Three days had passed.
"All of the money... gone."
Kyle had used almost everything he received from the quest to clear the utilities and rent that had piled up. Now only a hundred dollars remained—barely enough to keep himself fed. He still couldn’t believe how quickly one and a half months of salary had disappeared.
"Where the hell is the system when I need it?" he groaned.
Ever since he completed the quest, the system had gone completely silent. No messages, no windows, nothing. Anxiety gnawed at him. He had only just started to feel hopeful, and now the thing had decided to ghost him.
"Should I just get a part-time job? Something is better than nothing. I can’t keep applying to places and waiting around for replies forever."
Money was too tight. The idea of part-time work, something he had always avoided, forced its way into his thoughts. He used to tell himself a graduate with decent grades and skills shouldn’t be stocking shelves or working a register—it felt embarrassing. But embarrassment wouldn’t pay the bills or fill his stomach. Pride had to take a back seat.
---
"Alright, you’ll be on the night shift—eight to two. That work for you?" the store owner asked.
"That works. I can start tomorrow if that’s okay."
The owner nodded.
Kyle had landed a night-shift position at a grocery store as cashier and stocker. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was better than nothing. With the system still silent and no responses from the companies he’d applied to, sitting idle while debts piled up wasn’t an option. He needed steady money for his EMIs at the very least. The pay was decent, and the hours weren’t bad—two in the morning was around the time he usually stayed up anyway.
He went home, dropped onto the floor, and called out, "Open System Screen!"
Nothing happened. No sound, no interface. It was as if the system had never existed.
"Was it all just a dream?" he muttered.
"No... it definitely wasn’t. At least not the money." He shook his head, rejecting the thought.
He pulled up his bank app and stared at the five-thousand-dollar deposit he had already spent on rent and utilities. The video he had uploaded was still online. Everything had been real. So where the hell had the system gone?
"Whatever. No point stressing myself out over it." He sighed and decided that if the system was real, it would show up again on its own.
---
K-Mart
Kyle stepped inside and immediately noticed he wasn’t the only one working the floor. Another employee stood behind the counter.
"Sup. You must be the new guy."
It was a girl—and not just any girl. She looked like she had walked straight out of one of those viral "model versus real life" edits. Long, dark-brown hair with subtle caramel highlights fell in soft waves past her shoulders. Sharp, almond-shaped eyes the color of warm honey flicked over him with casual confidence. Full lips curved in a slight smirk, and her figure was impossible to ignore—curvy in all the right places, the kind of body that filled out even a simple work uniform like it was designed for her. A natural baddie, the type that turned heads without even trying.
"Y-yes! I’m the new guy," Kyle managed, frozen for a second as her looks hit him full force.
’Who the hell is she? Did God decide to drop an angel in a grocery store to accompany me?’ His heart hammered against his ribs.
"Whatcha lookin’ at? Changing room’s in the back—go get ready already." She tossed a key toward him and jerked her chin toward the staff area.
*Clank.*
The sound of the key hitting the counter snapped him out of it. His cheeks burned red as he nodded quickly and hurried toward the back, praying she hadn’t noticed how hard he’d been staring.
"Cute," the girl murmured under her breath, watching him go.
*What the hell is wrong with me?!*
Kyle slammed his forehead lightly against a locker, heart still racing.
’Get it together... I can’t mess this up on the first day.’
He forced himself to calm down, changed into the work uniform, and headed back out to the checkout counter.
The night shift was quiet. Barely any customers came through, so there wasn’t much work to do. Kyle sat behind the counter most of the time, deliberately avoiding eye contact with the girl beside him. He kept to himself, only stealing the occasional glance when he thought she wasn’t looking. Talking felt too risky on his first day—he was certain he’d end up embarrassing himself somehow—so he stayed silent and pretended to be busy with nothing.
"So," the girl said suddenly, turning toward him with an amused tilt of her head, "how long do you plan on staying quiet?"
Since he clearly wasn’t going to start the conversation, she had decided to do it herself.
"W-what? I’m not silent," Kyle replied a little too quickly.
She raised one perfectly arched brow, honey-colored eyes sparkling with quiet laughter. Her long dark-brown hair shifted over one shoulder as she leaned an elbow on the counter, the soft caramel highlights catching the fluorescent lights.
"Really? You’ve been sitting there like a statue for almost an hour. Name’s Lira, by the way. You’re Kyle, right? Boss mentioned it."
"Y-yeah... Kyle." He cleared his throat, forcing himself to meet her gaze for half a second before looking away again. "Nice to meet you."
"You always this nervous, or am I just special?" Lira teased, a small smirk playing on her full lips.
Before Kyle could scramble for an answer, a familiar translucent window suddenly flickered into existence right in front of his face.
[That’s exactly why you’re still single, Host.]
"What the hell are you doing? No, where the hell were you?" he said to the system like an angry father talking to his kid.
"Poor boy... Looks like you got embarrassed by my tease."
She interpreted his silence as embarrassment, which wasn’t entirely wrong, but it also wasn’t completely correct.
To keep the conversation going, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a slim pack of cigarettes, tapping one free.
"Want one?" she offered casually, holding it out toward him.
Kyle blinked, still half-distracted by the system window. "Isn’t smoking against store policy?"
Lira shrugged, already placing the cigarette between her lips. "It’s fine. No one’s coming this late. Besides, sharing a smoke is good bonding, don’t you think?" She flicked a lighter, the small flame briefly illuminating her honey-colored eyes and the soft caramel highlights in her dark hair.
After taking a slow drag, she exhaled to the side and glanced at him again.
"So what’s your story, anyway? You look like you should be working some office job, not stocking shelves on the night shift. What happened?"
*****
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