While Junhyeok and Purdy were going absolutely wild in the living room, Junho ca out a little later, gave a short laugh, and said,
“Don’t get too excited. We’re spending all that money on building the shelter anyway.”
“Co on, seriously, hyung. You’ve got no romance in you. Still, we did make eighteen billion won, didn’t we? Have a drink.”
“A drink? In the morning?”
That was his response, and then Junho caught himself.
He rembered it just then. “Have a drink” had started as a among soccer fans, but for Junho it belonged to a past so far away that he had forgotten.
“Man, what was I even expecting from you? You don’t even know s? Then again, once this year’s over, you’ll be thirty. Old man.”
“Yeah. And once this year’s over, you’ll be in your mid-twenties. Reserve-force geezer.”
“Urk.”
Putting on an exaggerated look of shock, Junhyeok flopped onto the couch, then imdiately broke into a grin.
“But seriously, this is insane. Eighteen billion won. You’re selling everything right away, right?”
“Of course. Once it goes over a hundred thousand won per coin, it starts swinging hard. Then around May or June, it completely crashes. In Korea and the U.S., everyone still holding {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} by then gets wiped out, and the developer ends up on Interpol’s wanted list.”
“That’s insane too. But... there’s no way it crashes and then they co after us or sothing, right? Like for manipulation or collusion or whatever?”
Seeing the worried look in Junhyeok’s eyes, Junho answered with total certainty.
“Absolutely not. If we held until the very end and sold for profit at the peak, maybe that’d be a different story, but we’re cashing out right now. What collusion? We don’t even know what the developer looks like.”
“Ohhh.”
“And globally, what blows up is tens of trillions. Our eighteen billion won doesn’t an anything. People will just think we were insanely lucky.”
“That’s a relief, then. All right, then, Mr. Lee Junho, coin tycoon. What’s the next step?”
“Three billion goes into NVIDIA. The remaining fifteen billion goes into a newly opened account. And the very first thing we do is—”
Junho turned the tablet screen toward Junhyeok as he continued.
“Haneul Forest Campground. Ti to win the bid.”
“Hell yeah! But do we have to go ourselves? Hyung, do you know anything about auctions?”
“No.”
“Huh? Then what do we do?”
As Junhyeok tilted his head, Junho lowered the tablet and answered.
“We hire soone who can handle all that for us.”
“What? There’s soone like that?”
“There is. In Busan.”
Lee Dongcheol.
A forr prosecutor who had resigned after getting caught up in an ugly scandal, then opened a small law firm in Busan.
When the apocalypse broke out, he had co to Seoul on personal business and ended up trapped there, but he survived in the end. He was one of many family n in the apocalypse—never truly monstrous, but cunning and selfish, and willing to do anything to get back to his family in Busan.
‘He ended up dying after getting mixed up with so bullshit cult...’
Anyway, even so, there was a reason Junho still wanted to hire a man like that.
‘Because he worked as a prosecutor in Chuncheon and Namyangju.’
No matter how he thought about it, Junho felt there would be tis during the shelter construction process when he would have to use backdoor thods.
There might be tis he would need to grease a civil servant or a politician too.
He needed an expert who understood that kind of thing and could handle it.
Of course, if he really looked, he could probably find another capable lawyer. But in Junho’s judgnt, it would not be easy to find soone more suitable than Lee Dongcheol, who had actually worked as a prosecutor in Namyangju.
More importantly, if you paid him enough, he was the type of man who could handle not just legal gray areas but outright illegal work with practiced ease.
That ca from soone who had stayed in the sa place as Lee Dongcheol before the regression and absolutely hated the man, which made it easier to trust.
He had cursed him out as a born son of a bitch, the kind who was frighteningly good at cleaning up other people’s sses and handling dirty work.
And what if things went wrong?
Even in the worst-case scenario, Lee Dongcheol was the kind of lawyer who could drag things out through a second and third trial for years.
And Junho only needed exactly two years to finish all his preparations.
“So we’re going down to Busan to et him? When?”
“When’s the election?”
“Jesus, even if you already know who wins, at least act interested. It’s on the ninth.”
