Still groggy from the night prior, Aster woke up with piercing pain in his head. His throat burned, as did his eyes from the sunlight. Lethargically he rolled over to close the window shades. He couldn't reach them from his bed however so he covered himself in his sheets in hopes of delaying the inevitable.

"I hate hangovers, why do I always put myself through this?" His voice was hoarse making the words linger with deep rumbles. 

Unable to return to sleep, Aster stood up and made his into the bathroom for his morning start. After the shower, he wrapped himself in a towel and went downstairs to start on breakfast.

"We are engaged but could you not walk around in a towel?" Lucia commented with an obvious snicker.

He was turned away from the giant fridge in a stupor. Lucia sat at the island with a bunch of pictures laid out in front of her. "Wait you are?" He almost smacked himself across the face to see if he was dreaming or not. Hallucinations weren't common for hangovers but never know.

"Lucia, we met last night at the bar. You forgot your fiancé?" She made a hurt face but was almost laughing. Aster went silent and tried to think back to the night before. 

"Oh, the girl who wanted my money," Aster turned and walked back to the fridge, grabbed a breakfast sandwich.

"You eaten yet?" He asked,

"Your chief, Wyatt, made me crab cakes and eggs benedict, there is still some here if you want them." She answered, pushing the plate over to him. Her eyes were still bright, even now at dawn. Also more obvious in this lighting was her Asain facial features. Her long hair was perfectly straight cascading to the middle of her back; her face was adorned with slight amounts of make-up, a casual t-shirt that was too big so it hung off a shoulder, and a pair of tight blue jeans. The two were at the bar until two in the morning, a fact she did not at all show, as she took sips from her still steaming coffee. 

Aster looked between the plate and his breakfast sandwich, before putting it back. "Thank you, I'll be back down in a few moments."

While changing, Lucina's phone rang, "Hello?"

The person on the other side yelled, "Eun! What do you mean you quit!"

Lucina's head turned on a swivel quickly taking in every corner of the room to make sure no one heard the man on the other end, "I quit, it is that simple."

"Your contract only just ended, don't you want to hear what we were offering before you go somewhere else? We will match their price, just tell us what they gave you." The man was reeking of desperation, his nervousness seeping out with every word.

"Sir, I didn't quit because of a different company. I quit because, I realized I needed to move my plans up."

"Eun!-" She quickly hung up the phone as she saw Aster enter the room. 

He held a laptop and placed himself next to Lucina. He noticed her unease from the phone call, "Everything okay?" He didn't continue to look at her though, giving his attention to his computer. 

"It's nothing important, just my previous job calling about why I quit." She answered.

"Okay," He didn't dwell on it, not even giving it a second thought as he answered emails for the next while taking bites of the leftover breakfast here and there.

Lucina took this time to continue going through the photos, looking at venues, dresses, and such for the wedding. 

After a short while, "We should talk about what we expect from this...exchange," Lucina suggested spinning her stool evidently bored.

Aster went for a stretch, "I expect nothing. So let's start with the simpler terms, how much are you looking for?"

She stopped spinning and to balance herself she placed her elbows on the table and head in her hands. To finish the look she adopted a pout, her eyes darting to match Aster's...many eyes. "50 million."

"What's your bank account and routing number?" He questioned. She requested to use his computer on which she searched for that information. He jotted down the information in a word document.

"The money will be sent to your account by the end of the day." The two then drifted back to silence neither having anything to talk about.

It wasn't long later Aster's phone rang, "Hello, Aster Holland, what happened?" He pinned the phone between his shoulder and ear before he opened a new tab and typed in about a trial and company. He only skimmed over the headlines and an article and gained an understanding while the other end went into more detail.

"Short-sell it, the trail is very likely to swing guilty." His calm voice didn't last after he heard back from the other end.

"What do you mean you bought 12 million worth of shares!"

"It could be pennies for all I care! You bought into a losing stock!"

The anger was short lived immediately changing to annoyance with his head in his hand. "Okay okay, go back and sell every share you own. The amount you will lose now is nothing in comparison to what you could lose in the future." He didn't care for what the caller had to say so he hung up and opened up an Excel sheet.

"What's this?" Everything was neatly organized with titled columns and rows but Lucina didn't understand a lick of it.

"An annual loss sheet, each contractor I work with gets one. When the paper loss goes far enough red I drop them. This sheet does the math for me."

"You have one for yourself?"

"Yea, one second." He saved the document with a keyboard shortcut and loaded up his own sheet shortly after.

His numbers where excessively larger than the previous person's. The other sheet was covered in splotches of red yet on Aster's, Lucia only saw black text, 10 million, 30 million, 90 million. The numbers were exponential, and from what he said these were only annual sheets.

He went on to explain almost sounding depressed, "Shocking isn't? When you read my net worth on a page the number seems dull. When you see what it started as and as it grew over the days it puts the achievement in a much better picture. You see, 50 million is a difficult amount to liquidate, but nothing in comparison in what I make."

"Maybe I should have asked for 90." She said with a joking smile, even though she didn't understand a word he said. To her, the number on that sheet and the number she read on multiple other sites look and felt the same.

He laughed for what felt like the first time since meeting her, "You still can. You don't seem to understand what you truly gained access to. You can half of it, every two cents I earn you get one."

The shock on her face wasn't hard to see, "Half? I get half?"

Aster was confused at her confusion, "You didn't know this?" She only shook her head in response, and this sent him further into confusion.

This is the basics, where and how was she raised to not know such a thing. He thought over this for a bit but tossed it aside, it didn't matter.

"Okay, since you don't seem to understand your position I'll have to explain it to you." He didn't go into great detail and only went over the basics. To help he loaded up sites about marriage and used them as guides for her to look at as he talked. Lucina gave him her undivided attention as even when his phone rang he ignored it to continue explaining this all to her. 

"Thank you!" She slightly bowed her head and offered a bright smile. Aster tried to return the smile but his was stiff.

"I have to go out with a client for a late lunch. So you'll have the house to yourself for a few hours." Their conversation had gone on for a few hours, it now was a bit past noon. He closed down his computer and packed it up in a laptop carrier, his phone left on the counter.

"I won't wait up then, should I expect you for dinner?"

"I should be, if I'm not Wyatt will make you whatever you want. I got to get going." He made his way outside having forgotten his phone.

It wasn't long after he left and Lucina had returned to looking at venues that it rang the ID, Mom.