Infinite Cashback System

Jordan finished the croissant, brushed the crumbs off his hands, and went upstairs to shower.

The water ran hot, and he stood under it longer than he needed to, letting it work on the bruise Maya had planted across his shoulder that morning. Purple going yellow at the edges.

She’d read his hip injury before he stepped into the ring, thrown a body hook that landed on the exact spot she’d damaged Thursday, and then commented on the bite mark on his chest like it was a scheduling conflict.

He kept thinking about that. The way she’d looked at Kumiko’s teeth marks and said someone had a temper. No jealousy in it. No curiosity. Just the flat observation of a woman who read bodies for damage and moved on. But she’d said it, and she’d walked away, and Kyle had made it into a whole thing in the parking lot.

Jordan turned the water off.

He wasn’t thinking about Maya. He had a family dinner in nine hours where he had to explain seventeen pounds of missing bodyweight to a sister who did this for a living, and a girlfriend downstairs carrying his kid, and a second girlfriend one wall over talking herself into being fine, and a third girl in Newport who’d called him at eleven-thirty at night and dropped her phone when he used the voice.

He absolutely did not have room to think about Maya Santos.

He toweled off and got dressed. The nice dark henley Chloe had left on the closet door. Dark jeans. The Chelsea boots she approved of. He examined himself in the bathroom mirror the way he’d started doing without noticing, cataloging the changes like they belonged to someone else. Sharp jaw. Shoulders that filled the shirt. Eyes that had stopped looking like they were apologizing for the crime of existing.

Cassie was going to spend all afternoon trying to reverse-engineer this. Credit statements. Timeline analysis. She’d build a presentation and walk into Giuliano’s with a folder full of inconsistencies and no thesis, because the thesis was a golden app that gamified his love life and she’d never believe that in a million years.

Good luck, sis. The math doesn’t close.

His phone lit up on the counter.

Kumiko. A photo first, the way it always started. Her at her sewing table, a half-finished Sally cosplay draped across her lap, thread the color of dead leaves. Then a message.

Chloe-chan came over. She explained about tonight. I’m okay!!! I promise I’m okay. I don’t want to be the girlfriend who makes family dinner weird. Your mom needs to focus on you and Chloe and the baby news and I would just be a whole extra person to explain and that’s a lot.

Then, thirty seconds later:

I did cry a little but it was a good cry not a bad cry. Chloe-chan held my hand. She’s really good at the holding thing even though she pretends she isn’t.

Then:

Page 27. I’m allowed to be sad about something and okay about it at the same time. Dr. Nakamura says those aren’t opposites.

Jordan sat on the edge of the bed and typed back.

You’re not extra. You’re mine. Tonight’s just complicated in a way that isn’t about you.

Three dots appeared instantly. Vanished. Appeared. He could see her drafting, deleting, drafting.

I know. I do know. My brain knows it and mostly my chest knows it too. Just sometimes my chest is slower than my brain.

Jordan looked at the message for a long moment. Then he stood, walked to the wall he shared with Unit 403, and knocked twice.

The music on the other side stopped. Footsteps. A pause where he could picture her standing there deciding whether to open the door or pretend she hadn’t heard.

The door opened. Kumiko stood in the hallway in one of his black shirts, the one she’d claimed two nights ago and never given back, her twin tails loose and slightly crooked, a smear of thread across one cheek. Her eyes were pink at the rims. The good cry, apparently, still left evidence.

"You’re supposed to be getting ready," she said.

"I’m ready." He reached out and put his hand on top of her head, right at the part between the tails, and the trait rolled through his palm warm and immediate.

Kumiko’s whole body went soft. Her breath hitched. A small sound escaped her throat, somewhere between a hum and a whimper, and her shoulders dropped as the anxiety drained out of her like someone had pulled a plug.

"Nnh," she managed. "That’s cheating. You can’t just. I had a whole. I was being mature about it."

"You’re still being mature about it." He traced his thumb along the part in her hair, and she swayed toward him, forehead dropping against his sternum. "You’re just being mature about it while I do this."

"Mmnn." Her hands found the front of his henley and curled into the fabric. "I hate you. I love you. Both. At the same time. Page 27."

"Page 27," he agreed.

She stayed there against his chest for a moment, breathing him in, and then she tilted her face up. Her eyes had gone glassy in a different way, half-lidded, her lips parted. "Chloe-chan said I can come to the debrief tomorrow. She said you’d tell your family and then tomorrow you’d tell me everything that happened and I could ask questions."

"That’s the deal."

"How many questions?"

"As many as you want, Kumi."

Her whole face did something complicated, joy and relief and the specific overwhelm that lived in her nervous system whenever something she wanted turned out to be real. She rose onto her toes, one small hand flat against his chest for balance, and pressed her mouth to the corner of his jaw. Soft. Lingering. Then lower, to his throat, just above the henley collar where the fabric couldn’t hide the mark she’d left three days ago.

"Kumi."

"I know you have to go." Her lips moved against his skin, and her voice had dropped into that lower register she used when her brain went quiet. "I’m not going to make you late. I just." She kissed the mark. "I wanted to give you something to remember while you’re pretending to be normal for your sister."

Her teeth grazed his throat, gentle, right over the bruise, and Jordan’s hand tightened on the back of her neck before he made himself let go.

"That’s not fair," he said. His voice had gone rough. The Alluring Whisper crept in at the edges without permission, and Kumiko’s knees actually buckled, a small sound punching out of her.

"Neither is the voice." She stepped back, cheeks flushed, twin tails askew, his shirt hanging off one shoulder. "Go. Be normal. Come back and tell me everything." She pointed at him with the seriousness of someone laying down law. "And if your sister is mean to Chloe-chan I want a full report so I can write a strongly worded letter. On the nice paper. With the cats in the corner."

"I’ll take notes."

"Good." She smiled, the whole thing, eyes crinkling. "I love you, Jordan-kun."

"I know."

She made an outraged noise and shut the door in his face, but he heard her laughing on the other side of it, and that was worth more than anything Cassie could dismantle over pasta.

Jordan stood in the hallway a second longer, throat still warm where Kumiko’s mouth had been, the trait’s echo fading behind his ribs. Down the hall, Chloe’s door was closed. She was in there with Kumiko or on her way back, running numbers, building the presentation that would out-analyze his sister’s presentation, because that was who she was.

Two girlfriends. A kid on the way. A sister running background checks. A dinner in nine hours where he had to explain a transformation he couldn’t explain.

Three months ago he’d have spiraled. He’d have written forty follow-up texts and deleted them and sent them anyway and hated himself for it.

Now he checked the time, decided he had space to run the daily quest and hydrate and maybe sleep for an hour, and walked back into his own apartment like a man who had somewhere to be.

The math didn’t close for Cassie. It never would.

But it closed for him.