Infinite Cashback System

The voice came from his right. Bright, warm, delivered at a volume calibrated to cut through ambient store noise without becoming a shout. Professional cheerfulness with actual human warmth underneath.

Jordan turned.

The girl standing at the greeting station beside the entrance was short. Not Kumiko short, but shorter than average, maybe five-two in her work sneakers. Her dark brown hair was pulled into a messy bun that looked deliberately undone in a way that probably took deliberate effort, loose strands framing a round face with big hazel eyes and a nose ring, tiny silver stud on the left side.

She wore the standard Micro Center polo, tucked into high-waisted black pants, and the polo did absolutely nothing to disguise the fact that she was built like every anime character Jordan had spent his teenage years pretending he didn’t stare at on Crunchyroll.

The fabric strained across her chest in a way the Micro Center uniform designer clearly never accounted for, the buttons around the second and third position fighting a war they were losing by the hour. Her name tag read SOPHIA in block letters, slightly crooked, like she’d pinned it on while walking.

Sophia held a tablet and a smile that could sell extended warranties to a dead man.

"Do you guys need help finding anything today?"

Her eyes found Jordan first. That was normal. He was the tallest person in the immediate vicinity by a good four inches. Her attention stayed on him for maybe a beat longer than customer service protocol required. Then it moved to Chloe, then Kumiko, registering the full picture of two pretty girls flanking a tall guy in an electronics superstore on a Sunday afternoon.

"We’re good, thank you." Chloe’s voice had an edge so faint you’d need a microscope to detect it. She stepped forward and to the left, placing herself slightly between Jordan and the greeting station. The movement was small enough to qualify as accidental. It was not accidental.

"We know where everything is," Kumiko added from Jordan’s right.

Jordan blinked.

That was new.

Kumiko hadn’t spoken a word since the parking lot confession of mutual silence. She’d been clutching that Pocky box like a lifeline, eyes glazed, brain clearly operating on minimal power. But the moment a girl in a polo shirt said hello to Jordan, Kumiko’s vocal cords rediscovered their purpose with remarkable speed.

"Oh, awesome!" Sophia’s customer service smile didn’t waver. She was good at her job. "Well, if you change your mind, I’ll be floating around. We’ve got some deals on peripherals today if you’re building a setup."

"We already built the rig," Kumiko said. The sentence came out fast and a little too firm, like she was establishing territorial boundaries on a nature documentary. "We’re just getting peripherals and accessories. Audio equipment. Lighting. Webcam. The basics."

Sophia’s eyes dropped to the tablet in her hand, then tracked back up to the trio blocking her greeting station. "That’s amazing! I should mention we just got a fresh shipment of the Shure MV7 Plus in our audio section. It’s been super popular with the streaming crowd lately. Absolute game-changer for vocal clarity. I’d be happy to show you guys where we keep them and go over the specs if you’re interested."

"We’re fine."

The words came from two mouths simultaneously.

Chloe and Kumiko froze mid-sentence, the unified rejection landing between them and the employee like a brick dropped from shoulder height. The silence that followed stretched just long enough to become noticeable. Chloe’s head turned, a slow pivot that ended with her blue-streaked hair shifting across her shoulder as she found Kumiko standing three feet to her right. Kumiko’s head turned too, her twin-tails swinging with the momentum as she registered Chloe’s presence like a radar dish locking onto an unexpected signal.

Something wordless happened in the space between them.

Jordan, standing two feet behind both of them and equipped with an allegedly enhanced ability to read emotional subtext courtesy of a gacha trait he’d pulled Thursday night, understood exactly none of it. Their faces conveyed completely opposite messages. Chloe looked like someone who’d just noticed a typo in an email she’d sent three hours ago and was deciding whether it mattered enough to issue a correction. Kumiko looked like someone whose internal CPU had been running fifteen browser tabs simultaneously and twelve of them had just crashed at once.

But the words had been identical. Same timing. Same inflection. Same instinctive rejection of a third party entering their orbit.

Which meant some part of their operating systems had aligned without conscious input, a synchronization that happened below language and above logic.

"Okay then!" Sophia backed up half a step, her customer service smile still holding but her posture shifting into retreat mode. She’d been working retail long enough to recognize the social weather patterns of Southern California and know when to evacuate before the storm hit. "I’ll be hanging out near the keyboard section if anything comes up. Enjoy your shopping experience!"

She pivoted on one sneaker and vanished into the maze of displays, her messy bun disappearing behind a wall of graphics cards and motherboard packaging.

Jordan stood at the entrance. The air conditioning blew. The clicking of sample keyboards provided ambient rhythm.

"That was something," he said.

"What was something?" Chloe resumed walking toward the audio section without looking back.

"Nothing." Jordan followed. Because what else was he going to do.

Kumiko fell into step beside him. Her shoulder came to the midpoint of his upper arm, and the top of her head barely cleared the display shelves they passed. She still hadn’t opened the Pocky. Her fingers worked the plastic wrapping, rotating the box end over end, but never actually tearing it.

Jordan dropped his voice. "You good?"

Kumiko’s head snapped up. Her brown eyes, massive and round behind whatever emotional processing system was currently overloading her circuits, locked onto his face. Pink bloomed across her cheeks, the kind that started at her cheekbones and spread toward her ears with the speed of spilled paint.

"I’m perfect! Everything is great! I love Micro Center! They have the best selection in the tri-county area and their return policy is very consumer-friendly!"

Jordan stared at her.

Kumiko stared back.

"Okay," Jordan said.

"Okay," Kumiko repeated.

They walked.

Chloe had already reached the audio section and was examining a wall-mounted display of microphones arranged by price point and brand. Her blue streak caught the overhead fluorescent light as she tilted her head to read the specifications card beneath a Blue Yeti X. She looked completely focused, completely normal, completely like a girl who was shopping for professional audio equipment and thinking about nothing else.

Jordan didn’t buy it for a second.