…
Leon did not wake Chloe.
He looked at her one last time from the doorway of the living room, then silently returned to his room and shut the door behind him.
He knew exactly what kind of woman Chloe was.
If she found out what he had now—if she realized that the money sitting in his account was already far beyond anything she had ever imagined—then things with her would become very simple.
Too simple.
Her attitude would soften. Her distance would disappear. Maybe even the faint pride she still carried in front of him would melt away on its own.
And if all he wanted was a woman, then that would be easy enough.
But Leon no longer found that kind of ease particularly valuable.
Beauty still had its place. He was a normal man in that regard. Desire did not vanish just because his ambitions had grown larger.
It was only that now, compared to everything else opening before him, it no longer felt urgent.
There would be opportunities later.
He had no shortage of time.
…
In his room, Leon sat down at the desk and laid the two contracts in front of him.
One was the Time Acquisition Contract, numbered 1,000,001.
The other was the Time Sale Contract, numbered 1,000,002.
He looked at them side by side for a while before placing each carefully into its own folder.
Then he pulled over his notebook, opened it, and picked up his pen.
This was a habit of his from long ago.
Whenever something important happened, he liked to write it down—not simply to remember it, but to understand it. To strip it apart, sort through it, and see clearly what had actually worked and what had merely seemed to.
The pen touched the page.
The first two transactions had both gone smoothly.
That, at the very least, was enough to prove that his initial line of thought had not been wrong.
Neither buyer nor seller had truly questioned the nature of what was happening once he had brought them into the rhythm he wanted. Whether it was Ethan, an ordinary student desperate enough to sell ten years of his life for a hundred thousand dollars, or the Rowan family standing around a dying old man with all their wealth and influence, the pattern had remained the same.
The deal worked best when he controlled the room from the very beginning.
That much was already clear.
Leon wrote slowly, not because he lacked words, but because he wanted each line to be precise.
To make a transaction like this possible, two things seemed indispensable.
First, he had to show enough of his power to destroy doubt before it had time to take shape.
Second, he had to preserve mystery.
Not the cheap kind. Not theatrics for their own sake. It had to be the kind of mystery that made people instinctively lower their voices around him, the kind that made them feel they were not negotiating with an ordinary man, but stepping into contact with something older, colder, and fundamentally beyond them.
His eyes lowered slightly as he remembered what he had said to Ethan.
For longer than you can imagine, I have walked this world, purchasing time from some and reselling it to others who both need it and can afford it.
At the time, he had spoken those words half by instinct.
Now, looking back, he realized they had worked exactly as intended.
As for the Rowan family, the effect had been even more obvious. Appearing before them within the hundredfold flow of accelerated time had done more than display power—it had set the emotional terms of the meeting before a single serious negotiation began.
Fear. Awe. Uncertainty.
Once those emotions took root, people became easier to guide.
Leon wrote another line.
In future transactions, that atmosphere had to remain intact.
His demeanor could not become casual simply because the deals were becoming larger. If anything, the opposite was true. The more powerful the client, the less room he had to appear ordinary. He had to remain cold, detached, difficult to read. He had to keep everyone who sat across from him slightly off balance.
That was the safest position.
His pen stopped.
For a few seconds, Leon stared at what he had written, then turned the page.
When he began again, the handwriting grew a little heavier.
He had been too exhilarated tonight.
There was no use pretending otherwise.
A hundred million dollars had arrived in his account in one day. He had stood in front of the Rowan family, dictated terms, and watched them accept his price. Anyone in his position would feel something swell inside them after that.
Confidence, certainly.
But also the beginnings of carelessness.
Leon's gaze sharpened.
William Rowan was not a fool, and neither was a family like theirs. With the resources they possessed, tracing an account back to its owner was hardly difficult. If they wanted to know who he was in the ordinary world, they almost certainly could.
Strictly speaking, he had had safer options.
He could have prepared a cleaner identity. He could have built more distance between himself and the transaction. He could have hidden behind more layers.
Instead, he had chosen efficiency.
Because money was not the only thing the Rowan family could offer him.
Far from it.
A family like that had reach. Connections. Influence. Doors that opened only for people of their level. If he wanted to move quickly, if he wanted his future clients to emerge from the very top of society rather than from the random desperation of ordinary people, then attaching himself to a family like the Rowans was not a mistake. It was a shortcut.
A dangerous shortcut, perhaps.
But a useful one.
His fingers tightened slightly around the pen.
And besides—
if this world truly was just an ordinary world, if there were no hidden forces in the shadows, no other beings with powers like his, no absurd unknowns waiting behind the surface of reality—
then who exactly did he have to fear?
No one.
That conclusion might have sounded arrogant if spoken aloud, but on the page, in the silence of his own room, it felt less like arrogance than simple arithmetic.
As things stood, no ordinary person could touch him.
Still, invincibility and caution were not opposites.
Leon lowered his eyes and wrote a few short lines to himself, not as a formal list, but as rules he intended to follow over the next few days: stay alert; do not fall into routines unnecessarily; assume he may already be under observation; reveal nothing extra; do not let a single successful deal convince him that all future deals would be equally smooth.
Only after that did his thoughts shift toward what came next.
He tapped the pen lightly against the notebook.
Before the next transaction, he should prepare a proper card for the identity of the Time Merchant.
Something simple.
Something that could be handed over without explanation and still leave a mark.
After that, his thoughts turned naturally to the Longevity Club.
At its current stage, there was no need to overbuild it. If the number of members remained small, then a private group chat would be enough for now. A crude beginning, perhaps, but beginnings did not need grandeur. They only needed function.
Later, when the right people had gathered and the structure had become stable, he could build something more complete.
A dedicated app.
A true private platform.
A place that existed for one purpose only: to gather those wealthy and powerful enough to seek time itself.
Leon's eyes rested on the last line for a while.
The Longevity Club.
The name alone already carried the shape of something much larger than a mere business.
In the future, membership itself could become a threshold.
Not everyone with money should be allowed in.
Not everyone with need should be given access.
The rarer the invitation, the greater the pressure to receive it.
The more selective the circle, the more valuable time would appear within it.
No—
not appear.
Become.
A faint smile, almost imperceptible, crossed Leon's face.
Time would become the highest luxury in the world.
At some point deep into the night, he finally stopped writing.
He closed the notebook, capped the pen, and put everything away carefully.
Then he stood up, stretched, and lay back on the bed.
With his eyes closed, his breathing soon steadied in the darkness.