As the city began to wake, Jake sat at his trading desk in the quiet of his apartment while the monitor cast a soft glow across the room and early morning light crept through the blinds.
Outside, traffic was still light and the air still carried that brief hush before the day fully took shape, and for a moment everything felt perfectly aligned.
On the screen, his balance sat steady.
1,234,620 VM
Two months back, that number would have felt impossible. It would have looked like the kind of figure people fantasized about when they were tired, broke, and trying not to think too hard about how long change might take.
But now it felt different, not necessarily small but no longer felt like that's all he could ever hope to achieve.
