Sweet Romance14 min read
The Lucky Goose and the One-Cent Coin
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I found the coin while my feet were kicking a stone down the sidewalk toward the university dorms.
"I can't believe rent is this high," I muttered, and the coin jingled in my pocket like it had something to say.
"Pick me?" a child's voice piped in my head, impossibly bright and impossibly nearby.
"I didn't hear anything," I told no one out loud.
"I heard it," Danielle Gardner said two steps behind me, her heels clicking like a metronome. "You're talking to yourself again, Olivia."
"Shh," I whispered to whatever it was. "Not now, Dani. I'm trying to be an adult and find a place to live."
"You should just let your parents move you into a mansion," she said, and I felt all the old, small things rise in me. "Oh," she added, in that tone that made the whole room smaller, "wait."
She didn't know about the coin yet. She didn't know I had only a little less than ten thousand in savings and three possible, overpriced apartments to choose from. She didn't know how I had stopped putting money in my pocket ever since my parents weren't around. She didn't know that finding a coin in my jeans felt like finding a secret.
"You're pale, Olivia," she added, as if it mattered.
"It's a moon night," I said. "Shadows are flattering."
The voice in my head came back, high and syrupy. "Lucky Goose says hello! I am Lucky Goose. Your system is bound!"
"System?" I laughed, sharp. "I'm exhausted. I can't devolve fictional systems into my walk home."
"Ten seconds to task one: spend one cent in ten minutes," the voice sang.
I stopped, fingers in the pocket on the denim where I'd just found a quarter-inch silver coin. I had not put that coin there. I had not been outside long enough for anyone to slip it in. I was careful—too careful—to carry cash in a pocket again after a childhood of losing lunch money.
"Hello?" I said to the empty street.
"Spend it in ten minutes," the voice repeated. "Spend it, and the item you buy is your reward."
"That's not how things work," I told the voice. "That's not how anything works."
"Spend it now!" a plush, round shape popped into being above my hand. It hovered like it had weight but no mass, a fat, mottled kitten with three colors and a tiny pompom tail. "Lucky Goose says hurry!"
I pinched the coin so hard it ached.
"Okay," I said, because I didn't know what else to do.
"Quick, go," the kitten urged.
I ran.
"You're on campus, Olivia," I told myself as my legs pumped. "This is ridiculous."
"Thirteen. Twelve. Eleven..." the kitten sang.
I hit the campus store and grabbed the cheapest thing I could find — a lollipop priced at one cent, if the universe's ledger would be kind enough to hold to its joke. The cashier, a tired girl with braid and eyeliner, raised one eyebrow. "That's one cent? It was a mistake. It's one cent five, sorry."
"Please," I said, louder than I planned. "I'll pay the rest."
You could have watched me hand over three coins and feel how small they felt in my palm. I did not care. The kitten walked into my bag like it had always lived there and ate the lollipop in three kittenty bites.
"System?" I said. "You can be visible."
"Of course," the fluffy thing purred. "I can eat things, I can speak, I can give tasks."
"You expect me to believe a talking kitten is a system," Danielle scoffed when I showed her that night. "You really will talk to anything to avoid asking your professors for references."
"Don't ridicule me," I told her, because what else would I say? "Lucky Goose is real."
The kitten licked a sugared whisker. "Daily tasks. Weekly. Random. Spend what we give you, and you get what you buy. Fail, and it's taken back. Success, and keep the goods."
"There's always a cost," I replied. "Free money makes me nervous."
Lucky Goose blinked. "There's a side effect," he said. "People with privilege may fall in love with you."
I looked at my mirror. My face was ordinary, a small face with a pair of quiet eyes. "You're joking."
"Not joking," Lucky Goose said. "But it's a gift. Or a mischief. Maybe both."
I found this hard to file under 'real life.' I told myself I'd prove it wrong by sleeping. I told myself I'd ignore a talking kitten. I did neither.
"One cent became one dollar," Lucky Goose squealed the next morning like a child who'd found a bigger coin. "Spend it in ten minutes!"
