Chapter 493 | Lost Points for Ambiance

Chapter 493: 493 | Lost Points for Ambiance

Jordan stared at the gold panel until his eyes burned. Three-twelve in the morning, Chloe’s breath warm on his ankle, and the System wanted him to fund the escape of a girl whose family could buy a small country if they got bored of Newport.

He read it again.

Fund her independence. Establish a financial safety net.

His balance sat at eighteen thousand and change. Six months of Alexis’s lifestyle cost more than his entire account. The math didn’t work. The math was laughing at him from somewhere in the distance, probably wearing a Rolex.

But the System had never given him a quest he couldn’t complete. Brutal, humiliating, designed to make him question every choice that led here, sure. Impossible, no.

The reward line bothered him more than the math. Slot 3 at seventy-five percent. Pay for her freedom, and the System would hand her to him with a bow on it. He didn’t like what that made the money, and he liked even less how fast his brain had started doing the arithmetic anyway.

He minimized the panel and opened his notes app.

ALEXIS INDEPENDENCE FUND (working title, needs something less pathetic)

Monthly costs to identify:

Rent? Does she even pay rent? Probably lives at home

Car insurance on whatever German engineering she drives

Phone bill

Clothes (oh god the clothes)

Food (see: the foam comment)

Hair/nails/whatever rich girls do to look like that

Miscellaneous rich person expenses I can’t even imagine

Funding mechanisms she won’t hate:

Employment (Chloe mentioned brand side needs someone)

???

????

I have no idea how to make a Van Der Berg take money

Don’t let Chloe pay for it

He saved it. The panel pulsed once, as if the System approved of him at least admitting the problem, and faded.

Through the wall, silence. She’s never slept in a room with someone who didn’t want something from her.

Next door, the wealthiest person he knew was asleep on a dumpling pillow she hadn’t paid for. He did not have a spreadsheet for that. He suspected Chloe didn’t either, which was the part that scared him.

He thought about waking her. She would have a legal pad out in forty seconds and a number in five minutes. She was also asleep for the first time all weekend, one hand on her stomach and her mouth open. He let her sleep. The problem could have one night of him being bad at it.

He put the phone face down. Sleep came thin and restless, full of spreadsheets and cat ears and a blonde girl in a parking lot asking him what he wanted.

Morning arrived with the smell of coffee and the sound of Chloe swearing in Korean.

The bed beside him was empty, the duvet thrown back in the pattern Chloe always left when she woke up annoyed. Sunlight came through the factory windows in thick bars. Downstairs, a pan hit the stove.

6:41 AM, courtesy of Morning Person, punctual as a landlord. The quest still waiting where he’d left it.

He pulled on sweats. His shoulder ached where she’d bitten him. Good sore. The kind that meant somebody wanted him enough to leave evidence.

Chloe stood at the stove in his black henley, hair in a messy bun, glasses crooked. She was making eggs angrily, cracking shells with more force than strictly necessary.

"Morning."

"Rice cooker is broken." She didn’t look up. "The one thing I asked the universe for this morning was functional rice, and the universe said no."

The display showed a vaguely threatening error code. Jordan unplugged it, waited three seconds, and plugged it back in. It flickered and went back to normal.

"You fixed it by turning it off and on again?"

"Works for most problems." He leaned on the counter. "Sleep okay?"

"No." Another egg died. "I dreamed Kumiko gave Alexis my notebook and Alexis used it to write a Yelp review of our relationship. Three stars. Lost points for ambiance."

"That’s weirdly specific."

"Dreams are liars." She stirred in sharp, jerky strokes. "How many are we feeding?"

"Four."

"Four." Like the number had personally offended her. "I’ve never cooked breakfast for four people in my life. My mother made breakfast for two, and half the time she forgot the second person was me."

Jordan stepped behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. She went stiff for half a second, then recognized him and softened. No heat. Nothing activated. He just held on.

"Kumiko texted me last night."

The stirring slowed. "After ten?"

"One in the morning."

"She’ll confess herself, you know. Rule five. She’ll tell me before the eggs are done."

"She said to tell you gently."

"This is gently?"

"This is me holding your shoulders. It’s the gentlest I’ve got."

"What did she say?"

"Alexis fell asleep on the dumpling."

The spatula stopped. Chloe stared at the eggs as if they’d revealed something terrible about existence.

"She gave her the dumpling."

"You mentioned that last night."

"I’m mentioning it again because it’s still true this morning and I still don’t know what to do about it."

He pressed his thumbs into the knots at the base of her neck. No skill. Just the pressure any boyfriend could give. Her head dropped forward on a sound that was half sigh, half surrender.

"I’m being stupid," she said.

"You’re being human."

"Then here’s a human suggestion. You cook for four, and I count for four. You don’t have to watch everybody’s bowl at once."

"You can’t count."

"I can count to nine."

She elbowed him, not hard. The next egg went into the pan with considerably less violence.

"Same thing."

Through the wall, the latch on 403 clicked. Footsteps, and Kumiko’s voice, bright despite the hour.

"Good morning, good morning, I smell eggs and I brought reinforcements!"

"Reinforcements," Chloe said under her breath, and cracked one more egg.

Chloe straightened. By the time Kumiko pushed through the door to 404, the mask was back.

Kumiko bounced in first, lavender cardigan over pink sleep shorts, twin tails already ribboned. Behind her came Alexis, and Jordan had to work to keep his face neutral.

The cat onesie was gone. Last night’s silk pajamas, wrinkled and missing the top button, the frayed black cuffs of his henley peeking out at the wrists. Hair loose and uncombed. Without makeup she looked younger.

She looked like a girl who had slept in a room where nobody wanted anything from her.

Chloe looked at her too. Jordan watched her take in the missing button, the hair, the cuffs, and file all of it somewhere he wasn’t allowed to see. Then she reached up and got down a fourth bowl.

"Alexis-chan ate half the pocky I keep in my nightstand," Kumiko announced, like breaking news. "She said she wasn’t hungry but her body disagreed, so I told her bodies are smarter than brains."

"I ate three sticks." Alexis’s voice was sleep-hoarse, the edge missing. "That hardly counts as half."

She said it to Chloe, Jordan noticed, not to Kumiko. Reporting to the person who counted.

"The package only had six left, so mathematically it was half, and I have the receipts." Kumiko produced her pink notebook from nowhere. "Page forty-seven, pocky consumption tracking."

"You track how much pocky you eat?"

"I track everything. Dr. Nakamura says patterns reveal truths we’re too scared to speak aloud." She kicked her feet on the stool. "Also I have a graph. Do you want to see the graph?"

"No."

"You say that now, but the graph is very compelling."

Alexis eyed the coffee pot. "It isn’t nine yet."

"It’s seven-oh-four," Chloe said. "You can have tea."

"I don’t really—"

"You can have tea."

Alexis had tea. She held the mug with both hands and didn’t complain about the brand.

Chloe plated four even portions on the island with chopsticks and small bowls of last night’s banchan. She set one directly in front of Alexis.

"Eat."