The windows hit him on the walk to campus, before Sophia’s call, before he had coffee.
They came in clean, one after another, like the System had been waiting for him to have enough of a life to promote.
[System Level Up: 1 → 2]
[Condition met: named climax + independent funds]
[Title: Appetite]
Ethan stopped under the union overhang and read it twice.
Level two. Not a quest. A rank. The thing in his head had decided he was no longer the broke kid it had picked up after Ryan’s party.
[Level Reward: +1,000 CP]
[Level Reward: +$500]
[Skill Granted: Clean Ask]
[Effect: When you name a price or a fact, they hear an adult. Not a guest.]
He laughed under his breath. Same trick as Wicked Fingers. The skill had not been on any list. It just landed.
Clean Ask. A sentence that would not sound like it came out of Veronica’s house.
That was worth more than the points.
[Asset Convert revised]
[5 CP = $1]
[Daily cap: $1,000]
[New Shop Tabs]
[Sex — Uncommon available]
[Business — Common available]
[Current CP: 6,750]
[Cash on hand: $2,000]
[Next: Level 3 — Pull]
[Need: $2,000 own funds. Two named women. One room with status.]
[Funds: met]
[Named women: met]
[Status room: not met]
Two thousand in the account. Convert sitting there at a rate that was finally not an insult. Uncommon sex skills and a business tab he had not had yesterday.
Ethan opened the shop long enough to look. Second Wave. Used After. Read the Room. Finder’s Cut.
He did not buy. Not on the sidewalk. Clean Ask was the tool for the morning. The rest could wait until he knew what Sophia wanted.
He converted nothing yet either. Two thousand already looked like a person. Another thousand would look like a person who had gotten nervous.
Sophia called while he was still under the overhang.
"I am at the Halston for an hour," she said. "If you are going to be creative about David Mitchell, do it to my face and not over text."
"I’ll be there."
"Do not dress like the mixer."
The lobby was the same glass and quiet money as the first time. Sophia had a table this time, not a coat on a chair. Laptop open. Coffee she was actually drinking. She looked at him when he sat down and did not comment on the face. She had already done that week.
"David Mitchell left me a voicemail that sounded like a man who had been fed a story at dinner," she said. "He wanted to know why I had Veronica Cole’s boy walking my buildings. He used the word boy. I did not correct him on the phone. I am correcting it now. What did you do."
Ethan kept his hands still. Clean Ask sat in his mouth like a second set of teeth.
"Ryan Mitchell told his father I live in Veronica’s house and that the work came through her. He mentioned the mixer. That is the story. The work is that I walked Holt and File and Reeve, I told you Holt was a bad buy, and you paid me for the week. That is the part that is true."
Sophia watched him say it. Something in her face changed. Not softer. Straighter. The sentence had landed like it belonged on her side of the table.
"He also put Madison Blake in the same paragraph," Ethan said. "That part is campus. It is not your listing."
"I do not care about a student unless she becomes a donor problem." Sophia closed the laptop halfway. "I care about David Mitchell calling my clients and asking if I am running a charity. So here is what we are going to do. I have a walkthrough Friday with a couple who actually have money. You will be there. You will talk like you talked just now. You will not look like Veronica sent you with a note."
"What’s the number."
Sophia’s mouth moved, almost a smile. "There it is. Three hundred for the afternoon. If they like the building, we talk about a retainer for Westhaven instead of week-to-week. If you freeze in front of them, there is no retainer and I handle Mitchell myself."
Three hundred. Small next to two thousand. It was also a door into a room Ryan’s father used.
"I’ll take the afternoon," Ethan said. "If the retainer is real, I want it in writing. I am not doing this as a favor you can cancel after one voicemail."
Sophia sat back. Clean Ask had put a spine in that line and she heard it.
"You have gotten comfortable since Reeve."
"I got paid since Reeve. That is different."
She looked at him over the cup for a long second. The empty bedroom on Reeve Street sat between them and neither of them put it on the table. Low Heat stayed down. This lobby had cameras and a man at the desk.
"Mitchell will be at a donors’ breakfast Saturday," Sophia said. "I was not going to take you. I am taking you now, because the story he has is a boy in Veronica’s house, and the story I want him to have is a man I hired. You will not touch anybody. You will not get cute with Ryan if he is there. You will stand next to the work."
"I can do that."
"I know you think you can." Sophia slid a folded slip across the table. A time. An address. Friday. "If Veronica asks why I called you downtown, you may tell her it was Mitchell. You may not tell her I had to clean up a rumor her house is standing in."
Ethan took the slip.
"She already knows he called her office."
"Then she and I are going to have a conversation I will not enjoy." Sophia stood and smoothed her coat. "Friday. Be early. And Ethan."
He looked up.
"Whatever you did to your voice just now, keep it for the couple. Leave it off me in a lobby. I already made one mistake in an empty building. I am not making the next one under a chandelier."
She left him with the slip and the two thousand dollars and a rank in his head that had decided he was allowed to want more.
On the sidewalk he opened the shop again.
He bought Read the Room. Two hundred felt cheap for a breakfast where David Mitchell would be counting him.
[Purchase Confirmed: Read the Room]
[Effect: Who has money. Who is bored. Who is lying.]
[CP Remaining: 6,550]
Then he converted enough to make Saturday look like a choice.
[Asset Convert: 2,500 CP → $500]
[Daily cap remaining: $500]
[CP Remaining: 4,050]
[Cash on hand: $2,500]
Level 3 wanted a room with status. Money and names were not enough. David Mitchell’s breakfast would be the last piece, and the System was going to make him walk into it first.
[Level 3 — Pull]
[Funds: met]
[Named women: met]
[Status room: Saturday]
Ethan smiled at the street.
The System had paid him in cash, in a skill nobody had listed, and in a voice David Mitchell would not be able to call a boy without working for it.
Ryan had wanted a leak.
Ethan was going to walk into the leak’s father’s breakfast with money in his pocket and Sophia Bennett beside him.
That was the better use of a Thursday.