Jason stared at the message on his screen.
Sarah: Hey
That was it. No context, no explanation, just the kind of opener that could mean anything from I’m fine to I’ve thought about this and I’m never coming back to your apartment again.
But a small part of him was still relieved that she texted. He hadn’t been sure she would, not after the way she’d left, hand already on the door before he’d even finished asking her to stay.
He was still deciding how to reply, thumb hovering over three different openings that all sounded either too casual or too much like he’d been sitting here waiting, when the phone buzzed again.
Sarah: got home safe btw
Ah. There it is.
The actual point of the first text, apparently, delayed by half a second like she’d typed it, second-guessed the order, and sent the important part second.
He almost smiled at that, the small, specific evidence that she’d been just as unsure how to open this as he currently was.
Jason: good. was starting to plan a search party
Sarah: lol no need to. i walk fast when i want to
Jason: noted. I’ll add that to the file
He watched the three dots appear, disappear, appear again, and found himself oddly invested in whatever was taking her three attempts to write.
Sarah: sorry for leaving like that
There it was. He read it twice, the same way he’d read the system’s rewards twice, like a second pass might reveal something the first one had missed. It didn’t, not really, it just sat there, small and a little bare on the screen, an apology with no explanation attached to it.
She’s apologizing for the wrong thing.
That was his first thought, and it arrived fast enough that he almost typed it exactly like that before catching himself and softening it.
Jason: you don’t need to apologize. probably me anyway. I’m sorry for stealing that one from you
He meant it as an easy out for her, a place to land if she wanted one, the kind of thing that let both of them agree to not examine it further tonight. He was fully prepared for her to take it.
Sarah: it’s not you
Sarah: and you didn’t steal anything. I promise
Jason: okay
He didn’t push. He’d already decided that earlier, standing in his own doorway watching her leave, and nothing about a phone screen changed the decision.
Sarah: we’ll talk later. properly. just not tonight
Jason: sure. whenever is good for you
He looked at that line after he’d sent it, wondering if it read as easy as he meant it to, or if it read like he was just as unsettled as she clearly was and doing a slightly better job of hiding it over text than she’d managed in person.
Sarah: goodnight
Jason: yeah. goodnight
He set the phone down on his chest again, the same spot it had been resting a few minutes ago, and stared at the ceiling.
Eight hours he thought. A scheduled gym session and a purple pill doing god knows what to my body while I sleep.
Tomorrow should be a normal day. I’m begging
Jason’s eyes opened at exactly 6:24 a.m., a full minute before his alarm even started its first ring, and for a second he just lay there, blinking at the ceiling, waiting for the usual internal argument to begin.
It didn’t come.
No grogginess dragging at the back of his skull, no bargaining with himself for five more minutes, none of the low-grade resentment he normally reserved for mornings on principle.
He rolled onto his side, stretched until something in his back gave a satisfying, painless pop, and sat up like his body had simply decided cooperation was the plan for today.
"Huh," he said, to the empty room. "That’s new too."
He swung his legs off the bed, walked over, and silenced the alarm a second before it actually went off, which felt like an unnecessary flex his own reflexes hadn’t earned but he’d take it anyway. He checked the time out of habit.
6:25.
Wait. He did the math without really meaning to, the same instinct that had made him lay out the night’s events like chess facts on a board.
Ten p.m. to six a.m. was eight hours exactly. Add the extra twenty four minutes and that was well past the threshold.
So where’s the reward.
He flexed his hands, checked his arms, glanced at himself in the mirror across the room. Same face. Same slightly-too-good posture from last night.
Nothing new that he could immediately identify, which meant either the pill had been a placebo, a scam, or something that hadn’t finished processing yet.
That’s great. Opened a mystery box, ate an oddly colored pill I found inside it and the mystery is whether anything actually happened.
[Reward 2: Physical Optimization II has taken effect]
[Please observe.]
Jason froze mid-thought. "Observe what, exactly."
The system, predictably, offered no further clarification, because apparently specificity was a feature it activated only when it felt like it. He looked down at himself again, more carefully this time, actually checking instead of glancing.
It took a second to find it. Then it took considerably longer to process it.
In his pants, he could feel it now.
They were longer. Not dramatically, not cartoonishly, but unmistakably, visibly longer than they’d been yesterday.
He quickly brought his hands down to his waist now holding his pants dragged it forward a bit to confirm if what he just felt now was real and it was
Holy shit!
The proportions of his dick suddenly slightly unfamiliar, like trying on someone else’s gloves and realizing halfway through that they actually fit.
"That’s..." He pulled his hand deeper to grab it for himself, turning it slowly, checking it from three different angles like a new angle might make it make more sense. "That is genuinely bizarre."
A slow grin started somewhere he wasn’t proud of and spread before he could stop it.
Okay. Okay, actually, this is kind of great. But what’s the point, it currently will have no use. I get no girls and the last one I thought I had just get fucked up by me yesterday. And you were there watching it too.
[Confirmed measurement increase: 5 inches to 7 inches.]
Jason stared at the notification for a solid five seconds, then looked at his own hand again, then back at the screen, doing the kind of math a man does when he genuinely cannot believe the number is real.
"I’m sorry," he said out loud. "Seven inches now? That’s a pornstar level dick"
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