Chapter 38: Another Woman?!

Chapter 38: Chapter 38: Another Woman?!

Garrett tapped the notification.

[MAJOR TASK UNAVAILABLE]

[FINANCIAL QUALIFICATION INSUFFICIENT]

[HOST DOES NOT CURRENTLY MEET THE REQUIREMENTS FOR A MAJOR TASK.]

He stared at the screen.

How’s that possible? A hundred thousand pounds isn’t enough?

He looked at the notification again, hoping he’d somehow read it wrong.

He hadn’t.

"I have a hundred thousand pounds sitting in my account and somehow..." he muttered. "...that’s still not enough?!"

A student walking past glanced at him before continuing. Garrett ignored her.

The system didn’t explain anything else.

Of course it didn’t.

[RECOMMENDATION: COMPLETE MINOR TASK.]

[TAP ACCEPT TO REVEAL]

Garrett looked at the message for a moment before tapping accept.

If the system wouldn’t let him take the major task, there wasn’t much else he could do.

[MINOR TASK GENERATED]

[OBJECTIVE: ESTABLISH A GENUINE ROMANTIC CONNECTION WITH ANOTHER LADY WITHOUT LOSING EMILIANA.]"

[TIME LIMIT: 8 DAYS.]

Garrett read it twice.

"What the hell is happening?" He said out loud to anyone who cared to listened, visibly perplexed.

He didn’t like it.

"No."

He said it without hesitation.

Another woman?

He’d only just started figuring out what he was doing with Emiliana. Things had finally become simple between them, or at least simple enough.

Now the system wanted him to add another person to the situation.

"Why?"

The screen changed.

[THIS TASK IS REQUIRED FOR ROMANTIC PROGRESSION.]

Garrett frowned.

"That’s not an explanation."

There was no response.

He waited. Nothing.

"Right."

He lowered the phone slightly.

Helpful.

He wasn’t sure what the system expected him to do with that answer. He already had Emiliana. He wasn’t looking for another relationship, and he certainly hadn’t planned on having two at the same time.

Yet the system had given him eight days.

Garrett looked at the countdown again.

Eight days.

That was plenty of time to figure out what the hell it wanted.

At least, he hoped it was.

The screen changed again.

[CANDIDATE ANALYSIS IN PROGRESS...]

Garrett waited.

A few names appeared briefly before disappearing.

Then the system stopped.

[CANDIDATE SELECTED]

[CANDIDATE: FREYA HUGHES]

Garrett went still.

Freya?

His neighbour.

The girl who lived nearby. The one he’d known for a while and occasionally ran into around the building.

And then he remembered Daniel. Daniel liked Freya.

Garrett had known that for some time. His friend had told outrightly that he was interested in her.

He looked at Freya’s name again.

Seriously?

Out of everyone the system could have chosen, it had picked the one girl that could make things complicated with Daniel.Things would have been much easier if Daniel didnt know about his interests with Emiliana.

Garrett rubbed his forehead.

Daniel is going to kill me. The thought came naturally, Then another one followed.

Why Freya?

Garrett stared at the screen, waiting for the system to give him some kind of explanation.

It didn’t.

The name remained there.

FREYA.

And for the first time since receiving the system, Garrett had the uncomfortable feeling that it knew something he didn’t.

Garrett kept walking, but his attention was still stuck on one word.

He tried to focus on the road ahead, but his mind kept going back to the system’s choice. Freya had been his neighbour for a while. He knew her well enough to talk to her, but not well enough to understand why the system had chosen her.

Then Emiliana came to mind.

He thought about the day at the park. The way they had started talking and somehow kept talking for hours. He remembered how comfortable things had become between them. There had been no need to keep finding things to say. They could simply sit together and enjoy being around each other.

He remembered what she had told him about Brian. He remembered her being honest with him, even when she was clearly nervous about saying it. Then there was last night and this morning, waking up beside her and seeing her panic when she realised what time it was.

Garrett slowed slightly as he thought about it.

Do I actually like her?

The question had been sitting somewhere in the back of his mind for a while.

He didn’t have a simple answer.

He liked being around Emiliana. He liked talking to her. He liked the way she looked at him when she thought he wasn’t paying attention. He had enjoyed spending time with her long before yesterday.

But there was still one thing he couldn’t ignore.

The system had brought them together.

It had given him objectives involving her from the beginning. It had pushed him toward her, rewarded him for getting closer to her, and now it had given him another task involving someone else.

So how much of this is actually me?

Garrett didn’t like the question.

He liked Emiliana. That much felt true.

Whether his feelings had grown naturally or whether the system had influenced him more than he realised was something he didn’t have an answer for yet.

He wasn’t going to pretend he did.

I’ll figure it out eventually.

For now, there was another problem.

Freya.

And the task attached to her.

[TIME LIMIT: 8 DAYS.]

Garrett looked at the countdown again.

Eight days.

He didn’t want to do this.

That much was obvious.

He had just started a relationship with Emiliana, and now the system was telling him to develop a romantic connection with another woman. It wasn’t exactly the kind of complication he had been hoping for.

He considered ignoring the task.

Then he remembered the £100,000 reward from the previous mission.

The system had already changed his life in ways he still hadn’t completely understood. Walking away from it now wasn’t a decision he could make casually.

Garrett sighed.

Great.

He put the phone back into his pocket.

The system could wait.

He needed to get through today first.

But the problem wasn’t going away.

Freya was still the selected candidate and Daniel liked her.

This is going to be awkward.

He kept walking toward campus.

Freya had no idea what the system had just decided.

Daniel had no idea either.

And Emiliana certainly didn’t know that Garrett had just been given a task involving another woman.

Garrett wasn’t sure which part of that situation was going to cause him the biggest problem.

He reached into his pocket and felt his phone through the fabric.

Eight days.

He still didn’t know what he was going to do.

But for the first time, Garrett was beginning to understand that the system wasn’t simply going to make his life easier.

It was going to make it more complicated first.

And apparently, Freya was where the next complication started.