Infinite Cashback System

Jordan lowered the bar. Sixth rep went up ugly, his right arm lagging behind his left by a fraction, the bar tilting before he corrected. Kyle’s hands ghosted under the bar without touching it.

"Speaking of plans." Kyle waited until Jordan locked out the seventh rep before continuing. "You still down for that boxing gym? I found a place in Huntington Beach that does mixed classes. Boxing, kickboxing, some grappling. They’ve got a free trial thing going this week."

Jordan’s arms burned. The eighth rep came up slow, each inch a negotiation between his muscles and the weight that wanted nothing more than to crush him flat against the bench. He locked out. His chest heaved.

He’d completely forgotten about the boxing gym.

Jordan’s brain had been running at max capacity since Friday morning, allocating bandwidth to girls and business plans and gacha traits and the low-grade guilt of a man building a relationship on a foundation of supernatural deception.

Boxing had fallen off the priority list. Which was stupid, because Kyle had been talking about this for a week and Kyle never asked for anything.

Ninth rep. Jordan’s arms felt like they were filled with wet sand. The bar crawled upward one millimeter at a time, his face turning red, veins standing out along his forearms. Kyle’s fingertips touched the bar, featherlight, just enough to let Jordan know help was there if he needed it. Jordan gritted his teeth and locked out on his own.

"Yeah." He sucked air through his teeth. "Yeah, I’m down. Today?"

"After your last class. They’ve got a four thirty session."

"Cool." Jordan lowered the bar for the final rep. His chest was on fire. His shoulders screamed obscenities in a language he didn’t speak. The bar touched down on his sternum and sat there for a moment while Jordan gathered everything he had left in his arms, his chest, his ego, and the deep reservoir of spite that had powered him through every pushup in his apartment three weeks ago when he’d been sobbing on his living room floor and flipping cards from a deck.

He pushed.

The bar moved. Slowly. Painfully. His elbows shook. His wrists ached. Kyle’s hands hovered closer, ready to grab. Jordan’s face contorted into something between agony and defiance as the bar crept past the sticking point, then accelerated through the last few inches to lock out with a final, triumphant clank against the rack.

Jordan sat up gasping. His tank top was dark with sweat from collar to hem.

"Clean set," Kyle said. "Your form’s getting better. Another two weeks and we’re putting three plates on."

Three fifteen. Jordan filed that goal away next to "build streaming empire" and "figure out how to date two women without destroying everything." The list was getting long.

"We’re bringing Leo too," Jordan said.

Kyle’s expression went flat. "Leo said he has a stomachache."

"Leo says he has a stomachache every Monday morning."

"His exact words were ’bro my intestines are staging a revolution’ followed by a green face emoji, a skull emoji, and a picture of a toilet."

Jordan pulled out his phone and opened the group chat. Leo’s message sat at the bottom of the thread, timestamped 5:47 AM, which meant the supposed intestinal revolution had woken him up before dawn. Or more likely, Leo had stayed up until 5:47 AM doom-scrolling through Alexis’s Instagram and decided that morning gym was incompatible with his lifestyle of expensive fast food and self-pity.

Can’t save them all, Jordan thought.

But the thing was, he could try.

"He’s coming," Jordan said. "Drag him if you have to."

"He’ll complain the entire drive."

"He complained the entire time he ate that salad last week and he still ate it."

"He also complained about the gym for the entire five minutes he was here before he tried to bench the bar and gave up."

"Right. So boxing is different. Boxing is cool. Boxing is something Leo can tell Alexis about at karaoke next week when he’s pretending he’s been doing it for months."

Kyle considered this for a moment. A slow grin spread across his face. "That’s manipulative."

"That’s motivational strategy."

"Those are the same thing."

"Only if it doesn’t work."

Kyle laughed. The sound was loud enough that the auburn-haired volleyball girl looked over again, this time with more obvious interest. Kyle didn’t notice. Kyle never noticed. The man possessed the situational awareness of a golden retriever at a tennis ball factory and the romantic instincts of a brick.

Jordan typed a message into the group chat.

JORDAN: Boxing gym 4:30. You’re coming.

LEO: bro i literally cannot my stomach

JORDAN: If you need to throw up you can throw up at the boxing gym. They probably have a bucket.

LEO: THATS NOT A SELLING POINT

JORDAN: Free trial. No commitment. Just show up and punch stuff for an hour.

LEO: i hate punching stuff

KYLE: That’s because you’ve never punched anything that wasn’t a keyboard

LEO: ...

LEO: that was mean

KYLE: Was it wrong though

LEO: no

JORDAN: 4:30. I’ll pick you up at 4.

LEO: what if my stomach is still

JORDAN: Then you throw up in the parking lot and walk inside like a man. Bring water.

A full minute of silence. The typing indicator appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.

LEO: fine. but if i die its on both of you.

KYLE: Deal.

Jordan pocketed his phone. The morning crowd had thickened since they started, more students filing through the turnstiles with ID cards and gym bags and the half-conscious expressions of people who would rather be sleeping but understood that their bodies would not maintain themselves through wishing and Red Bull. Jordan had been one of those Red Bull zombies four weeks ago. The memory of that version of himself felt like reading someone else’s biography.

His mind was already cycling through the day’s priorities. Economics at nine. Math at ten. Then a gap before Sociology at one where he could potentially catch Brooke if she was on campus. He needed to loop her into the streaming empire concept, not as talent but as the analytics brain behind the operation. Brooke could run numbers and optimize content schedules with a ruthlessness that would make Dr. Ashford proud. She’d already demonstrated knowledge about the creator economy that exceeded anything Jordan could fake, and her awkward genius energy would translate surprisingly well to certain internet demographics.

Then there was Alexis. Jordan needed capital for the business entity, and while his System balance sat healthy enough for day-to-day expenses, launching a proper LLC with branding, website, legal structure, and initial marketing required real money. Alexis had money. Alexis had connections. Alexis had the kind of social influence that could get a brand noticed overnight through a single Instagram story viewed by forty-three thousand followers who bought whatever she recommended.

Alexis was also a girl who slept in his shirt and blushed when he called her princess and described her ideal man in a karaoke bar using specifications that matched Jordan’s exact physical description down to the dirty blonde hair and vocal ability.

That particular variable complicated the equation.

Kyle tapped the bar. "You want another set or you done?"

Jordan looked at the bench. Looked at the loaded bar. His chest and arms ached with the deep, honest soreness of muscles that had been forced to work for the first time in their pampered lives and resented every second of it.

"One more."

"That’s what I like to hear."