Infinite Cashback: My Wealth Rebate System

They cut across the quad toward the library’s east wing, Vivian setting a brisk pace that Jason matched without much effort, and somewhere around the second flight of stairs she launched into her briefing without any prompting.

"Okay, so, quick rundown before we get there." She held up one finger. "Priya’s not there anymore, obviously, wrong Priya, this is a completely different person, don’t panic."

"I wasn’t panicking."

"You looked like you were about to." She held up a second finger before he could argue the point.

"First one you’ll meet is Nadia. She’s the reason the group exists in the first place. Started it because she wanted an A and decided the fastest way to get one was to force other people to be accountable alongside her. Very intense. Treats flashcards like they personally owe her money."

"Sounds terrifying."

"She’s not terrifying, she’s efficient. There’s a difference. You’ll like her once you stop being scared of her, which takes most people about a week."

Vivian held up a third finger, already moving on.

"Then there’s Bree. Complete opposite energy. Nadia runs the group like a military operation, Bree shows up whenever she remembers the meeting exists and somehow still knows more than everyone else because she reads everything twice and never talks about it."

"So she’s quiet."

"She’s quiet the way a librarian who secretly knows every secret in the building is quiet. It’s unsettling in a good way." Vivian grinned at her own description, clearly pleased with it.

"And then me, obviously, who you already know is loud and correct roughly forty percent of the time, which apparently is still enough to be useful."

"Forty percent feels generous."

"I’m being humble. It’s actually higher." She pushed open the door to a small study room tucked at the end of the hallway, glass walls on two sides, a round table already occupied by two girls who looked up the second the door opened.

The one closest to the door had her laptop angled at a precise forty-five degrees, three different colored pens lined up beside a notebook that was somehow already half filled despite the fact that, as far as Jason knew, the class had only just started covering this material. She looked up, sharp-eyed, immediately assessing him the way a hiring manager assesses a résumé.

"You’re late," she said, to Vivian, not to him.

"I’m exactly on time. This is Jason. He’s joining us."

"I didn’t approve a new member."

"You don’t have veto power, Nadia, this isn’t a dictatorship."

"It’s functionally a dictatorship. I just haven’t formalized the paperwork." Nadia’s eyes flicked to Jason, evaluating him for another second before apparently deciding he passed whatever silent test she was running.

"Fine. But if you slow down the pace, you’re out. I don’t do remedial explanations twice."

"Noted," Jason said, deciding not to argue with the terms.

The second girl, tucked into the corner with her feet pulled up onto her chair and a battered paperback textbook open on her knees, hadn’t looked up yet at all, though a small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth like she was tracking the whole conversation despite the appearance of not paying attention.

"That’s Bree," Vivian said, gesturing toward her.

Bree finally glanced up, unhurried, studying Jason with a quiet, careful attention that felt entirely different from Nadia’s brisk assessment, slower, more thorough, like she was reading a whole paragraph instead of just a headline.

"You’re the one who thinks he’s already failing," she said.

Jason blinked. "How do you know that."

"Vivian texted the group chat on the way here." Bree’s smile widened slightly, small and private. "She was very confident about it. Said, and I’m quoting, ’bringing a hopeless case, be nice.’"

"I said be gentle, not be nice, there’s a difference," Vivian corrected, dropping into the empty chair beside Nadia without any apparent embarrassment at being called out.

"Hopeless case. Thanks for that," Jason said, pulling out the remaining chair and sitting down.

"You’re welcome. Accuracy matters." Vivian grinned at him, entirely unrepentant.

Nadia slid a stack of printed notes across the table toward him without any further preamble, already back in business mode.

"We’re on Chapter four. Anchoring bias, framing effects, the usual heuristics unit. If you haven’t read it, catch up tonight. I’m not slowing the group down for one person."

"I’ll catch up."

"Good." She turned back to her notebook, clearly considering the introduction phase officially concluded.

Bree, meanwhile, was still watching him with that same quiet, patient attention, and after a moment she reached over and slid something across the table toward him too, a small folded square of paper that looked distinctly out of place among Nadia’s color-coded printouts.

"What’s this," Jason asked, unfolding it.

Inside, in small, careful handwriting, was a single line. *You’ll do better than you think. You answer questions like someone who already believes they are wrong, which usually means you actually know more than you give yourself credit for.*

He looked up at her, genuinely thrown. "You just wrote this. Right now."

"I write a lot of things right now." She shrugged, already looking back down at her book, entirely unbothered by having handed a stranger a folded note within the first two minutes of meeting him. "I read people fast. Occupational habit."

"That’s a little unsettling."

"Most people say that." She turned a page, apparently done with the conversation for now, though the small smile stayed.

Vivian leaned over toward him, lowering her voice slightly, though not nearly enough to actually keep it private. "She does that to everyone. Wrote me one on day one too. Freaked me out for like a full week."

"What’d yours say."

"Not telling. Some secrets are sacred." She grinned, straightening back up as Nadia cleared her throat pointedly, clearly signaling that social time was over and study time had officially begun.

The next twenty minutes moved briskly, Nadia running through the material with clipped efficiency, occasionally firing a question directly at Jason to test whether he was actually following or just nodding along.

Bree occasionally interjecting with a quiet, precise clarification that somehow always landed exactly where the group needed it, and Vivian filling every natural pause with commentary nobody had asked for but that somehow kept the whole session from feeling like a lecture.

By the time Jason actually stood to leave, ten minutes had long since become forty, and he found himself oddly reluctant to cut it short even though he’d told Vivian at the start he only had ten to spare.

"See," Vivian said, walking him to the door. "Told you you’d survive."

"Barely."

"Barely counts." She grinned. "Same time tomorrow. Don’t be late, Nadia holds grudges."

"Noted."

He left the library and started the walk home, the note from Bree still folded in his pocket, and found himself, somewhat against his own expectations, thinking about the whole afternoon on repeat. Nadia’s sharp efficiency. Bree’s unsettling accuracy. Vivian’s easy, chaotic warmth holding the whole group together without seeming to try.

Three completely different people.

He turned the thought over slowly as his building came into view.

And somehow all three of them just handed me something I didn’t know I needed. A study group. A joke. A note I probably shouldn’t be thinking about this much.

He pulled the folded paper back out once he reached his apartment, reading it again in the quiet of his own room, Bree’s small, careful handwriting sitting there in a way that lingered longer than it probably should have for someone he’d known for less than an hour.

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