The people around you may continue to believe you are decent, and their belief will become unbearable in a way hatred never could. Hatred would give you an enemy; trust gives you a mirror. Every confidence placed in you will reopen the question of what you do with another person s vulnerability when it is left undefended. Every act of generosity will remind you that there are people who could take and do not, people who encounter weakness and choose not to feed upon it, people who pass through an unlocked door without mistaking access for ownership. Their goodness will not comfort you. It will stand beside you in kitchens, offices, crowded trains and quiet bedrooms, saying nothing, needing to say nothing. You will begin to understand that innocence is not ignorance but restraint, and that the line separating you from the person you once imagined yourself to be was crossed without force, without necessity, without anyone pushing from behind. You stepped over it awake. You knew. One day the money will be gone. It will dissolve into purchases you barely remember, into fees, appetite, error, time; perhaps it will be stolen from you by someone who recognises in your caution the scent of a man who cannot ask for help. Whatever form its departure takes, it will leave without gratitude, because money has no loyalty to the ruin committed in its name. Then you will stand with empty hands and the one possession you cannot transfer: the knowledge of your price. Not the amount you stole, but the amount required to make you become the thief. That number will follow you more faithfully than any fortune. It will be present when your face changes, when your name is spoken less often, when the people whose judgment once frightened you are dead and beyond caring. There will be no final witness waiting outside you, because none is needed. The witness entered with the money. The money will leave. The witness will remain.