The door clicked shut behind Daniel, and the apartment settled into a different kind of quiet. Not the comfortable silence of cooking together or the charged tension of meeting her mother. Something heavier. Something that had been building since Chloe mentioned they needed to talk after everyone left.

Jordan watched Chloe cross to the kitchen and pour two glasses of water with hands that trembled slightly. She set one in front of him on the counter and kept the other for herself, wrapping both palms around it like she needed something to hold.

"So," she said.

"So."

Neither of them spoke for a long moment.

Jordan had faced down Maya Santos in a boxing ring, had stared into the eyes of men who wanted to hurt him, had walked into situations that should have broken him. None of that felt as dangerous as this moment, standing in Chloe Kim’s kitchen while she gathered the courage to say whatever she’d been holding back for weeks.

"I know you’re hiding something."

There it was.

Jordan didn’t flinch, didn’t look away, didn’t do any of the things that guilty people did when confronted with truths they couldn’t deny. He just waited, because denial would insult her intelligence and deflection would insult everything they’d built together.

"I’ve known since the beginning," Chloe continued. "Since the coffee date. Something about you was wrong. Not bad wrong, just... wrong. Like the math didn’t add up."

"What math?"

"You paid three thousand dollars to meet me. To meet Calypso." She set her water down and crossed her arms, and Jordan saw the girl who ran a six-figure empire beneath the soft pink sweater and natural waves. "Three weeks later, you’re running a content creator network, you own a hot springs resort worth millions, and you’ve got a body that looks like you’ve been training for years instead of weeks. Your grades went from C-plus to straight A’s. You went from desperate simp to... this."

She gestured at him, at all of him, and Jordan understood what she meant without needing clarification.

"People don’t change that fast, Jordan. People don’t transform that completely without something helping them. Without something... supernatural."

The word hung in the air between them.

Jordan’s phone sat heavy in his pocket, the golden app pulsing with data he couldn’t explain and shouldn’t possess. The System that tracked chemistry percentages and granted wishes and turned his pathetic life into something resembling a video game.

He could lie.

He could deflect.

He could make a joke about steroids or good genetics or finally getting his shit together.

But Chloe had just spent an entire afternoon showing him her real family, her real life, the parts of herself she protected most fiercely. She’d introduced him to her mother. She’d trusted him with the most important people in her world.

He owed her the same.

"It started on January tenth," Jordan said. "The night before I met you."

Chloe’s expression didn’t change, but her body went very still.

"I was at rock bottom. Lower than rock bottom. I’d just spent two weeks gooning in my apartment after Eliza cheated on me, and I’d blown three thousand dollars on a coffee date with an OnlyFans girl because I couldn’t imagine any woman wanting to spend time with me for free." He laughed, but there was no humor in it. "I was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about how pathetic I’d become. And I said out loud that I wanted to change. That I was done being this person."

"And?"

"And my phone lit up. This interface appeared, gold and white, like something out of a Korean manhwa. It called itself the Infinite Cashback System."

Chloe’s eyebrows rose incrementally.

"It tracks attraction. Chemistry percentages, like a dating sim. When I spend money on women I’ve registered in the system, I get cashback based on how attracted they are to me. Below fifty percent, I lose money. Above fifty percent, I profit."

"That’s insane."

"I know."

"That’s literally insane."

"I’m aware."

Chloe stared at him for a long moment, her dark brown eyes searching his face for any sign of deception. Jordan let her look. He had nothing to hide anymore, nothing except the parts he hadn’t gotten to yet.

"Show me."

Jordan pulled out his phone and opened the golden app. The interface materialized on the screen, familiar and impossible, displaying his account summary and active connections with the same clinical precision it always had.

💝 CASHBACK ∞

ACTIVE CONNECTIONS

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Chloe Kim 📍

Chemistry: 79% ▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▱▱

Return Rate: 1.58x

Last interaction: Now

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Kumiko Yamanaka 📍

Chemistry: 42% ▰▰▰▰▱▱▱▱▱▱

Return Rate: 0.84x

Last interaction: Today

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Chloe took the phone from his hands and examined the screen with the same intensity she’d applied to analyzing sponsorship contracts. Her finger scrolled through transaction histories, quest logs, trait descriptions. Jordan watched her face cycle through disbelief, confusion, and something that might have been recognition.

"Seventy-nine percent," she murmured.

"It was eight percent when we met."

Her eyes snapped to his.

"Eight percent. That’s what the coffee date was worth. Three thousand dollars for eight percent chemistry." Jordan shook his head. "The System basically called me pathetic for spending that much on someone who barely registered my existence."

"But you kept spending."

"I kept spending. And you kept... liking me. Somehow. Despite everything."

Chloe scrolled further, finding the milestone notifications and reward histories. Her finger paused on a particular entry.

"You got a fifteen hundred dollar sign-on bonus for cleaning your apartment and calling your dad."

"The System has opinions about personal hygiene."

"There’s a quest called ’Path to Becoming Adonis’ that requires you to shower with actual soap."

"I told you. Rock bottom."

Chloe looked up from the phone, and Jordan braced himself for disgust, for revulsion, for the kind of judgment he probably deserved. Instead, her expression held something closer to wonder mixed with exasperation.

"You’ve been tracking our relationship this entire time. Every date, every conversation, every kiss. You’ve been watching numbers go up like we’re a video game."

"Yes."

"That’s manipulative."

"Probably."

"That’s creepy."

"Definitely."

"Why didn’t you tell me?"

Jordan reached for the phone and she let him take it, their fingers brushing in a way that felt different now that everything was on the table. He pocketed the device and met her eyes directly.

"Because I didn’t know how. Because I was afraid you’d think I was insane. Because the System specifically forbids disclosure to registered targets in most circumstances, and I wasn’t sure what would happen if I broke that rule." He paused. "Because I was scared of losing you."

Chloe’s arms uncrossed. Her shoulders dropped slightly.

"You were scared."

"Terrified."

"Of losing me."

"Of losing everything. The System, the progress, the person I’ve become. But mostly you."