Item Fifteen

At 2 p.m., six months of talks finally became ink on paper during a video call: the studio would create a collectible-card set for one of boxing history's most famous names. The framework and schedule were signed; the name, artwork, and release date were still undecided, and everything remained confidential.

The meeting itself was remarkably uneventful. Legal reviewed every clause, both sides signed and returned the documents, all in under an hour. After the call ended, the office was silent for a few seconds; then someone let out the cheer they had held in for six months. A studio of barely more than a dozen people had landed a name like this.

What deserved recording was not the signing itself, but a question repeated throughout negotiations. The other team cared most not about art or gameplay, but this: where would an ordinary fan keep the card they bought? Would they need to understand wallets and gas fees?

Each time, the studio could offer only the industry's standard clumsy answer: install a plug-in, copy down twelve words, and do not lose them. Even the people saying it did not believe it.

At that evening's retrospective, the question was copied verbatim onto the whiteboard and numbered fifteen. A celebrity's name could bring tens of millions of outsiders to the door, but the threshold remained. The chain was not ready to receive them.