Infinite Cashback System

The bench press at Pacific Crest’s rec center weighed exactly two twentyfive pounds, and Jordan was starting to feel every single one of them on his fourth set.

His arms burned from shoulder to wrist. The bar wobbled on the upward push, then locked out with a satisfying clank as he squeezed his chest at the top. Sweat ran down his temples and pooled in the hollow of his throat, soaking the collar of his grey tank top dark. The overhead fluorescents turned everything the color of stale milk.

Kyle stood behind the bench with his hands hovering under the bar, spotting with the casual competence of someone who’d been doing this since sophomore year of high school. His dark hair stuck up at odd angles, still damp from the shower he definitely took before coming to the gym, because Kyle Perry was the kind of psychopath who showered before sweating.

"Bro, did you see Raw last night?"

Jordan lowered the bar to his chest. Controlled. Slow. The Tune Up trait kept his stabilizer muscles from shaking, but one-eighty-five was one-eighty-five, and gravity did not give a shit about supernatural body upgrades. He pressed the bar back up with a grunt that came from somewhere deep in his diaphragm.

"Missed it."

"Dude. You missed the ladder match."

"I was busy."

"With what? Your skincare routine?" Kyle’s grin was audible even from below. "Because your face has been looking suspiciously dewy lately and I have concerns."

Jordan lowered the bar again. His pecs screamed on the descent, that good burn that told him the muscle was actually working instead of just pretending. He pressed up. Six reps down, four to go.

"Cody did this insane spot off the top of the ladder where he basically flew like twelve feet sideways and caught Seth midair." Kyle’s hands tracked the bar’s path without touching it. "The whole crowd lost their minds. My roommate woke up and almost called the cops because I was yelling."

"Sounds violent."

"It was beautiful is what it was. Genuine athletic poetry."

Jordan racked the bar after his eighth rep and sat up on the bench, his chest heaving. The rec center’s morning crowd filled the space around them with the clatter of plates and the rhythmic thud of treadmill footfalls. A girl on the rowing machine two stations over kept glancing in Jordan’s direction. She had auburn hair pulled into a high ponytail and wore a Pacific Crest volleyball jersey. Jordan caught the look. She looked away fast.

His phone sat face down on the rubber floor mat beside his water bottle. The System had been blissfully quiet since he woke up at six AM courtesy of the Morning Person trait, which turned out to be the single most underrated ability in his entire inventory. He’d opened his eyes to natural light and genuine energy instead of the screaming alarm, zombie shuffle, existential dread combo that had defined every morning of his previous existence.

Kyle tossed him a towel. "So how’d you actually spend your weekend? You went dark in the group chat for like thirty hours."

Jordan wiped his face and took a long pull from his water bottle. The question required navigation. His weekend had involved building a two thousand dollar gaming PC, having sex with his girlfriend on approximately four separate occasions, giving his other girlfriend her first kiss and a headpat that apparently rebooted her central nervous system, and plotting a streaming empire while cuddling two women on a grey sectional under purple LED lighting. Standard stuff.

"Took Chloe to dinner with my parents."

Kyle stopped mid-stretch. His arms froze above his head, fingers still interlaced. His expression went through several distinct phases, starting at surprise, passing through disbelief, and settling on something that looked a lot like respect.

"Already meeting the parents?"

"Saturday night. Giuliano’s."

"That Italian place in Costa Mesa with the wine list that costs more than my textbooks?"

"That’s the one."

Kyle lowered his arms and sat on the bench opposite Jordan, straddling it backwards. His Pacific Crest hoodie bunched at the waist, revealing the kind of core definition that came from four years of disciplined training rather than a supernatural body optimization gacha pull. Kyle earned every line of muscle the hard way, which was one of the reasons Jordan respected him more than almost anyone else on this campus.

"Isn’t that a little fast? You guys have been together for what, less than a month?"

Jordan picked up the towel again and draped it over his shoulders. The honest answer was yes, it was absurdly fast, dangerously fast, the kind of velocity that should have every rational alarm in his brain screaming. Three weeks ago he was crying on his apartment floor watching League streams and burning through OnlyFans subscriptions. Now he was introducing a girl to his parents, a girl whose content he used to pay for, a girl who lived twelve feet from his bedroom wall.

But the honest answer was also that nothing about his life followed normal rules anymore. He had a phone app that tracked romantic chemistry like a stock portfolio and paid him actual money for being a decent boyfriend. Normal metrics did not apply.

"Nah." Jordan shook his head. The bar sat in the rack above him, loaded and waiting. He laid back down and gripped the knurling at shoulder width. "I don’t think so."

He unracked the bar. The weight settled into his palms. One-eighty-five pressed down on his chest with the familiar gravity of a challenge he’d asked for.

First rep. Clean. Smooth.

"She handled my dad’s interrogation like a pro. Mom loved her instantly. Dad tried to grill her about money and she shut him down so hard he actually apologized."

Second rep. The push felt heavier. His triceps complained.

"And like, I know it’s fast. I know that. But she’s..." Jordan paused at the bottom of the third rep, the bar resting a half inch above his sternum. His arms trembled. Not from fatigue. From the weight of trying to describe Chloe Kim in a sentence or two when she contained entire novels. "She’s the first person who’s ever made me feel like I’m worth something without me having to buy it."

Third rep. Grind. Lock out. Clank.

"That’s real, man." Kyle’s voice carried no irony. No jokes. Just the plain, direct warmth of a friend who’d watched Jordan’s lowest points and refused to stop showing up. "I’m happy for you."

Fourth rep. The bar moved like it was fighting back now, Jordan’s arms burning from his elbows to his shoulders as the lactic acid accumulated faster than his body could clear it. He locked out at the top and held for a second, his chest quaking, then lowered the bar again.

Fifth rep. Jordan’s arms shook on the way up. One-eighty-five had become two hundred and eighty-five somewhere around rep three, at least that’s what his muscles were telling him. He locked out with a growl that turned a few heads from the adjacent squat racks.

"Five more," Kyle said.

"Five more is a lot."

"Five more is what you signed up for. Push."