I spent the dollar on breakfast and stuffed half a hard-boiled egg in the kitten's bag. The kitten—system, whatever—slid the egg whole into its feline mouth like a magician. It did not choke.
"You're not human," I said, astonished and a little amused.
"I'm a system with features," the kitten said, licking egg residue. "And I like you."
At work, Danielle sat in the desk across from mine, in a pale pink dress like a sculpture of confidence.
"Morning," she said, but there was an edge. She had always liked to be the sun and to be the person everyone orbited around.
"Morning," I said.
"Move, Olivia," she said an hour later, standing at my window like it was a stage. "You should switch with me. It's better by the window."
"No," I said.
She dropped to a soft squeal of a pout. "Just this once."
"Fine," I said, because that was easier than going to war with a girl who'd spent four college years finding ways to sting. We traded desks like two kids trading seats.
From the window I could see the building across the street. A man on the twelfth floor stood at a huge, old-windowed square and looked out across the city. For one breath, he held something up to his eye, a long cylinder.
"Is that a telescope?" Danielle whispered.
I looked. The man raised the device and looked—directly at our window.
"Don't look back," Danielle sniffed like a cat. "He's probably a creep."
"He is looking," a voice in my chest said. Lucky Goose clicked his kitten tongue. "He will notice."
We did not know the name Julio Engel yet, but other students later would tell you his face looked like it had been carved from marble. He had the sort of economy of expression that made people read novels into his blink.
"You traded with me," Danielle crowed. "For what? To pose like a mannequin? If he likes you, you must be worth something."
"Don't be ridiculous," I muttered.
Weeks crawled. The kitten taught me the rhythm of grateful spending. A daily task of ten cents, then one dollar, then ten. I learned to spend small amounts and to receive small rewards. The kitten grew. It slept on my bed like it had always been there. It was a system that wanted to try on being a pet. It wanted to be edible for my loneliness.
"Random task!" Lucky Goose chirped one afternoon. "One thousand. Twenty minutes. Done."
My bank pinged with a deposit like a little earthquake. I ran, heart in my throat, into the shopping center across from that man with the telescope.
That day I bought two undergarments—expensive, real things that fit the shape I'd always tried to hide—and I tried the new phone I could not before think of owning. I felt guilty and very alive.
"You picked the purple lace," the shop girl said gently. "Good taste."
I paid. My chest tightened. There was a dizzy sense of being let inside a private room where people kept secrets. I also clicked the wheel the system gave me and pulled out a prize: a skill. A skill that filled me with a warmth that went deeper than the bra's lace.
"Hán-language expertise," Lucky Goose announced.
I sat on the mall bench and felt words rearrange themselves in my head. I could hear endings, the music of other people's sentences. The world shifted by a micrometer and felt safer.
That evening, the man with the telescope came down to the mall. He followed me, clumsy as a moonbeam.
He called himself Julio Engel. "May I pay you back for the restaurant recommendation?" he asked, when we met by a fried-chicken place, eyes like a dusk sky.
"What restaurant recommendation?" I asked, confused. Lucky Goose purred in my bag, jealous.
"You suggested the bucket," he said. "My nephew liked it."
"I didn't...?" I stumbled.
"Thank you, Olivia," he said. He had memorized my name from a social update—he'd posted a photo and credited me for the choice. He had fewer pretense and more focus than anyone I'd ever seen. He was a kind, curious man who made me feel a flutter like the first time you ride a bike.
He became a soft presence. "Can I make you coffee?" he asked one day. He made a point of being gentle.
Then the evening at the karaoke place became its own kind of nightmare.
"Go in with me," my supervisor, Leanna Barbieri, told me. "We'll celebrate the deal. Don't be silly—it's a team thing."
I had promised to return the company's phone. I had promised to leave early. But the world had other ideas. Leanna was drunk with joy, and I found myself walking into the fluorescent loneliness of "Scenery" with a dozen colleagues behind me.
The hallway to the toilets was empty and perfumed. I went to wash my hands.
