The X-Trail was gone by sunset.
Andy watched it disappear down Jalan Setiabudi—black paint gleaming, new car smell still lingering in the cabin, the faint outline of his graduation tassel hanging from the rearview mirror that he'd forgotten to remove. Ricky had counted the cash twice, rubber-banded it into a paper bag that smelled of coffee and cigarettes, and shaken Andy's hand with the gravity of a man who knew he'd just made the easiest commission of his life.
Three hundred and forty million rupiah. Minus seventeen for Ricky's cut. Three hundred and twenty-three million total.
Andy didn't go back to his boarding house. He took an angkot to the train station, bought a ticket to Jakarta with cash, and sat by the window watching the mountains fade into darkness. The money sat in his backpack, pressed against his spine, heavier than physics suggested it should be.
In Jakarta, he checked into a cheap hotel near Gambir—no ID, extra payment for discretion—and spent the night staring at the ceiling, listening to the city breathe. The cash went into three separate envelopes. One for living expenses. One for the flight. One for Singapore.
He didn't sleep. He couldn't. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the scoreline: 7-1. The numbers burned like neon in the dark.
Singapore was humidity and order, a city that ran on rules Andy found almost offensive in their efficiency. He'd been here once before, in his late twenties, for a conference he barely remembered—endless presentations about supply chain optimization, hotel buffets, early nights.
This time was different.
He checked into a hostel in Little India, paid for a week upfront, and started asking questions. Careful questions. The kind that didn't leave fingerprints.
"Where does someone place a... large wager?" he asked the hostel owner, a Malaysian Chinese man named Mr. Lim who watched cricket matches on a small TV behind the counter.
Mr. Lim didn't look up. "Depends how large."
"Large enough that local bookies get nervous."
That got his attention. Mr. Lim muted the TV, turned slowly, and looked at Andy with eyes that had seen too many young men with too much confidence and too little sense.
"You police?"
"ITB graduate. Just graduated, actually." Andy smiled, trying to look harmless. "My parents gave me a car. I sold it. I have... theories about the World Cup."
"Theories."
"I think Germany will win. Big."
Mr. Lim studied him for a long moment. Then he reached under the counter, pulled out a business card, and slid it across the scratched laminate.
"James. Australian. Used to work for Betfair, now runs his own shop. VIP clients only. He'll want to see your money before he sees your face."
Andy picked up the card. Plain white, just a number. No name, no address.
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me." Mr. Lim turned the cricket back on. "James has buried two clients in the last five years. Not metaphorically. Actual burying. Desert somewhere, I heard. Be sure about your theories, ITB boy."
James turned out to be sixty years old, sunburned, with the watery eyes of a man who drank too much gin and remembered too little. His office was above a seafood restaurant in Clarke Quay, accessible only through a metal door that required three knocks in a specific rhythm.
"Three hundred thousand," James said, looking at Andy's bank draft. "Singapore dollars?"
"Started as rupiah. Converted through three currencies to avoid attention."
"Smart. Or paranoid."
"Both."
James laughed, a sound like gravel in a blender. He poured two fingers of gin into a dirty glass and didn't offer one to Andy.
"Here's how this works, college boy. I place bets on your behalf with bookmakers who don't ask questions. UK, Macau, Vegas, some private funds in Monaco. I take fifteen percent of winnings. You pay taxes in whatever country claims you. If you try to cheat me, I know people. If you try to cheat my people, they know worse people." He sipped his gin. "What do you want to bet on?"
"Germany to win the World Cup."
James snorted. "Boring. Safe. Three-to-one odds at best."
"Not just to win." Andy leaned forward. "I want to bet on specific matches. Specific scores. As the tournament progresses."
"Accumulators?"
"Something like that."
"Risky. One wrong pick and you're done."
Andy smiled. "I have theories, remember?"
The group stages were testing ground.
Andy started small—fifty thousand on Germany to beat Portugal 4-0. The odds were long, almost insulting at 45-to-1. When the match ended exactly as predicted, James called him at 3 AM, voice sharp with something that might have been fear.
"How did you know?"
"Lucky guess."
"Bullshit."
"Does it matter?"
Silence. Then: "Your account is now at 2.3 million. What next?"
The Round of 16. Germany vs Algeria. Andy bet on extra time, on the specific minute Schürrle would score. The odds were astronomical. When it happened—exactly as he remembered, minute 92, the ball curling past the keeper—James stopped asking questions.
