Infinite Cashback System

Chapter 338: 338 | Same Energy [CASTLE BONUS]

Jordan counted.

Not because he was a good person. He’d stopped pretending that was the primary motivator for anything he did around February fourteenth, roughly the same day he accepted a quest from a magical phone to emotionally dismantle his ex-girlfriend for cash. He counted because Chloe had asked him whether he was going to, and Chloe asking a question that sounded like a question was never a question.

Five-fifty-one. The gym bag sat on top of Kumiko’s DO NOT OPEN box like a bomb that smelled like sweat and rubber. Inside it, his phone had gone dark again, Eliza’s two-message pattern completed, the second buzz a follow-up that probably read "no pressure!" or "just wanted to check in!" or some other phrase she’d typed and deleted nine times before sending. Jordan knew the pattern because he’d invented the pattern. He’d been the one sending that exact double-text to Eliza for two months straight while she ignored him from Cameron’s passenger seat.

Funny how that worked.

Kumiko’s breathing had evened out against his chest, the Headpat’s aftereffects still running through her system like the last dregs of anesthesia. Her hand had stopped clutching his shirt and was now simply resting there, fingers loose, palm warm, the kind of contact that suggested she’d forgotten she was touching him and was just existing in the same space his body happened to occupy. One of her twin tails had come partially undone, the lavender ribbon trailing down across his stomach, and the faded hickey on her neck was visible above the henley’s collar where her concealer had surrendered to the sweat of moving boxes all afternoon.

Chloe had moved to the kitchen island. She didn’t look at the gym bag. She’d made that point once and wasn’t going to make it again, because Chloe Kim did not repeat herself, ever, about anything, and if you missed the first time she said something then that was a you problem. She poured herself a glass of water from the Brita pitcher and drank half of it standing up, one hand on the counter, her weight shifted to her left hip in a way that pulled the henley tight across her back.

"Kumiko."

"Mmnghlf."

"Wake up."

"I’m awake. I’m planning the itinerary in my head. We need matching lanyards for our park tickets so we don’t lose them, and I saw a tutorial where you can embroider initials onto the—"

"You’re asleep."

"I’m PLANNING."

"You’re planning in your sleep. Get up and eat something before you crash."

Kumiko peeled herself off Jordan’s chest with the reluctance of someone being separated from a heat source during a blizzard, and the spot where her face had been was damp with tears and faintly smudged with black mascara that had transferred onto his shirt in a pattern that looked vaguely like a Rorschach test. She sat up, pushed both hands through her demolished hair, and blinked at the room like she was loading in from a different dimension.

"Food," she said, her voice still thick. "Yes. Food is a thing that I eat."

"That’s the spirit."

Jordan sat up after her, his abs protesting the movement in a way that had nothing to do with Maya’s training and everything to do with the night before with Chloe, and he forced himself not to look at the gym bag as he stood. The phone inside it was a live grenade with a thirty-day fuse, and the pin was a girl who’d taught him what it felt like to stand in a parking lot and realize that the person you’d given everything to had never considered you a person at all.

But that was three hours and thirteen minutes from now. He’d respond at nine-oh-four, exactly six hours after she’d texted, because Chloe had said six hours and Chloe’s numbers were scripture.

Right now the apartment contained two girls who needed dinner, seven boxes that still needed labels, and a mattress that needed replacing before anyone slept on it again.

Jordan pulled leftover bibimbap from the fridge and heated three portions while Kumiko sat cross-legged on the counter swinging her feet and narrating an unprompted ranking of every Disneyland attraction by emotional devastation value. Pirates of the Caribbean ranked fourth. Haunted Mansion ranked second. The number one slot went to It’s a Small World, which Kumiko insisted destroyed her psychologically every time because the song lodged in her brain for seventy-two hours minimum and created a pavlovian association with existential dread.

"That’s not what pavlovian means," Jordan said.

"The bell rings, I hear the children singing, I lose my will to live. That’s Pavlov."

"That’s PTSD."

"Same energy."

Chloe ate standing up at the counter, scrolling her phone with one hand and spooning rice into her mouth with the other. She’d pulled her hair back into a low ponytail and the blue streak hung loose against her cheek, catching the LED light from the streaming setup that Kumiko had already half-installed in the corner.

They ate in a quiet that wasn’t silent. Kumiko hummed between bites. The fridge cycled on with a low drone. Somewhere in the walls, the building’s ancient plumbing made a sound like a large man clearing his throat. Outside, the Newport skyline had finished bruising and gone fully dark, the harbor lights reflecting off the factory windows in long amber smears.

At six-thirty Kumiko announced she needed to shower and disappeared into the bathroom with an armful of products that she’d retrieved from a box labeled "SKINCARE: NON-NEGOTIABLE." The shower started, and through the door came the sound of her singing something in Japanese that sounded like it belonged in a Studio Ghibli movie about a very clean forest creature.

Chloe set her bowl in the sink and turned around.

"Tell me the number," she said.

Jordan had been wiping down the counter. His hand stopped.

"Hers," Chloe clarified. "Right now. What is it."

He didn’t reach for the bag. He didn’t need to. The notification from the library had burned itself into his visual cortex like a brand. "Forty-seven."

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