Day 9, August 26, 2015
Opening balance: ¥2,040,000
Total new profit: ¥540,000
Final balance: ¥2,580,000
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Julian's POV
He didn't sleep. Not because he couldn't. But because there was nothing to sleep for.
The candle he left burning on his desk had long died out. The Bloomberg screen glowed like the last light in an abandoned ship.
¥300,000 left.
Out of ¥15,000,000.
He hadn't cried. He didn't have that kind of wiring. What he had was a spreadsheet with a blood trail, a heartbeat synced to VIX, and a quiet certainty that the market wasn't just red. It was personal.
Julian Watanabe, 31.
Former trader at a London hedge fund.
Son of a Japanese lawyer and an English violinist.
Once the golden boy in a tailored suit, running volatility arbitrage strategies and quoting Euripides in board meetings.
Now?
Now he was a failed son with a blown-up account and a half-written suicide note in his Notes app titled: "VIX can't forgive me."
At 2:13 p.m. on August 25th, he received two things:
A margin call from Rakuten Securities. A message from his mother.
"If you're still alive, please call."
And somehow, that broke him more than the loss.
Not the ¥12 million down the drain.
Not the disgrace.
But the fact that even his mother was always tactful, always reserved, was already saying goodbye.
So he walked.
Not to think. Just to end.
The Ikebukuro overpass was tall enough. Public enough.
It felt clean. Financially symmetrical.
Like a short position finally closing itself out.
But she saw him.
Not as a crying child.
Not as a man needing saving.
As a trader mid-drawdown.
"You stand there and no one remembers you," she said, cigarette in one hand, phone in the other.
"But if you make the right trade, the market will."
It wasn't a metaphor. It was language.
Trading language.
Julian didn't believe in signs. But he believed in market noise. And her voice had the clarity of a clean breakout.
He didn't thank her. Didn't cry.
He just walked into the nearest convenience store, bought a Pocari Sweat, sat on a bench, and stared at the Nikkei futures.
Then he placed an order:
Nikkei 225 Put.
3 contracts.
Far month expiry.
Execution type: Market.
He lived in a duplex in Yoyogi-Uehara. It had once been the pride of his "Tokyo rebirth."
Now it looked like a hedge fund after earnings season—empty fridge, black mold in the corners, two giant monitors glowing like eyes in the dark.
Bloomberg terminal. Four phones. An old iPad showing real-time VIX.
The room reeked of instant ramen and expensive failure.
On the wall, he had taped a full-sized S&P 500 chart like a serial killer would tape photos of victims.
He hadn't opened the windows in days.
Aria arrived just after noon.
Not planned. Not invited. But he had sent a message that morning:
"I have coffee. You have judgment. Let's see who breaks first."
She showed up anyway.
She didn't look surprised by the chaos.
Maybe because she was chaos, too.
She sat. No questions. Just eyes like candles that don't flicker.
Julian, slouched in a chair, mismatched socks, hair undone, looked like a man two ticks away from becoming a ghost.
And yet he was beautiful.
Not in a way magazines print. But in the way glass looks when it shatters perfectly.
He didn't hold back.
Not because he trusted her. But because he had nothing left to protect.
"You think I wanted to die?" he said, staring at the TSLA pre-market chart.
"No. I just didn't want to keep waiting to die."
He told her everything:
"I wasn't always like this," Julian said, swirling the lukewarm black coffee in his chipped porcelain cup, the one that had a tiny Hermès logo on the bottom. A corporate gift. A past life.
"I used to live in Notting Hill. Woke up to espresso and FT headlines. Traded the European open in silk pajamas and calculated Greeks before brushing my teeth. We had catered lunches. Champagne on Fridays."
He glanced at the mess around him: tangled monitor cords, Red Bull cans, a half-eaten protein bar slowly oxidizing on the windowsill.
"I once ran a volatility desk," he continued. "We were young, fast, arrogant. I could tell you how much Vega a position had by the sound it made when the market sneezed. I didn't sleep. I didn't lose. I was the prince of nonlinear pricing."
He laughed, short and hollow.
"Then one week, I said Valeant's gamma curve looked like a fraud. I shorted it live on CNBC Europe."
He looked at her now.
"They said it was brave. Then I was down 17% in two hours."
Julian leaned back, his eyes glassy with memory.
"They fired me with gloves on. PR said 'misalignment of strategic vision.' What they meant was: I bled too loudly."
He stood, walked to the window. The Tokyo skyline at night reflected faintly in the glass, like a dream that refused to wake up.
"I came here with ¥15 million and one goal: triple it. Redeem myself. Prove London wrong."
Aria said nothing. He kept going.
