Jake sat at his desk just before dawn, the apartment wrapped in that deep, fragile silence that only existed in the hour before morning properly arrived. Outside, the city was still only half-awake.
A few distant headlights moved through the dark, and somewhere far below, a car rolled past with the soft hiss of tires against the road. Inside, there was only the faint hum of his laptop and the pale glow of his monitor cutting across the room.
At the center of the screen, his account balance remained still.
Balance: 1,782,440 VM
He looked at it for a long moment, not because he couldn't believe it, but because part of him understood exactly what it meant.
Two months ago, that amount would have looked impossible. It would have felt like the kind of money that existed in other people's lives — the kind attached to business owners, wealthy families, men in tailored suits stepping out of black cars with tinted windows.
