A/N:I fucked up.
This Chapter was supposed to drop before the hospital visit. It was ant to be the bridge between the shopping marathon and the mont everything got heavier. Instead, I sohow posted the hospital scene first like a complete degenerate who can’t keep his own tiline straight.
I can’t say sorry enough. Truly. I’m sorry.
Consider this the corrected, properly placed correction. We’re sliding it back where it belongs so the story flows the way it was always ant to.
Thank you for your patience, you beautiful, patient degenerates. Now let’s fix this ss and get back to the good shit.
****
The day was a marathon.
Not the noble, sweat-soaked, finish-line kind. But one where your legs still worked but your soul slowly leaked out through the soles of your designer shoes while eleven ridiculously beautiful, terrifyingly opinionated won dragged you from one craving to the next like a very expensive, very willing pack mule.
Breakfast ca first.
A sleek Downtown Paradise restaurant Maddie had been hyping for weeks.
Phei sat at the centre of a table so obscenely long the waitstaff had to shove three together, surrounded by Sierra’s, Maddie’s infectious laugh, Delilah’s quiet intensity, lissa’s maternal steel, Valentina’s lingering post-firing glow, Maya’s soft silver-haired mystery, Sienna’s predatory elegance, Victoria’s effortless poise, Emily’s razor focus, and the general atmosphere of barely-contained chaos that always erupted when that many powerful, horny-for-life won were stuffed into one room and told to pick appetisers.
They did not agree on appetisers.
They did not agree on anything.
But they laughed. They bickered over nus like rival warlords.
They stole bites off each other’s plates with zero sha.
They told stories so filthy Phei nearly choked on his orange juice and had to be patted on the back by three different hands at once.
The al stretched into two glorious, loud, ridiculous hours because nobody wanted it to end, and when the bill finally arrived it was a number that would have sent his old self into cardiac arrest and made his new self only wince, shrug, and Venmo it without blinking.
Then ca lunch. And ice cream.
So matcha café Victoria swore had the best in the city, which Sierra imdiately declared overrated, which Maddie overruled because "the aesthetic is perfect for pics, shut up and pose."
More food. More laughter.
More Phei sitting as the lone male at a table of goddesses, quietly wondering—not for the first ti—whether this was actual heaven or a very specific, very pastel-coloured circle of hell designed to look like heaven from the outside while slowly draining his will to live through sugar and estrogen.
Then things got worse.
Shopping.
Shopping with the harem was not shopping.
Shopping with the harem was a full-scale military campaign with no general, no compass, no exit strategy, and zero regard for mortal limits.
It was being hauled through temples of comrce that slled like new money and looked like modern art museums.
It was watching won caress fabrics with the sa reverence priests reserved for holy relics.
It was standing outside fitting rooms like a very well-dressed coat rack while the bags multiplied faster than rabbits on Viagra.
And because he was the strongest—or more accurately, the only man—he carried the bags.
Not so of the bags.
Most of the bags.
All of the fucking bags.
Shopping bags hung from both arms, both hands, hooked over his shoulders, dangling from every finger until circulation beca a distant, theoretical concept.
He looked like a designer-clad pack mule that had been taught to walk upright and regret every life choice that led him here.
And the absolute worst of it—the thing that cracked sothing fundantal inside his soul and might never fully heal—was Sienna.
Sienna didn’t shop.
Sienna consud.
She moved through boutiques like a locust swarm with perfect cheekbones and an unlimited black card.
She didn’t try things on. She didn’t deliberate.
She pointed, conquered, and advanced with the cold, relentless efficiency of a woman who had been bred for retail warfare since birth.
Racks were stripped bare. Staff were summoned with nothing more than a raised eyebrow.
Bags multiplied at her feet like offerings to a very demanding goddess.
Maddie, who Phei had once considered the retail apocalypse incarnate, suddenly looked like a casual Sunday browser.
Phei’s shoulders burned (didn’t).
His fingers had gone fully numb sowhere around store seven (didn’t). His spine was making sounds that spines should never make outside of a torture chamber (didn’t).
