Chapter 6: The Paper Mountain
The warehouse shift that night felt different. The screech of the pallet jack was just a sound, not a nail in the coffin of his soul. The mindless rhythm of stacking cans and boxes left a corner of his brain free to churn, replaying the afternoon. Valentina's face, her laugh, the way she'd looked at a chaotic splash of paint and seen what he saw in a volatile market—energy, emotion, a system.
Back in his dorm as dawn broke, he didn't collapse into bed immediately. He opened his laptop, the glow illuminating his tired but focused face. He opened his paper trading account. The simulated balance was $50,000. It was nothing. It was everything.
He pulled up a chart of the EUR/USD, the same pair that had featured in so many of his early, ignorant fantasies. But now, he didn't see a lottery ticket. He saw structure. He saw the "geometry of chaos" Valentina had inadvertently shown him. He identified a level of support, a zone where the price had repeatedly bounced. He measured the recent volatility, the "energy" of the market.
His plan was simple, born from the ashes of his previous failure: if the price approaches this support, he would buy, with a stop-loss set *immediately* below it. The risk was precisely defined, a small, acceptable fraction of his virtual capital. The profit target was the next level of resistance. The ratio was logical, not greedy.
He set the orders and walked away, the ghost of his old, desperate self screaming at him to watch the screen, to hover, to hope. He ignored it. He went to the communal bathroom, showered, the hot water sluicing away the grime of the warehouse. When he returned, the trade was live. The price was hovering just above his entry, the P/L flickering a tiny, insignificant green.
He felt nothing. No euphoria. No panic. Just a clinical observation. *The thesis is playing out.*
He went to his 8 a.m. lecture. He didn't see Valentina, and a small, unexpected knot of something—not disappointment, he told himself, just… nothing—tightened in his chest. The professor droned on. Liam took notes, his mind a calm, partitioned machine.
During a break, he checked his phone. A notification from his trading platform. The price had hit his profit target. The trade was closed.
A gain of 1.2% on his capital. Simulated money. A meaningless number.
A slow, deep sense of satisfaction spread through him, warm and solid. It wasn't about the number. It was about the process. He had formulated a plan based on logic, executed it with discipline, and managed his risk. He had been right, but more importantly, he had been *correct*. There was a difference.
It was a single, perfectly laid brick in the long, slow climb.
That afternoon, buried in the silent, cavernous depths of the university library with a stack of engineering textbooks, the satisfaction began to fade under the weight of differential equations. He rubbed his eyes, the numbers blurring. The lack of sleep from his warehouse shift was a lead blanket over his thoughts.
"Rough day?"
He looked up. Valentina stood by his table, her own arms laden with heavy art history volumes. She looked tired, a smudge of charcoal on her cheek, but her smile was warm.
"Something like that," he said, gesturing to the empty chair opposite him. "Just… grinding."
She sank into the chair with a grateful sigh, dropping her books with a soft thud. "Tell me about it. I have a fifteen-page paper on Neoclassical sculpture due tomorrow. So much for idealized beauty." She nodded at his screen. "You?"
"Trying to remember why I chose a degree that requires this much math." It was a half-truth, the easy answer. He hesitated, then added, "Had a good… study session earlier, though. Felt like I finally understood something."
He didn't elaborate. He wouldn't know how to explain the sterile triumph of a paper trade without sounding foolish.
She seemed to understand he wasn't talking about calculus. "Those are the best moments," she said simply, pulling out a laptop covered in stickers. "When it just… clicks."
For the next two hours, they sat in a comfortable silence, broken only by the rustle of pages and the soft tap of keys. It wasn't a date. It was a truce. A shared, quiet understanding of the pressure they were both under. He'd glance up from his equations and see her, brow furrowed in concentration, chewing on the end of her pen. Once, she caught him looking and rolled her eyes dramatically, gesturing at the massive book open in front of her. He smiled back, a quick, genuine thing.
When she finally packed up to leave, the silence felt louder.
"Good luck with your paper," he said.
"You too. With… all that," she replied, waving a hand at his textbooks. She paused, then pulled a granola bar from her bag and slid it across the table. "For the grind."
Then she was gone.
He looked at the granola bar. It was a small, simple gesture. A fragment of normalcy. The boulder was still there. The mountain was just as high. But for a moment, sitting in the quiet library, the relentless push felt a little less solitary. He wasn't just climbing anymore; he was aware of another climber on the same mountain, and the simple, unspoken camaraderie made the path feel just a little less steep.