Infinite Cashback System

"Oh thank God." Jordan exhaled, and the breath came out unsteady, shaky, like something inside his chest had finally unclenched after holding tight for too long. His hands were trembling. When had that started? When had his hands, attached to a six-two frame that the System had reconstructed from scratch, started shaking like a dog left out in a storm? He had abs. Literal supernatural abs. And his fingers looked like they were trying to vibrate through dimensions.

"I guess what I’m trying to say," he continued, the words tumbling forward in a clumsy cascade he couldn’t quite organize, "badly, with too many words and probably none of the right ones, is that I want you. If you’ll have me. If you can handle this with Chloe. If you can handle all the weird, complicated garbage that comes with being part of whatever the hell this thing is that we’re building here."

Silence settled over the apartment like someone had hit pause on the entire world. The only sound was the low hum of his gaming PC cooling down from an afternoon League session and the faint white noise of traffic crawling along PCH seventeen floors below.

Kumiko slipped her hand free. First from Chloe’s grip, then from Jordan’s, fingers sliding out one by one. The motion was slow and deliberate and, for one terrible second that stretched into a year, Jordan’s entire body locked up because he thought she was about to stand and leave.

His stomach dropped. Not to his feet. Lower than that. Through the floor. Through the seventeen floors below. Into the parking garage foundation where it could sit next to all his other catastrophically poor life decisions. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

But Kumiko didn’t stand.

Instead, she grabbed the front of Jordan’s black t-shirt with both small fists and yanked. Hard. The kind of yank that defied physics and common sense and everything anyone would assume about a five-foot-four girl in a pink sweatshirt and pleated skirt.

Jordan’s body lurched sideways across the cushion, balance completely gone, upper body dragging toward her like gravity had personally chosen sides. His brain didn’t even have time to send the "what the fuck is happening" memo before Kumiko closed the distance and kissed him.

Her lips were soft.

That registered first, before anything else. Soft and faintly sweet, like the strawberry Pocky she’d been demolishing all afternoon while she and Chloe ranked anime protagonists by "dateability." Her hands stayed locked in his shirt, knuckles pressed against his chest, pulling him even closer with a desperate strength that felt borderline feral. Like she thought he might disappear. Like she thought if she let go for even a second, this moment would evaporate and she’d wake up back in her dorm room with nothing but a "what if" echoing in her skull.

Jordan froze.

Exactly one and a half seconds.

Then his hands found her waist.

She was so small compared to him. His palms nearly spanned the entire width of her torso, his fingers pressing into the soft pink sweatshirt that had fallen off one shoulder. Her body was warm and light against his, nothing like Chloe’s lean athletic frame. Kumiko was curves and softness, the kind of body that her crop tops and pleated skirts showcased without apology.

"Mmph."

The sound came from Kumiko, muffled against his mouth, and it sent electricity down his spine. She kissed him harder, her small fingers releasing his shirt to slide up his chest toward his neck, her nails dragging faintly across the fabric in a way that made his abs clench involuntarily.

He should probably come up for air. He should probably acknowledge that Chloe was sitting three inches away watching her boyfriend kiss her best friend. He should probably think about what this meant for their dynamic and their future and the System and the countdown timer ticking away in his pocket.

But Kumiko tasted like strawberries and her fingers were in his hair now, tugging gently at the strands near the nape of his neck, and every rational thought in Jordan’s head packed its bags and left the building.

"Nn... ha..."

Kumiko pulled back first, her breath coming out ragged and uneven. Her brown eyes were glassy, her cheeks flushed so deep they’d gone past pink into genuine crimson, and her twin tails were askew from the angle of the kiss. One pink ribbon had come partially untied and hung loose against her shoulder.

"I’ve wanted to do that for two weeks," she breathed. Her voice sounded wrecked.

Jordan’s brain was rebooting. He could practically hear the Windows startup sound. "That was... yeah. Wow. Okay."

"Eloquent," Chloe said from beside them.

Jordan turned to look at her. Chloe sat with her legs crossed under her on the sectional, her chin propped on one hand, watching them with an expression that contained so many layered emotions he’d need a team of archaeologists to excavate them all. There was warmth there. Possessiveness. A flicker of something that could have been jealousy but was tempered by the fact that she’d literally orchestrated this situation.

"Was that okay?" Jordan asked her, because he needed to know. Because Chloe’s feelings mattered more than the System, more than the countdown, more than any of the gamified bullshit his phone had been screaming about for the past three weeks.

Chloe looked at him for a long moment. Then she looked at Kumiko, whose eyes were still wet and whose chest rose and fell too fast beneath her oversized sweatshirt.

"Come here," Chloe said to Jordan.

He leaned toward her, and Chloe kissed him too. Her kiss was different from Kumiko’s. Where Kumiko had been desperate and urgent, all grasping hands and strawberry sweetness, Chloe was confident and thorough. She kissed like she did everything else: with full commitment and the unspoken understanding that she was in charge and Jordan was welcome to enjoy the ride.

Her hand cupped the back of his neck and her thumb pressed into the hollow behind his ear. Jordan’s entire body responded, a full-system reaction that had nothing to do with any gacha trait and everything to do with the girl who’d slammed her door in his face twelve days ago and then let him into her life anyway.

Chloe pulled back and wiped her lower lip with her thumb. "That was for not being a coward about this."