Infinite Cashback System

Chapter 325: 325 | Continue Doing Nothing [CASTLE BONUS]

The rest of the morning went the shape mornings had started going, which Jordan still didn’t fully trust. Bagels on the counter. Kumiko narrating her floor plan for Unit 403 with the cat-print sheets and the ring light angled in the northeast corner for the softest key light. Chloe on the phone with Brooke about lease paperwork, using the phrase address rationalization twice. Somebody’s coffee going cold. Somebody’s laundry still in the dryer from yesterday.

Jordan stood in the middle of the kitchen with a bagel he wasn’t eating. He thought about how, on January ninth, he had gone eleven entire days without speaking a word out loud to another human being.

Then he thought about two o’clock, and the bagel lost its appeal.

Econ at nine. Bluffs Hall 150, third row. Kumiko already occupied his usual left-hand seat, her frilly pastel skirt bunched up as she scribbled in a pink notepad open to a page drawn with ninety percent hearts.

Alexis Van Der Berg marched down the aisle at 8:58, her camel coat hanging open over dark blue Re/Done jeans that clung to her Pilates-sculpted thighs. Her expensive sunglasses sat pushed back into flawlessly styled honey-blonde hair. She didn’t look at him.

That was a new development. For three weeks she made a project out of staring holes into his head and being furious about his existence. Today she slid into the seat on his right, opened her Macbook, and glared at the screen like it owed her money.

She wore his gray waffle-knit henley under the coat, the familiar collar wrapping around her pale neck.

"Morning, princess."

The pause lasted long enough to furnish a living room.

"Don’t." Her tone carried all of its usual acid, but none of the volume. "Not today."

"Rough weekend?"

"Harrison sent me a calendar invite." She typed something with more force than the keys required. "A calendar invite. For dinner. With a location pin and a dress code and a note that said looking forward to continuing our conversation. We never had a conversation. He narrated his portfolio at me for forty minutes while I ate seven grams of bulgogi."

"Seven grams."

"I weighed it emotionally."

Kumiko leaned across him, her thick black twin-tails brushing his arm as she rested her pointy chin nearly on his shoulder. Her large brown eyes were wide with concern. "Alexis-chan, you should just say no."

"Kumiko, I love you, but shut up."

Dr. Jones started talking about interest rate corridors in a voice engineered to make paint drying seem thrilling by comparison. Jordan opened his notebook, dated the top of the page, and then stared at that single line for the next twelve minutes while words about monetary policy floated past without landing. Alexis sat next to him like a statue carved from resentment.

Her hands lay flat in her lap, her pink-glossed lips tugged down at the corners. She had the exact gray shirt from his laundry basket wrapped around her torso, the one she swore she sent to the dry cleaner two weeks ago.

It took him four hours last night to mentally catalog every way Eliza broke him, but he couldn’t spare thirty seconds to notice the girl sitting close enough to share his body heat who looked like she was trying to compress herself into a black hole through sheer force of will.

He took that entire train of thought, packed it into a box, sealed it, and kicked it down a mountain. He had a two o’clock meeting with an OnlyFans creator who also happened to be his Econ classmate. His bandwidth for emotional complications was spoken for.

Math at ten. Ava Moreno transformed her corner of the lecture hall into what could only be described as a disaster preparedness bunker for academic excellence.

Four notebooks spread across her desk in a perfect fan formation, each one tabbed with color-coded sections, edges lined up with geometric precision. She practically disappeared inside an oversized gray fleece hoodie that was at least two sizes too big, her dark brown hair wrestled into a chaotic bun that looked three minutes away from structural failure.

When Jordan dropped his bag on the desk next to her, she jerked like someone had fired a starting pistol directly behind her ear, sending her pen skittering across the page in a wobbly blue line.

"You sat here again," she said.

"I sit here."

"Yes, but statistically most people rotate seats within the first four weeks of a semester as social groups solidify. You haven’t rotated, which either means you’re establishing a routine or you don’t have anyone else to sit with. I don’t know which one is more concerning for you as a person. Sorry, that came out wrong. I meant it as an observation, not an insult. Oh no."

"Did you think about the job?"

"I made a document." She pushed a stapled, twelve-page printout across the desk. "It’s my concerns. There are nine of them. Number four is that I’ll accept the position and then discover I’m not qualified and you’ll have to fire me. I’ve never been fired. I ran the scenario forty times and in thirty-eight of them I cry in a stairwell."

"What happens in the other two?"

"I cry in my car." She stared down at her perfectly aligned notebooks. "The car has better acoustics."

"You’re hired."

"You keep saying that."

"You keep making documents."

Professor Nguyen started writing equations on the whiteboard at a speed that suggested she was being timed. Jordan copied the numbers down, understanding maybe half of the material. At 10:47, his phone buzzed against his thigh. He knew what it was before he pulled it out.

⚠️ QUEST UPDATE: Bitch Breaker

Target: Eliza Hartwell

Attraction: 34% → 39% (+5%)

Cause: Target has spent 71 minutes over the weekend viewing your public social media presence. Target has drafted and deleted four messages. Target has asked two mutual acquaintances about your relationship status.

Objective Two progress: Escalating.

Note: You have done nothing. Continue doing nothing. It is working beautifully.

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