A girl staggered in, beautiful and messy, and I helped her to the door. She smiled and whispered about auditions and fans and how grateful she was. I left her in the door, because kindness is a small thing we give strangers.
The room opened, and everything unraveled.
"Who is she?" a man asked.
"She shouldn't be here," another spat.
The girl was led into a box by a woman with business hair. "She works with us," the woman said.
"She lied," I heard. I didn't want to be there. I wanted out.
"Don't go," said the man who'd grabbed my wrist.
"Let go!" I hissed.
I had thought of only two men near ground level that night: the drunk male and his circle. That circle swarmed. The air filled with the metallic tang of wine and the foam of humiliation.
"Please," I pleaded when they pinned me to a couch. "I'm not..."
A man whose mouth had been soft turned cruel. He was called George Montgomery. He'd been part of the pack. He'd been the kind who liked to show that he owned a room.
"Who brought this cheap girl?" one jeered.
"Don't move," he said. "You're mine for a minute."
I bit him and scratched him, because instinct lives in the blood and not the etiquette. He yelped, white-lipped, and I felt a terrible joy for a moment. He had not expected that response.
People began to throw bottles. A bottle missed my head by a breath. Someone tossed a bottle that didn't hit me; it cracked against the door. Glass and whiskey sprayed the room like rain.
Someone screamed. I ran. I texted the police because we had to, because the world had finally been loud enough.
Later, there were headlights and sirens. There were statements and crying and people who couldn't quite hold onto what they'd pretended to be. The police were serious. They made us go down to a station. The man who'd been my puppet-master called his friends and they called their lawyers and the room around them hummed with power.
"They'll make it go away," someone whispered behind bulletproof glass at the station. "That's what usually happens."
"Not tonight," I said. "I called the police."
I told the truth. I stuttered and shook, and Lucky Goose in my lap purred and pressed its head into my hand like a warrant between the pages.
"You're brave," Leanna said later, at the hospital where I'd been taken for leg cramps. "You shouldn't have come. I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault," I said. My leg twitched in a curve of pain. The doctor said I had locked muscles from stress and from running. They gave me fluids, and the room smelled like antiseptic and patience.
George had been arrested that night, but out on bail within hours. People with money move in different weather. That phrase repeated like a cold melody.
"You should quit," I told myself. "You should leave the city before that man decides to make you a headline."
Lucky Goose blinked once, as if reading the map of my future. "We have tasks," he said. "And luck."
The system grew louder in small joys. Random tasks vaulted me into buying a phone, then a bed, then a coat. Each time, the kitten's wheel offered me something—a skill or a small prize. I drew a language skill and a running skill. The running skill made me able to outrun anyone for one hundred meters. It was flawed and perfect—it would not turn me into an Olympian, but in one terrifying, breathless moment it could be the difference between hurt and safety.
A month passed, and Julio became a mirror and then a light. He texted, "Coffee tomorrow?" and the screen made the room small in a good way.
"Why him?" Danielle said once, staring at my new phone's wallpaper—my biggest secret was now a man who read like an old poem.
"Because he saw me," I said. "Because he was there without asking for purchase."
But the world has ways of balancing its ledgers.
George returned to town with a court order. He had friends in the press and in the night. He was loud in the wrong rooms. He was the kind of man who learned to look like regret but know the voice of menace. He came to the mall like a storm and believed power could fix his mistakes.
A decision pressed into me like a cold coin. Lucky Goose whispered, "We can make them watch."
"Are you serious?" I asked the kitten.
"Lucky Goose is always dramatic."
Julio asked, one evening, "Do you want to go to the fundraiser? It's the charity gala in the square. They will show art and have speeches."
"They will all be there," I said. "The social light-keepers. People who watch and gossip."
"That's exactly why," Lucky Goose said. "If you want a confession, public light is useful. People in power fear the public."
I thought of the night in the box, of the warm press of a hand that had tried to own me. I thought of police files and legal weight. I thought of the necklace my mother had worn and lost. I thought of a coin in my jeans.
