Kang Doyoon checked his phone four times that morning.
Once as soon as he opened his eyes.
Once while washing his face.
Once while getting ready for work.
And once more right before leaving for the office.
The same numbers as yesterday were displayed on the screen.
Taeseong Electronics
Purchase price: 3,200 won.
Current price: 3,205 won.
Return.
+0.15%
Kang Doyoon let out a quiet laugh.
In his first life, even numbers like these had made his heart race.
If a stock rose by just a few percent, he mistook assumption for knowledge and thought he could read the market.
If it fell by just a few percent, anxiety would consume him, and he would stare at the stock quote screen all day.
Back then, he hadn't been investing in stocks.
He had been letting stocks drag him around.
But things were different now.
For the time being.
"A 3,200-won stock."
Kang Doyoon muttered to himself.
"To someone else, it might just be a number."
"But to me, it's a number that holds ten years of memories."
Yet a lingering discomfort remained in one corner of his mind.
Knowing the future.
It was unquestionably a powerful weapon.
But it was also a shackle.
The possibility that the information he had might be wrong.
That thought refused to leave his mind.
As soon as he arrived at the office, Kang Doyoon began his usual work.
Writing reports.
Organizing data.
Contacting clients.
In his first life, the work had felt like something he simply had to endure day after day.
But things were different now.
He observed his surroundings.
The way people spoke.
The atmosphere in the company.
The small changes.
He could see things he hadn't noticed in his first life.
"Doyoon."
Yoon Seoyeon set a document down.
"Could you take a look at this?"
Kang Doyoon accepted it.
"Sure."
Yoon Seoyeon didn't walk away right away.
"By the way."
"Yes?"
"Is there really something going on?"
Kang Doyoon looked up.
"What do you mean?"
"You've been acting strange lately."
Yoon Seoyeon leaned back in her chair.
"You've suddenly changed."
"I have?"
"Yeah."
She paused to think.
"You always looked anxious before."
Kang Doyoon listened quietly.
"You seemed like someone who was constantly being chased by something."
"But now..."
Yoon Seoyeon searched for the right words before continuing.
"Now you look like someone who knows something."
For a moment, Kang Doyoon's hand stopped moving.
Someone who knew something.
The words were too accurate.
But what she meant by them was completely different from the secret he carried.
"People can change as they go through life."
Kang Doyoon smiled as he spoke.
Yoon Seoyeon looked at him.
"I suppose that's true."
"But people don't suddenly change without a reason."
At lunch that day.
Choi Minseok sat across from him in the cafeteria.
"You really invest in stocks?"
Kang Doyoon set down his chopsticks.
"Who told you that?"
"Your face."
"Does my face look like the face of a stock investor?"
"Yeah."
Choi Minseok laughed.
"I know because I've done it myself."
Kang Doyoon paused at that.
"You too?"
"A little."
Minseok said it as though it were no big deal.
"The market's pretty interesting these days."
Kang Doyoon looked at him.
It was a scene he remembered from his first life.
Choi Minseok had already been interested in the market around this time.
But back then, Doyoon hadn't known.
He had thought of Minseok as nothing more than a coworker.
At least until he saw his name in the news later on.
"What did you buy?"
Minseok asked.
Kang Doyoon didn't answer right away.
"I'm just studying for now."
"Studying?"
Minseok laughed.
"You don't make money in stocks just by studying."
Kang Doyoon felt something strange when he heard that.
It sounded right in a way.
And wrong in a way, too.
Stocks weren't something you could master through studying alone.
But anyone who didn't study would eventually fail to survive the market.
After work.
Kang Doyoon contacted Han Taesik.
At first, he hesitated.
He could have chosen not to call.
He wondered whether someone who knew the future really needed anyone's advice.
But then he thought differently.
The biggest mistake of his first life.
He had mistaken assumption for knowledge and believed he knew everything.
So this time, he wanted to make a different choice.
"Hello."
A low voice answered.
"This is Kang Doyoon."
A brief silence.
"You remember me."
It was Han Taesik.
"Yes."
"Did you buy a stock?"
The question came out of nowhere.
Kang Doyoon paused.
"How did you know?"
"Most people who call fall into one of two categories."
Han Taesik spoke calmly.
"People asking because they've lost money."
"Or people asking before they put money in."
"But your voice is neither."
Kang Doyoon almost laughed.
"Then what am I?"
"Someone who's already made a decision."
A few days later.
Kang Doyoon visited Han Taesik's office.
It was smaller than he had expected.
There was no flashy interior, either.
The walls were lined with books, not stock charts.
"That's unexpected."
Doyoon said it aloud.
"What is?"
"I thought an investor's office would have several monitors."
Han Taesik smiled.
"That's a trader's office."
"An investor has to spend more time looking at his thoughts than at a screen."
Han Taesik offered him a cup of coffee.
"So."
"What did you buy?"
Kang Doyoon didn't answer.
Han Taesik smiled.
"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."
"An investor also has to learn how to protect his own thoughts."
Kang Doyoon was a little surprised by those words.
Han Taesik was different from the investors he had known.
Most of the people Doyoon had met in his first life bragged about their stocks.
How much they had made.
How many times their money had multiplied.
They competed over who had been right.
But Han Taesik was different.
He asked about the process, not the result.
"May I ask you one thing?"
Kang Doyoon said.
"Why are you interested in me?"
Han Taesik thought for a moment.
"Because you're interesting."
"Me?"
"Yes."
Han Taesik gazed out the window.
"People who survive in the market for a long time have something in common."
"What is it?"
"They know they can be wrong."
"But you..."
Han Taesik looked at Kang Doyoon.
"You have the eyes of someone with absolute confidence, even as you're afraid you might be wrong."
That night.
Kang Doyoon returned home.
Then he checked the stock price.
Taeseong Electronics
Current price.
3,450 won.
Return.
+7.8%
It was a small rise.
To someone else, it would have been a meaningless number.
But to Kang Doyoon, it was different.
It was the first moment when the future and the present aligned.
He smiled quietly.
"Just as I thought..."
At that moment.
His phone chimed with an alert.
Breaking news.
[Taeseong Electronics Announces Unexpected New Investment]
Kang Doyoon's expression hardened.
That news wasn't part of the future he remembered.
It definitely wasn't.
He slowly lowered his phone.
At first, he had thought everything would be easy because he knew the future.
But he had been wrong.
The moment he returned to the past, the future had already begun to change.
Kang Doyoon opened his notebook.
For the first time, he added a new sentence beside the Future Records he had written down.
A variable has emerged.
The future doesn’t unfold according to memory.
That night.
Kang Doyoon realized something for the first time.
What he possessed wasn't the future.
It was merely memories of the past.
And between memory and reality,
there were still countless paths he didn't know about.
The next morning.
A new rumor appeared on the company message board.
"I hear there's some major movement involving Taeseong Electronics."
And there was another person who saw the post.
Choi Minseok.
He stared at the screen, then smiled quietly.
"Interesting."
"Is this where it starts?"
Kang Doyoon's first investment had only just begun.