After pulling out his phone and checking the date and day of the week, Junho said,
“Next Tuesday. The day before the election.”
“Four days from now?”
“Yeah. I’ve got too much to take care of on Monday. I’ll go down Tuesday, et the lawyer, and also... there’s soone way more important than the lawyer I absolutely have to see.”
As he said that, the location of Suho Tool Center—saved on his phone months ago—was displayed on the screen.
***
After selling off all the coins over the weekend, the final amount shown in Junho’s exchange account was 18.7 billion won.
As of 2022, virtual-asset gains were not subject to taxation, so moving almost the full amount into a dostic bank account posed no real problem.
There was no reason for the National Tax Service to make an issue of it, and even if there was, he could just leave it to the lawyer he was about to hire in Busan, Lee Dongcheol.
His specialty was corporate civil litigation, so he would either know tax-related matters too or at least have the right network.
On Monday, the bank branch Junho visited to open a new account was thrown into total chaos.
The branch manager and another manager ca running out imdiately, and instead of a consultation room, Junho was ushered into the branch manager’s office, where he had to sit through over thirty minutes of flattery and sweet talk.
He was able to open a secure account with unlimited limits for both in-person and remote transactions.
The bank wanted to assign him a dedicated private-banking asset manager, but Junho politely declined.
The money was business capital on paper, but in reality it was shelter-construction money.
That said, he did accept issuance of their highest-tier credit card, the Pentium Black.
After finishing at the bank and being personally seen out by the branch manager and the other manager, Junho imdiately used the brokerage firm’s global HTS platform to buy three billion won worth of NVIDIA stock.
Before that, though, he had tried posting a fake shitpost on a stock board to casually fish for information.
But between comnts about how he needed a precise buying plan that accounted for exchange rates, how placing limit orders during a correction phase would be better, and people calling each other assholes and fighting in the replies, he gave up and just cleanly shoved in three billion won at market price.
After that, with a move now completed that would, by this ti in 2024, earn him another roughly ten billion won with virtually one-hundred-percent certainty, Junho headed to an H Motors dealership.
Maybe because he had arrived driving an SUV of the sa brand, the salesperson—a guy who looked around his age—was fairly friendly.
He clearly wanted to show him several models, but Junho had already decided what he was buying.
“I’m thinking of the Bionic 5 Long Range.”
“Excellent choice, sir. It’s a very popular model with custors in their twenties as well. Then for a test drive—”
“I’m just going to buy it.”
“......!”
Startled for a second, the salesperson imdiately put on a bright smile and said,
“Sir, let take you to the consultation room.”
Since Junho had already made up his mind, the consultation and contract moved quickly.
The problem was that it was such a popular model, and with the global semiconductor supply issue and everything else, the reservation wait was long.
But Junho had already prepared a solution.
“A display car or a test-drive vehicle is fine. If you can just let drive one out right away, I’ll pay in full and add a rush fee too.”
If he wanted the car fast, this was no ti to get cute with installnt tricks.
“I think it can be done. No—I’ll personally make it happen, sir.”
A fire lit up in the salesperson’s eyes.
After that, the process moved fast as lightning.
All contracts and arrangents were finished within an hour.
Junho handed the keys to his used SUV to an employee who said it would be delivered directly to his ho, then drove off in a demo vehicle with barely over one thousand kiloters on it.
The reason he had chosen this car was simple.
Its energy efficiency was only so-so, but its driving range was very long, and since it was an electric vehicle, there would be no fuel worries if he used the shelter’s solar power.
On top of that, it was one of the best-selling models in the country, which ant fewer problems with parts supply and maintenance even during the apocalypse.
There was no reason to hesitate.
It was better to get used to this car even one day sooner.
“As for an armored car... I need to think about that more.”
Thinking he could make it through the apocalypse with just one vehicle was naive.
He needed at least two or three.
And on top of that, Junho was planning a shelter where several people would live together.
He would need lots of vehicles—ordinary ones, and special-purpose ones too.
Just buying vehicles alone would obviously run over one billion won.
And among them, armored vehicles were absolutely necessary, and also the most expensive.