"Do it," Julio said, when I told him my plan. "I will be there."
The gala hall was a crystal palm in the city's throat. Red carpets, gold lights, and a sea of faces that had learned to move like their reflections.
"Smile," Julio murmured, taking my hand at the entrance.
I walked in like someone carrying a secret and a plan. The hall hummed. Champagne tinkled. People wore names like armor.
George was there. He was flawless in a suit that smelled like money and a confidence bred from never needing to stop and taste his actions. He spotted me and his face froze into a mask of confusion and then appetite.
"Not tonight," I told my hands, because they were ready to tremble. Lucky Goose sat in my clutch like a better conscience.
The charity was streaming the stage to a thousand eyes beyond the hall. There would be philanthropists and donors and the society column—sharp and hungry for drama.
"Now," Lucky Goose said.
I took the microphone when the host offered a moment for witnesses. I spoke with a voice that surprised me because it did not shake like a sudden leaf. "Good evening," I said. "I will be brief."
Gasps slid like silk across the crowd. Cameras leaned.
"You all come to raise money for safety," I told them. "For helping those who have no one. I came here to tell you what violence looks like when cloaked in power."
There was a rustle of interest. A camera turned my face into two thousand screens.
"For those who don't see," I said, "I was taken, shoved, and threatened. I called the police. The man who did this—George Montgomery—was among you. He upheld a reputation in the evening when drinks and bottles became weapons."
"He attacked me," I said. "I called the police. They did the job at the station. He was released on bail. Tonight I stand here so that you may know: being rich does not mean you are above harm. Being famous does not mean you cannot be judged."
A silence like winter lay in the room. The rich and famous blinked, their faces suddenly their own skins rather than public artifacts.
"Why are you doing this here?" someone whispered, clearly not a fan of truth.
"Because the cameras are on," Julio said beside me, low and sure. "And because there will be the press and public."
I pointed to the live feed, the scrolling names of donors, the floating faces in the screens outside the hall. "This will be seen beyond these walls," I said. "This will be seen by the people who can make difference."
That was the short, honest part. Then I told the concrete things. "We have a police report. We have witness testimony," I said. "We have photos. We have the thing every person here trusts: presence. I will not ask for pity. I will ask for accountability."
George stood like a statue that had been told it was on fire.
"You're lying," he spat.
"Mmm," I said, as if tasting a flavor. "No, I'm not."
"Security," he ordered like the world was still his to command.
"Everyone," I said, louder, and the sound carried like a bell. "This is the moment when you choose who you are. Will you be the people who hush? Or will you be the people who stand?"
The cameras closed in.
Someone in the first row rose and their face was not new to me. A woman, her eyes bright with hunger and anger, spoke. "I was there," she said. "I saw what happened. He thought he could do it, and he pushed someone else."
Others followed. A chorus of small truths spun out. People in the hall who'd been quiet for years turned their faces into newspapers and found their own headlines. Those who had been complicit because it was easier to nod, found they could not bear such a half-truth when it was presented in polish and in song.
"You're a liar," George stammered. "You want attention."
"I want justice," I said.
The press smelled the moment like a bird smells rain. Microphones created a ring of greed around George. His friends moved closer, whispers like serpents.
"Get him out," one man hissed.
"No," the woman who had spoken earlier said. She took a breath. "He's been like this for years."
Behind George, the industry leader who'd kept him friendly shifted uneasily. A thousand minds did the math. "Is this a scandal?" one man murmured. "Will donors pull?"
The board that had once propped him now scraped its conscience.
People began to record. Phones raised. Images clicked.
The host, who'd been smiling like a curated thing, froze. "Security," he said again, voice trembling, "please."
But this time, security arrived with a different hand. This time the police were there, quietly, because someone had put in a call; because the public makes a different kind of power than secret money does.
The officers approached, patient and professional. "Sir, we need to ask you to come down for questioning," one said. He asked gently but firmly.
George's face went through very human weather: arrogance, disbelief, fury, denial, then a tiny flinch.
