Infinite Cashback System

Chapter 363: 363 | My Idiot

Jordan ordered three meals, two waters, and one blue milk. The total came to sixty-seven dollars and forty-three cents for breakfast at a theme park cafeteria where the tables were shaped like cargo crates.

Sixty-seven dollars. For breakfast. At a place where you ate standing up because the seating was deliberately limited to increase throughput.

His phone buzzed. The System processed the transaction with the same clinical precision it applied to everything, showing the purchase, Chloe’s chemistry rate, and the rebate calculation.

Purchase: $67.43. Rebate: $106.54 (1.58x). Net profit: $39.11.

Jordan stared at the notification. The transaction processed completely, every digit and decimal accounted for. He’d just profited thirty-nine dollars from eating overpriced falafel in a cafeteria designed to look like a spaceship hangar, and the margin would only increase as Kumiko’s percentage continued its climb.

This was either the greatest financial cheat code in human history or the most elaborate trap ever designed by a supernatural entity with a really specific sense of humor. Six weeks of experience with the System suggested both options were simultaneously true.

Kumiko lifted her blue milk with both hands curved around the cup. Her brown eyes went soft and distant above the rim. The first sip produced a sound that existed in some undefined space between religious experience and food commercial voiceover work.

"Mmmmnh." Her lashes dropped halfway. Her shoulders curled inward like she needed to physically contain whatever was happening to her nervous system. "Oh my god. Oh my god this is incredible. This is what the Force tastes like. This is what Yoda drinks when he wants to treat himself."

"It tastes like coconut and sugar."

"It tastes like DESTINY, Jordan-kun." She extended the cup toward him with both hands, turning the straw to face his direction. Her whole face radiated expectation and absolute sincerity. "Here, try."

The cup hovered in the space between them. The straw pointed at his mouth with the accuracy of a targeting system. Kumiko’s expression contained zero irony, zero self-awareness, and approximately infinite hope that he would validate her blue milk experience.

Jordan leaned forward. He wrapped his lips around the straw. He drank.

The liquid was cold. Sweet. Mildly coconut-flavored. Aggressively, unnaturally blue in a way that suggested multiple food safety violations or extremely confident food scientists.

It tasted like a six-dollar smoothie from any Jamba Juice in Southern California, dressed up in Star Wars cosplay and priced at a thirty percent premium.

"Good, right?" Kumiko’s whole body leaned forward with the question.

"It’s fine."

"Fine means you like it but you’re pretending not to because admitting you enjoy blue milk would damage your masculine mystique."

"I don’t have a masculine mystique."

"You have enormous masculine mystique and I am documenting it in real time." Kumiko held up her phone, which displayed a new entry in her pink notebook app: Jordan-kun drank blue milk from my straw. First indirect kiss at Disneyland. 8:26 AM. He said fine which means he loves it.

Chloe ate her Endorian Tip-Yip with methodical efficiency, one hand holding the container and the other scrolling through the Disneyland app’s wait times. She’d selected the cheapest protein option on the menu without discussion and supplemented it with a side of roasted vegetables that cost eleven dollars for what amounted to six ounces of cauliflower.

"Haunted Mansion is at twenty minutes," Chloe said between bites. "If we move after our boarding group gets called, we can hit it before the line builds."

"My spreadsheet has Haunted Mansion scheduled for two forty-five."

"Your spreadsheet didn’t account for the parade routing change they posted at six this morning. The three-thirty parade blocks the path from New Orleans Square to Frontierland, which pushes everyone into a bottleneck at the Haunted Mansion entrance starting at two. If we go early, we dodge it entirely."

Kumiko’s phone came up. Her thumbs moved. Her brow furrowed. Her lips moved as she recalculated something, cross-referencing the parade map against her existing timeline, and Jordan watched the exact moment the data confirmed Chloe’s analysis.

"She’s right," Kumiko whispered, horrified and impressed.

"I’m always right."

"Version eight. I’m making version eight of the spreadsheet."

Jordan finished his falafel and tossed the biodegradable container into the themed trash receptacle that looked like a rust-patched droid. Sixty-seven dollars gone, thirty-nine dollars gained, and the day hadn’t even properly started.

At Universal, he could’ve gotten a Krusty Burger for twelve bucks and ridden the Velocicoaster twice. But Universal didn’t have Kumiko clutching blue milk with reverence or Chloe quietly restructuring someone else’s itinerary with surgical precision, and Universal definitely didn’t have both of them wearing matching Mickey ears that Kumiko purchased online and produced from her cat backpack with the flourish of a magician completing a trick.

Jordan looked at the ears. Regular black Mickey ears for himself. Pink sequined Minnie ears for Kumiko. A pair of black velvet ears with a small veil detail for Chloe, tasteful enough to qualify as fashion rather than costume.

"No," Jordan said.

"Yes," both girls said at the same time, in the same flat register, with the same absolute finality that suggested this had been discussed and decided in a group chat he wasn’t part of.

Kumiko placed the regular Mickey ears on Jordan’s head. The plastic band dug into his temples and the felt ears stuck up at angles that would’ve made any self-respecting man question his life choices. At six-two, the ears added another four inches of height and made him visible from approximately half a mile in any direction.

Kumiko stepped back, examined her work, and clasped both hands beneath her chin.

"Devastating," she breathed.

"I look like an idiot."

"You look like MY idiot. Chloe-chan, look at our idiot."

Chloe looked up from her phone, took in the full picture of Jordan McKnight standing in a Star Wars land wearing Mickey Mouse ears and a gray henley that showed the outline of every muscle Maya had punished into existence, and her expression didn’t change at all except for one corner of her mouth, which twitched upward by two millimeters before flattening.

"Acceptable," Chloe said, and returned to her screen.

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