At four in the morning, New York was still pitch black.
Leon wrapped himself in his only warm coat and left the rental room.
In his pocket was his entire net worth—some forty crumpled dollars.
But unlike the anxiety of the past few days, he felt confident today.
With the inheritance of a Seer, there should be plenty of ways to make money.
The most direct ways were buying lottery tickets or hitting the casinos.
Before heading out, he had performed a dream divination.
First question: “Will I find enough money on the streets of New York today to pay rent?”
In the dream, he saw himself on Fifth Avenue with his head down like a scavenging stray dog, his eyes scanning the pavement.
Aside from cigarette butts and gum flattened into black stains, there was absolutely nothing.
The scene shifted.
He turned into a dark alley, and his dream self indeed spotted a fat wallet.
But before he could even bend down, a cold sensation pressed against his lower back.
It was a knife.
The dream shattered, and Leon woke up in a cold sweat.
The revelation was clear enough: main streets meant no money; back alleys meant no life.
He snuffed out that idea instantly.
Then he turned his thoughts to casinos.
Second divination: “Can I safely and smoothly get money from a casino?”
This time, the dream was even clearer.
In the first scene, he sat at a blackjack table.
Relying on a vague intuition of the game, he won a few hundred dollars.
Knowing his limits, he cashed out.
But as he left the casino with his cash, a Black man tailed him from a short distance, clearly harboring ill intent.
The dream trembled and reorganized.
In the second scene, his luck was godlike.
He swept the baccarat table, earning a mountain of cash.
But before he could drown in the immense joy, two burly men in suits with earpieces flanked him and “invited” him into the manager’s office.
The manager smiled warmly, expressing his hope that a pro like him would either stay to work for them or leave his hands behind so he could never work again.
A thug slammed a pair of brass knuckles onto the desk with a heavy thud.
The dream shattered again.
Leon sat on the cold edge of his bed, motionless for a long time.
He finally understood.
With his thin Asian face, entering a casino was like walking in as a fat sheep.
Win too little, and desperate losers would target you.
Win too much, and the casino would target you.
He couldn’t handle either outcome.
Since the quick and shady paths were dead ends, only one road remained.
Leaning against the cold wall, he whispered his final question—this felt less like divination and more like a prayer.
“How should I make money right now?”
This time, the gray fog let out a sigh before presenting a soft, warm image.
Sunlight fell upon a bridge railing, bathing it in a warm, golden glow.
He saw himself sitting by the bridge with a tattered cloth spread out in front of him, several cards with bizarre symbols laid upon it.
A blonde girl smiled and handed him a bill.
The scene was stable and safe.
More importantly, as he watched himself in the dream tinkering with the cards and speaking in that mysterious, mystical tone, a warm current spread through his bones, making his entire soul feel at ease.
That was it!
Divination…
acting…
digesting the potion…
So that was how it worked!
This wasn’t just earning money; it was the “acting” itself!
Behaving like a seer, adopting their cadence—only then could he digest the potion and pave the way for his future.
This was the most stable path.
For someone like Leon, who wanted to calculate whether to step out with his left or right foot first, he naturally complied with the “standard answer” given by his spirituality immediately.
The first two paths were full of pitfalls.
The third path might be more exhausting, but it went the distance.
Was there even a choice?
He immediately took action.
At a 24-hour stationery store on the corner, he spent two dollars on a stack of the cheapest cardboard and a black marker.
Returning to his cold, dark room, Leon exhaled a puff of white vapor and began his “creation.”
Instead of copying standard Rider-Waite tarot cards, he relied on the memories etched deep within him, drawing the mysterious symbols belonging to the Fool’s pathway onto the cardboard.
The twisting, changing pupilless eye, the mask concealing lies and disguises, and those endlessly tangled patterns of worms…
Every stroke was made with a near-ritualistic solemnity.
Three hours later, a crudely made deck of twenty-two Major Arcana cards, rough in material but exceptionally precise in symbolism, was spread out before him.
This was his first step in turning the “knowledge” in his head into a livelihood.
Braving the cold morning wind, Leon ran to the tourist-packed Brooklyn Bridge.
