2025-08-05 18:55:37The sting of Jane’s slap lingered on Damon’s cheek, but it barely registered. He looked at her, then at Xavier, and a short, sharp laugh escaped him. It wasn’t a laugh of pain or embarrassment, but one of pure, unadulterated amusement.
“Stalking you?” Damon scoffed, shaking his head. “Jane, please, you’re not that special. I’m here to shop for myself.”
Jane’s eyes narrowed, her face flushing. “Not special? How dare you! You were just begging me to take you back an hour ago!”
“Begging?” Damon raised an eyebrow. “I was asking what was going on. You were my girlfriend, or so I thought. Apparently, I was wrong.”
“You thought wrong, pauper!” Xavier interjected, stepping closer to Jane, with his arm still possessively around her. “She’s with me now; you’re nothing. You’ll never be anything.”
“Oh, I’ll be something, alright,” Damon retorted. “Just you watch, both of you.”
Their heated exchange was loud enough to draw attention. A salesgirl, impeccably dressed and carrying a clipboard, rushed over, her brow furrowed with concern. She spotted Xavier and her expression immediately softened into a respectful smile.
“Mr. Duston! Is everything alright?” she asked, her voice deferential.
Xavier puffed out his chest. “Everything’s fine, Jessica. Just a… minor annoyance.” He gestured dismissively at Damon, who was still in the full clown costume. “This… guy seems to have wandered in from the streets. He’s claiming he’s here to shop.”
Jessica’s gaze flickered to Damon, her eyes widening slightly at the sight of the ridiculous outfit. “Shop?” she repeated, a hint of skepticism in her tone. “Sir, are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Damon stated, his voice calm despite the clown suit. “I need some new clothes and a few other things.” He gestured vaguely around the opulent store.
Jane burst into a peal of laughter, loud and mocking. Xavier joined in with a booming and superior laugh.
“You, Damon? Shop here?” Jane shrieked, clutching her stomach. “Are you serious? This isn’t some thrift store, you know! Items here start at ten thousand dollars, at least.”
“Yeah, Newton,” Xavier sneered, wiping a tear from his eye. “Last I checked, you had barely three grand to your name. Where exactly did you get ten thousand dollars for a single shirt?”
Damon just smiled, a slow and knowing smile that infuriated Jane. “Don’t worry about where I got the money; you’ll find out soon enough.”
“Inform Jane Foster that you will be attending her birthday party tonight with your beautiful new girlfriend,” the System’s voice echoed in Damon’s mind, clear and insistent.
Damon blinked. A new girlfriend? He didn’t have a new girlfriend. He wasn’t even interested in going to Jane’s party, not after what had just happened.
“System, I don’t have a girlfriend,” Damon thought, a flicker of panic. “And besides, Jane… she’s the most beautiful girl I know. Who could be more beautiful than her?”
“The instruction stands: convey the message. Your compliance is required for task progression.” The system’s tone was firm, leaving no room for argument.
Damon sighed internally; he had no choice but to trust the System. It hadn’t let him down with the million dollars, and so he took a deep breath and faced Jane and Xavier again.
“You know what, Jane?” Damon said, his voice carrying a newfound confidence. “You don’t need to worry about my money. You’ll find out all about it tonight when I show up at your party with my beautiful girlfriend.”
Jane and Xavier stopped laughing. Their expressions shifted from amusement to disbelief.
“Your… beautiful girlfriend?” Jane stammered, her eyes wide.
Xavier roared with laughter again, even louder this time. “His beautiful girlfriend! Oh, that’s rich! Which poor, deluded girl on campus would ever date someone like you, Damon? The best shot you ever had was Jane, and she dumped you without a second thought!”
Damon just shrugged, his smile unwavering. “You’ll see. Don’t you worry.”
Jane’s eyes narrowed, a calculating look replacing her shock. She knew Damon, and she knew his financial situation. There was no way he could pull this off; this was her chance to publicly humiliate him, to prove he was still the pathetic pauper she’d just discarded.
