Golden Spoon Investment Portfolio - Chapter 102

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

102. The Great Kobe Earthquake.

January 17th, 1995. Kobe, Japan.
Tsuji had returned late from overtime work and only fallen asleep past midnight when something strange jolted him awake.

“What…?”

Lying in bed, he turned his head, but the small eight-tatami studio apartment shrouded in darkness was silent as a tomb—nothing seemed amiss.
He reached for his wristwatch resting on the nightstand and checked the time: 5:40 AM.
He would need to rise soon to prepare for work, but exhaustion weighed heavily on his body. Desperate for just one more hour of sleep, Tsuji set the watch down and closed his eyes.
In that moment, a hellish ordeal he would never forget descended upon him.

“Huh?”

Feeling the bed shake, Tsuji’s eyes snapped open immediately.
Living in Japan, earthquakes were routine; minor tremors were typically dismissed without concern.
But this time, something felt profoundly wrong.
Tsuji’s instincts screamed danger. The moment he pushed himself upright, a violent tremor unlike anything he’d ever experienced seized the studio apartment.

Boom-boom-boom-boom-crash!
“Ahhhhh!”
Crash! Clang!

Like a sailboat tossed violently by a raging storm, the apartment building swayed back and forth with increasing ferocity.
Objects on the shelves tumbled down, shattering and breaking with deafening clamor.

“Damn it!”

Cursing, Tsuji bolted from the bed in his pajamas and, following the lessons learned since childhood, pulled the bedsheet over his head.
A low table would have offered better protection, but his cramped studio only had a modest kotatsu, making that impossible.
The apartment was already a wreck, scattered with fallen objects covering the floor, and the earthquake continued to shake the very foundations of the earth with apocalyptic force.

“Ahhhhhhh!”

Tsuji, huddled against the floor with the bedsheet clenched in his fists, screamed in terror.
The fear was so overwhelming that if he didn’t cry out, he felt he would lose his mind entirely.
As violent tremors continued to shake the entire world around him, white cement dust cascaded down from the ceiling with a rattling sound, falling onto his head.
When Tsuji lifted his gaze upward, he could see the concrete mansion’s ceiling and walls cracking and splintering apart in the darkness.

“Damn it all!”

Seeing this, Tsuji gasped in shock and stumbled backward, only to be immediately blocked by the wall of his small rented room.
The violent shaking was causing the thirty-year-old dilapidated mansion building to collapse under the strain.
Remembering how the real estate agent had assured him when he rented the room that despite its age, the building was constructed solidly and would withstand even a major earthquake, Tsuji screamed with tears streaming down his face.

“Solid my ass!”

As he thought he was about to die, his entire life flashed before his eyes like a lantern show.
His parents back home, his friends….
His face was completely drenched in tears.
Then, as if by a lie, the earthquake suddenly stopped.
Tsuji, still huddled beneath the bedsheet and trembling violently, slowly lifted his head with a half-dazed expression and looked around cautiously.

“Is… is it over….”

Shelves had toppled over and everything had spilled onto the floor, broken and shattered, but such things didn’t matter now.

“I… I’m alive. *sniff*, *sob*.”

Tsuji rejoiced, sniffling pathetically.
He had thought he was about to die without any way to escape, but now that he had survived, a sigh of relief escaped him.
But that relief was short-lived.
Knowing that earthquakes don’t end with just one tremor but are followed by numerous aftershocks, Tsuji threw off the bedsheet and hurriedly got to his feet.

“This isn’t the time for that.”

Tsuji quickly grabbed his wallet and the bankbook he kept in his drawer, then frantically shoved a few pieces of clothing into his backpack.
Without even having time to change out of his pajamas, he put on his sneakers and bolted out of his rented room.
The hallway was already filled with neighbors like Tsuji, evacuating to safer locations.

“Get out quickly!”
“Good heavens, what on earth is happening?”
“Everyone, watch your footing as you come down—don’t fall!”
“Children. Hold my hand tight.”
“Mom. Waaahhh!”

Amid the cacophony of voices shouting from all directions, the desperate cries of someone searching for family members tangled with the wails of small children.
And then there were the sirens wailing in the distance.
Tsuji descended the emergency stairwell with an anxious expression, gripping his backpack straps tightly as he squeezed through the throng of evacuating residents.
Only when I emerged from the mansion building did my nerves finally settle somewhat.
Fires blazed from every direction, painting the night sky a deep crimson, while several surrounding buildings lay either collapsed or toppled sideways like toys.
The asphalt road was torn and fractured like ripped paper in places, with jagged sections jutting upward, and debris from destroyed buildings scattered haphazardly across the street.
In what felt like barely five minutes, the peaceful street had transformed into a war-torn wasteland.
When I saw the mansion where my room had been, my skin crawled at the sight of the building tilted slightly to the left, its entire facade covered in spiderweb cracks.
I shuddered to imagine what would have happened if the quake had continued for just one more minute—or even a few more seconds.

* * *

Beep beep beep! Beep beep beep!

Seok-won’s eyes snapped open at the shrill ringing that shattered the pre-dawn silence.
Still lying in bed, I stretched one arm across the mattress, fumbling along the nightstand until my fingers found my phone, which I brought to my ear.

“Hello?”

I answered in a voice thick with sleep, and the caller’s urgent voice burst through the receiver.

[Boss, it’s Landon Shore. A massive earthquake has just struck Japan!]

