Ding-dong! "You have received $10,000 on Venmo."


Max's eyes went wide. "We went to the same college. Why are we living in different tax brackets? Is real estate that profitable?"


"I'm not doing that well. You're just doing that poorly."


"Wow. Right in the heart. Life is hard enough without you roasting me. Wait, you aren't going to ask what it's for?"


"When we got into that brawl in college, did you ask me why I was fighting before you jumped in?"


"No."


"Exactly."


Max felt a surge of genuine emotion. "Don't worry. I'll pay you back..."


"Stop being weird. Just one warning: No prostitutes, no gambling, no drugs. You touch that stuff, we're done."


"Do I look like that kind of guy?"


It really matters to have a solid friend when you hit rock bottom. Max felt the gloom from The Hustle vanish. He was fired up. If life had hurdles, he'd jump them. If there were pits, he'd dodge them—and grab any loose change he found on the way.


Max chugged the rest of his chestnut bisque, wiped his mouth, and stood up. "I've got errands. Take your time eating. I'm out!"


"Huh? What errands?" Shane asked, fork halfway to his mouth.


"Going to the bank. A few of them!"


"What?"


Who goes to "a few" banks?


Before Shane could ask, Max was gone, vanishing out the door like a hurricane. Shane sat there, chewing on a piece of cabbage, frowning. Something felt off.


"Hello, sir. Your total is forty dollars. Members get twenty percent off." The waitress appeared, blinking big, innocent eyes as she handed him the bill.


Shane stared at the check. "..."


Wait. Wasn't he treating me?


Just as the annoyance set in, his phone rang. "Hello? Mom? What's wrong... Wait, what?" Shane's face dropped.


...


When Max said he was going to "a few" banks, he wasn't kidding.


Capital One, Wells Fargo, Chase, Citibank, US Bank...


Max was like a busy little hamster scurrying between the city's financial giants.


"Hi, I'd like to apply for a credit card."


"Certainly, sir. Which one?"


"The one with the highest limit."


Same opening line. Same process. Max did it seven times.


Show ID, fill out forms, swipe, activate.


Thank the gods for digital banking. The whole process was ruthlessly efficient, clocking in at under fifteen minutes. Even so, Max barely managed to finalize everything before the bank doors locked for the night.


The seven shiny new credit cards in his pocket were the fruit of an entire afternoon's labor. Add those to the two he already had, and Max was now packing nine pieces of plastic heat. Achievement Unlocked: Card Master.


Credit cards. They were the magic wands of the modern age. They could buy you a quiet, peaceful life or fund a whirlwind of romance and excess. You didn't have to use them, but you absolutely couldn't survive without them. In a pinch, they were your emergency war chest.


And a war chest was exactly what Max needed. He was preparing for a little thing historians like to call "primitive accumulation of capital."


Max knew the future. He knew a massive stock market crash was barreling toward them like a runaway train. To pull off the ultimate short-sell and secure his First Fortune, he needed liquid cash, and he needed it yesterday.


Money couldn't buy happiness, sure. But if you wanted to rewrite destiny? You couldn't do it broke.


Applying for this many cards in one day was going to nuke his credit score, obviously. But Max wasn't sweating it. Once he was rich, he could just throw money at the problem until his credit score begged for mercy.


By the time he dragged his exhausted self back to his studio apartment building, the sun was already bleeding into the western horizon.


He rounded the corner—


Bam! "Oof!"


A small figure slammed right into Max's waist.


Max was fine—he was sturdy enough—but the little missile that hit him bounced off and landed hard on their backside. A grocery bag hit the pavement, exploding a payload of potatoes across the sidewalk. Passersby stopped to stare.


"Hey, you okay?" Realizing he'd just collided with a little girl, Max hurried to help her up.


"I'm okay, I'm okay. I'm sorry, Mister. I wasn't looking," the girl stammered, clearly panicked.


"Don't worry about it. Accidents happen." Max wasn't about to get beef with a kindergartner.


But... why did her voice sound so familiar?


As the girl scrambled to collect the runaway potatoes, Max crouched down to help. That's when he saw it—a smear of red on her palm. He froze.


"You're hurt."


The girl flinched, hiding her hand behind her back. "It's nothing," she whispered timidly. "Just a scrape."


Max dropped the last potato into her bag and took a quick inventory: tubers, some greens, tomatoes, and a few eggs. He looked the kid over.


