Earlier, in a Data Center in Shenzhen
"Boss, I'm seeing something odd here," the IT administrator said, frowning at his monitor. "We're under what appears to be a highly sophisticated, sustained DDoS attack... the pattern is unlike anything I've seen."
"What?" His supervisor leaned in, his face tightening.
"It's been loading nearly 30% of our server capacity for the last eight hours straight. The traffic pattern is consistent with an attack, but it's... different."
"Who the hell is it? Is this OpenAI¹ trying to sabotage us?" the supervisor snapped. "Or another domestic company? The team behind Qwen²? Who knows?"
Some time later, the lead engineer had a secure shell open on a Linux terminal, his fingers flying across the keyboard. He inspected logs, analyzed network traffic, and scanned for embedded malware. "This is too clean for a typical attack," he concluded. "Let's bring in a security researcher from Beijing—someone who specializes in AI infrastructure."
After an hour of collaborative deep-diving, the engineer sat back, a look of disbelief on his face.
"We've traced the source. It's not an attack. It's a single user. From South Korea."
The room went silent.
"A single user?" the supervisor repeated, incredulous. "Doing this? What is he, some kind of superuser?"
"His usage pattern is... aggressive. He's pushing the model's reasoning to its absolute limit, session after session. The system logs show he's maintaining multiple, simultaneous high-intensity sessions, as if he's running a one-man focus group. He's essentially stress-testing our entire architecture for free."
One of the junior staffers spoke up. "Should we just block him?"
The IT admin immediately shook his head. "No. A public block could ruin our reputation for having an 'open, free AI.' We've already had other users complaining about slowdowns. If it gets out that we throttled a heavy user instead of scaling to meet demand, the backlash would be worse than the server load."
He turned back to the supervisor, a new idea forming. "We should take this to corporate. It's time to propose a premium plan, like our rivals have. This user is the perfect case study. He's practically begging us to take his money."
…
Corporate Headquarters, Beijing
The proposal from the Shenzhen data center landed on the right desk. The corporation saw not a problem, but an unprecedented opportunity. The plan was approved instantly.
The new service tier, dubbed "DeepSeek³ Pro," was priced aggressively at just half the cost of OpenAI's Plus plan—a strategic move to capture the market of serious individual developers and small startups, exactly the profile of their unintended benefactor.
However, the CEO himself added a crucial, pointed condition to the launch: the pricing was to be fluid. If the Americans ever reduced their prices, they were to undercut them immediately. It was more than just business; it was personal. He was still smarting from the US tariffs that had hampered their hardware imports, and this was his way of fighting back in a domain where China could excel. This wasn't just a product launch; it was a shot across the bow.
Word spread like wildfire through the engineering teams. The legend of the "Korean Power User" grew. They were no longer just monitoring his server load; they were analyzing his prompts.
"What's he asking?" a lead engineer in Beijing inquired, reviewing the logs.
"That's the fascinating part," a data scientist replied, pulling up a transcript. "Look at this. His prompts aren't vague queries. They're structured, precise, and deeply technical. He's performing systematic research on hardware optimization, software architecture, and tax law. The logical progression is... remarkably efficient. It's like he's using our model as a co-pilot to build a business from the ground up."
A senior director, overhearing the conversation, stepped closer. A slow smile spread across his face. "This is a goldmine. This user isn't just stressing our systems; he's stress-testing our model's reasoning capabilities with real-world, high-stakes problems. Clean, high-quality data like this is priceless."
He turned to his team, his voice filled with conviction. "Flag every one of his sessions. I want his prompt-and-response chains isolated and prioritized for our training pipeline. This is the exact data we need to train DeepSeek-V4. If we can build a model that reliably handles this level of complex, multi-step reasoning, we won't just compete with OpenAI's o3 model..."
He let the sentence hang in the air, but everyone understood.
"...We'll topple it."
A product manager chimed in, her eyes alight with possibilities. "And with V4 as our foundation, the path is clear. 'DeepSeek Pro' will be our flagship for developers. But for the top of the market, we launch 'DeepSeek Oracle'—a tier built on this multi-agent framework. It won't just answer questions; it will deploy a team of specialist AIs to solve entire problems."
The lead engineer, who had been studying the Korean user sessions, leaned forward. "There's more. Our analysis of his prompts reveals the key. He isn't having one conversation; he's conducting a sustained campaign. He returns to the same core problems—his software's architecture, his tax obligations, his UI design—each time building on previous sessions. OpenAI's models have amnesia by comparison. They treat every query as a clean slate."
He tapped the data on his screen. "This is our true edge. While others just make context windows longer, we are building a superior memory architecture. 'Oracle' won't just think; it will remember. It will maintain a persistent, evolving understanding of a user's entire project across weeks or months. It's the difference between a consultant who takes notes and one who lives and breathes your business. That is how we create indispensable value. That is how we win."
The decision was made. To support this new arms race, the company immediately began scaling up its infrastructure, authorizing the rental of massive new server capacity across three provinces. The cost would be astronomical, but it was no longer a question of expense. It was an investment in capturing a future they now knew was possible, all thanks to their unsuspecting pioneer.
Unknowingly, Dong-seung had just become the most valuable beta tester in the world.
…
They arrived back at the apartment building, the sleek ASUS box under Dong-seung's arm and the Bowers & Wilkins bag in Min-jun's hand. As they approached the entrance, a figure stepped out of a parked van—a man with the broad shoulders and solid build of a seasoned mover, yet his face carried a warm, approachable demeanor.
"Ah, you must be Dong-seung!" the man boomed with a friendly grin, wiping his hands on his jeans. "I'm Seo-yeon's father. She called ahead. Let me give you a hand with that."
