Infinite Cashback System

Chapter 358: 358 | Mr. Snuggles is Emotional Support Infrastructure

Jordan woke at five-fourteen, forty-seven minutes before the alarm Kumiko had set for him, seventeen minutes before Chloe’s brutal K-pop detonation was scheduled to rip through the loft like a small war crime. His Morning Person trait had apparently decided that Disneyland warranted an early deployment, flooding his veins with the kind of crisp, unearned alertness that made him feel like a simulation of a functional adult rather than the genuine article.

Chloe lay diagonal across the bed, one arm flung over the edge and her blue-streaked hair covering most of her face like a curtain someone forgot to tie back. She had stolen the entire blanket sometime around three in the morning, which left Jordan exposed to the February chill rolling off the factory windows, his bare chest prickling with goosebumps. She breathed with the deep, even rhythm of someone who had no intention of being conscious before her phone told her to be.

Jordan lifted himself off the mattress in stages, careful not to disturb the sleeping architect of his entire existence. His abs protested on the way up, the dull soreness from Maya’s Thursday body hooks reminding him that combat sports and marathon intimacy existed on the same spectrum of physical self-destruction, distinguished only by the company you kept and the bruises you could explain in public.

He padded down the loft stairs barefoot, the concrete cold and real under his soles, and found his phone on the kitchen counter where he had left it face-down the night before. The golden interface pulsed once when he picked it up, a subtle heartbeat of acknowledgment, and the screen populated with his morning stats.

Chloe Kim. Chemistry: 100%. Return Rate: 2.00x. Status: Soulmate. Last interaction: 11:42 PM.

Kumiko Yamanaka. Chemistry: 42%. Return Rate: 0.84x. Status: Infatuated but Guarded. Last interaction: 8:43 PM.

Jordan locked the screen and set the phone back down. He brewed coffee with the automatic movements of a man whose kitchen routine had been optimized by a woman who color-coded her spice rack and a System that graded his skincare compliance. The coffee maker gurgled. The building’s pipes groaned. Somewhere below, a car alarm began and stopped. Newport Beach at five in the morning sounded like a machine trying to remember how to function.

He poured two cups, left one black for Chloe with the handle facing left because she reached with her left hand first, added cream and one sugar to the second, and set it on the counter beside a clean glass of water with a lemon wedge floating in it because Kumiko had mentioned six days ago that lemon water helped her morning anxiety and Jordan had filed this under the same mental category as her shampoo preference, her ribbon color rotation, and the exact spot between her twin tails where his palm fit when she needed to stop vibrating.

At five-twenty-eight, three soft knocks rattled the door, followed by silence, followed by a fourth knock hard enough to rattle the frame.

Jordan opened the door and found Kumiko standing in the hallway in the predawn dark, wearing a pastel pink sundress he had never seen before over white sneakers, her twin tails perfect and her pink ribbons fresh and tight. She held a backpack shaped like a cartoon cat against her chest with both arms, and her brown eyes were enormous, wide awake, and vibrating with enough compressed excitement to power the entire Anaheim electrical grid.

"I couldn’t sleep past four-thirty."

"I know."

"I tried. I counted sheep. Then I ranked them by wool quality and got distracted."

"Come in."

Kumiko slipped past him in a rush of strawberry and vanilla, her sundress brushing his arm as she squeezed through the doorway without waiting for him to step aside. Her bare legs were smooth and pale in the hallway light, and the hem of the dress stopped about three inches above her knee, showing more skin than her usual campus outfits. She must have spent the rest of the night planning this look after he sent her to bed.

"I packed light," she announced, holding up the cat backpack. "Toothbrush. Charger. Pajamas. One change of underwear. My pink notebook. And Mr. Snuggles."

"You packed a stuffed animal."

"Mr. Snuggles has lived experience and cannot be left alone."

"I said toothbrush, charger, pajamas."

"Mr. Snuggles is emotional support infrastructure. That counts as pajamas."

Jordan handed her the coffee. She took it with both hands, brought it to her lips, sipped, and her entire face transformed, her eyes softening and her shoulders dropping two inches as warmth spread through her small frame.

"You put one sugar," she said.

"Yeah."

"And cream."

"Yeah."

Kumiko stared at the cup like Jordan had presented her with a religious artifact, her throat working on a swallow that had nothing to do with coffee. She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again.

"If you cry," Jordan said, "I’m revoking your park privileges."

"I’m not crying. My eyes are sweating. It’s a medical condition."

"It’s five-thirty in the morning."

"Eye sweat doesn’t have a schedule, Jordan-kun."

Chloe’s alarm exploded through the loft at five-forty-seven, thirteen minutes ahead of its usual six o’clock deployment, which meant Chloe had changed it last night without telling anyone. The K-pop shattered the apartment’s quiet like a mortar round, and from upstairs came the sound of a hand slapping the nightstand three times before fingers closed around the phone and murdered the music.

"I’m awake," Chloe called down, her voice carrying the flat, betrayed tone of someone who had been conscious for approximately four seconds and already resented the universe for it. "Why does it smell like coffee."

"Because I made coffee."

"Why are there two voices down there."

"Because Kumiko is here."

A pause. The sound of blankets being violently rearranged.

"It’s five-forty-seven."

"Her sheep had variable wool quality."

Chloe descended the stairs in Jordan’s gray waffle-knit henley, her legs bare from mid-thigh down, her hair a tangled disaster of black and electric blue that suggested a night of restless turning. She had not put in her contacts yet, and her natural brown eyes, smaller and softer than the blue lenses suggested, found the coffee cup on the counter without looking anywhere else first. She picked it up, drank half of it in one continuous pull, and set it down with the decisive sound of a gavel.

Her gaze moved to Kumiko, who stood by the island in her pink sundress holding her cat backpack and trying very hard not to vibrate out of her skin.

"You look cute," Chloe said.

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