"I lived like a monk who only worshipped risk. I rented this stupid duplex for the view of Shinjuku at night. It was supposed to remind me of Bloomberg tickers. Romantic, right?"
He pointed to the kitchen.
"Now the fridge has five things: black coffee, expired Greek yogurt, Red Bull, whey protein, and vodka. I don't cook. I don't clean. I run simulations until my jaw locks."
He collapsed into the couch, eyes wild now.
"You want to know how I got to the edge? I bet left-side into every falling knife. TSLA earnings week, NFLX China rumors, BABA's false breakout. I knew they'd rebound. They didn't."
His voice dropped to a whisper.
"One trade. That's all it takes. One wrong angle, and the whole algorithm breaks."
He held up his hand, shaking.
"I placed an overnight straddle on NFLX, ¥2 million, just before it breached support. I was sure it was a bear trap. It wasn't. I woke up with ¥600,000 and a message from my mother saying, 'We can't trust you anymore.'"
Julian looked at her, really looked.
"I didn't jump yesterday because I wanted to live. I didn't jump because the market wasn't done killing me."
Silence.
Then, softly:
"You saw me. And you didn't look away. That's why you're here, right?"
He pointed to the monitor.
"That's why I'm still here."
"I lost ¥12 million in 72 hours," he said. "But that wasn't the worst part."
She didn't ask what it was.
So he told her.
"It was when the market stopped answering. When even the charts went quiet. Like I didn't matter anymore."
Aria stood up after a while.
Not with pity. With mutual fatigue.
Before she left, she asked:
"Why tell me all this?"
Julian gave the barest shrug.
"You saw me at my worst. And you didn't walk away."
He gestured toward her phone.
"And because your puts were clean. You trade like you've already died once.
Aria didn't speak for a long time.
Not because she didn't know what to say, but because she did.
She just didn't think it would help.
She'd seen men like Julian before. Back when she was still pretending to care about morning standups and quarterly goals. The kind of man who lived at the edge of brilliance and breakdown.
But never this close. Never this raw.
She looked at the chaos of his apartment again.
At the mismatched socks, the Red Bull cans like war trophies, the chart-streaked notebook that looked more like a confessional than a trading log.
And for the first time, she didn't feel superior.
Just… adjacent.
Her phone buzzed.
Nikkei PUTs +¥380,000
SoftBank PUTs +¥160,000
Total balance: ¥2,580,000
She had more than doubled her original stake.
In eight days.
Alone.
Aria stood up, slowly.
Not because she wanted to leave.
But if she stayed, she might say something human. And that wasn't part of the plan.
"You're not the only one who thinks winning is scarier than losing," she said.
Julian didn't answer. But the look in his eyes wasn't panic anymore.
It was recognition.
Julian didn't want her to go.
He didn't say it, of course. That would make it real.
So instead, he stood.
"I know a place," he said, voice too casual to be casual. "If you're not too busy counting your profits."
Aria raised an eyebrow. "Is it a rooftop?"
He smirked. "Not unless you're planning to push me off this time."
She didn't laugh. But she followed.
They ended up in front of an old stone building in Marunouchi, a closed-down satellite office of the hedge fund Julian used to work for.
The logo was gone, the plaque dust-covered, but the ghost of money still lingered in the marble steps and gold-lettered security warnings.
"This is where I first learned the phrase 'counterparty risk,'" he said. "And the second time I heard it, I was the risk."
Aria looked at the building, then at him.
"You brought me here to show me a grave?"
Julian lit a cigarette, hands shaking slightly. "I brought you here because I thought if someone like you saw it… It might stop feeling like I made it up."
Silence.
Then Aria said, "You didn't make it up."
She didn't say more. She didn't have to.
Back in Yoyogi-Uehara, they stopped at a FamilyMart.
It was nearly midnight.
They sat at the tiny corner table meant for bentos and lonely students.
Julian opened a can of coffee. Aria picked at a konbini egg sandwich.
"You really live like this?" she asked, glancing at his near-empty wallet.
"I used to order ¥4,000 pour-over beans," he said. "Now I live on the margin. Both kinds."
Pause.
"I like it better."
"You're lying."
"I am," he admitted. "But at least now I know what losing feels like. Most people don't."
Aria looked at him.
At the exhausted eyes, the too-clean suit, the knuckles still red from clutching his mouse too long.
And somehow, he looked more alive than anyone she'd met in months.
She tore off a piece of her sandwich and handed it over.
"You can pay me back when you hit ¥10 million," she said.
Julian took it, slowly.
"Deal."
That night, he sat at his desk again.
No candle. Just screen glow.
Hands trembling slightly, he opened a new position.
He wasn't healed.
But he was still in the market.
And for someone like Julian Watanabe…
That was more intimate than survival.