Day 3 – August 20, 2015
Her brokerage account was live.
Aria woke up to the notification blinking on her iPhone.
securities companie had finally approved her application.
She stared at the email like it was a text from a god. Or maybe the devil.
She'd been refreshing it obsessively since yesterday, like a gambler waiting for the pit boss to open the gate.
No ceremony. No confetti. Just a login link and a polite message:
> "Your trading account is now available. Please deposit funds to begin."
She cracked her neck, opened her laptop, and transferred ¥20,000 into the account.
The full amount. No hesitation.
It wasn't confidence—it was conviction. And arrogance disguised as certainty.
She knew this play. She remembered the future. She wasn't guessing—she was *executing*.
This was it. Her first trade.
She had spent two days preparing, pretending to be cautious.
But the truth was: she'd been itching to throw the first punch.
She needed the adrenaline. She needed to *start*.
The stock was called Tella Inc. — ticker 2191. A volatile small-cap biotech she remembered from the chaos of 2015.
In her memory, it had plummeted in August and then exploded upward days later.
She remembered watching the news, reading the chat boards, the stunned faces when it doubled in a week.
It had been one of those "I knew it" moments—except she hadn't acted then.
Now she could.
Today, it was down 4% at open.
Perfect, she thought. Pullback before liftoff.
She bought all in.
She hit "Buy" like she was lighting a fuse.
---
The stock drifted sideways for two hours.
No bounce. No volume.
Then—
A dip.
Another.
The red candle grew longer, fatter.
No reversal. No breath.
No news, either.
Her palms began to sweat.
She told herself she was early. That the market was playing possum.
But the feeling in her stomach was different.
This wasn't anticipation. It was déjà vu with a stomachache.
She clicked refresh. Again. Again.
Time crawled. Her heart didn't.
By 2:30 p.m., Tella was down 8.4%.
She froze.
Her fingers hovered over the sell button.
Every muscle in her body screamed "wait."
But her gut whispered, "You already lost."
At 2:55 p.m., she sold.
Final balance: ¥15,700.
Her first trade had cost her ¥4,300.
She stared at the screen like it had just slapped her.
She didn't move for a long time.
The room was quiet except for the tick of the analog clock.
Outside, a crow laughed on a power line.
Her brain replayed the trade, line by line, like a post-mortem.
Entry was good. Volume was low, but expected.
The problem wasn't the setup.
The problem was her *memory*.
She had remembered the outcome, not the cause.
She had remembered the win, not the pain before it.
And that terrified her.
She reached for her notepad and wrote:
> "I remembered the candle. Not the wick."
> "Memory is a liar with good lighting."
Then she lay back on the tatami and stared at the ceiling.
It wasn't the money. Not really.
It was that she'd been so damn sure.
The kind of certainty that made you laugh at caution.
And now, just three days in, the world had already reminded her:
Nothing is guaranteed. Especially not memory.
Around 4:00 p.m., her flip phone buzzed.
Not a smartphone app—an old-fashioned SMS.
It was from her boss, Kobayashi.
She hadn't seen that name since before the timeline reset.
> "Need updated documentation for login protocol. Send before 6."
She stared at the message for a long time.
Then typed one word:
> "Noted."
And hit send.
She didn't even open her work laptop.
The company was just a shadow now. A ghost she hadn't exorcised yet.
The paycheck was useful, but the work?
She had no interest in pretending anymore.
At 6:00, Yuji messaged.
Voice note. Of course. He always preferred those.
> "Hey. Just checking in. You've been quiet lately.
> Wanna get dinner this weekend? Maybe somewhere with A/C?"
She hit play, didn't react, then muted her phone and dropped it face-down on the floor.
She didn't have the energy to lie nicely tonight.
Aria met Yuji in the break room of a startup that no longer exists.
The company had folded six months after they both joined, but somehow, they'd stayed together.
He was safe. Kind. The sort of man who remembered birthdays and watered plants.
Yuji had a gentle laugh, the kind that made people around him relax without realizing it.
In the early days, she used to watch him pour over hardware manuals like they were poetry.
He used words like "solid state" and "efficiency curve" with reverence.
She liked that about him.
He had never asked her to be softer.
Never once told her to smile more.
They used to cook together in his tiny kitchen, scraping tofu into miso broth, arguing over how much wakame was too much.
He made a decent omelet and an excellent silence.
The kind of silence that didn't need to be filled.
