Chapter 5 · 9 min

Chapter 5

Guided by the clerk, I went into the consultation room inside.

The moment I sat on the soft sofa, a fund manager in a neat suit held out a card and greeted me agreeably.

"What sort of investment are you thinking of? These days our bank is pushing quite a few funds with good returns."

"Not a fund. I want to buy stocks I designate myself."

"Ah, you want direct investment. Is there an issue you have in mind?"

I brought out the name I had kept carefully in my head.

"Australian stock. An iron-ore mining company called Fortescue. I want to put all my money into it."

In my previous life, sending money to my family, I could not even dream of something like investing.

So I do not know well how much a stock rises, or when.

But rolling thirty years in the construction industry, there were a few pieces of information stamped into my bones.

Construction reacts very sensitively to the price of steel products like rebar.

As China began sucking in raw materials like a black hole, rebar prices exploded, and the places that swept up the wealth of the world then were precisely the Australian iron-ore companies that exported raw materials to China.

Among them, the name that remained most vividly in memory was Fortescue, which rose like a comet to fourth in the Australian underground-resources industry.

A penny stock that, from what I heard, jumped fully two thousand times in corporate value.

At the thought of pouring all my forty million won into that tremendous money printer, my heart felt as if it would burst.

But the fund manager cleared his throat, as if put out.

"Sir, customer······. I'm sorry, but right now it is impossible for an individual investor in our country to trade overseas stocks directly."

"Yes? What do you mean?"

"Indirect investment through an overseas fund is possible, but even that is limited to parts of the US and Europe. A system for an individual to buy individual issues on the Australian market directly is not yet open domestically."

For a moment it felt as if I had been hit in the back of the head with a hammer.

Because I had grown too used to the memory of a future where, with one smartphone app, you could buy and sell stocks around the world in a few touches.

I had completely overlooked the fact that in the financial infrastructure of 2002, an ant's direct overseas investment was tightly blocked.

The manager took the gap of my disappointed face and spread a flashy pamphlet on the table.

"Forget overseas investment, how about joining a domestic blue-chip fund we manage? The returns are very······."

"Wait a moment."

I cut the manager off and asked earnestly.

"Is there really no way? Then setting investment aside entirely, on that terminal, please just search once whether there is an iron-ore company called Fortescue on the Australian market. I beg you."

Even to find a way around it somehow once regulations loosened later, I had to confirm the company existed.

At my earnest look, the manager reluctantly began tapping the keyboard.

But a moment later, the manager checking the terminal shook his head.

"Sir. I have gone through the Australian exchange and the unlisted mining-company list, and there is no iron-ore company called Fortescue. It is a company that does not exist at all."

"······It doesn't? That can't be. Please look carefully once more!"

"I searched changing the spelling too, and it isn't there."

In that moment I fell into a deep frustration.

What good is knowing the future.

A lifetime of fifty years moving from labor site to labor site, I had only picked up by ear the result that Fortescue hit a jackpot, and I did not know the exact year of founding or the merger process.

Probably the name is different now, or the company has not been established yet.

Without exact information, it is the shape of waving a hand in empty air even with a bundle of money before my eyes.

'Fool. I was proud of knowing the future, and in the end it is like this······.'

While I bit my lip and blamed myself, the manager, like a salesman who does not know how to give up, held the pamphlet out again.

"So instead of this uncertain talk of grabbing clouds, join a sure blue-chip fund. Our fund is over 70 percent bank and finance stocks, very solid. These days there are a tremendous number of people getting credit cards on the street, right? The government is encouraging it, so finance-sector profits are at an all-time high. It will definitely rise from here!"

I nearly fell for the manager's flashy speech for a moment, but another fragment of the future flashed cold in my head.

'Bank stocks? Finance stocks? Hah... crazy.'

Next year, 2003, right away.

I recalled that the reckless issuing of credit cards would fester and burst, and the worst economic crisis to sweep the Republic of Korea, the card crisis, would come.

Pour out millions of credit delinquents, and finance stocks cut past half into scraps of tissue — bury my blood-like money in that hellscape?

"No. I will not join that fund."

At my firm refusal, the manager's forced smile stiffened slightly.

I shut my eyes tight and turned my head furiously.

If direct overseas investment was blocked and I could not find Fortescue, I had to find a substitute in the domestic market that could suck up the Australian iron-ore boom and China's explosive growth whole.

'China starts importing Australian iron ore like mad. Then what do they carry those heavy lumps of iron to China on?'

Ships.

And enormously large bulk carriers at that.

The memory of that time, when China swept up raw materials and cargo ships around the world dried up and the shipping freight index exploded, fitted together like a puzzle.

Eyes flashing open, I threw a counterproposal at the manager in a voice full of certainty.

"Manager. Not a fund. Please buy just one stock with the whole of this money."

"······Which stock do you mean?"

"Hanjin Shipping. The money in my account, all of it, please buy as Hanjin Shipping stock."

At my words the fund manager's face changed in an instant to the look of a man who had chewed dung.

