The flimsy receipt from Chiman was a live wire in Harsh's pocket, shocking him with a jolt of anxiety every time his leg brushed against it. The days after the gold purchase were a special kind of torture. The confident, strategic part of his brain was locked in a vicious civil war with the part that was just a terrified nineteen-year-old who had bet everything on a memory.
He was a ghost in his own life. His hands moved on autopilot, repairing circuits his mind couldn't focus on. The lively banter with Deepak and Sanjay had died, replaced by a tense silence punctuated only by the nervous tap of Sanjay's foot or the deep, worried sighs from Deepak. The alcove, their fortress of ambition, had become a prison of waiting.
Every newspaper headline was scoured for meaning. Every crackle of the short-wave radio was a potential herald of doom or salvation. He'd jump at the sound of a customer approaching, his heart hammering with the irrational fear that it was Chiman, coming to tell him the deal had fallen through, that the money was gone, that he was a fool.
The weight of his solitary knowledge was crushing. He had seen the future, but what if this time was different? What if his very presence in the timeline had altered events? What if the war was averted? The doubt was a poison, and it was paralyzing him.
He couldn't eat. He couldn't sleep. The skeptical faces of the shopkeepers he'd tried to recruit haunted him. Mr. Joshi's patronizing smile. Mrs. Iyer's shrewd dismissal. The pawnbroker's mocking laugh. They were all a chorus in his head, chanting one thing: You are just a boy.
One evening, the pressure became too much. He mumbled an excuse to Deepak and Sanjay and stumbled out of the alcove, needing to escape the four walls that seemed to be closing in on him. He walked with no destination, his feet carrying him through the familiar, yet suddenly alien, streets of Bhuleshwar.
The vibrant chaos of the market felt like a mockery. The frantic haggling over a few rupees, the desperate energy of a thousand small survival schemes—it all seemed so insignificant, so small-time. He had climbed out of that pond, but the vast ocean he'd jumped into was threatening to swallow him whole.
His aimless wandering led him out of the electronics district, into an area with broader streets and brighter lights. And then he saw it.
A gold shop.
It wasn't the largest in Mumbai, but it was solid, respectable. Its windows were impeccably clean, and inside, under soft, glowing lights, necklaces, bangles, and coins lay on beds of dark velvet. It was a temple of permanence in a city of relentless flux.
Harsh stopped across the street, shrouded in shadow, and stared.
He wasn't seeing the glitter. He was seeing the idea. He watched a man in a well-tailored suit confidently examine a heavy chain, not as a speculative asset, but as a statement of earned success. He saw an old woman, her hands gnarled with age, carefully exchange a thick wad of rupees for a single, small gold coin—a tiny, dense piece of security to be tucked away against an uncertain future.
This was what he had bet on. Not the slippery promise of a broker like Chiman, but this unshakeable, ancient truth. Gold wasn't just a metal; it was a story humanity had told itself for millennia. A story about value, about fear, about survival.
And a storm was coming that would make that story more relevant than ever.
The anxious chatter in his mind began to quiet. The voices of the doubters faded. They were trapped in the present. He was acting on the future.
The tightness in his chest began to ease, replaced by a cold, solid certainty. This was no longer a reckless gamble. It was the most calculated decision of his life. He wasn't a boy playing a man's game. He was the only one in the game who knew the final score.
He stood there for a long time, until the shopkeeper finally emerged to pull down the heavy steel shutters for the night. The clanging finality of the sound echoed in the quiet street.
Harsh turned away. The walk back to the alcove was different. His steps, which had been frantic and lost, were now slow and deliberate. The fear was still there, but it had been transformed. It was no longer a paralyzing force; it was energy. It was focus.
He had stared at the gold shop, and in its reflective glass, he had seen past his own anxious reflection. He had seen the end of this chapter and the brutal, glorious beginning of the next.
He returned to the alcove. Deepak and Sanjay looked up, expecting the same hollowed-out ghost who had left.
They saw a different man. His eyes, which had been clouded with doubt for days, were now clear and hard, like chips of flint.
"Deepak," Harsh said, his voice low and steady. "Bring me the ledger. Not the old one. The new one."
He sat down on his stool, the nervous energy gone, replaced by a chilling calm. He opened the FUTURE ledger to a fresh page. At the top, he wrote a single word, larger than the others: OIL.
The period of anxious waiting was over. The period of active preparation had begun. The investment was made. The world was about to ignite.
He was done with the small games of Bhuleshwar. He was preparing for the global storm. He had made his first move on the big board.
The cliffhanger of the investment was resolved not with a payoff, but with a hardening of resolve. The setup for the next arc—Oil & Gold Opportunist—was complete. The stare down with the gold shop was the final, silent confirmation he needed. He was all in. Now, he would wait for the world to place its bet.
(Chapter End)