After pacing around his room for most of the night, David somehow, someway, fell asleep. Perhaps the whole ordeal had finally caught up with him.
When he woke up, it was 9:21 AM. He wanted to panic about missing class, but then he remembered his decision about school, and instantly all his worries evaporated.
Then the scene from the previous night replayed in his head, and he remembered his main problem.
"My money!"
With a speed that would make Olympic sprinters jealous, David rushed through his morning routine—bath, breakfast—and bolted out the door with his backpack holding his laptop. He ran to the street, hailed a cab, and rode it all the way to the university gate.
He made his way quickly to the library. This time he'd brought his student ID, so he was able to get in with ease. The place was unusually packed today, but that wasn't his concern. He found one of the quieter, more private spots, plugged his adapter into an extension cord, sat on the couch, and turned on his laptop.
As usual, the sluggish machine took almost half an hour to boot. When it finally did, he connected to the school network and pulled up the GlobePay website.
A quick sign-in revealed his account dashboard.
The moment his eyes caught sight of the balance, he froze.
"Twenty grand. I made twenty grand in one night."
He stared at the USD balance amount, barely believing it. But just before he could break out in celebration, he saw a message immediately below it.
"Wait. What's this?"
He tapped the message, and it expanded across the screen.
"This account was flagged by our system. After further review, this account has been frozen as it has been discovered to go against the territorial policies and regulations of GlobePay. All funds within this account are hereby withheld for further investigation, for a span of six months, after which the user will be provided a method to retrieve the money."
David read the message almost robotically. Then he read it again. And again.
He stared at those words for a full ten minutes, rereading everything to make sure it wasn't a mistake.
It clearly wasn't.
After that, he just leaned back against the couch and closed his eyes. As much as he wanted to beat himself up for being so stupid, he wasn't that shocked. After all, he'd anticipated this yesterday when he realized his mistake.
But it wasn't that bad anyway. He was still going to get the money. It was just going to be a matter of time.
"Time," he muttered. "Do I even have that?"
He looked at the message one last time.
"So it's back to square one then."
For the next twenty minutes, he scoured the internet to see if there was any hack to speed up the process of retrieving the money. There wasn't.
Eventually, he left the library and headed instead for the building from yesterday. He climbed the stairs as quickly as he could, passing a flood of students heading down and a few going up, until he finally reached the lab.
But the moment he twisted the knob, his brow furrowed.
"It's locked."
"Damn it." He ruffled his hair in frustration, pacing back and forth in front of the door. He looked through the window just in case, but the lab was empty.
He waited a bit longer, hoping for some kind of miracle. But it was no use.
Eventually, he walked back down the stairs the same way he'd come.
Before heading home, though, he made a stop at the ATM on campus and withdrew fifty dollars. He had no cash on hand—the last of it had gone to pay for the cab that brought him here. He had no choice but to make a withdrawal now.
At this point, there was barely $355 in his account. The withdrawal took a hundred from that, leaving him with just $255.
"How do I make this last for six months?" he muttered, walking through the street where he usually hailed cabs. "I also need a phone."
He thought about the plan he wanted to enact, but there was a problem now—one that could seriously lessen the already low probability of his plan working.
Food. And a phone.
Those were essential. If he invested all he had left into his plan right now, what would he do when he ran out of food? He could stockpile cheap noodles, sure, but he probably wouldn't survive the backlash of living on that junk for so long. And it wouldn't even last six months.
Then there was the phone. He needed it not only for communication but to stay up to date with the financial world if he didn't want to blow up his money. But buying a phone would cost a lot. Even the cheapest Android would probably run about a hundred bucks. Anything less than that would be junk disguised as unusable. And then there was the subscription—it was either waste cab fare every day to rely on the library's internet or subscribe to his own plan.
David stopped walking and stood at the corner of the street, thinking.
"Alright. Let's try one more time."
He decided he was going to try again—but this time, come early in the morning to see if that girl who'd stolen his phone would be there. Even for him, it sounded stupid that someone who'd stolen his phone would come back to the scene of the crime.
But he had this gut feeling.
And if there was one thing David always did, it was trust his gut.