them. Minho’s expression shifted from confusion to skepticism to something else—a careful, evaluating attention that reminded Daniel uncomfortably of the Minho he’d known in boardrooms.
“How do you know all this?”
“I’ve been reading. The data is public. The Federal Reserve reports, the bank earnings statements, the credit default swap numbers—it’s all there if you know where to look.”
“You’ve been reading Federal Reserve reports.” Minho said it flatly, like he was testing the words to see if they made sense.
“Yes.”
“You. Cho Daniel. Who two weeks ago told me your life plan was ‘wing it until something works.’ You’ve been reading Federal Reserve reports.”
“People change.”
“People don’t change this fast.” Minho leaned forward, elbows on knees, eyes locked on Daniel’s. “Two weeks ago, you were a normal dude. Played StarCraft, ate ramyeon, didn’t care about school. Now you’re tutoring four kids, flipping phones like a pro, reading economic reports, and predicting a global financial crisis. What the hell happened to you?”
The question landed like a punch. Not because it was hostile—it wasn’t. It was the question of a friend who was genuinely worried. And that made it worse.
I can’t tell you the truth. I can’t tell you that I lived an entire life, that you destroyed it, that I died and came back, that I’m a forty-two-year-old man in a seventeen-year-old body trying to rebuild everything while keeping you close enough to watch but far enough to protect myself.
I can’t tell you any of that. So what do I tell you?
“I had a wake-up call,” Daniel said slowly. “A few weeks ago, I—I realized that I was wasting my life. That if I kept going the way I was going, I’d end up with nothing. No skills, no money, no future. And I didn’t want that.”
It was the truth. Just not the whole truth.
Minho studied him for a long time. Pedestrians flowed around them—Saturday afternoon crowds heading to the market, families with strollers, elderly couples walking arm in arm. Bupyeong Station hummed with the vibration of arriving trains.
“Okay,” Minho said finally.
“Okay?”
“Okay. I don’t totally buy it, but okay.” He leaned back on the bench and stretched his legs out. “So. You think the stock market’s going to crash.”
“I know it is.”
“And your plan is to what? Buy stocks after the crash? You’re seventeen. You can’t open a brokerage account.”
“I know. I’ll need my dad’s help.”
“Your dad. The factory worker who thinks the stock market is legalized gambling.”
“That’s the one.”
Minho burst out laughing. Not the polite laugh or the sarcastic laugh, but a genuine, full-body laugh that made the old woman at the next bench look over in alarm.
“You’re insane,” Minho said, wiping his eyes. “Completely, absolutely insane. And I’m in.”
“You’re in?”
“If the stock market crashes like you say, I want to invest too. I’ve got some money saved up. Not a lot, but some.”
“Minho—”
“Don’t ‘Minho’ me. You just showed me your whole operation—the tutoring, the electronics, the economic analysis. You didn’t have to do that. You did it because you trust me.” He paused. “Right?”
I did it because keeping you out was more dangerous than letting you in. Because a Minho who feels excluded is a Minho who gets resentful. And a resentful Minho is a dangerous Minho.
But also… maybe… a small part of me did it because I wanted to.
“Right,” Daniel said.
“Then I’m in. We do this together.”
Daniel looked at his oldest friend—his future betrayer, his current ally, a seventeen-year-old boy with messy hair and an expensive hoodie and a grin that could sell anything to anyone.
“Together,” Daniel agreed. “But I handle the money. All of it. Non-negotiable.”
“Obviously. I’m the ideas guy, you’re the money guy.”
The money guy. God help me.
They sat on the bench at Bupyeong Station, watching the Saturday crowds flow past, and for a moment—just a moment—Daniel allowed himself to feel something that wasn’t caution or strategy or the weight of knowing the future.
It felt like the beginning of something. Whether it was the beginning of a partnership or the beginning of a very elaborate mistake, he couldn’t tell.
Nine days until the world changed.
And for better or worse, he wasn’t doing it alone.