Infinite Cashback System

"Page twenty-three disagrees."

Jordan kept his hand where it was, fingers resting in the part between her twin tails. Kumiko leaned into the touch like a cat seeking warmth, her forehead eventually coming to rest against his shoulder. She smelled like fabric softener and something sweeter underneath, the particular scent of her skin that Jordan had learned to recognize over the past weeks.

"Your family accepted Chloe," she said against his shirt.

"They did."

"And the baby."

"Mostly. Dad’s still processing. Cassie’s suspicious. Mom’s ecstatic."

"And me?"

Jordan’s hand stilled.

"They don’t know about you yet."

"I know." Kumiko’s voice was small. "I’m not complaining. I understand the sequence. Chloe first. Baby second. Complicated secondary girlfriend third. The math makes sense."

"It’s not about math."

"Everything is about math." She pulled back enough to look at him, her eyes glistening but not quite crying. "Chloe explained it. If we introduce too many variables at once, the system becomes unstable. Your parents need time to integrate each piece of new information before receiving additional inputs. I am an additional input."

"You’re not an input."

"I’m a complicating factor." She said it without self-pity, just stating a fact. "I make your life more complicated. Chloe makes your life more complicated too, but she also makes it more stable. I just make it more."

Jordan cupped her face with both hands, tilting her head up so she had to look at him directly.

"You make it better," he said. "Not more complicated. Better."

Kumiko’s lower lip trembled.

"You’re doing the voice thing."

"What voice thing?"

"The voice thing where you say something sincere and I can’t tell if you mean it or if your magical throat is manipulating my neurochemistry."

Jordan laughed despite himself. "I mean it."

"The magical throat also makes you more convincing when you mean things. This is documented. Page thirty-four."

"Page thirty-four of what?"

"My notebook." She reached past him and grabbed the book from the coffee table, flipping to a section near the back. "I have an entire appendix on your voice. Chloe contributed. We compared notes."

Jordan looked at the page. It was covered in Kumiko’s handwriting, with annotations in Chloe’s sharper script. There were bullet points. There was a section labeled Observed Effects by Context. There was a hand-drawn chart with axes labeled Emotional Intensity and Proximity to Jordan’s Mouth.

"You graphed my voice."

"The data was compelling." Kumiko snapped the notebook shut. "The point is, I can’t trust my reactions when you’re using it. I need you to say things normally."

"I don’t know how to turn it off."

"Then I’ll account for it." She tapped the notebook cover. "Fourteen percent inflation factor for sincerity, based on controlled testing."

"You tested me?"

"Chloe tested you. I observed and recorded." She looked up at him with the particular intensity she got when she was about to say something important. "Jordan. I need you to tell me something. Without the voice, without the touching, without any of the things that make my brain go fuzzy."

Jordan released her face and sat back against the couch.

"Okay."

"Do you actually want me here? In your life? Not as an experiment or a complication or a third wheel but as an actual person who you actually want to be with?"

The question landed in the quiet apartment. The lo-fi playlist had shifted to something with piano.

"Kumiko."

"That’s not an answer."

"I’m getting there." Jordan ran his hand through his hair, a habit he’d developed sometime in the last month when he needed a second to think. "Three months ago I was a disaster. I spent four thousand dollars on a girl who never even held my hand. I thought money was love and attention was intimacy and if I just bought enough things someone would eventually want me back."

Kumiko said nothing. She watched him with the same intensity she brought to her sewing, like every stitch mattered.

"Then I met Chloe. And the System happened. And I started changing, and I couldn’t tell which parts were real and which parts were the app making me different. I still can’t tell sometimes." He looked at her. "But you. You showed up in my hallway with your camera and your notebook and your panic attacks and you looked at me like I was worth looking at. Before you knew about the System. Before you knew about the money. Before any of it."

"I was stalking you."

"You were documenting me. There’s a difference."

"A small one."

"The point is, you saw me when I was still figuring out who I was going to be. And you decided you wanted to be around for it. That’s not something I can inflate by fourteen percent. That’s just true."

Kumiko’s eyes had filled completely now, tears spilling down her cheeks in two neat tracks.

"I prepared for you to say something disappointing," she said, voice cracking. "I had a whole section in my notebook about managing expectations."

"Sorry to ruin your planning."

"You’re always ruining my planning." She wiped her face with the back of her hand, smearing the tears rather than removing them. "I hate it. I love it. I don’t know which one is accurate right now."

Jordan pulled her into his lap.

She came willingly, her legs settling on either side of his thighs, her hands fisting in the fabric of his henley. She was light and warm and shaking slightly, the particular tremor she got when her emotions overwhelmed her nervous system’s ability to process them.

"Mmmnhh... Jordan..."

He kissed her forehead. Then her cheek. Then the corner of her mouth where a tear had traced its path.

"I want you here," he said against her skin. "I want you documenting everything and spiraling about page numbers and stealing my shirts. I want you at the debrief tomorrow asking forty-seven questions about what my mom said and what my dad’s face looked like and whether Cassie’s threat was credible."

"Forty-seven is a lot of questions."

"You’ll have more."

Kumiko made a sound that was half laugh and half sob. Her fingers found the hair at the back of his neck and pulled, not hard enough to hurt, just enough to ground herself.

"I’m going to kiss you now," she said. "And then I’m going to cry some more. And then I need you to leave before I do something that ruins Chloe’s schedule."

"What kind of something?"

"The kind that involves page fourteen and insufficient soundproofing."

Jordan’s blood heated at the reference. Page fourteen had been a revelation.

"Chloe told me not to stay too long."

"Chloe is wise," Kumiko repeated. "And also cruel. But mostly wise."

She kissed him before he could respond.

Kumiko kissed the way she did everything else, with complete and focused attention, like the kiss was a project she intended to execute flawlessly. Her mouth was soft and tasted like strawberry balm, the same flavor he’d noticed that first time in the shower, and her tongue traced his lower lip with a gentleness that made his chest ache.

"Mmm... hahh..."

When she pulled back, her lips were swollen and her eyes were still wet and she looked at him like he’d given her something precious.

"Tomorrow," she said. "Debrief. Eleven o’clock. I’ll make pancakes."