Chapter 140: The Money Came from Crates
The account balance was the part Jin had been putting off, which was strange, because it contained good news.
[Meridian Academy — Student Account: Astor, J.]
[Feed Allocation (Tournament, non-transferable): Active]
[Credits (Supply Division, hours logged): 1,940]
The balance was split into two categories that never touched.
The tournament reward was feed credit. It bought approved protein for a registered beast at an academy dispensary and did nothing else, no matter how the request was worded. Jin had checked twice.
But with that credit covering Glitch’s diet, the other number stopped being an emergency fund.
That was the important part.
Ever since the egg came home, some portion of the family’s money had been quietly reserved against the possibility that a growing beast would eat more than expected. Jin had been hoarding his shift pay for the same reason.
Glitch ate at the dispensary now, while Jin’s meals came from the dormitory hall. Neither expense was reaching the Astor household.
He sat on the edge of his bunk and did arithmetic he did not need to do three separate times. Then he transferred 1,200 Credits to a household account in the Outer Ring of Shelter 7.
It was not a fortune. The money had come from evening shifts moving crates in Incoming Supply while a supervisor named Bellek explained the manifest system at unnecessary length.
It was also more uncommitted cash than the Astor household had possessed at one time since buying the egg.
Jin called them before he could reconsider.
Elsa answered, which meant she had been near the terminal.
Which meant she had been waiting.
"You sent money."
"Hello to you too."
"Jin." Her voice climbed. "You sent money. Twelve hundred. Did you send us twelve hundred Credits?"
Something scraped against the floor on the other end, probably a chair. Arthur’s voice came closer to the pickup, much quieter than Elsa’s.
"Can you afford this?"
"Yes."
"Jin."
"The dorm is covered. Meals are covered. The warehouse assignment gets me approved surplus for Glitch, and the tournament allocation covers his protein." Jin lay back and put one arm over his eyes. "I’m not eating less to send it. I checked because I knew you’d ask."
"You should keep it," Elsa said. "You need equipment. You need—Jin, everyone there has better gear than you. You told me that. You said the Fourth Class students get fitted armor, and you get the standard suit that doesn’t even—"
"Elsa."
"—and what if Glitch gets hurt? What if there’s a medical charge? What if—"
"Elsa."
She stopped.
Through the terminal, Jin could hear the apartment behind her. The circulation fan still clicked unevenly, and somebody’s shift alarm sounded through the wall.
"Use it for food," he said. "Not the fund."
Nobody answered.
"The fund is smart," Jin continued. "I know it’s smart. Put the money there, and in six months it’ll still be sitting untouched while everyone keeps eating recycled protein loaf. Buy food."
"That’s not—"
"You’ve been eating less."
The faulty fan clicked twice into the silence.
Jin had never said it aloud before. He had noticed after Glitch’s feeding costs began rising, when the portions in the household unit stopped being equal and Elsa’s quietly became the smallest.
"I train," Elsa said. "Trainees monitor intake. It’s standard—"
"You’re fourteen, and you’re doing conditioning six days a week." Jin kept his voice completely flat. "If you pass out in the middle of your own training because you refused to buy an egg, that’s going to be a really embarrassing way to prove you’re the responsible one."
Elsa had nothing to say to that.
Then Elena spoke from farther away, her voice careful. She was doing what she always did when discussing money: circling the number instead of approaching it directly.
"The market on the fourth level has real vegetables on the third day of the cycle. Not the tinned kind. They had eggs last month too. Actual eggs. I saw them." She paused. "We could do proper protein twice a week. Maybe three."
"Do three," Jin said.
"Twice," Elena replied, and he could already hear that she had decided on three.
Arthur had been quiet for a while.
Jin waited him out. His father had a habit of withdrawing whenever he started recalculating something, and Arthur recalculating was a slow, thorough, dangerous process that had already brought him uncomfortably close to the truth twice that year.
"You haven’t been at Meridian long," Arthur said at last.
"No."
"When we bought the egg..." He paused. "I told your mother that if it worked, you might get a logistics posting. A desk somewhere behind a wall."
"That’s still the plan."
"Mm," Arthur said.
He did not voice the rest. He did not need to.
Jin lay in a Meridian dormitory, far from the Astor apartment but still inside Shelter 7, and listened to his father not say that no first-year logistics student should have started sending money home this quickly.
Beside the bunk, Glitch lifted his head from his crossed forelimbs.
Jin doubted he had understood more than a fraction of the conversation. Food had been mentioned, along with the family and Glitch’s own name. From those clues, he appeared to have reached a conclusion, because he sat up with his chest pushed proudly forward.
Jin looked down at him.
"You are not the provider."
A serene certainty traveled through the bond. Glitch disagreed.
"You’re the reason there was an emergency feed fund," Jin told him. "You cost this family more Credits before hatching than I’ve earned in my entire life."
Glitch declined to acknowledge the accounting. He settled back down with his tail curled over his feet, wearing the air of a household’s primary earner taking a well-deserved rest.
"Jin?" Elsa said. "Are you listening?"
"No."
"Jin."
"Buy the eggs," he said, and ended the call while she was still objecting.
He remained on the bunk for another minute with the phone resting on his chest. The room felt too quiet after the call, and he stared at the underside of the upper bunk until his breathing settled.
He possessed an EX-Rank soul talent that broke the world’s economy. It had revealed Glitch’s hidden bloodline, enabled impossible growth, and helped him obtain a skill nobody around him knew a Grey Rock Lizard could possess.
The twelve hundred Credits had come from moving crates.
The notice arrived forty minutes later.
[MERIDIAN ACADEMY — OFFICIAL NOTIFICATION]
[Recipient: Astor, Jin — Fifth Class]
[Assignment: Controlled Beginner-Rift Deployment, Unit 12-C]
[Departure: 2 days]
[Basis: Command evaluation and combat evaluation updated following bracket tournament results.]
[Designation: Provisional Fourth-Class Readiness Assessment]
Jin read it three times.
Then he read the smaller line beneath it. The academy had clearly dealt with this misunderstanding often enough to make the warning part of the standard notice.
[NOTE: This deployment does not constitute promotion and does not guarantee promotion. Class review considers academic standing, beast care record, command ability, mission results, contract stability, and sustained performance.]
Fair enough.
He had entered the tournament with a profile containing no mission record, no teamwork evaluation, no field-discipline score, and no judgment rating from anyone who had watched him make a decision with something real on the line.
Those boxes could not be filled from a dormitory.
The fact that this had genuinely bothered him was irritating in its own right.
The rest of the notice was a list.
[Required prior to departure:]
[— Equipment collection (Lending Hall, Tier 5 allocation)]
[— Emergency protocol certification]
[— Pre-deployment beast scan]
[— Baseline medical scan]
[— Unit briefing, 12-C]
Jin stopped at the pre-deployment beast scan.
The words sat there innocently enough.
A formal scan meant records, comparisons, and people whose job involved noticing when a beast’s development did not fit its species. Glitch had changed too quickly, learned too much, and acquired a sensory skill no Grey Rock Lizard should have possessed.
The opportunity came with exactly the kind of attention Jin had spent months avoiding.
He stayed seated for another few seconds, then rose from the bunk. That had not been part of his plan for the evening, but apparently the plan had changed.
Two days remained before departure, and Jin had attended Meridian long enough to establish routes between his dormitory, his classroom, the dispensary, Incoming Supply, and the places where Glitch could train.
He had never properly examined what existed beyond them.
Jin picked up his phone and went to look at the academy.