Chapter 198: Sixteen Hundred Credits
The support schedule arrived that afternoon and Jin read all six pages of it, because he had learned what happened when he did not.
[MERIDIAN ACADEMY — THIRD CLASS SUPPORT SCHEDULE]
[Astor, J.]
[Flexible scholarship: 1,600 Cr / month, paid directly]
[Registered beast provision — separate, not deducted from scholarship:]
[— Glitch (Bronze): protected feed schedule, Bronze tier]
[— Flicker (neonatal, supervised): approved feed and clinical support, limited to registered recovery requirements]
[Facility access: advanced conditioning halls; Third-Class training rooms; priority booking subject to academy schedule]
[Housing: eligible for Third-Class allocation — improved environmental control, expanded beast space. Transfer window: 7 days]
[Equipment requisition: restricted allowance — approval required]
[Approved categories: protective gear, defensive equipment, training consumables]
[Restricted allowance is non-transferable, non-convertible, and may not be applied to personal debt]
He read that last line twice and was not surprised by it.
So the gear budget is gear. Fine.
He checked what it did and did not cover and filed it. Protective and defensive equipment would matter the next time Meridian sent him somewhere less controlled than a training hall, and training consumables meant he could stop buying his own resistance wraps.
It did not touch any of the things for which he needed cash.
The scholarship did.
[Payment processed: 1,600 Cr]
[Automatic deduction — Verrow Hatchery balance: 300 Cr]
[Remaining balance: 900 Cr]
[Available: 1,300 Cr]
Nine hundred left on Flicker. Down from twelve.
Jin sat at his desk with the slate and did the arithmetic properly, once, and did not revisit it afterward.
Thirteen hundred available. Glitch’s feed is separate and protected. Flicker’s clinical support is separate and capped to her plan.
So this is the first month since Glitch hatched where the money in my account is not already spoken for by an animal.
He kept three hundred.
He thought about that number for longer than about any of the others, because there was a version of him that sent the whole thing home and felt good about it for approximately eleven days, until Flicker needed something unscheduled or a piece of equipment broke and he went straight back into debt he had just finished climbing out of.
Three hundred is what stops one surprise from putting me back where I was in the spring.
That’s not selfishness. That’s the entire reason I have anything to send.
He transferred a thousand Credits to a household account in the Outer Ring of Shelter 7 at 1614 and started composing a message to go with it.
He got four lines in before the call came.
"WHAT DID YOU DO."
"Hello, Elsa."
"A thousand Credits." His sister’s face filled the display, entirely too close to the pickup as always. "A thousand. Jin. Who did you sell? Did you sell Glitch? Is this Glitch money?"
"I got promoted."
"You got — no." She sat back. "No, you don’t get to say it like that, like it’s the weather. Promoted to what?"
"Third Class."
There was a pause during which Elsa’s expression went through four distinct stages.
"You’ve been at Meridian for four months."
"Approximately."
"Approximately?" She twisted away from the pickup. "MUM. Mum, come here, he did something."
The next eleven minutes were the family arguing with him about money, which Jin had budgeted for.
Elena arrived first and her position was immediate and firm.
"Send it back."
"I can’t send it back, it’s already in your account."
"Then I’ll send it to you. Jin, you need that. Food, equipment, your beasts—"
"Glitch’s feed is a separate line item. It’s funded to Bronze schedule and it doesn’t come out of this." Jin turned the slate around so they could see the page. "Flicker’s clinical support is separate too and it’s capped to her recovery plan. Neither of them touches the scholarship."
"Then your food—"
"Third-Class board is covered. It’s been covered since Fourth."
Arthur had come into frame by then and had said nothing, which was how Arthur disagreed.
"You’ve been promoted this morning," he said eventually, "and by the afternoon your account’s empty."
"It isn’t."
