Bull Market, Dead Heart

The trading floor at 3 AM was a graveyard of screens and despair. Marcus sat at his desk, the forty-second floor overlooking Manhattan's glittering spine, feeling like a zombie moving through somebody else's life. He'd been surviving on four hours of sleep and pharmaceutical-grade caffeine for six weeks since the merger announcement.

His boss, Chen — whom everyone called 'the bull' for his aggressive negotiation style and tendency to charge through problems — had demanded another all-nighter. 'Market opens in Tokyo in four hours,' Chen had barked before leaving at midnight. 'I want those models ready or don't bother coming in tomorrow.'

Marcus rubbed his eyes. At home, waiting in his empty apartment, was a stray cat he'd secretly started feeding last week. She'd appeared on his fire escape during a rare moment of vulnerability — the night his divorce papers arrived. He'd named her Ghost because she moved like smoke through his hollow life, reminding him he still had a capacity to care for something living.

The spreadsheet blurred. His phone buzzed — his ex-wife's lawyer. More negotiations about the division of assets they'd spent twenty years accumulating, now just numbers on a screen, worth less than the warmth of a cat's purr.

He stood up, legs trembling, and walked to the window. Below, the city churned with real life. Somewhere, people were eating late-night dumplings, falling in love, burying parents, making mistakes that mattered. Here, he was helping rich people get marginally richer while his soul atrophied.

The bull's expectations echoed in his head. The zombie routine of his days stretched before him like a prison sentence. And Ghost would be waiting, hungry and alive and utterly unlike everything else in his world.

Marcus returned to his desk, closed the spreadsheet, and typed out his resignation. It was time to start feeding something that mattered.