With the bags containing his things on the floor, Steven took one final look at his old apartnt, a nostalgic smile on his face.
He had lived here for more than four years. Four years of grinding, struggling, and barely keeping his head above water. The walls had seen all of it — the late nights, the quiet hunger, the mornings where getting out of bed felt pointless. It wasn’t much of a place, but it had been his, and there was sothing about leaving it that sat differently than he expected.
His thoughts drifted to his late parents, and his smile softened. He wished they were here to see this. His mother especially. She had always told him that his ti would co, that the world had a way of evening things out for people who kept going. He had stopped believing that for a while. He believed it now.
I hope you’re watching, he thought quietly.
He exhaled, closed the door, and locked it. He picked up his bags and left without looking back.
Outside the building, he loaded his things into the trunk of the Aston Martin and got in, sinking into the driver’s seat. The leather was cool against his back. He gripped the wheel for a mont without starting the car, just sitting with it.
Then he noticed a group of boys drifting toward the car with that particular kind of casual interest that wasn’t casual at all. He understood imdiately what that was about. He started the engine and pulled out before they got any closer.
The mont he hit the open road, he pressed the accelerator and felt the car surge forward. The engine note dropped into sothing low and serious, and Steven felt it in his chest.
He had driven before. A beat-up car in his late teens. But this was nothing like any of that. This was the kind of drive that made a person understand, on a physical level, why people spent their lives chasing cars like this. The city blurred at the edges. Buildings and pedestrians and traffic lights streaked past. The wheel was responsive in a way that felt almost alive beneath his hands.
He wasn’t driving recklessly. He was just driving the way the car was built to be driven, and it felt like the difference between walking and flying.
So this is what it feels like.
He eased off the gas as he pulled into the neighbourhood an hour later, dropping to a speed that matched the quiet, well-maintained streets around him. Even the roads here looked different. Smoother. Cleaner. Like the city maintained this part of itself with a different level of care.
He followed the underground parking signs and descended the ramp into the garage beneath the building. He brought the car to a slow stop and killed the engine. The silence that followed felt heavy and comfortable at the sa ti.
He stepped out and looked around.
A Porsche 911 was parked two spaces down. Beside it, a Panara. Further along, a Lexus LS, a Hellcat, a rcedes-Benz S-Class, and at the far end, a Lamborghini sitting under the light like it was posing for sothing.
Steven stood there for a mont, taking it in.
He had officially parked his car among cars like these.
So I really did step into a different world, he thought, a quiet smile crossing his face.
He grabbed his things from the trunk, locked the car, and walked to the elevator at the far end of the garage. There was no keypad. Just a key card reader on the panel beside the doors. He pressed his card against it and heard the beep. The doors slid open smoothly.
Inside the elevator, there was another key card entry. He pressed his card against it and the doors closed. The elevator began to rise.
Steven set his bags down and leaned against the wall, watching the floor numbers climb.
The stillness of the elevator gave him space to think, and his mind went to the past thirty-odd hours.
Yesterday morning, he had been standing in that restaurant, getting yelled at by a man who wasn’t even the owner of the place. He had $247 to his na, a cracked phone, a job he hated, and a girlfriend who turned out to be neither. His plan for the day had been to figure out how to survive the week.
Now he was riding a elevator in a building where people parked Lamborghinis underground, with over $1.7 million sitting in his account and an Aston Martin registered in his na.
The gap between those two versions of his life was so wide it almost didn’t make sense. And yet here he was, standing in the middle of it.
Thank you, he thought. Then, quietly, out loud: "Thank you. Genuinely."
He knew the system couldn’t respond. He had already confird that. But he wanted to say it anyway, because so things deserved to be said out loud regardless of whether anyone was listening.
Sothing else occurred to him as the elevator continued upward.
"The description said I get one exclusive point for every $100,000 spent. I spent more than $200,000 in a single transaction at the dealership. That should an I have at least two points by now," he muttered.
He pulled up the system screen.
[Rebate System]
[Na: Steven Craig]
[Physique: 12]
[Intelligence: 18]
[Account Balance: $1,730,226.43]
[Exclusive Points: 2]
He stared at the account balance for a mont.
$1.7 million.
If soone had told him that number yesterday morning, he would have laughed, the way a person laughs at sothing that has no connection to their reality whatsoever. It would have felt like flattery. A joke told kindly.
But that number was real. He had checked it three tis already and it hadn’t changed.
He shifted his attention to the exclusive points. Two, as expected. And there was now a plus signs beside both stats.
Steven had been curious about what increasing his physique would actually feel like, not just what the description said, but the physical reality of it. Now felt like the right ti to find out.
He took a breath and tapped the ’ ’ beside the Physique panel.
The number ticked up from 12 to 13.
What followed was subtle, but unmistakably real. It started in his core and spread outward, like a quiet current moving through his muscles. His body felt lighter and easier to carry. He squeezed his right hand into a fist and felt the difference imdiately. There was more power behind it. More than there had been a second ago.
He opened and closed his hand slowly, paying attention to the sensation.
"It actually works," he said quietly. "Every part of it actually works."
The system had co into his life at the worst possible mont and had proceeded to change everything. His finances. His body. His entire trajectory. He still didn’t know why it had chosen him, and he had accepted by now that he probably wasn’t going to get an answer to that question anyti soon. But it had chosen him, and he intended to make full use of it.
He still had one point left. He left it for now. He wanted to think about whether to put it into physique again or hold it until he understood more about how the stats scaled. Especially the Intelligence.
The elevator ca to a smooth stop and the doors opened to a quiet hallway.
Steven picked up his bags, stepped out, and walked to his door. He pressed the key card against the reader and heard the familiar beep.
The door opened.
He stepped inside and stood in the entrance for a mont, taking in the space. The last ti he had been here, he had ca on a tour. Now, it was his.
It was already nightti and the moonlight was flooding in through the windows.
Steven set his bags down by the door and walked to the window. He stood there, looking out at the city below.
He had official moved in to his new apartnt.
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