Before Dong-seung could protest, Mr. Han effortlessly hoisted the larger box. He then gave Min-jun a curious but friendly look. "And you are...?"
"Oh, I'm Min-jun," he said quickly, offering a slight bow. "A... friend."
"Good to meet you, Min-jun. Any friend of my daughter's boyfriend is a friend of mine," Mr. Han said with a hearty laugh, leading the way into the building.
The words hit Min-jun like a physical shock. Boyfriend? His mind, already reeling from the day's events, scrambled to process this. He shot a wide-eyed glance at Dong-seung, who simply looked back with a blank, uncomprehending expression, as if he hadn't even registered the label.
As they navigated the lobby towards the elevator, Dong-seung caught the murmurs from a couple of elderly neighbors.
"Finally got himself a girlfriend," one whispered, nodding approvingly at the scene of the two young men being shepherded by the paternal figure. "And a strong father-in-law, too. Good for him."
Dong-seung kept his eyes fixed on the elevator doors, a faint heat rising on his neck. He didn't correct them. In the strange new calculus of his life, a misunderstanding that felt this… normal was a problem for another day. Besides, Mr. Han was probably just making a friendly joke. Right?
Min-jun, looking like he'd been teleported into a drama he didn't audition for, made a hasty retreat after a few more polite nods to Mr. Han. "I'll… wait for your KakaoTalk, Dong-seung. Thank you again. For everything."
…
The moment the apartment door closed, Mr. Han let out a low, appreciative whistle, his head on a swivel as he took in the 160 square meters. "Yah, Dong-seung-ah! You didn't tell me you were living in a department store!" He ran a hand over the Miele dishwasher. "With appliances my wife would leave me for!"
He chuckled to himself, leaning against the kitchen island. "In my day, a young man's first place was a goshiwon¹ the size of this bathroom. You kids today… You start at the top!" It was the kind of good-natured, slightly outdated joke only a proud, slightly bewildered father would make.
After the last box was deposited in Seo-yeon's new room, Mr. Han clapped Dong-seung on the shoulder—a gesture that was both friendly and carried the unspoken weight of "I am a man who can lift refrigerators, so be good to my daughter."
"Take care of her," he said, his tone light but his eyes serious for a fleeting second. Then, with a final wave, he was gone.
The front door clicked shut.
Silence.
For the first time, Dong-seung and Seo-yeon were truly alone in the spacious apartment. The hum of the refrigerator seemed suddenly very loud. She stood in the middle of the living room, hugging herself and looking around with a mix of excitement and nervousness. He stood near the door, his hands shoved in his pockets, unsure what to do with the sudden, palpable quiet.
The professional "business arrangement" now had a very personal and very real roommate.
…
"Gumroad.com!" he yelled, the silence of the apartment broken by his sudden outburst.
This site was his holy grail now!
He could feel it. The ratings had dramatically increased. The new update must have been great, huh? he wondered, a grin spreading across his face. Or is this just the placebo effect in action?
He remembered a story from Minh Le, the co-creator of Counter-Strike. The developer once said that after every single update, players would complain, "This new version has more lag than the last version. What did you guys do?" even when they hadn't changed a thing. Finally, fed up, Le's team decided to hack perception instead of the netcode. In the next patch, they artificially subtracted 50 from everyone's ping. If a player's ping was 100, the game would display 50.
The response was immediate and euphoric: "Oh my God, what did you do? This is incredible!"
Maybe that's all I did, Dong-seung thought. I just subtracted 50 from the psychological ping.
He finally navigated to his trusty dashboard.
Dashboard Overview:
Product: Website-Detangler
Total Sales: 589
Total Revenue: 25,916,000 ₩
Support the Developer Donations: 2,385,000 ₩
For a full ten seconds, he simply stared, his brain refusing to process the number. Twenty-five million won. His mind flashed back to the terrified man he was just two days ago, staring at a balance of 268,500 ₩ like a death sentence. A disbelieving laugh, half-choked and hysterical, burst out of him. He was a millionaire. A won-millionaire, but the principle was the same. The sheer, absurd velocity of it made him lightheaded.
Payout Tab
His hand trembled slightly as he clicked to transfer the full amount. This wasn't just money; it was validation. It was fuel.
BRRRRRR
[Shinhan Bank: Your Balance is 20,880,026 ₩]
The monumental shock of his new wealth finally gave way to his programmer's brain, which immediately began running projections. At this rate, it will only take a month to reach the 50 million won capital. The path to his own company was no longer a distant dream, but a tangible, rapidly approaching deadline.
Yet, that same logical mind, now satisfied by the grand calculation, immediately latched onto a smaller, infuriating one. He stared at the bank balance, his euphoria momentarily punctured by a petty, obsessive-compulsive itch.
Ah. I hate that. In his mind, it should be a clean 20,880,000 won. That double-digit, 26 won was an affront to numerical elegance, just like the laptop's 5,599,999 ₩ price tag had been. For a mind that craved the clean logic of code, the financial world's messy remainders were a constant, low-grade annoyance.
…
Footnotes:
^1 OpenAI: AI research lab behind the GPT series, now focused on advanced "reasoning" models like O1 and O3. Access is typically through paid APIs or subscriptions, positioning it at the high-cost, high-performance end of the AI market.
^2 Qwen: Alibaba Cloud's large language model, with several open-source versions that can run locally. This enables greater privacy and independence from cloud services while offering strong AI capabilities.
^3 DeepSeek: AI company noted for freely releasing powerful LLMs that run locally, and for offering a free flagship web chat model. Its open approach makes it a popular alternative to subscription-based services.
^4 Goshiwon: Minimalist single-room housing in South Korea, originally for exam students. Rooms are tiny (just enough for a bed and desk) with shared kitchens and bathrooms, representing the cheapest form of private lodging.