The word “earthquake” jolted me fully awake, and I bolted upright in bed.
I had known that a devastating earthquake would hit Japan around this time, but I hadn’t remembered the exact date.
The moment Landon spoke, I realized that today was the day.

“An earthquake, you said?”
[Yes. A major earthquake measuring magnitude 7 or higher has struck Kobe.]
“A magnitude 7 would cause substantial damage even in Japan, with all its earthquake preparedness.”
[The epicenter is Kobe, a major city with a population of 1.5 million and Japan’s largest port. The shockwave is so powerful it’s affecting Osaka and Tokyo as well, so the damage is expected to be catastrophic.]

An earthquake of this magnitude would have caused considerable devastation even in a remote, sparsely populated area—but with the epicenter at the heart of Japan’s economy, the scale of the shockwave was beyond my comprehension.

[As soon as the breaking news hit, the yen, which had been climbing in the foreign exchange market, immediately reversed course and plummeted downward. Once the markets open at dawn, the Nikkei will undoubtedly experience a massive crash.]

A catastrophic disaster of this magnitude meant the markets would inevitably panic and collapse—as predictable as fire burning.

“What’s the yen trading at now?”
[It’s dropped to 99.55 yen per dollar.]

Since the Eldorado Fund’s average selling price had been 100 yen, we’d now recovered back to the breakeven point.

[When the yen climbed to 95, I thought we were taking massive losses—I nearly developed an ulcer. I never imagined it would reverse so dramatically in a single stroke.]

The exchange rate, which had hovered around the low 100s yen per dollar until last year, had soared to the 90s as Mexico’s currency crisis intensified.
With the Eldorado Fund leveraging 10 times over, we’d been forced to inject nearly 100 million dollars in additional margin to avoid a margin call.

‘If I hadn’t known the yen would collapse from the earthquake, I would have cut the position and accepted the losses back then.’

In fact, when the yen showed no signs of falling further, Landon Shore and Andrew had even suggested we quietly unwind the position.

‘Come to think of it, Investment Team 1 said the same thing.’

I recalled when the head of Investment Team 1 and Song Jong-geun had visited together, urging me to cover the short before losses mounted further.

‘Any longer and the losses will only keep growing.’
‘We need to cover the short now. We have to salvage whatever capital we can….’

Remembering the two of them pleading with me, shifting their weight anxiously, a quiet laugh escaped my lips.

‘They’ll be shocked when they wake up and find out what happened in Japan this morning.’

Snapping out of my brief reverie, I adjusted my grip on the phone and spoke.

“We’ve only just recovered breakeven—there’s no reason to celebrate yet. The real game starts now. Call me back once it breaks 100 yen.”
[Yes, understood.]

After ending the call, I rose from bed and glanced at the desk clock on the nightstand—it had just passed 6 a.m.
Being winter, the sun rose late, and the world beyond the window remained dark.
I flipped the light switch on the wall and turned on the television with the remote.
Just then, the morning news anchor appeared on screen with a grave expression, reporting breaking news of a massive earthquake that had struck Kobe, Japan.

[Just this morning at 5:46 AM on the 17th, a massive earthquake exceeding magnitude 7.0 on the Richter scale struck western Japan, including Kobe and Osaka.
It is the largest earthquake since the Great Nankai Earthquake of magnitude 8.0 that occurred in 1946, with tens of thousands of buildings expected to be destroyed and significant casualties anticipated.
Particularly, since the epicenter is located near Kobe, a major metropolitan area with dense population, the scale of damage is expected to be even more severe.
Meanwhile, the Japanese government….]

Because the massive earthquake had only just occurred, the anchor delivered the breaking news by reading hastily prepared scripts without any additional footage or graphics.
At that, Seok-won pressed the remote control button and switched to NHK, which was connected via satellite antenna.
As expected, earthquake disaster alerts were being broadcast, and alongside the urgent anchor’s commentary, aerial footage shot from a helicopter unfolded across the screen.
Watching the images on television, Seok-won’s face hardened like stone, and without realizing it, he let out a low murmur.

“Hmm.”

There was no word to describe it other than utterly devastating.
Fires broke out everywhere, crimson flames flickering as the entire city seemed to burn.
Roads and buildings were all collapsed or fractured, and from the docks, what appeared to be a gas explosion sent a massive pillar of fire soaring skyward, belching black smoke as it burned with wild ferocity.
What was particularly shocking was the sight of the elevated highway that crossed through the city lying on its side like a toy.
Just that alone made clear how massive and widespread the earthquake damage was.
A true catastrophe.
Concrete and steel reinforcement created by humans proved utterly powerless before the terrifying force of nature.
Even the anchor’s voice reporting the damage situation trembled finely with fear and shock.
Confronted with such a horrific scene, Seok-won murmured softly to himself, thinking about how the market would react to this.

“Another hell is about to unfold.”

Those who had placed long bets on the yen and Japanese stock market would be swept away in a sea of blood by this unforeseen mega-disaster.

“In every game, when one side makes money, the other side loses.”

But this time, with a catastrophe no one had anticipated unfolding, the aftermath would certainly be far more severe and devastating.
Seok-won watched the live footage continuing to broadcast on television with cold, settled eyes and spoke.

“When everyone is gripped by panic, that’s when real fortunes can be made—the golden opportunity.”

With that, Seok-won kept his composed expression, crossed his arms, and continued monitoring the news alerts.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————