Infinite Cashback System

Chapter 208: 209 | The Love is in the Tilting

"Yes." Kumiko said it instantly and without shame. "Yes please. Immediately. Right now. Before I burn your apartment down and we both die in a fire and Chloe has to identify our bodies."

Jordan scraped the egg remains off the stovetop and into the trash, then washed the pan in the sink with hot water and actual soap while Kumiko watched him with the expression of someone observing a religious ritual.

"You washed it FIRST? Before cooking? Is that a step?"

"It’s the step where you remove the previous egg’s corpse from the cooking surface."

"The video didn’t show that part."

"The video assumed you wouldn’t need to commit egg murder before making an omelet."

Jordan dried the pan, set it on the burner at medium heat, and dropped a proper pad of butter in. The butter melted and slid across the surface in a thin, golden layer. He cracked three eggs into a bowl with one hand each, the shells splitting clean and dropping into the trash without any fragments entering the mix.

Kumiko’s mouth fell open. "How. How did you do that. With ONE hand. I used both hands and a prayer and I still got shell in mine."

"Practice."

"You said you never cooked before Chloe!"

"My mom showed me eggs when I was twelve." Jordan whisked the eggs with a fork, adding a splash of milk and a pinch of salt. "She said every man should know how to make three things. Eggs. Rice. And an apology."

"Your mother is a genius and I love her."

Jordan poured the eggs into the pan. They sizzled on contact, the edges turning white as the center stayed liquid and golden. He tilted the pan to spread the mixture evenly, using the spatula Kumiko had launched across the kitchen to gently push the cooked edges toward the center.

"You tilt it," Kumiko said, fascinated. "The pan. You’re tilting it. She didn’t tilt it in the video."

"Different technique."

"You have a TECHNIQUE? For EGGS?"

"Everybody has a technique for eggs."

"I don’t have a technique! My technique is chaos and prayer!"

Jordan added a handful of shredded cheese from a bag he found in the fridge, watching as the residual heat from the eggs began softening the edges of the shreds before he even folded. He tilted the pan one more time, letting gravity help the omelet fold over itself in a smooth semicircle, the cheese stretching between the layers in thin translucent webs.

The exterior had reached that precise shade of golden yellow that existed between undercooked pale and overcooked brown. He gave the pan a small shake to loosen the omelet from the surface, then slid it onto a white ceramic plate in one continuous motion. The whole process, from cracked eggs to finished omelet, had taken less than three minutes.

The omelet sat there radiating heat, steam rising from the seam where melted cheese was already beginning to ooze out and pool on the plate.

Kumiko stared at it like it had personally insulted her entire bloodline.

"That’s not fair," she whispered, her voice taking on the wounded tone of someone who had just witnessed a fundamental violation of natural law. "That’s so unfair. I fought that pan for forty minutes.

Forty. Minutes. I used both hands, all my focus, and several desperate prayers to kitchen gods I don’t even believe in. And you just... three minutes... with your stupid perfect hands... and the tilting..." She gestured vaguely at the pan, at Jordan, at the universe itself. "Nobody mentioned tilting in the video."

"Here." Jordan pushed the plate across the island toward her, the ceramic making a soft scraping sound against the granite. "Eat."

"That’s YOUR breakfast!" Kumiko’s hands flew up in protest, nearly knocking over the pepper shaker Jordan had used earlier. "I made it for YOU! Well, I tried to make it for you and I produced a biohazard that may require professional disposal, but the INTENTION was for you, and now you made a perfect omelet with your perfect technique and you’re just giving it to ME? How does that make any sense? What kind of backwards breakfast logic is that?"

"I’ll make another one." Jordan was already reaching for the egg carton again, pulling out two more eggs with the same one-handed efficiency that had made Kumiko question her entire understanding of physics. "Sit down, Kumi."

The nickname slipped out. Not Kumiko. Not the full formal name with its four careful syllables. Just Kumi, soft and short and familiar, the way Chloe sometimes shortened it in texts.

Kumiko sat down so fast she nearly missed the stool.

She ate the omelet in small, deliberate bites, her bare feet swinging six inches above the floor because the stools were too tall for her without platforms. Every few bites she made a humming sound of appreciation that vibrated in her throat and nose. The coffee maker beeped, and Jordan poured two mugs, adding cream and one sugar to Kumiko’s after she described her preference as "sweet but not Starbucks sweet."

Jordan plated his own omelet and sat across from her at the island. Morning sun filled the apartment through the factory windows, warming the concrete floor and turning the chrome kitchen fixtures into small bright stars. The smoke had dissipated. The toaster still held its two jammed bread slices in their crooked formation. The butter stick sat on the counter with its single spoon gouge.

Kumiko had egg yolk on her right elbow. She hadn’t noticed.

"This is really good," she said between bites, pointing her fork at the omelet with genuine wonder. "Like, genuinely good. Not ’good for a boy cooking’ good. Actually good. Restaurant good."

"It’s eggs and cheese."

"It’s LOVE eggs and cheese. There’s a difference. The love is in the tilting."

Jordan took a sip of coffee and watched her over the rim. Her hair was a disaster. Her mascara from last night had smudged beneath her left eye, giving her a faint raccoon look. The hickey on her neck had darkened another shade. She held her fork the way a child holds a crayon, gripped in her whole fist rather than balanced between fingers.

She looked like she’d been hit by a truck and dragged through a hedge and she was the most alive human being Jordan had ever seen at six fifty in the morning.

His phone buzzed on the counter where he’d left it to charge. Jordan glanced at the screen.

A golden notification from the System.

He ignored it.

"Jordan?"

"Hm?"

Kumiko set her fork down and folded her hands on the counter. Her expression shifted from cheerful to something smaller and more careful, the way a candle flame dips when someone opens a door in another room.

"Last night was... I mean, it was..." She pressed her lips together. "I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a manga character."

"Try."