The trading floor at Lehman Brothers' headquarters, located in Times Square on Broadway in Manhattan, New York.
As always, the place was in frantic motion. Phones rang nonstop from every direction, and traders barked into their handsets, their raised voices colliding in a constant din.
Charlie kept his eyes fixed on the four monitors in front of him, chewing on a donut in one hand instead of eating lunch.
He scanned the nonstop stream of information pouring in through Reuters and Bloomberg terminals, watched stock movements, and executed trades swiftly whenever needed. Then he noticed something and let out a low exclamation.
"Huh. It finally broke fifteen dollars."
Rackman, sitting beside him, took a sip from a venti-sized takeout coffee cup, set it down, and asked,
"You're talking about Enron stock?"
Below the monitors, where price charts and red and green numbers flickered endlessly, brown-stained takeaway coffee cups were piled messily alongside empty paper boxes from Chinese takeout.
Both of them had barely left their desks, working nonstop and eating meals in place, leaving the desk looking like it had been hit by a bomb.
"A stock that was over ninety-one dollars just a few months ago. Who would've thought it'd crash more than eighty percent overnight?"
Charlie shoved the half-eaten donut into his mouth and turned to look at Rackman.
Rackman, who had loosened his tie, replied in a flat tone,
"There is one person."
Charlie immediately knew who he meant. He shrugged and let out a mocking scoff.
"Hey, dragging Chairman Park Seok-won into this is cheating."
"He shorted Enron and hit a massive jackpot all by himself. You can't even tell the story properly if you leave him out."
Charlie smacked his lips as he shot a sideways glance at Enron's stock chart, which was plunging almost vertically, as it had fallen off a cliff.
"Well, that's true. I thought he'd get caught in a reverse short this time and the bet would blow up, but here he is again, scooping up money like nothing. You have to admit, it's impressive."
A trace of envy flickered across Charlie's face.
"Last year, when everyone else was screaming in pain during the dot-com bubble collapse, he was the only one raking in profits and throwing a bonus party. Looks like the Eldorado Fund will be handing out fat bonuses again this time."
"Forget bonuses. They're lucky just to still have their desks."
Rackman snapped back, sounding like he didn't even have the luxury to be envious.
At that, Charlie unconsciously glanced around. Seeing quite a few empty desks scattered about, his expression turned bitter.
When the reverse short attack began, many Wall Street traders hastily concluded that the Eldorado Fund had been driven into a short squeeze and jumped en masse into buying Enron stock.
But contrary to expectations, accounting fraud allegations exploded, the stock price collapsed, and those who had rushed in to buy were saddled with massive losses.
As a result, a significant number of traders who had taken part in the reverse short were handed pink slips and forced to clear out their desks.
Lehman Brothers was no exception. With dozens of employees leaving at once, the atmosphere on the trading floor grew chaotic and tense.
Charlie, who had thought this was a great opportunity to buy Enron stock at the bottom, quietly let out a breath of relief.
"Good thing I hesitated and didn't do it."
If he had clicked the buy button, he might have been one of the people packing up and leaving.
Rubbing his arms as goosebumps rose, Charlie stared at the stock chart displayed on the monitor.
"Hm."
Charlie frowned as if deep in thought, then turned to Rackman and casually threw out a question.
"It's dropped more than eighty percent. This has to be the bottom by now, right? Don't you think it's about time to start buying?"
"You want to buy Enron stock?"
At the question, Charlie nodded.
"Yeah. Even if it can't get back to its previous high, if it rebounds, pulling in twenty to thirty percent wouldn't be that hard."
"Sure. That's assuming it really has hit bottom and comes back up."
At the sceptical response, Charlie frowned slightly and asked,
"You don't think Enron's going to rebound from here?"
Rackman pointed his chin demonstratively toward the monitor in front of them.
"It's not me. Eldorado—or rather, Chairman Park Seok-won—clearly thinks otherwise."