He had to fake it so that they can stop.
But every ti he glanced at his won—laughing, glowing, spinning in front of mirrors in outfits that made his cock twitch even through the exhaustion—he felt sothing warm and stupid bloom in his chest.
They were happy.
And sohow, against every survival instinct screaming at him to drop the bags and run, that was enough.
The eting ca after.
The Academy’s financial committee. Emily had been borderline aggressive about it—this could not wait, it had to be today, lissa specifically had to be present as his guardian... Academy request.
Phei walked into the sleek conference room expecting paperwork and polite handshakes.
He was not prepared.
One side of the long table held the committee—four n and two won in suits so expensive they probably had their own zip codes, faces carved from the particular granite of people who moved nine-figure sums before breakfast and had long since stopped being impressed by anything.
On the other side sat the PheiCrush SimpsFinance Team—a squad of terrifyingly competent young won with laptops glowing like altars, led by a girl in thick glasses who looked like she hadn’t slept since the Challenge ended and was running on pure caffeine, spite, and religious devotion.
Emily sat beside them, posture perfect, clipboard ard and ready, the face of a woman who had been counting down to this mont with barely-concealed sadistic glee.
And right beside Phei—lissa.
That was why Emily had insisted. The committee had made it clear weeks ago: they could not transfer this kind of money directly to a seventeen-year-old.
There were rules. Guardians had to be present.
Legal fraworks designed specifically to stop teenagers from waking up one morning with enough cash to accidentally destabilise small nations.
lissa was that guardian.
The head of the committee—a distinguished man with silver temples and the calm hands of soone who had spent thirty years nudging decimal points that rewrote lives—began speaking in the flat, clinical tone of a man reading stock reports.
"After collecting commissions from all dia outlets that utilised footage from the Challenge event... percentages from hotels that experienced capacity overflow, restaurants that reported record revenue, rchandise licensing, venue rental surplus, temporary infrastructure fees, Paradise tourism board contributions, and digital content syndication across fourteen international platforms..."
Phei’s mouth opened slightly.
"...the total amount generated was approximately five hundred and thirty million dollars."
Phei stopped breathing.
"Additionally," the man continued, as if he hadn’t just dropped a warhead of a number, "revenue from the betting pools—both sanctioned and auxiliary—ticket sales across all tiers, live-stream subscriptions, pay-per-view packages, VIP & booth VVIP hospitality, and various ancillary streams including but not limited to—"
"Sorry," Phei interrupted, voice coming out thin and distant, like it belonged to soone else. "Did you say five hundred and thirty—"
"—which brings the combined gross revenue from the Challenge event to approximately one point zero three billion dollars."
The room went perfectly still.
Phei stared.
One. Point. Zero. Three. Billion.
His brain did the math, then did it again, then blue-screened and rebooted in slow motion.
A billion dollars.
Not "a lot of money."
Not "you’ll never have to worry again."
A literal billion fucking dollars generated in a single weekend because he had stepped into an arena and let the world watch him ruin, claim, and breed his way through every challenge they threw at him.
The committee head kept talking. Allocation structures. Tax implications. Revenue splits between the Academy, the event organisers, the participating families, and the various stakeholders who had contributed to the infrastructure.
Phei leaned back in his chair, exhaled a slow, disbelieving laugh, and ran a hand through his hair.
"Just money," he muttered under his breath, the words tasting ridiculous even as he said them.
Across the table, Emily’s lips curved into a small, satisfied smirk.
lissa reached over and squeezed his knee under the table—steady, grounding, proud.
And sowhere in the back of his mind, a darker, hungrier voice whispered:
Good.
Because when you have this much money, the only thing left to spend it on... is ruining won until they can’t walk, can’t think.
Phei’s grin turned sharp.
Yeah.
Just money.
"— and after the Academy’s twenty percent allocation, the remaining amount designated for Mr. Ryujin Tiamat and associated entities—"
Phei blinked.
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