By the quarterfinals, Andy had 8 million SGD spread across twelve bookmakers. James had upgraded him from "college boy" to "the kid," which was almost respect.
"You could stop now," James said, during their weekly meeting. The gin had been replaced with coffee, a concession to Andy's preferences that felt almost paternal. "Eight million. Tax-free if you structure it right. Live like a king in Jakarta."
"Not enough."
"For what?"
Andy looked out the window at the Singapore skyline, all glass and ambition. "For everything."
The semifinal was July 8, 2014.
Andy remembered the date the way trauma victims remember accidents. He'd been twenty-two in the original timeline, watching on a grainy stream in his Bandung boarding house, surrounded by friends who cheered for Brazil because "they play beautiful football."
He hadn't understood what he was watching. Not really. The historic weight of it, the impossibility, the sheer absurdity of Germany scoring five goals in eighteen minutes against the host nation in their own World Cup.
Now he understood. Now he was counting on it.
"You're sure?" James asked. They were in the office above the seafood restaurant, but everything had changed. The metal door had a guard now. The gin was gone, replaced by mineral water and antacids. James looked older, the sunburn faded to something like pallor.
"About the match? Yes."
"About the score. Seven-one, Andy. That's... that's not a bet. That's a suicide note. No bookmaker will take that action. The liability is—"
"Then spread it," Andy said. He'd rehearsed this speech. Dreamed it. "Two million SGD. Break it into pieces. Five thousand here, ten thousand there. Bet on Germany to win by six goals. Bet on them to score seven. Bet on Brazil to collapse in the second half. Find prop bets—total goals, halftime scores, individual player performances. Package it all together so no single bookmaker sees the pattern."
"And if you're wrong?"
"I'm not."
James stared at him. In the months they'd worked together, Andy had never been wrong. Not once. Not about a single match, a single score, a single substitution. It was inhuman. It was terrifying. It was, James had privately decided, either divine intervention or the greatest inside job in sports history.
"Two million," James repeated slowly.
"All of it. Everything we've built."
"And if I say no?"
Andy stood up. He'd bought a suit for this meeting, his first since graduation. It felt like armor.
"Then I find someone else. There are other agents, James. Less careful ones. Less... ethical ones. But I trust you. You've been good to me." He placed a hand on the older man's shoulder. "Trust me now. One more bet. Then we're done."
James looked at the hand, then at Andy's face. What he saw there—absolute certainty, absolute calm—made his decision for him.
"You're either the luckiest man alive," he said quietly, "or you know something you shouldn't."
Andy smiled. "Place the bets, James. And book a flight to Zurich for July 9th. We'll want to be somewhere neutral when the money clears."
The match started at 4 AM Singapore time.
Andy didn't watch. He couldn't. Instead, he walked the streets of Little India, past the closed shops and the early morning prata stalls, listening to the city wake up around him. His phone was off. James had strict instructions: no contact until the final whistle.
He bought coffee from a street vendor. It tasted like burnt rubber and nostalgia. He thought about his parents, still in Bandung, still wondering why their son had disappeared with his graduation car and a backpack full of cash. He'd sent them one text: "Trust me. I'll explain everything soon."
They hadn't replied. He didn't blame them.
At 5:47 AM, a group of German tourists burst out of a bar near Boat Quay, singing something obscene and joyful. Andy's hands started to shake. He gripped the coffee cup tighter, so tight the paper crumpled and hot liquid spilled over his fingers. He didn't feel the burn.
At 6:15 AM, his phone buzzed.
The vibration against his thigh made him jump. He fumbled the phone twice before he could grip it properly, his fingers suddenly too thick, too clumsy. The screen lit up: James.
Andy stared at the name. His thumb hovered over the answer button. For a moment—one long, suspended moment—he couldn't move. His heart hammered against his ribs so hard he could feel it in his throat. What if he was wrong? What if this timeline was different? What if Brazil had won, or drawn, or lost 1-0 in a boring defensive struggle? Two million Singapore dollars. His parents' sacrifice. His one chance. All of it gone, evaporated, because he'd trusted a memory from another life.
The phone buzzed again. And again. 47 missed calls suddenly flashed on the screen, piling up in real-time, one after another after another.
Andy's hand was shaking so badly he had to press the phone against his ear with both hands to keep it steady.
"Hello?"
"SEVEN-ONE!" James screamed. The word hit Andy's eardrum like a physical blow. "SEVEN-ONE, YOU ABSOLUTE PSYCHOPATH! THEY DESTROYED THEM! FIVE GOALS IN EIGHTEEN MINUTES! THE HOST NATION! IN THEIR OWN WORLD CUP!"
