Catharine was one of the few places in Jake’s life where he still felt uncertain in a way money could not smooth over.
They had grown closer gradually over the previous three months, not through grand declarations but through repetition, presence, and the kind of mutual ease that only ford when two people genuinely liked each other’s company. She studied finance too, though she carried it differently from Jake. Where his relationship with the subject had beco increasingly sharp and predatory, hers remained curious, grounded, and touched by a belief that finance could still be about institutions rather than warfare.
During the second month of the ti, they t one evening after classes at a quiet café near campus.
Catharine sat across from him in a beige blouse and dark trousers, her notes pushed to one side, her cup untouched because she always forgot to drink while talking.
"I got the call back," she said, trying and failing to sound casual.
Jake looked up from his own cup. "For the post-graduation placent?"
She nodded, and the smile she had been suppressing finally broke properly across her face. "They want to start after graduation."
His expression ward imdiately. "That’s good."
"It’s more than good." She laughed softly, then lowered her voice as though saying it too loudly would sohow ruin it. "It’s at a mid-size financial institution. Governnt-funded. Mostly developnt support, risk assessnt, local investnt fraworks. Not glamorous, but stable. And the experience matters."
Jake watched the excitent move across her face and felt sothing inside him loosen in a way markets never caused.
"You wanted sothing that would actually teach you," he said.
"Exactly." She leaned forward slightly. "And it ans I won’t be sitting at ho after graduation pretending to be patient while sending out applications and smiling through family questions."
"That alone makes it valuable."
She smiled at him over the rim of her cup. "See? This is why I tell you things first. You understand the right part of the problem."
Jake glanced away for a second, hiding more reaction than he intended.
Catharine noticed. She usually did. "What?" she asked.
"Nothing."
"That’s never true."
He looked back at her. "I’m just glad for you."
The sincerity in his voice quieted her for a mont.
Then she said, softer now, "Thank you."
Their eyes held a second longer than normal. Jake broke it first by reaching for his cup, but the air between them had already changed a little.
That happened more often during the three months. Small pauses. Longer glances. Comfortable silences that did not feel empty. Neither of them naming what was gradually forming. Jake told himself there would be ti for that after graduation, when one Chapter of life was properly closed and the next could begin without the old one still breathing through it.
He held onto that idea more tightly than he admitted.
---
And then there was the Telegram question that had followed him through those months like a moral itch he could neither ignore nor satisfy. Whether to start a telegream signal group or not.
The logic was obvious. If he started a private signals group, even anonymously, the money would be absurd. He did not need many subscribers. His consistency on gold alone would create demand if people saw enough proof. He could build an audience, charge premium access, multiply inco without touching his core account balance.
He thought about it at night sotis, usually after profitable weeks when the account had climbed enough to make him temporarily more ambitious than cautious.
One evening, well past midnight, he sat alone in the apartnt with the city lights beyond the window and a blank page open on his laptop titled simply:
*Signal Group?*
Underneath, he made two columns.
*Pros*
Additional revenue
Scalable
Could genuinely help people
Diversifies inco beyond trading
*Cons*
Uses ability indirectly for profit from others
Could expose patterns
Moral dependence from subscribers
Pressure to perform publicly
Potential attention
He stared at the list for a long ti. The most uncomfortable truth sat in the middle of the page without being written.
If people made money because of him, they would trust him. If they trusted him, they would depend on him. If they depended on him, he would no longer be trading only for himself. He would be turning sothing deeply personal and fundantally unnatural into a product.
That felt wrong in a way he could not fully articulate.
Not because selling expertise was inherently immoral. Plenty of people did exactly that. But Jake’s edge was not earned in a way the world would understand if explained honestly. It had co from an accident, a surgery, a transformation he did not deserve more than anyone else.
Using it to build his own life was one thing. Using it to gather followers around a gift he had not paid for in any fair sense felt different. He closed the laptop without deciding.
He still had not decided by the end of the three months.
---
The closer graduation ca, the stranger ti felt.
University had spent years pretending to be permanent, then suddenly began acting like a place people rely passed through. Final submissions. Departnt notices. Group chats full of panic and nostalgia. Classmates who had drifted around one another for years suddenly becoming sentintal because the structure holding them together was finally loosening.
