Lena’s POV
The homepage of the Virgin Exchange loads with minimalist elegance, all white space and tasteful typography.
Adults-only disclaimers appear in serif font at the top, not screaming warnings but stating facts with quiet authority.
The language is careful, deliberate, words like "autonomy" and "choice" and "security" scattered throughout the copy like reassurances whispered by a trusted advisor.
Nothing here feels predatory or cheap. Everything feels curated, professional, almost clinical in its presentation. My cursor hovers over the screen, trembling slightly because my hand is trembling, and for a long moment I just stare at those words. Then I click.
The next page unfolds like a brochure for an exclusive service, something you might find in a luxury hotel lobby or a private wealth management firm.
Testimonials line the left sidebar, anonymous initials paired with dollar amounts that make my breath catch. "M.K. - $58,000." "J.R. - $74,000." "A.L. - $102,000."
Life-changing sums attached to single experiences, numbers that could erase debt, fund education, buy freedom. Below the testimonials, legalese about comprehensive health checks, background screenings, identity verification.
Everything designed to communicate safety, legitimacy, protection for both parties. On the right side of the screen, photos that show nothing explicit but suggest everything—champagne glasses, hotel room doors, hands reaching for each other across white sheets. Artistic, almost romantic in their composition, as if this is about connection rather than transaction.
Cold air seems to leak from the screen, or maybe it's just the way my skin prickles with awareness of what I'm looking at. My pupils widen, adjusting not to light but to possibility, and I can feel my heartbeat everywhere—in my wrists, behind my eyes, throbbing in my temples.
Is this fear? Maybe.
Probably.
But there's curiosity too, definitely curiosity, the kind that makes you lean toward the edge of a cliff just to see how far down it goes. My pulse slips into my throat and stays there, fluttering like a trapped bird, as I scroll down the page. I'm devouring every line the way a person dying of thirst swallows water too fast, desperate and heedless of the consequences.
"Eligible sellers must be eighteen years of age or older." I am.
I turned eighteen four months ago, celebrated with cheap pizza and a grocery store cake because that's what we could afford.
"All funds held in escrow until completion of agreement." Safe, professional words. Banking terminology that makes this feel legitimate, regulated, real. My brain is throwing up red flags, cataloging a thousand reasons to close this tab right now—danger, risk, the kind of choice you can't take back.
But my body leans closer to the screen, my eyes scanning faster, and I realize with a jolt of something like horror that I'm not going to close it. Not yet.
Imagination outruns caution the way it always does when you're desperate enough. I see the numbers that would erase the word "impossible" from my vocabulary entirely.
Fifty thousand dollars. Seventy-five thousand. Enough to cover tuition, housing, books, everything the merit scholarship doesn't touch.
The acceptance letter that's been sitting on my bedspread like an unanswered question suddenly shifts in my mind from fantasy to concrete plan, from dream to achievable reality.
All it would take is one choice, one transaction, one night that I could lock away in a compartment of my mind and never open again.
I think about Evan Mercer's laugh at lunch, the easy way he smiled like the world was built for people who looked like him. I remember Noah Mercer stepping between me and Trent, his voice low and certain, creating safety with nothing but his presence.
And a reckless part of me, the part that's been pushed down and ignored for so long it's practically starving for acknowledgment, wonders if any man could actually be kind in a room without witnesses.
If money changes the dynamic enough to guarantee gentleness. If a transaction comes with the promise of care, or at least the absence of cruelty.
The thought feels naive even as I think it, but I'm thinking it anyway because desperation makes you stupid.
I don't let myself think about the worst-case headlines, the ones I've seen in documentary exposés and true crime podcasts. I don't imagine what it would do to me if the secret blew up, if someone found out, if this became the thing everyone knew about me instead of just another piece of gossip.
I don't think about shame, about sitting across from my parents at the dinner table carrying this knowledge like a weight. I think only about relief.
The relief of saying yes to the university, of calling the financial aid office and confirming my enrollment, of not having to explain to anyone why I'm turning down the opportunity of a lifetime because of something as mundane as money.
The cursor glows over a button at the bottom of the page: "Create Profile."
Two words that feel heavier than they should, weighted with implication and consequence. The room around me is very quiet. Mrs. Patterson's voice has faded to background noise, just another sound I'm not processing.
The classroom, the other students, the world outside this screen—all of it feels distant and unreal. I am very young, eighteen and barely, and I am very tired.
Tired of being the girl who works three jobs and still can't make the numbers work. Tired of watching other people coast toward their futures while I scramble and scrape and still come up short.
In the hush of this moment, suspended between the person I am and the person I might become, the fantasy answers the question that money cannot.
The question that's been sitting at the center of my chest since I opened that acceptance letter, the question I whispered to my empty room: how do I make this possible?
And the answer, glowing on the screen in front of me, is simple and terrible and seductive: yes. Just say yes.
My finger hovers over the trackpad, my breath shallow, my mind already constructing the rationalization I'll need to actually go through with this. I'm about to tap on the "Create Profile" button when my name cuts through the silence like a blade.
"Lena Park, up!"