Infinite Cashback: My Wealth Rebate System

Sarah left her apartment with a simple plan

buy a complete charger set and go straight home. That was the whole itinerary.

Her old charger had finally surrendered after weeks of being bent, twisted, wrapped around itself, and generally treated with the specific casual cruelty electronics were never designed to survive.

The cable had frayed near the connector, the adapter had started running suspiciously hot, and replacing just one piece felt like actively daring the universe to finish the job.

A full set, then. Simple and efficient. A plan with zero room for complications.

She’d barely made it to the end of the street before her own brain, apparently bored of cooperating, veered somewhere else entirely.

I still don’t have his number

Sarah frowned at herself, genuinely betrayed by her own train of thought’s.

"...Seriously?"

She had spent the better part of yesterday negotiating a truce with her own brain

no more thinking about Jason, not until we happened to run into each other again

It was the kind of policy that sounds reasonable right up until you’re the one enforcing it.

Apparently, her brain hadn’t attended that meeting.

She slipped her hands into her pockets as she walked.

It wasn’t even that she wanted to text him.

Okay, maybe a little.

That wasn’t the point.

The point was that if she did want to which she didn’t she obviously couldn’t do that, making the whole thing infinitely more annoying.

She let out a quiet breath.

"Nice job."

A motorcycle rolled past, pulling her attention back to the street. She glanced into the window of a clothing store as she walked by and caught her own reflection.

She looked... normal.

Good.

Because she refused to become the type of person who smiled to herself in public over a man. That was a slippery slope with a name, and the name was unwell.

...

The hug came back to her anyway, uninvited, like it had been waiting behind a corner for its turn.

"Oh, come on."

Sarah rubbed her forehead.

"This is getting ridiculous."

She tried redirecting her thoughts to other things like her work and her schedule.

Whether she’d remembered to water the little plant by her window.

The plant lasted all of eight seconds before Jason wandered back into her head, casually ignoring every attempt she’d made to evict him, at this point he had better squatter’s rights to her brain than she did.

She sighed.

"This is why people make fun of crushes."

The sentence was out before she’d cleared it with any part of herself that might’ve objected.

A beat later, she froze suddenly realising what she said

"...I’m not admitting that to anyone."

Especially not herself.

She had been walking for a few minutes and now the electronics shop came into view at the end of the block.

The faded sign still hung above the entrance, and the little OPEN placard leaned at the same crooked angle she remembered from the last time she’d stopped by.

Perfect, buy the charger and go back home.

No unnecessary detours, a plan so simple even her brain which was currently on strike, couldn’t ruin it.

She reached for the handle and pushed the door open and the bell above it gave a bright, familiar jingle.

Sarah looked up.

Someone standing at the counter turned at the exact same moment and her steps stopped.

Jason?!

-----

Jason turned fully toward the door and for a brief moment, neither of them spoke.

Sarah still had one hand on the handle, the bell above the door finishing its cheerful jingle as the sound slowly faded into the quiet hum of the shop.

Whatever was written on his face right now was doing a poor job of looking calm which was fair because hers wasn’t winning any awards either.

Of all the places, of all the times.

Apparently the city wasn’t nearly as big as people liked to pretend it was. It was, in fact, the size of one slightly crooked electronics shop.

Then Sarah smiled, not the polite kind people gave strangers.

The kind that reached her eyes before she seemed to realize she was doing it.

"Hello!"

A small laugh escaped her.

"Jason!"

Jason found himself smiling back before he’d consciously decided to.

"...Hey."

Strange, somehow, seeing her here felt unexpectedly nice. A kind of nice that should’ve come with a warning label, given how the rest of his week was shaping up.

The feeling lasted exactly one second.

---

Sarah Whitmore

Age: 19

Attraction: 31%

Current Rebate Multiplier: ×1.55

---

Jason resisted the urge to sigh.

Seriously?

He’d almost managed to look at her like a normal person. Then the system barged in, pinning percentages over her head like it was conducting market research.

The timing of a smoke alarm going off during barbecue. Technically useful but spectacularly unwelcome.

Thanks. I’ll pretend I didn’t already notice she was standing there.

He mentally dismissed the screen. The numbers disappeared and only Sarah remained.

Much better.

"What are you doing here?" Jason asked as she walked closer.

She lifted the small shopping bag she’d brought with her before realizing it was still empty.

"My charger finally gave up." She spoke with the mild frustration of someone recounting a personal betrayal. "The cable was already hanging on by optimism, then this morning it just stopped working. The adapter has been acting suspicious for a while too, so I figured buying only the cable was probably asking for another problem next week."

She shrugged.

"So I’m getting a complete charger set. I’d rather replace everything now than end up with my phone dying somewhere and have to explain that I wasn’t ignoring people. I was just defeated by cheap electronics."

Jason nodded.

"Planning ahead usually costs less than fixing the consequences afterward."

"Exactly." She pointed at him as though he’d just validated months of research. "See? Someone understands."

Then she smiled.

"I’d like to believe the charger had a good life."

"It survived longer than most of them do."

"I know." She sighed dramatically. "It fought bravely. It deserves a respectful retirement."

Jason glanced toward the display of boxed chargers.

"I don’t think chargers usually get retirement ceremonies."

"They definitely should."

Before he could answer, Max looked up from behind the counter.

"Sarah." He called out, introducing himself into the conversation

She turned

"I told you weeks ago that charger set was a knockoff." He gave her a look that carried the quiet satisfaction of someone whose prediction had come true.

The specific smugness of a man who’d been waiting months to say "I told you so" and had finally been handed the perfect occasion.

"I honestly didn’t think it would last this long." Max added

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