16 Chapter 15: Making Money

Night came, and it was time for the "little ones" to sleep, so my parents put Jinhee to bed, and I took Seonhwa and Seunghae to my room. Since Seunghae was born 6 years ago, Seonhwa suffered from attention crises for a while and has slept with me ever since, even after she overcame her 'attention crisis' problem. Sometimes she stays at our house in my room or forces me to stay at her house in her room, but since then, we have always slept together.

Seunghae usually sleeps with her parents... But today, both stayed in my room. The day was very heavy for Seonhwa, and she fell asleep quickly, and Seunghae is still little and goes to bed early, so both of them fell asleep fast and soundly. I sneaked out and went to the living room where Hyung was waiting; he is the only one who did not go to sleep.

We greeted each other with a mutual nod and continued waiting for our parents. They took about 20 minutes to come down. I guess compared to Seonwha and Seunghae, it wasn't easy to put Jinhee to sleep.

"Jihu, honey, it's better if you go to sleep. This time the topics are a bit more complicated than usual, and although I know you are much more mature than a child your age should be, I still don't want you to worry about issues that are beyond your capacity and will only cause you unnecessary stress," said mom, trying to keep me out of the next conversation.

"It is about money, right? Uncle's condition is very delicate and requires specialized care until he recovers, and such care costs a lot of money, and that is what you are going to discuss, or am I wrong?" I said calmly and seriously.

Over the years, apart from the occasional joke, the rest of the time I have behaved maturely and sensibly. My parents and uncles trust my maturity, but it doesn't change that they see me as a child because of my physical age. But this time I cannot be left out of the conversation. They have problems that are beyond their capacity to solve, and I have the solution to those problems, but I will also need their help. In other words, I have to participate in this conversation no matter what.

My parents were perplexed by my words, and Hyung is somewhat lost because as he stayed home taking care of Jinhee and Seunghae all day, he has not yet heard the full situation and only knows that uncle and aunt had an accident and that they were operated on but are safe. That is because my parents could not tell him the whole story while Jinhee, Seonhwa, or Seunghae were present, and only now that they are asleep can we all talk freely.

"I know it's hard to take me seriously because of my age, but everyone here knows that I am anything but normal. But before continuing with the problems, we first have to update Hyung, who is still not aware of everything," I told them.

"Dad, mom, Jihu is right, don't leave him out. If it were any other child, I would understand, but Jihu is a genius and is as mature as an adult. Although it hurts me to admit it, sometimes I think he is more mature and capable than me, but I am proud to be his Hyung," said Hyung, a little embarrassed but proud at the same time, a rare combination of expressions if I had to say.

"Wooseok is right, Jihu is mature and intelligent enough. And right now, we need the latter above all. We are in trouble, and any good idea can help us," said dad, trying to convince mom.

"Well, I really don't want to worry him with problems like these. Even though he is more intelligent and mature, it does not change the fact that he is still a child and should be worrying about what he will play tomorrow instead of these things. But since everyone thinks otherwise, I suppose it's okay," said mom as she sighed resignedly.

Then they proceeded to tell Wooseok the whole story, how they received the call from the hospital while they were on their way to drop Seonhwa off at school and how they changed course from the school to the hospital.

Then they talked about Seonhwa's parents' surgery and prognosis and how they came out well, but that the aunt will be left disabled and that the uncle is in the ICU and it is not known how long it will take for him to recover or if he can really recover... that his life is still at risk and that the amount of money needed to keep him in intensive care is enormous.

And to make matters worse, even if we had the money to keep him there indefinitely, there are not many chances of recovery and even if he recovers, it is not known in what condition he will be left afterward. In the worst case, he may remain vegetative for his entire life, in the best case, he will not be vegetative but will have serious mental problems.

"So that's how bad things are, this is horrible, auntie will be left disabled and uncle is still struggling between life and death and we need money to pay for his treatment indefinitely," said Hyung in a heavy tone as he seriously reflected on the whole situation.

"How much money do we have? How many days can we pay for uncle's treatment?" I asked one of the questions to which I need an answer.

"Your father and I have some savings, with that we can pay for your uncle's treatment for a week, but after that, we have no way. The hope we have is that your aunt will wake up by then and she surely has access to her shared account. I know they also have savings and with that, we can pay for a little more time, but once the savings are exhausted we will have no way to pay unless we take out a loan," said mom.

"What happened to the responsible party? Can't we sue him and make him pay for the costs? It is his responsibility and the law will back us up," said Hyung quite upset.

