"A rich man isn't made of gold. He's made of dirt, blood, and choices."

---

In the blackened alleys of Shinzai, where firewood cost more than bread and rats were bold in the daylight, there lived a boy named Kaito.

He sold nails.

Not new ones. He dug old, bent ones from ruins and cleaned them with spit. Some days he ate. Most days, he watched others eat.

“No one gets rich saving coins,” he told himself one night, staring at the three coppers in his palm. “They get rich owning the road that coins travel on.”

Where he heard it, he didn’t remember. But it stayed.

---

When he was ten, he tried to scam a merchant by weighing rice sacks with stones. The merchant caught him. Beat him. Then tossed him a silver coin.

“Next time, don’t steal,” the man said. “Make a deal.”

Kaito didn’t forget.

---

He followed that merchant for weeks. Watched him barter, bluff, and build. Then one night, Kaito stole his ledger. He couldn't read most of it, but the numbers sang to him.

Buy low. Sell necessity. Never fall in love with a deal.

By twelve, he was trading scrap for copper. By fifteen, he ran iron between the war-torn border towns.

He wore no shoes. But he held contracts signed in blood.

---

“Why iron?” Ren asked one day, his only friend from the slums.

“Because swords rust. Chains rust. Shovels rust,” Kaito said, flipping a coin. “Everything that breaks has to be bought again. That’s where money sleeps.”

Ren laughed. “You talk like a ghost.”

“I’m not trying to be seen,” Kaito muttered. “I’m trying to last.”

---

Kaito’s empire grew in the shadows.

While nobles drank wine, he bought their debt. While lords lost wars, he bought the land they bled over. He smiled at kings, but never bowed.

By twenty-two, he was worth more than most provinces.

But still, he lived like a pauper.

Wooden sandals. Simple robes. No luxuries.

Ren once asked him why.

“You know what the book said,” Kaito replied, pouring tea. “‘Wealth is what you don’t see. Flash is a liability. Assets feed you when you sleep.’”

---

In the dead of winter, Ren stood on the balcony of Kaito’s mountain estate, looking down at villages that bowed when Kaito’s name was whispered.

“You’re rich now,” Ren said. “But you never laugh.”

Kaito stared into the snow.

“My rich dad taught me: ‘The poor work for money. The rich make money work for them.’”

“And your poor dad?”

Kaito didn’t answer right away.

“He died waiting for luck.”

---

That night, Kaito opened his private vault.

Stacks of silver. Land deeds. Rice futures. Bonds written on silk. And in the corner—a cracked iron nail.

The first one he ever sold.

He held it tight in his hand.

Then whispered, almost to himself:

“Being rich isn’t the goal. Being free is. Free to choose. Free to walk away. Free to sleep without fear.”

He smiled for the first time in years.