The man in the suit did not come back the next day.
Or the day after that.
Ethan decided that meant one of two things: either he'd been written off as unimportant, or someone was digging.
He hoped for the first.
He planned for the second.
The MT-HomeOne sat on his desk, quiet and unassuming.
His first real product.
A matte-black home router with no lights except a single soft indicator and no aggressive "performance" angles. It didn't try to look powerful. It just worked.
He turned it over in his hands.
"You're going to start a lot of problems for me," he told it.
He launched it anyway.
No hype.
No ads.
Just a clean website and a few distribution partners.
They sold out in eight days.
He stared at the sales report in disbelief.
"…I was hoping for a month."
The reviews were worse.
"It just works."
"My Wi-Fi finally stopped dying."
"Boring in the best possible way."
Ethan leaned back in his chair and laughed.
"…I accidentally made a rock. People love rocks."
Distributors started calling.
Not giants.
But not tiny either.
Enough to matter.
Enough to be noticed.
That was when the man in the suit came back.
This time, he brought two friends.
They didn't look like threats.
Which meant they were.
They walked in like they belonged there, sat down without being invited, and took in the room in one quiet, practiced sweep.
Ethan didn't need the Sharingan to clock them.
They sat with their backs to the wall.
They kept clear sightlines to the door.
Their posture was relaxed, but ready.
"…You guys aren't accountants," Ethan said.
The first man smiled. "No. But we do represent people with money."
"I'm not selling."
"We're not here to buy."
"…That's somehow worse."
They talked.
Carefully.
They praised Mercer Technologies.
Praised the engineering.
Asked questions that were just a little too precise.
Ethan answered honestly—but not completely.
When they finally left, they shook hands like businessmen.
But they moved like people who expected trouble.
That night, Ethan walked home the long way.
He didn't see a tail.
He didn't relax anyway.
He stood in his apartment, looking at the city through the window.
"…So this is the price of success."
He didn't write new rules.
He didn't change course.
He just accepted it.
Mercer Technologies kept moving.
He didn't sabotage his work.
Didn't slow down.
Didn't pretend to be worse than he was.
He released MT-HomeTwo three months later.
Better range.
Better stability.
Same quiet design.
It outsold the first.
Then came the first Mercer-branded mini PC.
Then a small office network switch.
All the same philosophy:
Reliable. Cool. Quiet. Boring.
And increasingly, trusted.
The car showed up.
Parked across the street from the office.
Three times in one week.
Ethan noticed.
He didn't confront it.
He didn't hide.
He just kept working.
The men in suits never came back.
But others started showing up.
Consultants.
"Advisors."
People who smiled too much and asked too many questions.
Mercer Technologies' name started appearing in industry conversations.
Not loudly.
But often.
One night, Ethan stood on the roof of his building, white hair catching the wind.
Sharingan off.
"…I could've stayed small," he said.
He looked at the city.
"But that's not why I'm here."
He thought about what was coming.
Not soon.
But inevitably.
"…If the world is going to get bigger," he said quietly, "then I need to build things that can live in it."
Somewhere, in places where nobody cared about routers, a few profiles were updated.
Mercer Technologies: flagged for observation.
Not a threat.
Not yet.
Just…
Interesting.