"He fled shortly before the ambulances arrived, the police are looking for him but the self-service station did not have cameras to record the scene and they only have some vague descriptions of what happened. Some deliriously even say they saw a child beating an adult and that both were run over, but apart from the poor guy who died from being run over, no evidence was found that anyone else was a victim so the police dismissed some testimonies as false and alarmist," said dad in a bitter tone and then continued saying, "The point is that it is unlikely that they will catch him and we cannot count on him paying anything," finished dad.

For my part, I said nothing, I cannot tell them that it was not a road accident of hit and run, it was an attempted murder and the guy who died from being run over was not a victim, but one of the assassins and that the targets were uncle and auntie.

I cannot tell them that, this is something I have to solve without their help. Telling the police will not work, they will not believe me and instead of getting any help I will only lose credibility with my parents. I have to take care of that gang on my own and I have the means to do it, I just need to alleviate the current situation before worrying about those damn miscreants.

"So we have a safe week and if aunt wakes up, possibly another, but then apart from a loan we will have no way to cover the costs," I said reflectively out loud.

Actually, I have the solution. As our life situation was good and we had no financial problems, I had not worried about getting money and was going to wait until I was considered an adult by society to save myself problems and start making money, but now things change I can no longer wait, but because of my age, making money on my own would be difficult. You need to be an adult for society to take you into account, but if my parents and Hyung trust me, I can use their identity as adults to meet the goals.

"I have a way for us to make money, but I will need your help and absolute trust for it to work," I said, drawing everyone's attention.

"You know we trust you Jihu, but can you explain in detail? Making money is not easy and even less the amount we may need," said dad.

The idea is simple, we are in the year 2002 and technology, communication, and the internet are constantly advancing and are the trend these days and the first step to the development of the technological society.

But the truth is that despite that, the computer programs or instruments of this era are barely developed, if I had to say, they are in the newborn phase. But I have knowledge of the future and know about many things in computing, although current technology does not allow me to do many things, nor is it a good idea to come out with something very futuristic that would end up causing more harm than good, there are still many things I can implement without causing harm and obtaining a lot of benefits.

"I need to use the computer," I said seriously. And my parents immediately worried.

The reason is simple. At this time computers are used mostly as work tools and companies are the ones who have them the most. Computers in homes are rare, very few homes have one and they are homes where one or several family members have some work that requires the use of computers.

As in our case, dad has an administrative position in the sales department of a company and needs the computer to keep a record of activities.

Normally children, in this case Seonhwa, Jinhee, Seunghae, and I are forbidden to enter dad's study where the computer is for fear of damaging it. Even Hyung was restricted access to dad's study until a couple of years ago when he was given permission to use it for homework.

By the way, as the uncles' work does not require a computer, they do not have one at home. In this era, a computer is seen only as a work tool, and seeing it as anything more than that is unthinkable.

Convincing them to let me use the computer was difficult, but I managed, and they took me to dad's study.

When I saw the computer, I was greatly disappointed; the technology of this era really is in its infancy. I feel like how someone from this era would feel if they were sent back in time and when asking for a calculator, were given an abacus instead.

So I couldn't help but be disappointed, even though I knew what to expect. My familiarity with the computers of this era comes from books I've read in the library, where they only talk about the basics of their use. Dad was anxious when he saw me approach to turn on the computer, and each of my movements made him nervous.

"Don't worry, Dad, I know what I'm doing. I learned a lot about computers at the library. I won't break it or lose any information," I told him to reassure him.

While the computer took what seemed like an eternity to start up, I began asking Dad about how and for what he uses the computer for work. He replied that it is mostly to keep a record of information about his clients and the company's sales items.

When they make orders, he creates formal sales sheets and prints them, but it all takes time. From what he told me, they perform price calculations manually with a calculator in hand and then also manually modify that data on the computer.

In other words, he uses the computer to manage a database, but the fact that he does calculations with a calculator in hand when he has the computer is like pushing the car when it works perfectly. Or like selling the car to buy gasoline; it simply does not make sense.

So I asked him to show me an example, and it's as he said, he has some data on the computer, but they perform the calculations separately with a handheld calculator and paper, then manually modify the data for each thing he does on the computer, simply a waste of time and effort.

Apparently, the computer does not have any specialized program or function that does all these tasks automatically. So I began to program a new program on the computer. As I don't want to affect the data and I don't trust that the technology of the era can support or analyze very advanced programming, I limited myself to very simple but practical things.

