Sarah stopped in front of Stan, smiled warmly, and said:

"Mind if I sit with you?"

"Sure." Stan shifted his tray to make room.

Sarah settled into the seat beside him with the easy comfort of someone who’d done this before, close enough that their shoulders nearly touched, relaxed enough that the gesture felt intimate without being performative.

Quinn Carter stood frozen in the exact spot where he’d been delivering his speech thirty seconds ago, mouth half-open, one hand still raised in a gesturing position that no longer had a purpose.

’What.’

’What is happening.’

He wasn’t the only one staring. Half the cafeteria had gone quiet. Heads were turning. Forks were pausing mid-air. A few phones had materialized under tables, angled discreetly toward Stan and Sarah’s table.

A campus belle, a genuine, certified, top-tier campus belle, had just walked into the most crowded room on campus and sat down next to Stan Harrison like it was the most natural thing in the world.

The hostile looks started almost immediately. Every man in the room who had ever harbored a private fantasy about Sarah was now directing the full force of his resentment at the back of Stan Harrison’s head.

’On what grounds?’

’How does a loser like him get to sit next to her?’

’What does he have that we don’t?’

Quinn Carter’s face had gone through several stages of shock and was now settling into a pale, sickly gray. His grand speech about Stan being unworthy of campus beauties was still hanging in the air like smoke from an extinguished fire, and the universe had chosen this exact moment to deliver the most devastating possible rebuttal.

Not with words. With Sarah herself.

Sitting right there. Next to Stan. Smiling at him.

Quinn’s mouth opened. Then closed. Then opened again.

Nothing came out.

Quinn Carter was seething.

If looks could kill, Stan Harrison would have been reduced to a fine red mist and scattered across the cafeteria floor. Quinn’s jaw was locked so tight the muscles in his neck had started to cord, and his fists were clenched at his sides hard enough to leave crescent-shaped marks in his palms.

Not thirty seconds ago, he had been standing over Stan Harrison’s table, loudly and publicly declaring that this penniless nobody wasn’t fit to breathe the same air as Peak University’s campus beauties. He’d been thorough about it. He’d listed them by name, Sophie, Maya, Sarah, ticking them off like items on a menu Stan would never be allowed to order from.

And then Sarah had materialized out of thin air and sat down next to the man like she belonged there.

The timing was so perfectly, catastrophically humiliating that it almost felt staged.

"Stan," Sarah said, turning slightly toward him, her voice warm and unhurried, "are you free tomorrow? I’d like to take you out to dinner. My treat this time."

She owed him more than money could quantify. The thirty million he’d paid off to the Wilsons, the ten million before that, he’d pulled her out of a hole so deep she’d stopped being able to see the sky. A meal was the least she could do, and they both knew it barely scratched the surface.

"No, it’s alright. I’ve been pretty busy lately."

Stan said it casually, without looking up from his tray, the way a man declines a second helping of rice.

Quinn’s eyes nearly fell out of his skull. ’He said no?!’

’He actually said no!’

A campus belle, a genuine, top-tier beauty, had just invited Stan Harrison to dinner, personally, publicly, with a smile that could have melted concrete. And Stan Harrison had turned her down like she’d offered him a flyer for a campus club he wasn’t interested in.

’When did this loser get so arrogant?’

If it had been Quinn, if it had been anyone, they would have accepted before the sentence was finished. They would have said yes so fast the word would have broken the sound barrier. And here was Stan Harrison, picking at his braised pork, casually waving away an opportunity that ninety-nine percent of the male student body would have committed minor crimes for.

’Hypocrite. Complete and utter hypocrite.’

A flicker of disappointment crossed Sarah’s face, brief, quickly smoothed over, but unmistakable.

"Then how about shopping?" she tried again, her tone lighter now, almost playful. "Let me buy you some clothes. You’ve done so much for me, at least let me do this."

"No need. I’ve got plenty of clothes."

Stan turned her down a second time without a moment’s hesitation.

He wasn’t being cruel, he genuinely had more clothes than he knew what to do with. Maya and Xenia had spent an entire afternoon stuffing designer garments into shopping bags with his name on them. His closet was currently better stocked than most boutiques on Steel Street.

Quinn’s emotional state was now operating somewhere beyond the normal spectrum of human jealousy. He was watching a man reject a beautiful woman’s advances twice in a row, two offers that Quinn would have sold a kidney to receive, and the casual indifference of it was physically painful to witness.

’Rejecting the campus belle. Twice. Back to back. Who does he think he is?!’

’He’s forgotten his own name. That’s what’s happened. Success has gone to his head and he’s forgotten that he’s nobody.’

Sarah’s expression softened into something quieter. She lowered her voice slightly, leaning a fraction closer.

"I’ll find a way to pay you back the money I owe you. I promise."

The shift in Stan’s demeanor was instant.

"Don’t." The word came out faster and firmer than anything he’d said all conversation. "Seriously, Sarah, don’t worry about it. You don’t need to pay it back. Not now, not later. It’s fine."

The urgency in his voice had nothing to do with generosity and everything to do with the system’s hundred-times penalty clause, which was currently the single most terrifying number in his life. If Sarah actually transferred money back to him, the fine would be catastrophic, the kind of financial extinction event that made thirteen billion dollars look like a parking ticket.

’Do not send me money. For the love of everything, do not send me money.’