Chapter 9 9
I got inside my apartment, locked the door, and dropped onto the couch with the kind of exhaustion usually reserved for war survivors. My shoes were soaked. My hoodie smelled like wet concrete. My heart? It was somewhere between WTF and Divine Glitch Alert.
I took out my phone, praying to the internet gods for answers.
First thing I did?
I searched the current price of a Tesla Model S.
Tesla Model S – $9.99 (Financing Available!)
I stared.
Refreshed.
Refreshed again.
Still: $9.99.
A Tesla. For ten bucks.
I dug deeper. Researched for three straight hours, diving into forums, finance blogs, crypto markets, even shopping apps.
Loaf of bread – $0.0002
Diamond necklace – $2.12
5-bedroom mansion in Beverly Hills – $24.50, negotiable
New iPhone 17 Ultra Max – $0.14 each / 7 for $1 bundle
What.
The actual.
Hell.
I stared at my phone screen like it had grown fangs. My $10 million lottery win—which I had cried over, bled for, and literally died trying to protect—was no longer just a miracle.
It was a nuke in my name.
Now! A hundred billion dollars. That’s what it was now, in this twisted, backward economy where a used McDonald's straw might cost more than an island.
I couldn’t take it. I needed a witness. A sanity check. Something.
So I grabbed the cursed ten-dollar bill and ran to Tita Mirabel’s unit, still in my wet hoodie and mismatched socks like a lunatic who’d just escaped from a high-end asylum.
She opened the door, confused. “Anak? Why are you out of breath? You look like you just saw Gong Yoo naked in a sewer.”
I ignored that mental image and waved the ten-dollar bill in her face like a golden ticket.
“Tita,” I gasped. “I have ten dollars.”
She blinked. “Where the hell did—is that fake?”
I frowned. “No! I HAVE REAL TEN DOLLARS,” I repeated louder, like that explained everything.
Tita looked at me the way someone looks at a toddler proudly holding a stick. “Is this… some kind of weird youth slang? Are we celebrating now?”
“No!” I pulled her into my apartment and pointed at my phone screen. “Do you see this? A Tesla. For nine dollars and ninety-nine cents. I can buy a Tesla for the price of two Jollibee buckets!”
She blinked, squinting at the screen. “So? That’s how prices have always been. You young people just don’t budget properly. Back in my day, you could buy two condos with your student discount.”
I froze. “I’m sorry—what?”
She handed me a biscuit. “You’re overreacting. Just spend it wisely. Don’t go buying five Teslas when one will do.”
“I’m not overreacting, Tita! You don’t find it weird that one thousand dollars could buy you a military-grade jet and half of my sanity?!”
She frowned. “Well, the last time I flew to Paris, it only cost me $1.75 round trip. With a free in-flight massage. What’s your point?”
I stared. Mouth open. Brain screaming.
She took the bill from my hand and looked at it like it was made of stardust. “Where’d you even get this much? Ten dollars isn’t pocket change, anak. You didn’t rob a bank, did you?”
“I won the lottery,” I muttered, dazed. “Ten million.”
She dropped the biscuit. “You WHAT?!”
“I—won—the—lottery,” I repeated slowly, watching her eyes nearly pop out. “But… I died. Sort of. And came back. Long story. Bleach. Knives. Betrayal. Not the point right now.”
She looked at me like I’d just told her I dated a carabao. “Anak. You’re telling me you have ten million dollars?”
“Yes.”
“And you came to my house? To show me this?”
“Yes.”
Tita Mirabel staggered into a chair. “We need to call the priest.”
“I'm not joking, Tita!”
“Are you on drugs?”
“Of course not!” I growled.
She sighed, “then I'm calling the priests.”
“No! No calling priests!” I waved my hands. “I’m trying to understand how nobody realizes this is not normal! One dollar used to be, like, ONE dollar. Not a downpayment for a cruise ship!”
She shrugged. “You've gone mad—whatever. As long as you can buy pancit and pay rent, it’s fine.”
I slumped back, gave her the one dollar and her eyes.
“For me?” Tita Maribel asked. Eyes widened.
“Yeah. Buy some pancit and ice cream for the kiddo.”
“But this is too much,” she whispered. “You will need this for—”
“It's fine, Tita. It's yours. I still have ten dollars, remember?”
It was not fine. Everything felt too surreal.
I stared at the ten-dollar bill again. Then to Tita Maribel who frowned as if she couldn't believe she was holding a dollar in her hands as she left for the door.
My cursed little rectangle of absolute power. Where a few days ago, before my death, an ordinary 10$, now became 100,000$.
This wasn’t luck. This wasn’t coincidence.
This was divine accounting. Cosmic compensation.
And somehow, I was the only one who realized the world had flipped upside down and no one got the memo.
Everyone around me was living like the economy hadn’t done a full triple somersault.
But I knew. I remembered.
And now?
I wasn’t just alive. I was fucking rich enough to burn the past—and rebuild it in my name.
Ha! Just you wait!
That morning, I did what any sane, desperate, sleep-deprived woman would do after learning that she’s technically a billionaire, but still unable to buy a croissant with her “too powerful” VIP bank card:
I went coin hunting.
Because apparently, despite all the riches sitting in my account like a sleepy golden dragon, I still couldn't hand my landlord a ten-dollar bill without accidentally offering to buy the entire apartment building and three parking lots with it.
I had one problem:
I needed rent money.
Real, physical, bite-sized rent money that wouldn’t trigger a bank-wide fraud investigation or start a rumor that I was laundering money for the Illuminati.
So I got to work.
I tore through old bags like a raccoon on a sugar rush.
Dug into faded wallets with ancient receipts and stale mints.
Checked my coat pockets, jeans I hadn’t worn since my “broke college girl” era, and the forgotten space behind the radiator that may or may not be haunted.
Then I eyed the place every poor girl turns to in times of need:
The old shoe boxes.
You know the ones. Stacked under the bed. Full of receipts, tangled headphones, broken dreams, and—
Clink.
There it was.
Inside a beat-up, faded green phone box tucked at the back of my dusty cabinet, sitting like a crown jewel in a dragon’s hoard—
Pennies. And dimes.
Lots of them.
I stared. The copper and silver glinted under the morning sun like they were mocking me.
I grabbed my phone and, with slightly shaking fingers, Googled the value of one dime in this magical new world economy.
One dime = $1,000
I blinked.
Refreshed.
One dime… could pay one month of my rent.
My monthly rent—formerly $1,000—now cost ten cents.
One single. Freaking. Dime.