"Ugh."
Following Rackman's gesture, Charlie grimaced and let out a groan.
Displayed on the monitor was Enron's short interest. Even though the stock price had fallen below fifteen dollars, the short position hadn't decreased at all and remained heavily stacked.
Rackman drained the rest of his now-cold coffee and stacked the empty takeout cup on top of the tower of cups beside him.
"If Chairman Park hasn't covered his short position yet, doesn't that mean Enron's stock hasn't hit bottom?"
"You're saying it could fall even further from here?"
Charlie asked incredulously.
"I won't stop you if you still want to jump in, but if it were me, I wouldn't do anything that goes against Chairman Park. We've already seen what happened to everyone who charged in recklessly."
Charlie swallowed hard as he recalled the empty desks scattered around, like missing teeth.
Watching him, Rackman leaned his tired body back against the chair.
"Of course, even Chairman Park can't win every bet forever."
"..."
"But up to now, he hasn't had a single failure. He's delivered unbelievable results every time. I don't have the nerve to bet against someone like that on such slim odds."
Rackman lowered his voice, speaking seriously.
"Especially not when the opponent is Chairman Park Seok-won."
Without a word, Charlie turned his head and stared at Enron's stock price on the monitor.
[ENE : 14.63 (▼1.73)]
Given how far it had fallen, it was clearly a price where a rebound was tempting.
But just as Rackman had pointed out, the fact that the Eldorado Fund was still maintaining its short position kept gnawing at him.
Enron's price-to-book ratio had already fallen well below one.
In other words, even if the company were liquidated immediately, its assets still far exceeded its liabilities.
And yet, there was almost no bargain-hunting buying coming in.
That could only mean one thing. Everyone was watching the Eldorado Fund. Or more precisely, they were watching Seok-won.
"Hm."
After hesitating for a moment, Charlie finally moved the mouse and closed Enron's price window.
'If you stick your nose into the wrong stock and things go south, you're dead on the spot. The best way to survive is not to look at it at all.'
Thinking that, Charlie forced himself to let go of his lingering temptation.
***
A few days later, Gimpo International Airport.
The airport terminal was crowded with people hurrying to board their flights and long, winding lines of passengers waiting in queues.
Amid the bustle, two young men in suits stepped into the immigration area, blending in with passengers who had just disembarked from a flight arriving from China. Each carried a briefcase in one hand and pulled a wheeled suitcase with the other.
They waited in line at the immigration counter for quite some time. Eventually, it was their turn.
The shorter of the two, a thin man with prominent cheekbones, stepped up first and handed over a Chinese passport.
The immigration officer took the passport, opened it, and compared the photograph with the man's face before asking in a businesslike tone,
"Your name is Jack Ma, correct?"
Having once worked as an English instructor, Jack Ma replied in fluent English,
"That's correct."
"What brings you to Korea?"
"I'm here on business."
After typing the passport number into the system and checking the details, the officer pressed the entry stamp firmly onto the passport and handed it back.
"Enjoy your stay in Korea."
Jack Ma slipped the passport into the inside pocket of his jacket and passed through the checkpoint. After waiting briefly, his companion also cleared immigration without any issues, and the two of them emerged into the arrivals hall together.
As they stepped outside the crowded terminal, the oppressive heat of midsummer greeted them.
Standing under the blazing sun, Jack Ma muttered with a tense expression, barely taking in his surroundings despite it being his first time in Korea.
"So this is Seoul."
He then turned to the man beside him, Du Moon-yong, and asked,
"The meeting is tomorrow afternoon, right?"
"Yes. It's scheduled for 1 p.m. at the headquarters in Yeouido."
Du Moon-yong replied, a slender man wearing gold-rimmed glasses.
"Hoo. Just thinking about meeting a legend of the venture capital world is getting me excited."
Jack Ma inhaled deeply and let out his breath as he muttered to himself.
