The flyer was starting to wrinkle from how many times Karl had unfolded it.
He walked the long way home from Wren Street, his mask now down from his cheeks, reading it under every streetlight he passed. This was not another school exhibition. It had stages. Group brackets, elimination rounds, disqualification rules printed in small font like the organizers were expecting people to try something. Registration opened this weekend, and the tournament itself kicked off in two weeks.
However, two weeks.
He folded the flyer and pushed it into his pocket.
’Two weeks is too long. The prize is ten thousand, and even if we win the whole thing, that still leaves me over twenty grand short with the clock running.’
The math had been sitting in his chest since the cafe, heavy and patient. His mother had two months. Tournaments paid, but not fast, and not enough.
Even with that out of way, there was no way for him to guarantee he would win any of the tournament by himself.
[Notice: Quest complete.]
Karl stopped walking.
[Quest: Form a team with Elsa and participate in the upcoming tournament. Condition one fulfilled. Registration intent confirmed.]
’Oh?’
[Reward: Lucky Box, 1 unit. Open now?]
’R..right. The box reward thingy.’
A small panel of pale light unfolded in the air ahead of him, and in the middle of it sat a box. Plain, dark, about the size of his two fists together. Karl glanced up and down the empty street once, then reached out.
’Open it.’
The box dissolved, and something dropped into his palm with real, honest weight.
A necklace. No, a choker, thick and cold and unmistakably gold, the links so cleanly made they looked poured rather than crafted. A tiny stamp on the clasp read a name he didn’t recognize, followed by a word he did.
Italia.
Karl stood under the streetlight holding it, and for a good five seconds his brain simply refused to submit any thoughts.
[Item: Custom gold choker. Handcrafted. Origin: Italy.]
[Charlotte states it would suit her master.]
’Charlotte can be quiet.’ He turned it over slowly, watching the light crawl along the links. ’This is real. This is a real, physical, expensive thing that did not exist a minute ago.’
[Correct.]
’And it’s mine.’
[Correct.]
His first thought was not to wear it, and it was not to keep it either. His first thought arrived fully formed, wearing work boots.
’How much can I sell this for?’
[Charlotte states her master is deeply unromantic.]
...
The man at the jewelry buyer’s counter took one look at the choker the next morning and got very quiet.
He weighed it. He checked the stamp with a loupe. He excused himself to the back room and came back with an older man, who did all the same things over again, slower, and then the two of them had a brief conversation consisting mostly of eyebrows.
"Where did you get this?" the older one finally asked.
"Inheritance," Karl said, which was technically a lie and spiritually the truth.
The offer came out to 17,000 dollars.
Karl kept his face still while his heartbeat did something embarrassing behind it. He had never seen that number attached to himself in his life. Not in an account, not in his hands, not anywhere outside of other people’s problems.
He signed where they told him to sign, watched the transfer confirmation land on his cracked screen, and walked out of the shop feeling like the pavement was slightly further away than usual.
’Seventeen thousand.’
[Affirmative.]
’From one quest.’
[Affirmative. This unit trusts the Administrator now understands the value of compliance.]
’Something like that...’
He stood outside the bank twenty minutes later with ten thousand of it withdrawn and folded into a plain envelope, and it was only then, with the weight of it inside his jacket, that the good feeling burned off and the actual plan caught up with him.
Because he knew exactly where the Black Snakes operated out of. Everyone in the neighborhood did. Knowing was easy.
Walking in was the stupid part.
...
They let him through the door, which was somehow worse than being stopped.
The place was a gutted storefront behind a laundromat, all folding chairs and cigarette haze, and every conversation in it died by the time Karl reached the center of the room. The man with the toothpick sat at the far end behind a card table. Eight or nine others stood loose along the walls.
And off to the side, arms crossed, stood a girl in a full face mask. A smooth, featureless mask, with only her eyes showing. She was the one person in the room who hadn’t moved when he entered, and somehow that made her the hardest one to ignore.
[Notice: Multiple hostile signatures.]
’I can see that’
Karl walked up to the card table, pulled the envelope from his jacket, and set it down.
"Ten thousand," he said. "The rest, thirty-one and change, you’ll get when I have it. And nobody visits my mother in the meantime."
The room shifted. The boss looked at the envelope without touching it, then looked at Karl for a long, careful moment, toothpick going still.
"Count it," he said, and someone did, and the room listened to bills being flicked through in silence.
"It’s real," the counter confirmed.
"Course it’s real." The boss leaned back. "Question is where a broke kid finds ten grand four days after bleeding on my shoes."
"I sold something."
"Must have been some something."
"It was."
[Charlotte notes that her master lies with an extremely straight face. Charlotte is uncertain whether to be impressed or concerned.]
The boss studied him a while longer, and then, to Karl’s genuine discomfort, he smiled.
"You know, we can always use someone resourceful. Kid your age, pulls money out of the air, keeps his nerve in a room like this. There’s a place for that here. Better terms than your daddy got."
"I appriracite the offer, but i must decline."
"Wowww ahahaha, didn’t even think about it."
"I don’t need to. Are we done?"
A couple of the men along the wall came off it slightly, the way dogs lean before they’re told to sit. The boss let the moment hang, enjoying it, then waved two fingers.
"We’re done. Two months on the rest. Same terms." His eyes followed Karl all the way to the door. "Careful out there, kid. Money makes people interesting."
Karl walked out without answering, spine straight, and made it exactly one building down the alley before a hand seized his collar and put his back against the brick wall hard enough to knock the air sideways.
The masked girl. Up close her eyes were dark and furious, and her forearm was braced across his chest with a strength that did not match her frame.
"Are you insane?" Her voice was low, pushed through her teeth. "You walked in there alone, with cash, and told the boss no in front of his men. Do you understand what usually happens to people who do any one of those things?"
"You’re part of them," Karl said. "Why do you care what happens to me?"
Something flickered behind the mask’s eyeholes. For a second her grip loosened, like the question had landed somewhere she wasn’t guarding.
Then she stepped back, let him go, and sighed, long and tired, the sigh of someone abandoning a conversation with a wall.
"Don’t come here alone again," she said, already walking away. "Stupid."
Karl stood in the alley, straightening his collar, watching her disappear around the corner.
[Charlotte would like it noted that this is the second strange woman in one week.]
’You really do talk alot.’
...