— The Weight That Skips No Generation —
Long before Victor made his first investment,
the price of his success had already been paid.
He just hadn't been told.
"Victor," I asked after a pause, "may I ask something personal?
Has anyone in your family ever studied... unconventional disciplines?"
He had made it clear he didn't believe in such things.
Yet the site itself was remarkably well chosen—too precise to be pure coincidence.
Without guidance, it would have been difficult for an ordinary investor to locate land like this by chance alone.
Victor's gaze wavered. He lowered his head.
"Yes," he said quietly. "Every generation did. My father. My grandfather. His father before him. It goes back a long way."
"Then why claim you don't believe," I asked, "if everyone before you did?"
His jaw tightened. The muscles in his face twitched, and his hand curled slowly into a fist.
"Because they all believed," he said through clenched teeth. "That's exactly why I don't."
I rested a hand lightly on his shoulder.
"You don't have to explain. Every family carries things it would rather not name. It's enough to know there was a legacy."
He exhaled heavily.
"...No. It's fine. I'll tell you."
He hesitated, then continued.
"Some ancestor—no one knows exactly when—came into possession of a book: The Book of Lu Ban, a forbidden manual that promised results, not consequences.
It was passed down in secret from that day onward. Anyone who studied it gained... unusual abilities. None of them lived long. Fifty became a ceiling—never a milestone.
Generation after generation, the pattern repeated."
"When people realized this, they banned it outright. Locked it away. But someone always broke the rule."
His voice grew flat.
"My grandfather did. My father hid the book, but my grandfather found it and practiced in secret. He died at forty-eight.
"My father was worse. He condemned his own father—then began using the book himself at twenty-five. He took requests. Helped anyone who asked."
His lips pressed together.
"My mother left because of it. He became obsessed. He barely noticed me or my brother growing up.
When he died, he was forty-five."
I waited a moment.
"And your brother?"
"As far as I know, he never touched the book," Victor said. "Still—he died at thirty. A car accident. His son was only eighteen months old."
His voice hardened.
"Even if my brother never read a single page, I believe it still caught up with him. That thing doesn't just destroy the person who uses it. It poisons everything downstream."
He wasn't wrong.
Some knowledge extracts payment not immediately—but eventually, and never from just one person.
I looked at him steadily.
"So you hate all of it. You see it as something that ruins lives. That's why you reject it completely."
"Yes," he said sharply. "My brother is dead because of it. I despise it. I will never believe in it."
"Then why come to us?"
"If this offends you, I apologize," he said stiffly. "I don't believe in what you do, and I never wanted to.
If not for my two partners, I wouldn't have gotten involved at all."
Jasper bristled.
"Arcturus, this is a waste of time. He's mocking us. Let's leave."
I didn't share his anger.
On the contrary—Victor's blunt honesty reassured me.
He wasn't pretending. He wasn't flattering us. He was saying exactly what he believed, to my face.
That kind of stubbornness isn't born from arrogance.
It's inherited.
"Victor," I said calmly, stopping Jasper with a gesture. "Ignore him. Keep going. Tell me about your brother."
Jasper frowned but fell silent.
Victor paused, then spoke again.
"He was five years older than me. From the time I was two, he practically raised me.
If I was afraid of the dark, he held me until I slept.
If I got bullied at school, he stood in front of me and took the blame—even the hits.
"When my business finally stabilized, I wanted him and his wife to live well. I thought we'd made it."
His voice broke, just slightly.
"Then they died. Both of them. Just like that."
He swallowed.
"You can't imagine what that felt like. After he was gone, I raised his son the way he once raised me."
He leaned back, staring into nothing.
"My business kept growing. From small shops to real estate. Almost nothing failed.
I've won investments that made no sense on paper. Even lottery tickets."
He gave a hollow smile.
"I've made more money than I ever imagined. But no amount of it fills what's missing."
That confession confirmed what I had already sensed.
Some people are carried by a tide of success so strong it drowns everyone else nearby.
In such families, fortune doesn't spread—it concentrates.
And when it does, someone else always pays.
If this project had been his alone, nothing would have gone wrong.
But partnerships fractured the balance. The moment he shared the burden, the cost surfaced.
I understood the pattern now—but said none of it aloud.
Instead, I nodded once.
"I understand how you feel. Anyone in your position would."
Victor looked at me, surprised.
Then, with a hint of shame, he said, "That said, Mr. Arcturus... I respect you. You're not like the people in my family."
I smiled and gently steered us back to the matter at hand.
"Did you personally decide the layout here?"
"Not entirely," he said. "The designers handled most of it. I just... felt certain areas were wrong and asked for changes.
Honestly, I didn't think my input mattered much."
He was mistaken.
What he called instinct was inherited sensitivity.
Discomfort marked imbalance. Ease marked alignment. He corrected flaws without knowing why.
That was his legacy.
"I see," I said. "That's enough for now."
"So—you've identified the problem?"
"Not yet. We'll know more tonight."
"Should we stay with you?" he asked. "More people might help."
"No," I said. "You can leave. Jasper and I will stay."
Jasper stared at me, about to protest. One look stopped him.
Victor hesitated, then glanced at Daniel.
"Then... thank you both. I need to pick up my nephew anyway. It's the weekend."
"Go ahead."
After they left, Jasper muttered, half envious, half incredulous:
"Some people are just born lucky. Everything they touch turns to gold. Why couldn't my family have that kind of run?"
I didn't answer.
Because luck like that is never free.
It is bought—with generations.