“Okay, Damon,” Jane said, a smirk playing on her lips. “Let’s make a bet, then. If you, Damon Newton, actually manage to show up at my birthday party tonight with a girl willing to be your date… then I will apologize to you publicly for everything.”
Damon’s smile widened. “Deal.”
“Oh, this is going to be good,” Xavier chuckled, shaking his head. “He’s truly lost it.”
“Don’t be late, clown,” Jane bellowed, adding a twinkling of condescension to the whole thing. She turned to Jessica, the salesgirl, who was gazing at the whole interaction with wonderment and scorn.
“Jessica, you better watch out for him. He’s got a history of... sticky fingers. Call security at the store if he tries to take anything.”
Xavier had the same answer. “Yeah, he’s probably just hitting up the joint. Get some distance from him. ”
With that, Jane and Xavier turned and left the store, squealing across the store as they disappeared behind a corner.
Jessica stared back at Damon, her eyes again tightening in suspicion. “Sir,” she said, her voice cold and threatening, “I’m watching you, sir. One misstep and I’ll send you packing. ”
Damon didn’t listen to her, his eyes already moving along the shelves of clothes. He went for a suit made up of black slacks, a crisp white shirt, and a sleek silk tie. And some fancy-looking leather shoes. At that moment he felt Jessica’s suspicious gaze upon him—but he didn’t care as he was on a mission.
He approached the counter, his arms full of clothes, but as he was coming up, he noticed a special section unlike the others he had seen before, the entire area cordoned off, and on display, one exquisite handbag on a velvet pedestal.
It was the Fendi Custom Glow bag, the first-grade one that cost a whopping $100,000.
And right in front of it, gazing like a dream with an eager face, was Aria Golden.
Damon kept taking a deep breath, Aria Golden. The most beautiful, most elegant, and most untouchable girl in the college. Every guy on campus had a crush on her, and every girl saw her as their idol. She was so effortless even standing there.
He followed her for a moment, watching her long dark hair cascade over her shoulders, her profile perfect as she stared at the bag.
The answer was standing right in front of him.
There was an audacious, crazy idea that came into his head. He had a million dollars. He had a bet to win and he had a new girlfriend to find.
Taking a deep breath, he peered over his head and put the clown hat on and set off with a risky plan to go to Aria Golden.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 684
By the time they reached home, the light had already begun to soften into late afternoon gold, the kind that made the house feel less like a structure and more like something that had grown into its place over time. The walk back had finished the conversation in fragments rather than conclusions, but none of them tried to force closure anymore. Some lessons, Aria had once learned the hard way, didn’t settle in words—they settled in repetition, silence, and the way people behaved afterward. Kael was the first to break the quiet once they stepped inside. “I’m hungry,” he said immediately, as if normal needs were a way of proving the world hadn’t changed too much. Mira nodded. “Me too.” Aria closed the door behind them. “You always are.” Damon leaned slightly against the wall near the entrance, scanning the house out of habit more than necessity. “That’s a good sign.” Kael frowned. “Why is hunger a good sign?” Damon replied calmly. “Because it means your body didn’t treat today as
Chapter 683
They didn’t speak much on the walk back.Not because there was nothing to say, but because something in the air had shifted after Aria’s words—after Damon’s confirmation that they had been lucky. That kind of honesty doesn’t disappear easily in children; it settles somewhere deeper than language first reaches.Kael kicked a loose stone along the path once, then stopped when it rolled too far.Mira stayed closer to Aria than usual, her hand still lightly gripping the edge of Aria’s sleeve without fully realizing she was doing it.Damon walked slightly behind them now, not because he was detached, but because he was watching the environment again—less for danger, more for patterns that might repeat.Aria noticed the silence first.“That’s too quiet,” she said softly.Kael looked up. “We’re thinking.”Aria responded immediately. “That’s what I’m worried about.”Mira glanced at her. “We’re not thinking bad things.”Damon spoke gently from behind. “It doesn’t have to be bad thoughts to be