She was maybe four feet tall, drowning in a Pineview Elementary uniform. She had a round, baby-faced look, with huge, dark eyes that were undeniably cute. She couldn't be more than six or seven. Most kids her age were getting chauffeured by soccer moms. This kid looked like a miniature housewife hauling groceries for a family of five. It was kind of funny, but mostly just depressing.


"Goodbye, Mister!" The girl bowed politely, clutching her heavy bag, and turned to leave.


Watching the tiny figure struggle under the weight of a bag that came up to her waist, hurrying like she was late for a very important date, Max felt a weird pang in his chest.


Ahead of him, the girl suddenly felt the weight vanish. She looked up to see the strange Mister holding her groceries.


"I'm going the same way," Max said, already walking past her. "I'll carry it for a bit."


The girl hesitated, but Max was already leaving her behind. She mumbled a quiet "Thank you, Mister" and trotted ahead to lead the way.


The golden sunset stretched their shadows long against the pavement. But with every step, the expression on Max's face grew more twisted.


A sinking feeling hit his gut. He was starting to realize something.


When they stopped in front of Building 5, Max looked like he'd seen a ghost.


"Mister, I'm here."


Max stared at the girl with a complicated mix of horror and recognition. "You... your name is Lily? You live in Apartment 302?"


"Huh? Mister, do you know me?"


Know you? Max thought bitterly. Thanks to you, I ended up in prison, hated by the entire world.


"Is this... what they call fate?" he muttered, imagining he could hear the great gears of destiny grinding together. Click. Clack.


The pieces were snapping into place.


He finally understood why this girl—Lily—had never appeared in the timeline he called The Chronicle of Misery. Yet, in the timeline known as The Hustle, she was the catalyst that destroyed his life.


There was only one explanation.


In the original timeline—The Tragic Life—he had never met her. He had been poor, isolated, and irrelevant.


But today, he had changed the script.


Because he was desperate to secure his First Fortune, he had gone out to get those credit cards. Because of that errand, he was on this street, at this exact minute, to bump into Lily. Their threads of fate had just knotted together.


This was the divergence point that led to The Hustle.


Max's brain felt like it was on fire. A terrifying thought clawed its way to the surface.


Logically, if a brutal murder happened in the apartment next to his, he should have remembered it, even if he didn't know the victim. But in The Tragic Life, he had no memory of it.


Was it because he had been so broke and depressed back then that he simply ignored the world? Or was the news report just a fleeting memory he'd forgotten?


Or...


In that original timeline, did the girl not die?


Max went rigid.


If it was the latter, then the implication was sickening. It meant that the girl's death wasn't inevitable. It meant her death was... collateral damage.


Caused by him.


If he hadn't tried to change his own destiny, this innocent kid might have kept on living, safe and sound with her Bella.


Way down the line, in some distant future, she might have gone to a dream college. Maybe she would have met someone, fallen in love, and built a happy life...


And Max? Just to save his own skin, he had likely just traded this cute girl's entire future for his own.


A heavy, sickening pit of guilt opened up in Max's stomach. For a second, he wanted to grab time by the throat and force it backward, to let fate snap back to its original, tragic track.


Wait, he thought, shaking his head. No time for a pity party.


If he could change fate once, he could do it again.


Max forced his brain to cool down. He mentally rearranged the threads of destiny, pulling at the loose ends.


If meeting me today is the catalyst for everything, he reasoned, that means the killer is watching us right now. He sees me with Lily, and that sparks the plan: kill her, frame me.


A setup this perfect meant the killer had been stalking Lily for a long time.


Which means... he's here.


Max froze. He snapped his head up, scanning the street.


There.


For a split second, he caught a glimpse of a figure in a hoodie and a face mask turning a corner, vanishing into the shadows.


Max's eyes narrowed.


An ordinary person might have brushed it off. A random guy in the street? Who cares?


But Max wasn't ordinary. He was the "Omniscient Reader." He was a "Spoiler Junkie" who had read the entire crime graphic novel of this life.


A mask? Fine. Maybe the guy had the flu. But a hood pulled up tight? At sunset?


And that alleyway... if Max's memory served him right, it led to the back entrance of an apartment complex. A fire exit.


It was always locked. Kept shut for management purposes, only opened for emergencies. Locals knew that.


It was a dead end.


A cold smirk played on Max's lips.


Gotcha, he thought. Mr. Killer, you didn't see this coming, did you? You've been circled in red ink right in the first episode.