Chapter 4: The Professor's Trap
The lecture hall was a cathedral of cold concrete and soaring ceilings, smelling of old paper and the nervous, metallic tang of a hundred students' anxiety. I sat in the middle row, my posture uncharacteristically straight, my notebook lying open but utterly blank. Around me, the frantic scratching of pens against paper created a rhythmic white noise. My peers were desperate to capture every word that fell from the lips of Professor Lee Sangcheol, a man they viewed as the gatekeeper to their future careers. To me, he was just a man whose future obituary I had already read.
I didn't need to take notes. I wasn't here to learn; I was here to blend in while my capital fermented in the digital vaults of the stock exchange.
"The movement of capital is not emotional," Professor Lee's voice boomed, echoing off the walls. He was a shark of a man, known for his predatory instinct in identifying a student's weakness. "It is a machine. If you do not understand the gears, you will be crushed by them."
He paused, his eyes scanning the room like a radar dish until they locked onto mine. I didn't look away. I didn't blink. That was my first mistake—showing him the eyes of a forty-two-year-old man in a room full of children.
"Mr. Han," he said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, inquisitive low. He pointed a chalk-stained finger at me. "You seem remarkably relaxed. Perhaps the complexities of currency valuation are beneath you. Tell the class: if the US Federal Reserve raises interest rates by twenty-five basis points tomorrow, how does the Korean won react?"
The hall went silent. A few students in the front row turned back, their faces twisted with petty anticipation, waiting for me to stumble. It was a classic freshman trap—a question that required an understanding of global markets that no twenty-year-old should possess.
I stood up slowly, the movement fluid and devoid of the hesitant twitchiness I'd had in my first life. I looked at the dust motes dancing in a shaft of sunlight, and for a moment, I didn't see the classroom. I saw the ghost of the 2008 Lehman Brothers collapse. I saw the blood-red ticker tapes of the 2011 European debt crisis.
"The won will initially strengthen against the dollar," I began, my voice projecting with a calm, resonant authority that made the Professor's eyebrows twitch. "But the real impact isn't the rate itself. It's the shift in the carry trade. Within six months, the speculative liquidity in the KOSDAQ will dry up as global investors pivot toward the security of US Treasuries. It will favor high-yield tech exports, but it will absolutely crush domestic retail and real estate leverage. If you're holding department store stocks, Professor, I'd suggest selling them before the third quarter."
The silence that followed was heavy, almost suffocating. A girl sitting two seats to my left—Choi Yuna—stopped her pen mid-sentence and stared at me. Her sharp, intelligent eyes narrowed, as if she were seeing me for the first time, not as a classmate, but as a threat.
Professor Lee lowered his glasses, his expression shifting from amusement to a deep, calculating suspicion. "That is... a remarkably specific and cynical forecast, Mr. Han. Which textbook gave you such a dark outlook on the third quarter?"
"I didn't find it in a book, Professor," I said, sitting back down and meeting his gaze with a terrifying neutrality. "I just looked at the gears. Like you said."
I could feel the shift in the room. I was no longer an invisible face in the crowd. I had painted a target on my back, but I didn't care. I wasn't playing the game of grades anymore. I was playing the game of empires, and I had just fired the first silent shot. As the lecture ended and the crowd began to shuffle out, I felt a presence lingering near my desk.
"You're either a genius or a very lucky gambler, Han Jiwoo," a voice said.
I looked up to see Choi Yuna standing there, her arms crossed over her chest. She was the daughter of the most powerful legal mind in the country, a woman who, in my past life, wouldn't have even known my name.
"I don't believe in luck," I replied, packing my bag without looking at her. "And I'm too tired to be a genius."
I walked out of the hall, leaving her standing in the aisle. My mind was already elsewhere, calculating the exact minute the market would open tomorrow. The Professor's trap had failed, but the real predators were only just beginning to catch my scent.