He had to sell the high-fee finance fund he recommended and sweetly raise his results, and a stubborn soldier suddenly insisting on a single purchase of a shipping stock, the look of irritation rising was plain.

"Sir, right now the shipping industry has unstable oil prices too, and putting it all in an individual stock, the risk······."

"My money, I handle it myself. If I tell you to buy it, just buy it."

When I folded my arms and held firm, in the end the manager, unable to hide a rotten expression, began clicking the mouse irritably.

At his fingertips my seed money of 39 million won was converted without remainder into the stock of Hanjin Shipping, which had been the top domestic shipping company.

'I missed Fortescue's two-thousand-times jackpot, but the direction is not wrong.'

The Fortescue investment, I would have to try again once I got to Australia.

I gave a slight smile toward the fund manager sitting with a dung-chewing face.

I had tasted to the bone the limit of thin information, but it was a day I learned more than that.

"I'll have to clear the stock out before I go to Australia."

* * *

Having loaded 39 million won onto the huge ship called Hanjin Shipping, I focused on army life again.

At the engineer school I was remade into a by-the-book assistant instructor more perfect than anyone, and the heavy equipment I practiced every day was now like my own hands and feet.

And whenever there was a gap I clung to the maintenance warrant officer, wrench in hand, staining myself with oil.

I took engines apart, assembled hydraulic pumps, and practiced catching where it hurt from the machine's fine vibration alone.

I could even learn ordinary vehicle inspection from the warrant officer.

At night, without fail, I sat in a corner of the lounge and dug into the English conversation book under the stand light.

A twenty-year-old's fresh brain met a man in his fifties' obsession and soaked up English like a sponge.

And luck followed, uncanny.

One of the new recruits who came into the assistant instructors' barracks had come out of a physical-education college and even been an Olympic reserve boxer.

"Hey, recruit."

"Private! Choi. Dong. Hun!"

"You used your fists a bit out in society? From today, look after my personal PT."

"······Sir?"

"If you take my physical training and hold the boxing mitts, I'll see the rest of your army life through more comfortably than a VIP. Call?"

"Call! Unconditionally call, sir!"

From that day, every day in a corner of the parade ground, I drove my fists into the mitts the recruit held.

"Shik, shik! That sound doesn't come from the mouth!"

Sometimes I followed a gag that had been in a movie.

"Wow... Corporal Han, who on earth do you learn that from?"

This green private!

Still, I laughed and took it cheerfully, calling him a kid with no sense.

The young, fresh body took on angles as time passed, and changed into a solid, balanced body.

Every single day made a new me.

And a surprising thing: perhaps because I ate well and lived regularly, I grew taller.

Past the height of my previous life, I now hit 178 centimeters.

At this rate, do I really hit 180?

When I asked Choi Dong-hun, he said hidden height had come out as my posture was corrected by exercise.

That day I ran that bastard.

English, skill, and stamina and practical self-defense too.

Splitting every minute and every second, I carried army life on, tight and fierce enough to choke.

Watching me like that, those around clicked their tongues.

"That Assistant Han, what on earth is he trying to do, going on like that?"

The people in the unit were very curious about me like this.

Each time, I went around boasting loudly that I would go to Australia when I discharged.

People snickered and told me, like a joke, to be sure to succeed when I went.

It was not that it was not hard.

Even so, the reason I clung this tenaciously was not resentment of my wife, or anger at the family that had treated me as an ATM.

'...L Hotel, deluxe suite.'

That soft, rustling, pure-white hotel bedding.

The moment I bit into the medium-rare tenderloin, juice dripping, that had come out on a silver tray when I ordered room service!

The savory taste of meat melting soft in my mouth, and the brilliant night view of Seoul beyond the full window.

Then, for the first time since I was born, I felt to the bone how thrilling and rapturous a pleasure it was to spend money for myself.

For Han Jeong-su of the previous life, a wild-goose father picking at ramen or salty kimchi, it was something he could not even dream of.

'One hotel room in Korea is this good, so how incredible would a barbecue grilled under Australia's clear sky be?'

The place my wife had loved so much she could not help it.

The place the children had called their own country.

'Just how good a place is that Australia?'

A life on that vast continent, which I would chew, tear, taste, and enjoy myself, with my own money.

That one pure, explosive expectation and flutter was an infinite engine of growth, making me take off sweat-soaked boxing gloves every night and memorize English words again.

"Sergeant Han Jeong-su. Fire a strong shout to the front for three seconds."

"Uwaaaaah!"

Time flowed like an arrow before a fierce goal.

Before I knew it, four bent bars were pinned on the chest of my combat uniform like medals.

Sergeant Han Jeong-su.

A monster who could take apart and assemble every piece of heavy equipment in the unit, who could converse capably in English, and who had hardened enough that even a junior who had boxed avoided sparring.

The wild-goose father who had once been like a beanpole had whetted every weapon sharp, and was waiting, square-shouldered, only for discharge day.