Andy's knees buckled. He grabbed a street lamp for support, metal hot from the morning sun digging into his palm. The coffee cup fell, splashed across the pavement. He didn't notice.
"Andy? ANDY! Are you there? Do you understand what this means? The accumulator paid out. Every single bet. The 7-1 exact score, the halftime margin, the total goals, the German scorers, everything! I spread it across forty-seven bookmakers like you said—no single liability over fifty thousand—they never saw it coming—nobody saw it coming—"
James was crying. Andy could hear it in his voice, the wet hitch between words, the disbelief cracking into something like religious awe.
"How much?" Andy managed. His own voice sounded distant, underwater. His teeth were chattering. He clamped his jaw shut, but the trembling moved to his hands, his shoulders, his entire body vibrating against the street lamp like a tuning fork struck too hard.
"Three hundred and seventy million. US dollars." James laughed, a hysterical sound, high and breaking. "After my fee. After the tax structures. Andy, do you understand? You're one of the richest men in Southeast Asia. You're richer than—"
"Send me the wire confirmations."
"What?"
"Now. Send them now. Then destroy your records. Every copy." Andy's voice was shaking, but the words came out anyway, automatic, rehearsed. "Pay your people to forget. Pay them enough that they actually do."
"Andy, we need to talk about—"
"No. We don't." Andy looked at his free hand. It was still shaking, fingers twitching like they belonged to someone else. He made a fist, squeezed until his nails cut crescents into his palm. The pain helped. "James. Listen to me. You did good work. Your fee is generous. But if you contact me again—if anyone connects me to this—I will destroy you. I know things about you too. Your real name. The bodies in the desert. Don't test me."
Silence. Then, quieter: "You're not human. You know that? No one is this lucky."
"Goodbye, James."
Andy hung up. His thumb slipped three times before he could power down the phone. He tried to remove the SIM card, but his hands were shaking too badly, fingers numb and stupid. He dropped the phone. Picked it up. Dropped it again.
"Fuck," he whispered. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."
He sat down on the curb, right there in the street, not caring about the dirt or the staring pedestrians or the morning traffic building around him. He held the phone between his knees and used both hands to pry open the back cover. The SIM card popped out, silver and innocent. He snapped it in half. The pieces cut his fingers. He didn't feel it.
Three hundred and seventy million dollars.
The number didn't feel real. It was too big, too abstract. He tried to convert it to rupiah and his brain stuttered, overloaded. He tried to imagine what he could buy—houses, companies, islands—and the images wouldn't form. It was just numbers. Just zeros.
His phone buzzed again. The screen cracked but still lit up: James: ANDY WHERE ARE YOU.
Andy stared at the message. Then he laughed. It came out wrong, too high, almost a sob. He was still laughing when he stood up, walked to the nearest drain, and dropped the phone in. It clattered against the metal, once, then disappeared into the dark.
He walked back to the hostel in a daze. The streets of Little India were ordinary. A woman swept her storefront. A child cried for teh tarik. The sun climbed higher, indifferent to the fact that the world had just tilted on its axis.
In his room, Andy sat on the edge of the bed and looked at his hands. They were still trembling, though less now. Small cuts on his fingertips from the SIM card. Coffee stains on his shirt. He was twenty-two years old. He had just gambled everything on a memory and won.
The shakes started again, worse this time. Not fear—relief. The aftermath of holding his breath for three months, for twelve years, for two lifetimes. He lay back on the cheap mattress and stared at the ceiling, letting the tremors run through him like electricity, like exorcism.
What now?
The question waited, patient. He had money. More than he'd ever imagined. Enough to buy companies, influence elections, reshape the future he'd already lived through. But money was just potential. Just fuel. The engine still needed direction.
Andy closed his eyes. The shaking slowly subsided, replaced by something harder, colder. Resolve.
He would build an empire, yes. But he would also build a life. Find people who didn't care about his money. Create something that mattered beyond the balance sheet. Use his knowledge not just to get rich, but to get free.
And first—before anything else—he would go home. Face his parents. Explain, somehow, why he'd sold their gift, disappeared for months, returned with more wealth than they could comprehend.
The sun rose over Singapore, painting the sky in shades of gold and promise. Andy Wijaya—twenty-two years old, three hundred and seventy million dollars wealthy, and still shaking from the weight of it—finally slept.
He dreamed of Bandung. Of mountains. Of a future he hadn't ruined yet.