The smell of fermented soybean stew and seasoned spinach filled the tiny, claustrophobic room as we sat on the linoleum floor. I watched my mother across the small, chipped folding table, my hands trembling so violently that I had to grip my knees under the surface to hide it. She looked so young—painfully young. Her hair was still thick and jet-black, pulled back in a practical clip, and her smile hadn't yet been eroded by the decade of industrial cleaning chemicals and the slow, agonizing rot of the sickness I remembered all too well.
"Eat, son. You look pale. Is university life that hard already? You should sleep more," she said, her voice a melody I had thought was lost to the wind. She reached out, gently placing a piece of grilled mackerel onto my bowl of white rice.
I couldn't find my voice. Every bite I took felt like swallowing jagged glass. I wasn't just eating a meal; I was consuming her life-force, her reddened, cracked hands, and the literal hours of her life spent scrubbing the floors of marble-clad buildings she would never be allowed to enter as a guest. In my previous life, I had looked at her sacrifice and felt a shameful, stinging embarrassment. This time, looking at the worn fabric of her cheap blouse, I felt a burning, cold clarity.
I will turn these hands into the hands of a queen, I swore silently, the heat of the stew rising to sting my eyes. I will build a fortress of gold around you so high that the world will never be able to touch you again.
After she left, her parting words a reminder to "study hard," I didn't head toward the campus for my afternoon lectures. Instead, I grabbed the white envelope containing the 500,000 won and walked down the street to the nearest PC Bang. The interior was a thick, blue haze of cigarette smoke and the frantic, rhythmic clicking of Starcraft players. It was a cathedral of the early digital age, a place where time seemed to suspend itself.
I found a terminal in the furthest corner, tucked away from the glowing eyes of the teenagers. I logged into a rudimentary online brokerage site, the interface clunky and slow compared to the lightning-fast apps of 2022. I stared at the balance: 0 won.
With a steady hand, I initiated the transfer of the 500,000 won—my mother's sweat and blood. In my first life, I had wasted this money within a month on overpriced textbooks I never opened and rounds of beer for people who called me a "friend" but never knew my last name. I had spent it trying to buy a seat at a table where I didn't belong.
This time, I didn't care about the table. I was going to buy the building.
I typed in the ticker for Samsung Electronics. In May 2004, the world saw it as a solid, perhaps slightly stagnant hardware company. They didn't see the smartphone revolution waiting in the tall grass. They didn't see the global hegemony it would achieve. I moved the cursor over the 'Buy' button.
To the world, this is a safe, boring investment, I thought, my finger hovering over the mouse. To me, this is a seed. And I am the only one who knows exactly how much rain is coming.
I clicked.
The screen flickered for a second before the trade confirmation flashed green on the bulky CRT monitor. It was done. The first domino had been pushed. As I leaned back in the plastic chair, my old flip-phone vibrated in my pocket with a sharp, mechanical buzz. I pulled it out and flipped it open.
A text message from Park Dohyeon: "Hey Jiwoo, coming to the Economics Club meeting tonight? We're scouting new talent for the mock investment team. Don't be late!"
I stared at the name on the tiny, low-resolution screen. The man who had eventually stood over my ruined life with a smile was already reaching out to pull me into his orbit. In my past life, I had been flattered by his attention. I had run to that meeting, desperate for his approval.
I closed the phone with a sharp clack. I wasn't going to avoid him. Avoiding him was a coward's move, and I had already died a coward once. I was going to walk into that room, look him in the eye, and let him believe I was exactly the naive student he wanted me to be. I was going to let the predator think he had found a lamb, while I spent every waking second calculating the exact weight of the blade that would eventually take his head.
I stood up, the smoke of the PC Bang clinging to my clothes like the ghosts of my past. The war hadn't officially started for the rest of the world, but as I walked out into the humid Seoul afternoon, I knew the empire was already being born.