If I Don’t Earn 1 Trillion Won, My Regression Ends - Chapter 24

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 24

Chapter 3. Stars, Connections, and Destiny

When the heavily tinted Range Rover entered the Jeongja-dong apartment complex, the sun had already completely set.

The appearance of an expensive foreign car rarely seen even in affluent neighborhoods drew the attention of residents returning home.

Among them was Seo Ssi, a company employee and former special forces Eagle Unit member, carrying his sleeping son on his back in a baby carrier after finishing grocery shopping.

“Honey, isn’t that Sing-a’s mom over there?”

“My wife? No, she said she was coming by taxi—”

Just then, a pair of mother and daughter got out of the car, laughing cheerfully.

There couldn’t be another such goddess and princess in Seo Shin-hyeon’s world!

Green onions and regular onions tumbled out of Seo Shin-hyeon’s shopping basket as his mouth fell open.

♧

One month later.

Time flew by quickly and it was already May.

And in May 1998.

South Korea was ruined.

“….”

Don’t misunderstand.

Those aren’t my words, but what the news has been shouting all day long lately.

The KOSPI 600 line, which had been barely hanging on by a thread, finally couldn’t hold on and collapsed.

Just until last March, with Quera Korea’s buff and Samsung’s hard carry, the KOSPI had rebounded to the 780 line, and everyone raised their glasses in celebration thinking they were saved now!…

Wait. Did you perhaps count your chickens before they hatched?

Ta-da~ It collapsed again!

In April, it plummeted repeatedly, crashing down to the 650 line.

The anxious government once again tearfully called for help from the nation’s hero, Chairman Park Min-su, but the cold Seoul man Park Min-su remained silent again.

“That Park Min-su has become completely American!”

“You can’t trust black-haired beasts these days!”

The 20th century version of hate comments from embittered Koreans ran rampant, but the stubborn Min-su didn’t budge. (It’s questionable whether he even watches Korean news in the first place…)

And during this time.

“I heard Quera is going to abandon Korea soon!”

“Quera is withdrawing their Korean factory!”

When such rumors spread, the Koreans’ anger quickly ended.

Like wet puppies, they whined “Chairman, please don’t leave us” as if nothing had happened, but due to anxious retail investors, even Quera Korea’s stock price was cut in half!

Once the market’s last bastion was broken, the collapse of the KOSPI 600 line happened in an instant.

The 600 line collapsed?

The flustered people attempted a collective psychological victory, saying “Wow~ hell is pretty warm. This is the end now, right? If you guys have any conscience, surely you wouldn’t go any lower than this? Haha” but…

That wouldn’t change the reality before their eyes.

When ominous rumors spread that even the KOSPI 500 line might break, retail investors crumbled. They began digging tunnels of despair one by one.

For reference, the KOSPI 500 line is 1980s level.

It was the collapse of 10 years of growth that South Korea had built up while bleeding, and an uppercut that harshly slapped the cheeks of citizens who had been blowing fanfares claiming they were also a developed country.

And at this very moment when the despairing market was plummeting so steeply.

A certain regressor child who had been holding on thought.

‘Is it now!’

“Daughter. My beloved daughter. Are we really, really going through with this?”

Father’s hoarse voice trembles.

I glanced up at Father.

Bloodshot eyes, bluish under-eye circles, sunken and haggard cheeks…

‘Is this what a person looks like?’

Where did the proud special forces member Seo Shin-hyeon go?

Where is the strong man Seo Shin-hyeon who caught and grilled snakes in the mountains whenever he was hungry and wrote love letters in blood?

Ever since deciding to go to the securities firm, he couldn’t sleep or eat and kept getting sick, finally ending up like this.

I gently comforted him like a filial daughter.

“Stop overreacting and hurry up. How did you even get through the military?”

One morning in May 1998.

Today was D-day to finally convert a huge sum of 50 million won into stocks – my 20 million won advertising fee that had been fully deposited, plus 30 million won earned from exchange rate profits!

Ah~ those past few years…

How much had I anticipated and longed for this day to come?

Today’s stock purchase was like the most important day in Seosing-a’s epic saga toward 1 trillion won.

Originally, I planned to visit with our perfectly matched Madam Bang Suk-yeong, but—

It was just last month.

From the day I returned home carpooling with Bae Seo-nyeok after finishing the advertisement shoot, Father began to turn dark— no, awaken.

Originally, Father was someone who, true to his long military background, moved frustratingly only by ‘orders’.