Finding an inconspicuous corner, he spread out his salvaged cloth and arranged his hand-drawn tarot cards.
Next to them, he set up a piece of cardboard with crooked English writing:
“$1 Tarot Reading”
He knew he wasn’t a real Seer yet and couldn’t provide highly accurate prophecies.
So, he had to play the game differently.
With eyes far more observant than his age suggested, he watched the passing tourists, noting their attire, listening to their accents, and catching the fleeting expressions on their faces.
Once someone sat down, he would concentrate his pitifully small amount of spirituality to grasp the most prominent emotion they carried.
Whether it was anxiety, joy, confusion, or sadness…
These fragments of emotion, combined with some ambiguous cold-reading techniques, pieced together into a decent “reading.”
Yet reality was always harsher than his imagination.
Throughout the morning, very few people were willing to spend a dollar to give it a try.
He earned four dollars.
The biting wind cut like a knife, freezing his fingers stiff.
Just as Leon was wondering if he should go haul sacks at the docks instead, a blonde girl stopped in front of his stand.
“Can you…
can you find lost items?”
The girl was young, likely a college student on vacation.
Right now, she looked anxious, her eyes rimmed with red.
Leon’s heart leaped.
“Divination offers no guarantees, but it can point you in the right direction,” he said, keeping his voice low, imitating the mystics on TV.
“Please, help me,” the girl said, on the verge of tears.
“I lost the earring my mother left me.
It’s incredibly important to me!
If you can help me find it, I…
I’ll give you fifty dollars!”
Fifty dollars!
Leon’s nerves instantly tightened.
He motioned for her to sit, then closed his eyes, sinking his consciousness to tap into the girl’s emotions.
The familiar stinging pain exploded at his temples, but he gritted his teeth and endured it.
A chaotic mess of emotions flooded in.
Beneath the surface layer of anxiety and regret, he grasped a few very distinct emotional fragments.
“Cold,” “sweet,” and a sense of “being forgotten.”
Leon’s gaze swept over the girl’s fingers.
They were stained with a tiny bit of dried ice cream.
All the clues instantly clicked into place.
He opened his eyes, picked up a “Fool” card featuring a distorted mask, and held it out to her.
“It is not lost.”
His tone was calm and deliberate, as if he saw through everything.
“It was merely forgotten in a sweet, dark corner.”
The girl was dazed, clearly unable to wrap her head around it.
Leon continued, “Think back carefully.
Before you noticed the earring was gone, were you holding some melting happiness in your hand?”
“Melting happiness?” The girl frowned, thought for a moment, then looked up.
“You mean ice cream?
I bought a cone on the bridge earlier!”
“Then go look in the remains of that happiness.” Leon gestured with his chin toward a trash can not far away.
Skeptical but hopeful, the girl ran over and began digging through it.
Several onlookers laughed, waiting to see how the fraud’s show would fall apart.
The next second, the girl’s ecstatic scream silenced everyone.
“Found it!
I found it!”
She excitedly held up a glittering earring in the sunlight, tears streaming down her face.
The ice cream wrapper she had thrown away had a tiny fold along the edge, and the small earring was caught right inside!
The “sweetness” of the ice cream, the “darkness” of the wrapper’s corner, and her subconscious “forgetfulness.”
Everything matched.
The girl rushed back to Leon’s stand, shoved a crisp fifty-dollar bill into his hand, and thanked him incoherently while wiping away her tears.
“Thank you!
Thank you so much, you’re literally a miracle!”
The expressions of the onlookers completely shifted.
Before his previously empty stand, a queue began to form out of nowhere.
That evening, when Leon returned to his rental room, he had seventy-eight dollars in his pocket.
This money didn’t just allow him to survive.
It convinced him that the path of “acting” worked.
For the first time in this world, he felt a sense of confidence.
He sat on the edge of the bed as the TV continued to scroll news of Tony Stark’s disappearance.
His eyes were brighter than they had ever been.
The issue of food was temporarily solved.
Now, it was time to prepare for the gamble that would change his life.
What he needed was a detail no ordinary mortal could possibly know.
And a channel to deliver this prophecy to Iron Man.
“I will push my spirituality to the absolute limit and make my play.”