"You're going to ruin me," he hissed, voice cracking like cheap glass. "You don't know what I can do."
The cameras did not blink. A thousand people leaned into the moment, the hall like a lung filled with witnesses.
"Please," his voice changed. "I— no. This is a mistake."
His friends began to peel away. The man who'd once been quick to laugh now watched his public currency leak. He understood, there in the raw heat, that some things cannot be insured.
He was led out. His face shifted like a man seeing a mirror of himself for the first time. From color to white to red. He began to plead.
"No!" he cried. "You're wrong. You saw wrong. I didn't—"
People who had once laughed at others' soft spots stood still. Some recorded. Some reached with a camera's curious mercy. Bystanders gasped. Some applauded—soft at first, then louder—because public morality is sometimes a chorus, and once the first voice cracks into the open, others follow.
The scene became the kind of punishment you cannot plan for and cannot ignore: the stripping of privilege in plain light. He begged the room, then the cameras, then God; his voice turned from bluster into something animal. "Please," he said, and the word was his own witness. "Please, I'll apologize. I'll do anything."
People's faces changed as they watched a man lose his breath and his bravado. He who'd counted on money and silence now had the whole city as jury. Reporters clipped his words like nails. Someone gasped and shouted about a charity board that had donated to his cause. Donors moved. The hall's atmosphere thickened like a storm.
"Stop," the woman who had been shoved said quietly. "I don't want to see him suffer like that. I want him to be stopped from doing it again."
The crowd understood and wished shame would be enough. But truth let itself be more precise than simply shame. The police had evidence. The board considered the optics. Sponsors whispered as each other. A name once immune to consequence found itself in a different ledger.
George's reaction shifted: first denial, then fury, then bargaining, then breakdown. He asked for forgiveness publicly, then for quiet mercy. He dropped to the floor and wept. Photographers snapped, and the world recorded the fall.
Later, in the months that came after, there was a public investigation, not because I wanted revenge for the heat of it, but because I wanted him to be stopped. A man who thought he could grab and silence another was watched, restrained, and then required to face more than a roomful of people. He had support and lawyers and money. He also had the weight of the truth and the unblinking eyes that now knew who he was.
"It was necessary," the woman with the quiet voice told me weeks later over coffee. "For all of us."
"Needed," Lucky Goose corrected.
I felt relief. I felt ambivalence. I felt the hollow sympathy you have when you watch someone break and you remember they once had a laugh. What I did not feel was fear.
Julio sat across the table from me the day after the gala, our hands warm with each other's presence. "You were brave," he said. "You did what you had to."
"I thought I'd have to leave the city," I confessed. "I thought I'd have to go somewhere far."
"You stayed here," he said softly. "You stayed, and you made a room safer for someone else."
Lucky Goose hopped onto my knee then and pressed its pompom tail against my palm, and in its small way it smiled.
"Did it work?" I asked. "Do you— does the system always make things go this well?"
"Sometimes the system makes you spend money," Lucky Goose said, "and sometimes it makes you spend courage. Both count."
I kept using the system. I learned to buy my life with small purchases that were sometimes dramatic and sometimes silly. The kitten kept giving tasks. Each time I fulfilled one I felt a little freer.
I wore the blue rock-patterned bra the system had helped me buy to a day when the city was wet with spring. I thought of the coin in my pocket and how far that one small silver thing had carried me.
"Will you stay?" Julio asked that evening, in an alcove of the city where the lamplight looked like a promise.
"I will," I said. "I will stay and use this strange luck to build a life."
Lucky Goose yawned like a knight who'd finished a day's duty, and the kitten curled into a neat ball across my lap.
Outside, car lights moved like a river. The one-cent coin still lived in the pocket of my jeans, smaller and duller than the memory of all it had done. I touched it and felt the simple fact of metal in my skin.
"That coin," I whispered to myself, to Lucky Goose, to the city, "started everything."
"Started, but not finished," Lucky Goose murmured. "Your story will be longer than a coin."
"Good," I said. "I like long stories."
The End
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