Chapter 682
They didn’t fully relax until they were beyond the active scaffolding corridor, where the structure transitioned into older, inert frameworks that no longer responded in real time to movement. Even then, Damon kept them moving for another hundred meters before finally stopping beneath a wide, broken overhang where the wind moved freely again and the oppressive sense of recalibration faded into something closer to normal silence.Only then did Aria finally release a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.Kael immediately dropped onto a low concrete ledge. “Okay. That was… a lot.”Mira followed him down more slowly, glancing back toward the corridor they had just escaped. “It felt like the place was thinking.”Aria looked at her instantly. “Don’t describe it like that.”Mira blinked. “Why?”Damon answered quietly while scanning the area. “Because it encourages misunderstanding.”Kael frowned. “It was thinking though.”Aria crouched slightly in front of both of them now, bringing
Chapter 681
The closer Damon walked toward the unknown figures, the more the scaffolding zone seemed to lose interest in collapsing and instead shifted into something stranger—like it was trying to accommodate multiple threads of movement without fully committing to any single outcome. The instability was still there, but it had changed shape, becoming quieter, more distributed, as if the environment itself had begun splitting attention between everyone inside it.Aria noticed it immediately.“This isn’t normal degradation,” she said quietly behind him.Damon didn’t turn. “It’s distributed response behavior.”Kael frowned from behind Aria. “That sounds like a fancy way of saying it’s worse.”Mira whispered, “It feels worse.”Damon answered calmly. “It is worse if you don’t understand it.”That shut them up again.The two unknown figures ahead remained still, watching them approach. Now that they were closer, it became clear they weren’t construction workers or civilians—they were too careful in t
Chapter 680
The realization that the scaffolding zone was beginning to “think in fragments” did not create immediate panic, but it changed how every step after it felt less like movement through a space, and more like negotiation with something that was no longer behaving as a single continuous structure. Even the air felt segmented now, as if each section they passed through had slightly different rules for how it responded to presence.Aria stayed close to the twins, her hand resting lightly on Mira’s shoulder without forcing direction, but maintaining contact as a constant reminder of proximity and control. Kael walked just ahead of them now, visibly trying to match Damon’s pace, though failing to hide the tension in his posture.Damon stopped suddenly.Not abruptly.Just… decisively.That alone was enough.Aria immediately noticed. “What is it?”Damon didn’t answer right away. His gaze was fixed ahead, not at a collapse or visible danger, but at a subtle misalignment in the structure that mos
Chapter 679
The moment they crossed the unstable gap, the scaffolding zone did not return to normal the way Kael and Mira seemed to expect it would. Instead, it settled into a different kind of tension—less like imminent collapse, and more like an environment that had finally acknowledged their presence and was now recalculating how to behave around them with far less tolerance for uncertainty than before.Damon noticed it first in the silence.Aria noticed it first in the twins.They were still close behind him, but their earlier excitement had been replaced by something quieter—attention, sharpened by the realization that their choices had consequences that could not be undone by simply stepping away.Aria finally spoke, her voice low.“We need to leave this section completely.”Damon didn’t look back immediately. “Agreed.”Kael frowned. “We already crossed the dangerous part.”Aria answered immediately. “No. We crossed one dangerous part.”Mira looked around carefully. “So there are more?”Dam
You may also like
The Decillionaire Heir
Dragonslav58.5K viewsThe Golem Mage
Mystic_dark152.8K viewsMy Werewolf System
JKSManga132.8K viewsFrom A Useless Cripple To An Almighty Boss
Sweet savage38.4K viewsHarvesting Beasts is my Talent
Shanew840 viewsSPEND OR DIE: THE GOURMET WEALTH SYSTEM
Teeha284 viewsSiren's debt
Ashik Singh 80 viewsMystic Arts Dual System
Dragonic Arts188 views