"Aren’t you going to buy it for her?"

"No," Stan said.

Felix’s eyes lit up with exactly the reaction he’d been hoping for.

"You can’t even afford that?" His voice rose, pitched to carry across the store. "A ring that costs a few thousand and you won’t even buy it for the girl you brought shopping? With that kind of budget, you still had the nerve to invite Sophie Youngs out?"

The sales staff behind the counter exchanged glances. A few of them directed looks of quiet disdain toward Stan, the particular look retail workers reserve for customers they’ve mentally reclassified as browsers.

"I just think it’s too cheap," Stan said evenly. "Not worth buying."

"Cheap?" Felix let out a performative laugh. "A ring worth tens of thousands is cheap to you? Please. You’re not even a convincing liar."

Sophie said nothing to the room, but beneath the counter’s edge, her hand found Stan’s and squeezed gently. The message was clear: ’I know. Ignore him. Let’s go.’

She knew. She’d held property deeds worth over a hundred million dollars in her own hands, deeds with Stan’s name on them. A man who could casually gift an entire restricted building in Four Seasons Garden was not a man who couldn’t afford a ten-thousand-dollar ring. He simply didn’t want it. And she trusted his reasons, whatever they were.

Stan was about to lead Sophie toward the exit when Felix made one final play.

"Waiter, I’ll take this ring."

He said it loudly, grandly, with the sweeping generosity of a man making absolutely sure everyone in the store was watching. The sales attendant hurried over, packaged the ring in a velvet box, and presented it to Felix with a small bow.

Felix turned to Sophie and held it out.

"For you. A gift."

Sophie looked at the box. Then at Felix. Her expression didn’t waver.

"No, thank you."

She turned away from him and slipped her arm through Stan’s.

"Stan, let’s go. Please. He’s ruining our time together."

Stan gave Felix one last cold look, the kind of look that communicated everything a fist would have, but with better manners, and walked out of the jewelry store with Sophie at his side.

Felix stood alone in the middle of the showroom, velvet box extended toward empty air, his grand gesture hanging in the silence like a joke that nobody had laughed at.

"I’m offering you a gift," he called after her, his voice cracking slightly with disbelief. "Why are you being so, so rude about it?"

Neither Stan nor Sophie turned around.

Felix’s hand slowly lowered. The ring box sat in his palm like a small, expensive monument to failure.

’She chose him. She actually chose the taxi boy over me.’

His face cycled through several expressions before settling on something hard and determined. He wasn’t done. He wasn’t close to done. If anything, the rejection had only calcified his resolve into something sharper.

He pocketed the ring, straightened his jacket, and followed them out of the store at a careful distance.

Stan and Sophie drifted through the next few floors arm in arm, browsing without urgency. Sophie paused at a window display here, examined a scarf there, pointed out a coat she thought would look good on him. The easy, unhurried rhythm of two people who were genuinely enjoying each other’s company.

Felix trailed behind them like a satellite that refused to deorbit, close enough to interject, far enough to pretend he wasn’t following. Every few minutes, he’d appear at Stan’s elbow with another pointed comment, another veiled insult, another attempt to wedge himself between them.

Stan endured it the way a man endures a persistent headache, with gritted patience and the quiet understanding that it would eventually end.

Then something Zack had mentioned the other day surfaced in his mind.

"Sophie," he said, his tone casual, "I heard you’ve been doing live streams lately?"

Sophie looked up, slightly surprised. "Mm-hm. I just started recently."

"Which platform?"

"TikTuk Live."

Stan filed that away immediately. ’TikTuk Live. Sophie Youngs. Livestream gifting. Rebate-eligible spending.’

The possibilities were already arranging themselves in his head. If he could direct consumption toward her through the streaming platform, it opened up an entirely new channel for triggering rebates, one that didn’t require physical shopping trips or elaborate excuses. He could sit in his dorm room, drop gifts into her stream, and watch the multiplier do its work.

"I’ll tune in when I get the chance," he said. "Send you some gifts."

Sophie smiled at that, a small, genuine smile that had nothing to do with money.

Felix, hovering nearby with the persistence of a man who had apparently decided that personal dignity was a renewable resource, overheard the exchange and seized on it.

"Speaking of TikTuk Live, did you guys hear about that mysterious tycoon everyone’s been talking about? Goes by ’A Streak of Green on the Head’ or something?" Felix’s voice took on the animated tone of someone sharing premium gossip. "Apparently he dropped over ten million dollars on Xenia in a single session. Made her one of the biggest streamers on the platform overnight."

Stan’s expression remained perfectly neutral.

"It’s true," Felix continued, warming to his topic. "Before that night, Xenia was mid-tier at best. Then this whale shows up out of nowhere, dumps ten million in rockets, and disappears. Nobody knows who he is. Nobody’s ever met him. He turned down Xenia’s dinner invitation, can you imagine? Turning down Xenia?"

Stan said nothing. Sophie said nothing. The irony in the air was thick enough to taste.

Felix, oblivious to the fact that the mysterious tycoon he was breathlessly describing was standing three feet in front of him, shook his head in admiration.

"Now that’s a real tycoon. That’s the kind of man who deserves to take a woman like Sophie shopping."

Stan patted Sophie gently on the back.

"Come on. Let’s go look at some clothes."

They moved through the fashion floors at an easy pace, Sophie gravitating toward displays while Stan walked beside her, content to follow her lead. Felix continued his shadow operation from a few steps behind, apparently incapable of taking a hint, a direct request, or an outright dismissal.