Infinite Cashback System

Chapter 329: 329 | The Next Time Won’t Be [CASTLE BONUS]

The word hung between them. The fluorescent overhead light buzzed at a frequency that burrowed into the silence and made it louder, a mechanical hum that filled the space where conversation should have been. Through the narrow glass pane beside the door, Jordan could see a girl walking past with a coffee in each hand, her ponytail swaying as she moved, completely unaware that six feet away a boy was dismantling his ex-girlfriend’s ego by doing absolutely nothing at all.

"I’ve got boxing at three-thirty," Jordan said, checking the time on his phone. The screen showed 3:17. "Maya doesn’t wait. She charges me if I’m late."

He pulled the door open. The hallway air was cooler and smelled like old carpet and printer toner mixed with whatever industrial cleaner they used on the floors after midnight. Behind him, Eliza sat alone in study room 3B with two iced coffees—one half-finished, one untouched and already sweating through the cardboard sleeve—and a perfectly researched bibliography that nobody was going to read tonight or any other night.

Jordan walked. He didn’t rush, didn’t look back, didn’t check his phone to see if she was watching him through the glass. His footsteps were steady on the industrial carpet, the kind that absorbed sound and left the hallway feeling empty even during passing period.

The golden notification pulsed again in his pocket, insistent and warm against his thigh like a second heartbeat.

He pulled it out at the stairwell, standing in the corner where the afternoon light came through the narrow window and turned the screen bright enough that he had to shield it with his hand.

💝 QUEST UPDATE 💝

Eliza Hartwell

Attraction: 43% → 47% (+4%)

Notes: Target asked whether user hates her. User said no and left. This is apparently the most devastating thing anyone has ever done to this woman. Attraction spike consistent with cognitive reframing: target is rewriting history to position user as "the one that got away."

Bonus: Target will text user within 90 minutes. Do not respond for a minimum of 4 hours.

Jordan pocketed his phone and took the stairs two at a time, his gym bag bouncing against his hip. The California sun hit him at the entrance, warm and immediate, and he crossed the quad toward the parking structure with the easy stride of someone whose only obligation for the next ninety minutes was getting punched in the ribs by a woman who could bench press his entire emotional baggage and then ask if that was all he had.

His phone buzzed at 3:04 while he was halfway across the lot.

Eliza: thank you for today. I know I don’t deserve it.

He read the message once, locked the screen, and tossed the phone into his gym bag where it landed on top of his hand wraps and disappeared beneath his water bottle.

Four hours. The System said four hours minimum.

Jordan decided on six. Because Chloe would appreciate the symmetry of it, and because somewhere deep in the circuitry of whatever cosmic joke was running his life, there was an algorithm that understood the single most destructive thing you could do to a girl who had spent two months ignoring your messages was to spend one evening ignoring hers. The math was brutal and perfectly balanced.

He parked at Iron Coast at 3:22. The rust stains on the sign caught the afternoon light and turned orange like oxidized copper. Through the open bay door, he could hear the rhythmic thud of someone working a heavy bag with clean, focused combinations that made the chain rattle on every fourth strike, a sound that meant Maya was already here and probably timing his arrival.

Maya stood in the center of the training floor, her braid coiled tight and her hand wraps already soaked through with sweat.

"McKnight. You’re early."

"Eight minutes."

"That’s early." Her dark eyes tracked from his face to his shoulder to the faded bruise on his collarbone. Her expression didn’t change, but something behind it recalibrated. "Clinch work. Thirty minutes. Then we spar. If you grab my hair again I will break your finger."

"That was an accident."

"It was. The next time won’t be."

Jordan dropped his bag against the wall and started wrapping his hands. The familiar loop of cotton wound between his knuckles, each pass around his thumb and across his palm grounding him in a body that belonged to him now. Not to a golden phone that graded his conversations. Not to a broken girl who texted him when her boyfriend wasn’t looking. Not to the version of himself who used to cry in parking lots over someone who never cared. The wraps were damp from yesterday, stiff in places where sweat had dried. They smelled like iron and rubber and something clean underneath that was probably just the soap he’d bought because Kumiko said it reminded her of forests. He pulled the wrap tight across his knuckles one last time and tucked the end under. His hands felt solid. Real.

Maya cracked her neck on both sides, the sound sharp in the empty gym. She settled into her stance with the kind of economy that came from ten thousand repetitions. Feet shoulder-width apart, weight on the balls of her feet, hands raised just high enough. Her entire body was a loaded spring, waiting for the moment it made sense to uncoil. She looked at him the way a mechanic might look at an engine that was finally running right, checking for the rattle that meant something inside was still broken.

"Ready?"

Jordan planted his feet on the mat. The rubber gave under his weight and pushed back, springy and solid. Somewhere in his pocket, his phone contained a message from a girl he used to love and a percentage that was climbing toward a number that would make him rich. He felt nothing about either of those facts. That was the entire point. That was the only metric that mattered right now. Not System notifications. Not rebate rates. Just whether he could keep his hands up for three minutes and remember to breathe through his nose when she came at him.

"Ready."

Maya came forward, and he stopped thinking about anything that didn’t involve surviving the next three minutes.

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