Whether he commissioned a dostic specialty vehicle company for modifications or imported them from an armored-vehicle specialist in the U.S. or Germany, the baseline was three to four hundred million won per vehicle.
He would probably need three to five of them.
Of course, he had no intention of paying for or commissioning all of them outright.
The cost exploding exponentially was one problem, but if he ended up owning that many armored vehicles, it would obviously attract suspicion.
“Maybe buy one or two, and the rest...”
Junho’s plan was to modify the others himself at the workshop he intended to build along with the shelter.
And tomorrow, he would drive this car to et the person who would be responsible for that shelter workshop.
***
“Huh? So does that an I can drive our SUV around now?”
“Yeah. After you get your driver’s license first, right?”
“Ah! Aaah...”
Even though it was a used car, the re fact that he would have a car of his own at twenty-three had made Junhyeok’s eyes light up, but the next second he collapsed onto the couch like a tragic hero.
“That’s why I’m telling you to hurry up and get your license, dumbass. Stop just ssing around with drones.”
“They’re fun, what do you want to do? Besides, the other certifications co first. Even the written exam for the hunting license looks like it actually takes so studying.”
“Then study hard. The exam’s only a month away now.”
“Yeah, yeah. But hyung, you’re staying in Busan for five whole days?”
“Yeah. I think I’ve got a lot to take care of there. I might even need to stay the whole week. Anyway, I already told the gym.”
“Okay. I’m taking Purdy out to work out.”
Quick on the uptake, Purdy imdiately brought over his leash and stood waiting in front of Junho. Soon the two of them were out the door.
Junhyeok still went to the gym four or five days a week like before, but Junho had cut his own attendance down to once or twice a week starting not long ago.
That was because the pressure for him to enter competitions—and even go pro—had been coming nonstop, and because he was now confident he had fighting skills solid enough to work in real combat.
‘Honestly, if I attacked at full power, even Coach...’
Junho figured that while his technique might still be lacking, his raw strength and punching power would work even against fighters in higher weight classes—maybe even heavyweights.
No, he was sure of it.
But in an apocalypse where every random bastard was carrying a weapon, unard fighting was nothing more than a foundational, basic survival skill.
Now that money was no longer a concern at all, he planned to start training seriously in Systema or Krav Maga.
And there was one more thing.
“I’ll have to go to the U.S. too.”
Learning unard combat and how to fight with knives or other weapons was good.
But if he was going to prepare seriously for the apocalypse, firearms training was absolutely mandatory.
Did that seem unnecessary because most adult n in Korea were already reservists?
Tactical firearms training.
The difference between people who had properly received that and people who had not was stark—from reaction speed in the field to basic survival odds.
Before the regression, Junho had seen a survivor with that kind of training fight.
Compared to an ordinary reservist like himself, their ability to respond to different situations was on an entirely different level.
So he had to learn it, no matter what.
CQB, force-on-force, low-light and no-light shooting, vehicle tactics, and more.
For that kind of specialized instruction, the United States was the best in the world.
In so states where gun rules were loose enough that even foreigners could try firing rifles, Junho and Junhyeok could get more than enough short-term training in under a month.
Both of them were law-abiding citizens from an allied country with nothing in their backgrounds to flag, and while in Korea they were just forr conscript reservists, by Arican standards they were Recon and Commando veterans.
Even as foreigners, there were plenty of private military academies they could attend as long as they paid.
So Junho’s plan was to first spend this year in Korea, taking related classes with his younger brother and building a foundation, then go to the U.S. next year for short, intensive training.
“It really is nice. Once you have money, the things you need to do start lining themselves up fast.”
But first—and most importantly—the thing he had to handle for sure was winning the bid for the closed-school property at Haneul Forest Campground, the site he had chosen for the shelter.
Junho packed a suitcase with about a week’s worth of clothes for Busan and went to bed early.
At dawn the next day.
After taking Purdy out for a short run around Chunui Mountain instead of their usual route, Junho ca back, left a note for his still-sleeping younger brother, and headed out.
Because the movie Train to Busan had popped into his head for no reason, he had never even considered taking the train in the first place. So he got into the electric car he had bought the day before and quietly set out for Busan.
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