"You’ve sent us a thousand out of—"
"Sixteen hundred." Jin laid it out flatly, because arithmetic was easier to win with than sentiment. "Three hundred came off Flicker’s debt automatically. Three hundred I’m keeping. A thousand went to you. That’s all of it and I’ve still got a buffer."
"Three hundred isn’t a buffer."
"It’s a month of not borrowing if something breaks," said Jin. "I’ve done the version where I have nothing. I’m not doing it again."
Arthur looked at him through the display for a while.
"What’s it for?" he said. "Say what it’s for."
"Your medication. Properly, every day, not stretched. Actual food. And whatever the household’s behind on, because I know there’s something."
Nobody contradicted that.
Then Jin said the thing he had actually called about.
"Mum. No extra shifts this month."
Elena’s face did the thing it always did.
"I’ve already picked up two—"
"Give them back."
"They’re only—"
"You’re doing twelve-hour shifts in the hydroponics level and picking up more on top of that, and there is a thousand Credits sitting in the household account doing nothing." Jin kept his voice completely level, because raising it never worked on his mother. "You working extra while that money sits there doesn’t help anybody. It costs you sleep and it doesn’t change the balance."
"That’s not—"
"It’s inefficient," said Jin.
Elsa made a strangled noise.
"He’s using efficiency on you," she said. "Mum. He’s using his lazy thing. That’s the same argument he used for not walking to the market."
"It worked then as well," said Jin.
Elena opened her mouth, closed it, and put a hand over her eyes.
"One month," she said.
"One month."
Arthur said his leg was fine when Elsa asked, which was Arthur’s answer to that question and had been for ten years.
"The medication’s enough," he said. "It manages it. I’m at the desk anyway, it’s not as though I’m walking rounds."
Jin did not push, because pushing on it made Arthur less honest rather than more.
He thought, briefly and precisely, about the other thing.
He had looked up corrective surgery once, months ago, out of the same instinct that made him read every clause of a consent form. Repairing damage that old was possible, but even the lowest credible estimate had six digits in it before recovery care.
Hundreds of thousands.
He did not say it. He did not announce a savings plan, make a vow, or promise anything. He had three hundred Credits in his account, a bird that still owed a hatchery nine hundred, and a new scholarship that could disappear into real expenses as quickly as it had arrived. Promises made from that distance were just a way of feeling good in advance.
He filed the number in the part of his head that kept expensive objectives, where it sat alongside two years of egg arithmetic and the exact cost of everything he had ever wanted.
Elsa and Elena drifted off eventually, Elsa still muttering about responsible duplicates, and Arthur stayed.
"Third Class in four months," he said.
"Yes."
"Early review. Instructor recommendation."
"Yes."
Arthur shifted his weight in the chair, which he did every four or five minutes and which he thought nobody noticed.
"You know why they did it."
"Because my record was strong."
"Because your record was strong and useful." Arthur’s voice was quiet and entirely without drama. "I was a Rank 2 Ironclad, Jin. I know how the Association thinks. They don’t pay you sixteen hundred a month at sixteen because you’re clever. They pay it because they’ve decided you’re going to be worth having in a bad place."
"I know."
"Then I’ll say the one thing." Arthur looked at him. "You don’t have to earn this by being reckless. They’ve paid you. They’ll want value. But nobody’s put a clause in there saying you have to be the last one standing in a corridor."
Jin thought about a station generator, and a decoy on a bedrock shelf two hundred and forty meters out, and Bram Rook’s shoulder hitting him in the ribs.
"Understood," he said.
"Mm."
Arthur changed the subject to whether Glitch had actually grown or whether Elsa was exaggerating.
Afterward Jin sat looking at his account.
[Available: 300 Cr]
It was more than the hundred and forty Credits he had survived Flicker’s incubation with, and far less than enough to feel wealthy.
He was not proud of it, exactly. Pride was not the thing. What he had was the flat, specific relief of knowing that for the next four weeks his mother would sleep, and his father would not be counting tablets on a Thursday to make them reach Sunday.
One month.
He would work out the next one when it arrived.