Chapter 7: The Grind
The rhythm of Liam's life became a brutal, metronomic cycle. The 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. warehouse shift was a lesson in physical endurance, his body moving on autopilot while his mind replayed the day's charts. The 8 a.m. lectures were a battle against sleep, fought with bitter coffee and sheer willpower. The hours in between were for studying—both the engineering degree he was clinging to and the market education that had become his obsession.
He saw Valentina mostly in class, and sometimes in the library. Their interactions were brief, quiet exchanges in the margins of their demanding lives. A shared glance of commiseration during a particularly dry lecture. A nod across a crowded library table. The easy rapport from the gallery felt like a distant memory, buried under textbooks and exhaustion.
One Friday, after a week where three consecutive paper trades had hit his stop-loss, the fatigue felt terminal. He was in the library, staring at a chart that made no sense, his eyes burning. The simulated losses were meaningless, but the failure stung. Each one was a reminder of how far he had to go.
A tray slid onto the table opposite him. He looked up. Valentina stood there, holding two steaming mugs of coffee from the library café. She had dark circles under her eyes.
"You look how I feel," she said, her voice hushed. She pushed one of the mugs toward him. "I just handed in that Neoclassical paper. I think I wrote ten pages on the political implications of marble biceps. I need a break from art, and you look like you need a break from... whatever that is." She gestured vaguely at his screen filled with candlesticks.
He almost refused. The discipline of his "Climb" demanded he analyze why those trades failed. But the aroma of coffee was a siren's call. He accepted the mug. "Thanks."
They didn't talk about trading or art. They sat in a weary silence for a few minutes, just drinking the terrible, bitter coffee.
"It doesn't get easier, does it?" she finally said, not looking at him. "The grinding. You just get better at enduring it."
It was the most perceptive thing anyone had said to him in weeks. He nodded, staring into his mug. "No. It doesn't. Some days the boulder feels heavier than others."
She glanced at him, a flicker of curiosity in her tired eyes at the metaphor, but she didn't press. "My boulder this week was marble. Yours looks... digital."
A corner of his mouth twitched. "Something like that."
They finished their coffee in that same comfortable silence. As she gathered her things to leave, she said, "There's a terrible student film screening at the arts building tomorrow night. So bad it's supposed to be good. A bunch of us are going. A complete brain-off switch. You should come. Might keep you from failing."
It was the first real social invitation he'd received in months. His first instinct was to decline. He had a warehouse shift. He had charts to analyze.
But he heard her words: *A complete brain-off switch.* It sounded like a foreign, necessary medicine.
"I have to work," he said. "But I get off at six. If it's not too late..."
"It starts at seven," she said. "I'll save you a seat. If you make it, you make it. No pressure."
She left, and Liam was alone again with his charts. But the crushing weight of the week's failures felt a fraction lighter. The offer hung in the air, a small, glowing ember of something other than the grind.
***
The next night, the warehouse felt more oppressive than usual. Every glance at the clock, showing 4:17 a.m., then 5:02 a.m., was a small agony. The temptation to go home and collapse into bed was immense. Showing up to a noisy room full of people, having to make conversation, felt like a monumental task.
At 6:07 a.m., he clocked out, his body aching. He stood in the parking lot as the sun rose, feeling the chill of the morning air. *Go home. Sleep. Study.* The mantra of his climb was a powerful force.
But he remembered the charcoal smudge on her cheek, the shared silence over bad coffee. He thought of the digital boulder, and for one night, he wanted to forget its weight.
He drove to the arts building, arriving at 6:55 p.m., still in his clean but plain hoodie and jeans. He found the small screening room, dark and filled with the chatter of art students. He hovered at the back, scanning the rows.
He saw her near the front, laughing with a friend. She turned, as if feeling his gaze, and her eyes found his in the dim light. A slow, genuine smile spread across her face, and she waved him over, shuffling her friends to make space on the aisle.
He slid into the seat beside her just as the lights went down completely.
"You came," she whispered.
"The brain-off switch was too tempting to resist," he whispered back.
The film was, as promised, gloriously terrible. A pretentious, low-budget sci-fi epic with wobbly sets and dialogue that made no sense. The audience didn't watch it in silence; they participated, heckling the screen with good-natured jokes and laughing at the most dramatic moments.
Liam, who hadn't genuinely laughed in months, found himself chuckling along. He glanced at Valentina. She was wiping tears of laughter from her eyes, her face illuminated by the flickering, nonsensical images on the screen. In that moment, she wasn't the insightful art student or his tether to normalcy. She was just a person, laughing in the dark.
He wasn't thinking about support or resistance, about stop-losses or his mountain of debt. For ninety minutes, the boulder was gone. He was just a guy in a movie theater, sitting next to a girl who made him feel, for the first time in a very long time, like he was exactly where he was supposed to be. It was a different kind of currency, one that couldn't be traded on any screen, and it felt more valuable than any paper profit.