Infinite Cashback System

Chapter 245: 245 | The Manager’s Hands Are More Perceptive Than My Own Brain

The treatment room existed in a space between reality and fever dream.

Warm light filtered through rice paper screens, casting the room in shades of amber and gold. A padded massage table occupied the center of the space, covered in pristine white sheets that probably cost more than Jordan’s monthly grocery budget.

Cedar-scented steam rose from a small stone fountain in the corner, and the faint sound of water trickling over smooth river rocks filled the silence. Candles lined the windowsill, their flames barely moving in the still air.

Jordan lay face-down on the table wearing nothing but a towel across his lower half. The cotton pressed against his skin, warm from a heated cabinet Ayaka had retrieved it from before instructing him to undress and position himself while she prepared the oils.

He heard her return before he saw her. The whisper of fabric against polished wood. The soft click of a bottle being uncapped. The scent of something warm and herbal, sandalwood maybe, or white tea, filling the space around him.

"Your muscles are extremely developed for someone your age." Ayaka’s voice came from somewhere above his right shoulder. Close. "Do you train frequently?"

"Every day for about four weeks."

"Mmm." The single syllable conveyed more than most people managed with entire paragraphs. "You carry significant tension in your trapezius and along the thoracolumbar fascia. Your rhomboids are inflamed. And here..."

Her fingers found his right shoulder blade. Warm oil spread across his skin as she pressed her thumb into the muscle with a pressure that made Jordan’s entire spine light up.

"Nngh—"

"Here," Ayaka continued, as if his involuntary grunt was simply part of the background ambiance, "you have a particularly severe adhesion. This is consistent with repetitive striking motions. Boxing, perhaps?"

"How did you—"

"The tension patterns are distinctive." Her hands worked outward from his spine in long, deliberate strokes. Her palms spread the oil across the entire surface of his back, the heat from her touch sinking through his skin and into the muscle beneath.

It reached places that hadn’t relaxed since the Tune Up trait first activated his dormant athletic potential. The warmth burrowed deep, loosening fibers that had coiled tight during weeks of daily training.

"Your body has been rebuilt recently. The muscle development is uniform. Comprehensive. This suggests rapid transformation rather than gradual progression."

Jordan’s face was buried in the headrest cushion. The fabric smelled like lavender and something else. Something sweeter, almost floral, but with an underlying warmth that reminded him of incense. "You can tell all that from touching my back?"

"I can tell a great many things from touch, Master Jordan." Her voice carried that same serene quality, like she was discussing the weather rather than cataloging his physiological secrets.

Her fingers found the knot below his right shoulder blade. The one he’d felt nagging at him for three days straight after an overly ambitious session with the heavy bag in the campus gym.

She pressed into it with authority. Pain bloomed outward from the contact point, sharp and clean and somehow exactly what his body needed.

Jordan bit the inside of his cheek to keep from groaning as Ayaka worked the adhesion with her thumbs. She applied pressure in small circular motions that broke apart the tension fiber by fiber, the oil allowing her skin to glide across his with calculated precision.

"Haaa... that’s..."

"Painful?"

"Good painful."

"The best kind." Her hands traveled lower, working along the muscles flanking his spine. She alternated between broad palm strokes and targeted thumb pressure, the combination suggesting either decades of professional training or supernatural ability. Knowing the System and its fondness for gacha rewards that transcended normal human limitations, probably both. Maybe a massage trait that came pre-installed in whatever metaphysical package created Ayaka in the first place. "Your lower back is compensating for your hip flexors. You sit in lecture halls too long without stretching afterward."

"You’re reading my life story through my muscle tissue."

"Bodies are honest in ways that people rarely are." Her thumbs pressed into the two dimples above his waistband and Jordan’s hands gripped the edges of the table. "They record every impact, every posture, every habit. A good masseuse does not simply release tension. She reads the narrative that tension tells."

Ayaka repositioned herself, and Jordan felt the shift in her proximity rather than saw it. The warmth of her body radiated against his left side as she leaned into a long stroke that traveled from his lower back to his neck, her forearm pressing flat against his spine and applying force with her body weight. The pressure forced air from his lungs in a sound that was embarrassingly close to a moan.

"Fuuuck..."

"You are responding well." Ayaka’s voice carried a smile Jordan couldn’t see. "Most first-time clients resist the deeper work. You accept it naturally."

Her hands returned to his shoulders, kneading the muscle on both sides of his neck with her fingers while her thumbs traced the ridges of his cervical vertebrae. Jordan’s Tune Up enhanced physique meant his muscles were denser than a normal eighteen-year-old’s, more resistant to pressure, but Ayaka compensated by leaning her full weight into each stroke. He could feel the soft press of her body against his arm as she worked, the warmth of her through the thin fabric of her kimono.

"Your breathing has changed," Ayaka observed. "More relaxed. The parasympathetic response is engaging."

"In English?"

"Your body is surrendering."

She found another knot, this one buried deep in his left trapezius, and attacked it with her elbow. The sensation sent a shockwave through Jordan’s shoulder that made his toes curl against the table padding.

"Mmmnnn... God..."

"Breathe through it." Her voice was closer now. Directly beside his ear. The warm herbal scent of the massage oil mixed with her own fragrance, something floral and complex that Jordan’s brain filed under extremely dangerous. "The pain means the adhesion is releasing. Your body has been holding this tension for quite some time."

"About four weeks."

"Since your transformation began." It wasn’t a question.