Infinite Cashback System

Chapter 319: 319 | This Makes It Official [GT BONUS]

He kept his hand there for a three-count, then lifted it.

She blinked twice, slowly, and looked up at him with enormous damp eyes and the expression of someone who had just been told the most terrifying thing in the world was also their favorite thing in the world.

"That’s not," she started.

"Fair?" he said.

"I was going to say legal." Her chin wobbled again. "I get to live with you."

"You get your own space. And you’re twelve feet away."

"You’re twelve feet away," she repeated, like she was testing the measurement. Like she needed the number to be real.

"And on the other side of you is your studio," Chloe said, from the towels, "which means you can stream in the middle of the night without waking us up, which is a structural improvement for everyone."

Kumiko made the noise again. The vowel sound. It lasted longer this time.

"I have to text my mom," she said, and then immediately started crying for real, the leaking, surprised kind, both hands back over her face. "Ahh, no, hm, I’m not, I’m not sad."

"We know," Jordan said.

"She’s going to, she’s going to ask why I’m moving and I’m going to have to explain that my boyfriend and my, my," she stopped. Looked at Chloe. "What are you. We didn’t, we haven’t."

Chloe set down the towel she was folding and turned around. She looked at Kumiko for a moment with the particular expression she wore when she was deciding something, the one that looked neutral from the outside and cost her something on the inside, and then she walked over and took Kumiko’s face in both hands and kissed her once, soft and deliberate, on the forehead.

Kumiko made a sound that was barely audible.

"Same," Chloe said, and went back to the towels.

Jordan processed this. The System did not buzz. There was no notification, no percentage update, no golden banner congratulating him on acquiring a found family at nineteen. The apartment was just quiet except for the dryer making its 2011 noises and Kumiko standing in the kitchen with both hands pressed to her own face and tears running down to her wrists and the most demolished expression he’d ever seen on a human.

He went and got her a glass of water. She accepted it without looking, drank half of it, and then leaned against the counter and started laughing with the crying, the kind that happened when your body ran out of lane and had to merge everything together.

"Okay," she managed, "okay, I need a minute."

"Take two," Jordan told her.

"I’m going to text Chloe-chan later about the kiss and I need you to know I’m already writing the entire speech."

"I know."

"I’m going to include diagrams."

"I assumed."

Kumiko drank the rest of the water and set the glass down and wiped her cheeks with her hoodie sleeve and looked at Jordan with red eyes and a smile that was genuinely, completely unmanufactured. Not the performance of joy she ran sometimes, not the bubbly brand personality, just her, seventeen years of loving things too hard all concentrated in one face.

"When do I get the key," she said.

"You already have Chloe’s key."

"I need the key from you."

Jordan pulled his key ring out of his pocket, worked her copy of Chloe’s key off the secondary ring where Chloe had added it three days ago, and handed it to Kumiko. She held it in both hands and looked at it the way she looked at the jellyfish at the aquarium, with the specific attention of someone archiving a thing for permanent storage.

"This is going in the notebook," she said.

"Obviously."

She opened the pink notebook to a fresh page and put the key in the center and traced around it in pencil and then wrote Jordan-kun’s key in her careful handwriting underneath it, the letters rounded and meticulous. Then she closed the notebook and hugged it to her chest and looked up at the two of them, Jordan with his coffee and Chloe with her towels and the dryer going thwump thwump thwump behind her, and said, with perfect seriousness:

"I want the room with the better windows."

Chloe said, "They’re the same windows."

"I want the windows that get the morning light."

"Kumiko."

"I have very specific lighting needs for my skincare routine," Kumiko said, with total dignity, and Jordan turned around and started laughing into the cabinet before she could see it.

By noon the laundry was done and Kumiko was sitting on Jordan’s couch with her notebook open and a list of what she needed to move, which was already three pages long and included, on the fourth line, my Hatsune Miku figure that is NOT coming if it’s going to live in a box. Jordan was eating cereal over the sink because neither of them had gotten to the grocery store and Chloe was on the phone with Brooke explaining the living arrangement with the calm efficiency of someone presenting a budget proposal, saying things like studio consolidation and address rationalization while Brooke said things like I see and the HOA may have opinions and I’ll add it to the organizational chart.

Kumiko looked up from the notebook.

"Jordan-kun," she said.

"Mm."

"Are you happy."

He ate another spoonful of cereal. Looked at the kitchen, the clean counters, the towels folded in a stack because somebody had done them, the System notification still sitting unread in his pocket offering a Platinum Gacha he would get to eventually, the Whirlpool with its 2011 damage still vibrating through the tile from the dryer cycle.

Chloe caught his eye from across the room. She had the phone against her shoulder and she was looking at him with the tilted-head expression she wore when she was waiting for him to do something stupid, and he gave her the half-smile that still went slightly wrong on one side because he’d had it since he was eleven, and her mouth went flat in the way that meant she was not laughing at him.

She absolutely was.

"Yeah," Jordan said. "I’m happy."

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