He had to specify times like “do this by such and such time” to be efficient, or he’d be lucky not to get beaten by Mother. But then.

「H-honey…?」

Wasn’t Bae Seo-nyeok frighteningly handsome even from a man’s perspective?

I thought Father’s face looked unusually pale when he came face to face with us mother and daughter getting out of his foreign car…

True to being an INFP daddy who raised an INFP daughter, I don’t know how far he progressed with his delusions alone.

He started a balance game in my ear: [Playboy 10 billion won rich stepfather VS Devoted, family-oriented, sweet penniless old father].

He’d fiddle with PC communication asking things like [How to recapture your wife’s heart during a rough patch].

Thinking he was acting like that because he didn’t know who Bae Seo-nyeok was, I kindly turned on the TV and explained.

Then his complexion went beyond pale to despair, and whenever he saw Mother, he began biting his lips like a woman confined to a Joseon-era women’s quarters.

Around then I realized. Ah!

‘So that’s where the term drama queen came from!’

This daughter couldn’t dare keep up with that tragic male lead…

I just left him alone, planning to watch how long he’d continue like that. (Of course, Mother paid surprisingly little attention.)

「Princess, you know what? Last time you said you and Mom made money somehow through currency exchange, right?」

Seo Shin-hyeon, the old-fashioned person who thought living in a rental house was free, buying used cars meant driving them for 30 years, and stocks were only for scammers, had changed!

In the original history, he only turned dark after losing all the family assets by guaranteeing the wrong loan!

I thought it would take a while for him to mature in this life, but who knew things would unfold like this?

Having gained some enlightenment, Father began flipping through news and newspapers. He even tried to act scholarly without glasses.

「Ahem. From what Father sees? Although this period of foreign exchange crisis looks dangerous, our family has sufficient cash, so if we plan well, it could actually be an opportunity—」

「So Mom and I are going to put 50 million won into stocks this time.」

「…?」

Seo Shin-hyeon’s painstakingly gathered courage faded away like that.

The courage that Mr. Seo Sinhyeon had desperately mustered faded away just like that.

She squeezed out tears and snot, stomped her feet, and threw herself flat on the floor to try to dissuade us mother and daughter…

Seosing-a, the regressor daughter who knew the future and didn’t even pretend to listen.

Bang Suk-yeong, the beast-hearted mother who had been treating her daughter half like a divine child prodigy ever since tasting the jackpot from currency exchange profits.

The mental barriers of these two mother and daughter were solid.

“No way~ honey. The 2,000 is what Sing-a earned from advertising, and the 3,000 is what she earned from currency exchange. It’s all money she made, so what’s wrong with taking a little risk?”

“That’s right, that’s right!”

“But… but still!”

“Enough! That’s what we decided! Seo Shin-hyeon, don’t you still know what kind of person your daughter is?”

“Huh?”

“You’re so clueless. Look, look. It was your daughter who pestered us to move to Bundang. It was your daughter who correctly predicted your mother’s colon cancer. And even the currency exchange on top of that. Need I say more? Can’t you truly feel this specialness?”

“Th-that’s-“

“Oh my~ Actually, my mother said that when I was little, you know. If I said ‘I think it’s going to rain today for some reason~’ then it would rain. If I looked at an old man in the neighborhood and said ‘That grandpa looks sick~’ then there’d be a funeral soon. You know this too, right? That my intuition is better than others. But that completely disappeared after I got pregnant with Sing-a, and now I realize it all got passed down to our daughter! I said from the pregnancy dream that it wasn’t ordinary.”

“…”

Of course, I only realized then that Madam Bang Suk-yeong’s main character syndrome was filling in my lacking plausibility in that way…!

Unlike Mother, who came from a small rural town and was innocent, Father was the son of a Seoul native hospital director.

When Grandmother divorced Grandfather, she abandoned Father at an orphanage out of revenge, and because he suffered quite a bit growing up that way, he was actually a very realistic person despite appearances.

However, as a man whose lifelong dream was to form his own family, he never won against us mother and daughter.

The conclusion is, that’s why we’re here today!

“25 million in Quera Korea… then, about 500 shares…”

Cold sweat beaded on Father’s nose bridge as he tapped the calculator and unconsciously chewed the tip of his ballpoint pen.

At this time, all stock purchase orders had to be written by hand.

As I watched Father fill out the order slip with trembling hands, my heart began to tremble along with his.

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