Just shared.
But love, she had learned, wasn't a shield.
It wasn't enough.
Yuji wanted a future. A house. Maybe a dog.
He joked once about having a kid, half-serious, while brushing his teeth.
She had smiled, but her stomach had clenched.
Not because she didn't love him.
But because she already knew what her life looked like if she stayed on that path.
Meetings. Paychecks. Bonus season dinners.
And the long quiet desperation of living a life that was technically fine.
Yuji didn't dream of escape.
He dreamed of stability.
When she talked about quitting her job, his eyes would go cloudy.
He never said "Don't."
But he would say things like
—"It's not the right time."
—"Just wait until the next promotion."
—"We're almost there."
Almost there.
THAT was the problem.
He didn't see the trap because he never felt trapped.
Aria didn't blame him.
She had chosen him for the exact reason she now couldn't lean on him.
He was comfort.
She needed crisis.
He was a pause.
She needed a rupture.
So when she died that night—alone, face-down on the floor, charts still open on her screen—
she didn't think of him.
She thought of her first paycheck.
Of her first loss.
Of how much time she'd spent in between, neither living nor risking.
Now she was back.
Back with Yuji's number in her phone.
Back in the same apartment they used to share on weekends.
Back in the same city where he still sent her voice notes that sounded like love songs written for an audience of one.
But she wasn't the same girl who once cried into his shoulder after getting a three-star evaluation from a five-star manager.
She had changed.
And he hadn't.
She still liked his voice.
Still remembered the shape of his hands when he held chopsticks, his thumbs always pressing too hard.
Still missed how he would switch from Japanese to Kansai-ben when he got sleepy.
But she also remembered the way he looked at her the night she tried to explain margin trading.
Like she'd grown horns.
Like she was speaking a foreign language, not just in words, but in worldview.
He wasn't afraid she would fail.
He was afraid she would change.
Leave the life they'd built in her rearview mirror.
And she had.
So when he messaged her that night—
a soft little "Hey. Just checking in."
she didn't respond.
Not because she didn't care.
But because she couldn't afford to anymore.
There was no room for love in a 30-day deathmatch.
No backup plan.
No "we."
Just her.
Just now.
Just this shot at rewriting everything.
And she intended to take it alone.
Because this time, she wasn't building a life.
She was burning one.
Yuji wasn't a bad person.
But he was part of the old Aria's life.
The Aria who thought comfort was the same as safety.
Now she knew better.
Love didn't keep you alive.
Discipline did.
At 7:15, she wandered downstairs to the curry shop.
The air was sticky. The fluorescent light buzzed.
Ramesh, the owner, gave her the usual: lentil curry, extra rice.
He didn't say much until she pulled out her wallet.
Then he looked up and said,
> "You look like someone who made a very expensive decision."
She blinked.
He added,
> "First trade?"
She raised an eyebrow. "How did you—"
He just grinned and packed her curry box.
> "You look like someone who learned something. That's the good kind of loss."
She paid, nodded, and walked back out into the night.
Tokyo didn't blink. It just breathed. Cars passed. Lights changed.
The city didn't care if she'd won or lost today.
But she did.
Back in her apartment, Aria sat on the floor, eating curry straight from the box.
She didn't turn on the lights.
She felt raw. Not broken—but cracked open.
She thought of how easy it would be to give up.
Just stop. Pretend this never happened.
Let herself sink back into the quiet rhythm of survival.
But then what?
Wait for another ten years to pass, wishing she'd done more with her second chance?
No.
She pulled her laptop back toward her. Opened a new page.
Title: Rules from the Ruins
1. Memory is not a signal.
2. Feelings are not positions.
3. Never all-in on the first swing.
4. The market owes you nothing.
5. If you can't watch it drop 10%, don't buy it.
6. You're not here to be right. You're here to survive.
7. Always check the float.
8. If it's too quiet, it's probably a trap.
9. Don't trade when you're hungry, angry, lonely, or tired.
10. You are not a god. Yet.
She stared at the list.
Then closed the laptop.
She didn't cry.
She didn't scream.
She just felt *awake*.
At midnight, she stood by the window with a glass of barley tea.
The streetlights outside glowed like static.
She sipped and whispered,
> "That's one life down."
She raised the glass like a toast.
> "Twenty-nine to go."
And drank the whole thing.
Her heart was still beating.
Her money wasn't gone.
Her war had just begun.