While my knowledge of the future is vast and varied, it is not perfect. The reason I know so much about everything is that, unable to move or feel my body and only having access to the network, my only options in life were to surf and surf the net.

Sometimes I studied, other times I simply wasted my time reading novels, watching series, movies, or videos of the world. But I was limited to entertainment before the virtual era because I could not access such resources due to my body. So I focused on everything that was available to me from the year 2700 backwards. Among them, programming, mathematics, and medicine were some of the things I liked the most.

Even if my knowledge is good, I am writing the program from scratch and although it is a simple one, I am still limiting myself to the programming that the computer already has, so it took me 3 hours to finish the program and 1 more hour to put the data I needed it to have to make it as practical, easy to use, and visually attractive as possible. During this time, my parents could only get more and more nervous watching me press the keys at a very fast speed on the keyboard, it almost looked like I was playing and that I could break the computer keyboard at any moment, but because of their trust in me and seeing my seriousness they said nothing and just waited.

Although I used reinforcement to further improve my performance and speed, it still took quite a long time, but I finished.

"It is ready, come here Dad, look," I said and began to show him a more complete database program, where he only has to type in the search engine what he wants, such as; customer name, article, price, or stock. Whatever he wants to search for appears as long as it is registered in the database and if he changes a number, the database would change all other related data accordingly, without him having to make the change manually as before. If, let's say, he had 5 items of one type and sells 1, immediately the 5 would change to 4 and so on. Or if he enters an order for several items, the price is immediately modified by adding the value for each item, this even made it unnecessary for him to make the quotation sheets because they are automatically done by the program, Dad spent 30 minutes testing and checking with his handheld calculator if the numbers were correct and seeing that there was not a single error he was astonished.

"My God, with this, I could do several hours of work in a few minutes," said Dad, not even believing what he was seeing.

"But I don't understand, while this will help me a lot with work I don't understand how we can make money with this son," said Dad who, like Mom and Hyung, looked super exhausted from the long day and now that we are in the late hours of the night they are worse off.

"It's easy, Dad. We will say that one of you, whether it is you, Mom, or Hyung, created it and we will sell this tool to companies. Imagine how much they will pay for something that makes their work easier, as you say it will make yours. But if they say a child made the program or if a child tries to sell it, it will only cause more problems. So one of you will have to take the credit and all of you will have to sell it," I said, trying to be as detailed as possible.

"Surely they will pay a lot for something like this, but there's no way on earth any of us can learn to do this to a computer, son. There's no way we can learn to do that in a few days or weeks, even if you teach us," said Dad in a defeated tone, which Mom and Hyung agreed with completely.

"It's not necessary for you to learn anything other than how to use it and sell it," I said as I opened the CD drive and took out the disc I had prepared to record the program that is now ready just to be installed. Best of all, I made sure that in addition to installing it with this disc, the program is protected so it cannot be copied from one computer to enter into another.

I protected it with a special code that I don't think can be broken with current knowledge, maybe in a decade, but not now.

"On this disc is recorded the program, all that is needed is to insert it into any computer and in a few minutes the program will install itself and you just have to demonstrate how it works. It is also protected to stop working after 1 week, which will be the free trial time we will give for the program.

If we had more time, I would give a longer free trial, but we are in a situation that requires quick money. I am sure that even if not everyone pays for it in the short term, there will still be many who will, and later on, when we don't have such a need, we can implement other methods to get more long-term profits or I can create other things to sell," I told them confidently.

"I knew my son was a genius, but this is on another level, or are all geniuses this surprising?" Dad was babbling.

"So what do you think? I'll copy 2 more CDs and give one to each of you, you will have to take care of going to as many companies as you can and get them to try the program and sell it. This is something I can't do, no one will take me seriously and even if they do, they will look for ways to take advantage of my age and in the long run, it will be nothing but problems," I told them and for a few seconds they were stunned in silence, but then they got excited and we began to discuss what they will say and explain.

In the end, Dad, who is the only one of them who took some courses on computer use, will take the credit for the program, which will make everything more credible.

We discussed the price at which we would sell it and if all goes well, in the worst case, we could cover Uncle's costs for several months, in the best case, we could make a small fortune.

In this way, I not only managed to further reinforce the trust of the family's adults in me, but I also opened the doors to facilitate my future projects and eliminate even more of the restrictions imposed on me by my parents because of my age. This will be very useful soon, as I need more freedom to take care of that damn gang, and if I have my parents watching my movements, it would become complicated and only cause trust issues in the family relationship.