Infinite Cashback System

Chapter 351: 351 | I’m Just Overwhelmed by Proximity

Kumiko stood in the hallway wearing his gray henley over pink sleep shorts, her twin tails freshly tied with lavender ribbons, her feet bare on the industrial concrete, and her arms wrapped around a pillow from her new room in Unit 403 that she had apparently carried twelve feet down the hall for reasons that would become clear in approximately four seconds.

Her brown eyes were enormous and wet and aimed directly at his bare chest with the focus of a heat-seeking missile that had locked onto its target and lost all interest in course correction. The concealer she’d applied that morning had worn off, exposing the faded hickey on her collarbone in full, and the henley had slipped off her left shoulder in a way that made Jordan’s brain produce a sound effect he would never admit to generating.

"Jordan-kun."

"Kumi."

"I can’t sleep."

"It’s four fifty-three in the afternoon."

"I can’t sleep TONIGHT. I tried. I lay in my new room in my new bed with my new pink sheets with the cats and I stared at the ceiling and I thought about Space Mountain and then I thought about you on Space Mountain and then I thought about you on Space Mountain holding my hand and then I thought about the part of Space Mountain where it drops and I grab your arm and you smell like cedar and I make a sound and people think I’m scared but I’m not scared I’m just overwhelmed by proximity and then I couldn’t breathe properly for eleven minutes so I came here."

"With a pillow."

"The pillow is for sleeping. If you let me sleep here tonight I promise I will be unconscious by nine and we can leave at five-thirty tomorrow morning and be at the parking structure by six-fifteen which gives us a forty-five minute buffer before the gates open and I’ve already planned the optimal walking route from the Mickey and Friends structure to the front gates accounting for Chloe’s walking speed and her nausea and the probability that she will need to sit on a bench near the Matterhorn for seven minutes between ten and ten-thirty."

She held the pillow against her chest with both arms like a shield and looked up at Jordan with an expression that contained zero pretense and maximum desperation, and the combination of her bare feet on cold concrete and his shirt hanging loose on her small frame and the ribbon in her hair catching the hallway fluorescent produced something in Jordan’s chest that the System could never quantify because it existed in the gap between what a number could measure and what a person could feel.

"Come inside before Miss Valentine sees you."

Kumiko made a sound between a gasp and a squeal and darted past him into the apartment, her pillow trailing behind her like a cape, and she was on his couch with her legs tucked under her before Jordan had closed and locked the door. She arranged the pillow against the armrest, opened her phone, and pulled up the Google Sheet with the air of a general reviewing battle plans before deployment.

"Okay so version seven has seventeen primary objectives and four secondary objectives and I organized them by geographical proximity within the park rather than by priority because Chloe pointed out that backtracking wastes forty minutes on average and I calculated that forty minutes is approximately two churro stops and one character photo opportunity which is an unacceptable loss of resources."

Jordan sat on the opposite end of the couch because Chloe’s rules about physical escalation pacing were still operational even if Kumiko’s eyes kept drifting from the spreadsheet to his abdomen and back with the subtlety of a neon sign.

"Walk me through it."

Kumiko’s face lit up with the intensity of someone who had been waiting their entire life to be asked that question. She turned the phone toward Jordan and began narrating with the passion and detail of a military briefing, her free hand gesturing at invisible maps and her voice climbing octaves as she reached key strategic points.

"Phase one: Rope Drop Rush. Gates open at eight. We sprint to Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge because Rise of the Resistance runs a virtual queue that fills in under three minutes and your reflexes are better than mine because you box with scary Maya-san three times a week, so you’re on phone duty. I will hold our bags and Chloe’s water bottle. Chloe will walk at a pace that doesn’t make her nauseous, which means she’ll arrive at the ride approximately seven minutes after us, so I brought her a portable chair that folds into a thing the size of a water bottle and I know that sounds fake but I bought it on Amazon and it has four point six stars."

Jordan studied the spreadsheet as Kumiko talked, genuinely impressed by the organization. Color-coded cells indicated ride priority levels. A separate column tracked dietary restrictions based on Chloe’s current condition without ever naming the condition, referencing only "stomach sensitivity" and "avoid spinning rides per protocol." Another column calculated bathroom proximity for every major attraction, a practical consideration Jordan would never have thought of but which demonstrated the kind of obsessive care that defined Kumiko at her best.

"Phase two: Morning Block. After Rise we hit Smuggler’s Run while the line is still under thirty minutes, then loop back to Radiator Springs Racers because that line hits ninety minutes by ten and we can’t afford that time sink. I mapped a food stop at Flo’s V8 Cafe at ten-fifteen for Chloe because they have plain toast and ginger ale and the seating is shaded which matters because February sun in Anaheim can still hit seventy-three degrees by midmorning."

"You checked the weather forecast."

"Hourly. For Saturday and Sunday in case we decide to do a bonus day. The hotel has a pool and I brought a swimsuit and I know Chloe bought a blue bikini at Zara during our shopping trip so she’s covered but I wasn’t sure if you own swim trunks because your dresser is mostly gym shorts and henleys that we keep stealing."

"I own swim trunks."

"What color."

"Black."

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