When Adam entered Unit 14 in his newer disguise, the air inside felt wrong imdiately.
No one was moving with purpose. No one was speaking properly. The whole office carried the heavy stillness of people who had already begun to lose faith in the thing they were building.
"What happened?" Adam asked.
All four of them looked up at once.
Kenji stared first. "Who are you?"
For half a second Adam almost forgot.
Then he rembered that the face in front of them was not the old man and not his real face either. It was the sa middle-aged identity he had used elsewhere.
"My na is Rivan," he said. "I’m Wil’s son. My father sent ."
That changed the room enough to focus it.
Adam set the heavy bag down on the desk and felt a real pulse of fear go through him despite how calm he kept his face.
Sixteen million dollars was enough to move things, but not enough to waste.
"My father sent this as the initial investnt," he said.
The mont the bag opened enough for bundled cash to show, Kenji’s expression changed in the wrong direction.
"No," Kenji said at once. "No. Tell your father he’s trusting too much. I don’t know what he sees in , but right now I want to quit."
"Kenji-" Davin began.
Kenji cut him off. "No. Every room feels the sa. They look at us and see a company with no history, no clients, and no proof. And now this much money is being put in my hands like failure isn’t possible."
Sera looked even worse after hearing that.
Shinju pressed her lips together and said nothing, which told Adam enough. She was shaken too. She was simply better at hiding where the fear landed.
"We’ve been asking strangers to trust what they cannot verify," she said at last. "We’re asking for too much too early."
Adam understood the gap then. Kenji had talent, but not enough experience in rooms where rejection ca wearing a calm face and formal language.
Adam spent the next several minutes trying to push them back up, but Kenji kept cutting those attempts down.
"We go, we explain, we get rejected; then we change the pitch, walk into another room, and still co back with the sa result," Kenji said.
Finally Adam sat down with them instead of speaking over them.
"Start from the beginning," he said. "Tell everything. One by one. I want to hear exactly what they said."
Kenji answered first.
"LunVista was a dead wall," he said. "Their branch head only heard us out because of a personal favor. After that he said the sa thing with a polite face. Their parent company already feeds their line. Why would they touch us?"
Davin leaned forward. "HeatSpring was better. That one actually matters."
Kenji nodded once. "They almost listened. Then their engineer asked for one completed order, nothing big, just enough to prove we could actually deliver. We didn’t have it, so everything after that felt fake."
Sera spoke next, slower than the others. "The calls coming here feel the sa way. First they ask what we supply. Then they ask who else we supply. Then the real question cos. ’Who is already trusting you?’ The mont I can’t answer that, their tone changes."
Shinju rested both hands on the table. "And from the legal side, we look worse than we feel. We are new, we have no operating history, no trade references, and no delivery record that protects the buyer if sothing goes wrong. To them, that is not bold. That is dangerous."
Davin clicked his tongue. "One mid-size assembler asked sothing I couldn’t answer properly. He said, ’If your batch fails inside our product, who eats the warranty loss first, you or us?’ After that he was done listening."
Kenji added another. "A small control-board company asked whether we could guarantee stable supply for sixty days if demand suddenly doubled. I said we were building toward that. He looked at like I had already lost."
"And one of the n from yesterday," Sera said, "called back only to ask if we had even one existing client who would speak for us. When I said no, he thanked and ended the call in five seconds."
Davin gave a tired laugh. "They don’t think we’re useless. They think we’re risky."
"You’re all making one mistake," Adam said.
"You’re collecting refusals, but you’re not collecting usable feedback in a way that changes your next move. So the sa fear cos back wearing different clothes, and you keep walking into it."
"Did any of you ask what risk they would accept instead?" Adam asked. No one answered, and that silence was answer enough.
They had walked in asking buyers to solve the trust problem for them instead of offering the first safe step themselves.
"And this problem has a na," Adam said. "It’s a credibility gap. A trust deficit. You have no proof of execution, no social proof, no reference custor, and no delivery history. You’re asking them to hand over a critical piece of their product to a company that has nothing behind its na except your words."
Shinju’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
Adam continued, "And one more thing. To sell this properly, you need another type of person around you."
"What kind?" Shinju asked.
"Soone who understands buyer psychology and can turn objections into a revised offer. A business-developnt mind."
Shinju nodded slowly. "I may know soone."
"Soone who can study the room while you’re still speaking," Adam said. "Soone who can tell you what fear sits behind the rejection and what you must change before you walk into the next office."
Adam leaned back for a mont as another mory rose in him.
During the worst stretch of his previous life, when steady work had almost vanished, he had spent a long ti working in a hotel kitchen and storage line. The owner there had once told him a story about his own early failure in business.
At first, the man had tried to sell custors only his product.
Later he had learned better.
He had said the mistake was not in effort. The mistake was assuming people bought the item first. But they’re coming because of the Trust.
Adam looked at the people in front of him and spoke the lesson out loud.
"Do not sell your chips," he said. "Sell them your trust."
Kenji frowned. "How?"
Adam t his eyes.
"By giving free trial."
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