Jake moved through it all with more composure than most, but not without feeling it. Surprisingly, during this chaos, Alex rarely appeared at school.
---
On the final Friday before graduation week, he visited his parents’ ho for dinner.
His mother was cooking when he arrived. His father was in the sitting room pretending not to nap. Aliya was at the dining table with books open in front of her and absolutely no serious studying taking place.
She looked up when Jake entered and grinned. "Look who rembered where he ca from."
Jake set down a bag of groceries near the kitchen. "You say that every ti."
"And yet it remains true every ti."
His mother ca to the doorway, wiped her hands on a cloth, and smiled at him in that warm, relieved way that still reached sowhere younger inside him. "You should co more often."
"I was here four days ago."
"Exactly," Aliya said. "Try three."
Their father opened one eye from the couch. "Ignore her. She thinks affection is a team sport."
Aliya pointed at him. "See? This family mocks because I care openly."
"You care expensively," Jake said.
She sat back in her chair and folded her arms. "That’s because quality care costs money."
Dinner was easy that night. Easier than dinners had been before the money, before the hospital, before the quiet tension of a household stretched too tight. They laughed more. The pauses between topics felt less loaded. Jake had done enough, quietly enough, to change the pressure in the house without forcing anyone to na the source too directly.
At one point his mother looked around the table and said, almost to herself, "It feels good, this. Having everyone alright."
Jake did not answer imdiately.
He looked at her, then at his father, then at Aliya, who was trying to steal chicken from the serving dish while pretending she was not.
He realized then that for all the ambition still running through him, for all the numbers and the future and the scale he could already feel gathering around his life, this was still part of what he had been building toward.
After dinner, when he stepped outside to leave, Aliya followed him to the gate.
She shoved her hands into the pockets of her hoodie and looked at him sideways. "You’re thinking too hard again."
Jake unlocked his car—one of the few visible upgrades he had allowed himself, a clean, understated sedan that did not scream wealth but also did not rattle like apology.
"I’m always thinking."
"Yeah, but tonight it’s the dramatic kind." She leaned against the gate. "Graduation making you emotional?"
He gave her a look. "You’d enjoy that too much."
Aliya smiled. "Obviously."
Then, more seriously, "You did well, you know."
Jake paused with one hand on the car door.
"In case nobody says it properly," she continued, her voice lighter than the words themselves, "you did really well."
For a second, he could not think of anything appropriately casual to say back.
So he went with the truth.
"Thanks."
She nodded once, satisfied, then ruined the mont imdiately.
"Don’t get soft, though. I still need my campus accommodation privileges."
Jake got into the car. "You’re a parasite."
"I’m family," she corrected.
As he drove away, he found himself smiling.
---
By the final night before graduation, the account stood where he had quietly pushed it for weeks.
Just over fifty-eight million total across his trading and bank balances.
The number sat on his screen in the dim light of the apartnt, enormous and strangely still.
Jake stared at it for a long ti.
Then he closed the app, stood, and walked toward the window.
Below him, the city breathed in light and motion. Tomorrow he would graduate. His parents would sit in the crowd. Aliya would make inappropriate comnts at the wrong volu. Catharine would be there too, stepping into the sa ending and beginning he was.
After graduation, she would start working.
After graduation, he would ask her.
Not vaguely. Not eventually. Not in the careful half-language they had both been hiding inside. Properly.
He rested one hand against the glass and let the thought settle. Sowhere beneath the calm, nerves stirred. Not market nerves. Not money nerves. Those he knew how to master now.
This was different.
The Chapter ahead of him was larger than profit. Larger than secrecy. Larger than the quiet ascent he had spent months controlling.
Jake looked out over Aurelia City and felt, for the first ti in a while, that not everything important in his life could be calculated before it happened.
He was no longer the broke student who had once stared at a zero balance and tried not to collapse under the weight of what ca next.
But tomorrow would still matter. Because so thresholds were asured in money. And others, he was beginning to understand, were asured in who stood beside you when you crossed them.
---
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