"I still can't quite believe it. I think I'm even more nervous than when we went to Hong Kong two years ago to secure investment from Goldman Sachs."
As Du Moon-yong spoke with a stiff, tense expression, Jack Ma gave his shoulder a light pat, projecting confidence.
"There's no need to be nervous. They were the ones who proposed the investment first. Plainly speaking, they wouldn't have called us all the way here unless they thought we were worth investing in."
"That's true."
Du Moon-yong's face finally relaxed a little.
"Let's head to the hotel first, unpack, and prepare the presentation. We can't afford to make any mistakes at tomorrow's meeting."
With renewed energy, Jack Ma strode forward, got into a taxi waiting by the curb, and headed into downtown Seoul.
***
Seok-won sat at a wide executive desk, with the deep blue Han River visible through the floor-to-ceiling glass wall that filled one side of the office. He closed the approval folder he had just signed and said,
"Handle this as is."
"Yes, understood, Chairman."
Na Seongmi replied with a smile, gathered up an armful of approval folders stacked on one side of the desk, and stepped out.
Leaning back in his chair, Seok-won rubbed the back of his neck with a slightly weary expression and muttered,
"Trying to deal with all the work that piled up while I was in the U.S. in one go is pretty exhausting."
In his previous life, even if he were halfway around the world, he could have handled everything easily through electronic approvals. But this was a time when the internet age had only just begun in earnest, and that kind of convenience was still a distant dream.
As a result, every time he traveled abroad, he had no choice but to grind through a mountain of delayed paperwork and approvals afterwards.
"At least if I had a smartphone, things would be easier."
Seok-won let out a regretful sigh.
But true smartphones would not appear for several more years, so there was no alternative but to endure the inconvenience.
"Come to think of it, the first iPod model comes out at the end of this year."
Thinking about smartphones naturally triggered another memory.
Apple would make a dramatic comeback thanks to the runaway success of the iPod, and on that foundation, the full-fledged smartphone era would eventually begin.
The thought that the day was not far off when he would finally be holding a smartphone, an essential tool of modern life, made his heart flutter with anticipation.
Of course, it was not all good news.
At the same time, he knew that Korean companies currently dominating the MP3 market would be rapidly pushed out by Apple, which filled him with concern.
He had been offering various pieces of advice to Ahn Byeong-guk, CEO of Digital Wave, the company that had pioneered MP3 players, but to be honest, he was skeptical about whether they could really hold their ground against Apple.
Compared to the iPod, which would arrive armed with innovative hardware, powerful software, and a refined sense of design, Digital Wave's products, focused almost entirely on functionality, were bound to look clunky.
Yet no matter how much advice he gave, Ahn Byeong-guk seemed unable to escape an engineer's mindset, firmly believing that if a product was good, consumers would choose it.
That was what left Seok-won feeling especially regretful.
"The deciding factor now, when there's no longer a big performance gap between market leaders and latecomers, is software. But everyone is taking that far too lightly."
Thinking of how Apple, unlike these Korean companies, had been methodically preparing to dominate the MP3 market by building an entire music ecosystem through iTunes even before releasing the iPod, Seok-won shook his head with a bitter expression.
And above all else, there was Apple's signature sense of refined design.
Faced with a design that would strike straight at the sensibilities of the younger generation, Digital Wave's products were bound to look downright ugly by comparison.
What was the point of boasting about superior performance?
Once a product was branded as ugly or outdated, it was finished.
Knock. Knock.
At that moment, Manager Han Ji-sung opened the door and stepped inside, approaching the desk.
Seok-won brushed aside his earlier thoughts, straightened his posture, and asked,
"Has Chairman Jack Ma arrived in Seoul?"
"Yes. We just confirmed that he checked into the Walkerhill Hotel we reserved for him."
At the news that Chairman Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, who would go on to dominate China's e-commerce market and grow into a massive IT conglomerate, had arrived, Seok-won's eyes lit up.