Infinite Cashback System

Chapter 209: 210 | I’ll Cry On My Own Property If I Want To

Kumiko opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. She looked like a goldfish that had been given a philosophy exam.

"Last night was the first time someone held me after," she said, so quiet that the coffee maker’s gurgling almost swallowed the words. "Like. After after. The other times, the guys would just... roll over? Or check their phones? One of them literally opened DoorDash while I was still catching my breath. He ordered Taco Bell. A Crunchwrap Supreme. I remember because I could hear the confirmation sound through the pillow I was trying to suffocate myself with."

Jordan set his mug down.

"You held me." Kumiko’s fingers traced the edge of her plate, pushing a stray bit of cheese around in a circle. "You cleaned me up with a warm washcloth, which, by the way, I didn’t even know boys owned washcloths. I thought you all just used the same towel for everything. And then you pulled me against your chest and your arm went around my waist and you just... stayed. You didn’t check your phone. You didn’t roll over. You didn’t order food. You breathed into my hair and you stayed."

She picked up her coffee mug with both hands and held it in front of her mouth like a shield, her brown eyes enormous above the ceramic rim.

"And I know that sounds pathetic. I know that ’he held me after sex’ shouldn’t be a revolutionary experience for an eighteen-year-old girl. I know Chloe-chan would tell me to raise my standards above ’basic human decency.’ But Jordan..." Her voice cracked on his name, a hairline fracture running through three syllables. "The bar was on the floor and you still cleared it by a mile, and I don’t know what to do with that information because my brain keeps trying to convince me that you’re going to stop."

"Stop what?"

"Being like this." She gestured at him with the mug, coffee sloshing dangerously close to the rim. "Being you. The eggs and the washcloth and the jellyfish and the ribbons and the ’you’re beautiful’ in that stupid voice that makes my kneecaps dissolve. My brain keeps running probability models on when you’ll get bored of me because everybody gets bored of me, Jordan, that’s the data, seven for seven, one hundred percent failure rate, and I know that’s a me problem and not a you problem but I can’t turn it off and I’m SORRY I’m ruining breakfast with my emotional baggage but you ASKED me to try and—"

Jordan reached across the island and put his hand on top of her head.

The effect was instantaneous. The Headpat trait activated the moment his palm settled between the loose waves of her black hair, and Kumiko’s entire body went slack like someone had found her off switch and flipped it. Her shoulders dropped four inches. Her grip on the coffee mug loosened until it rested against her lower lip instead of being clutched like a lifeline. The constant low-frequency vibration of anxiety that powered every one of Kumiko’s waking moments went silent, replaced by something warm and slow that spread from the crown of her skull down through her spine and into the soles of her bare feet.

"Nnnh." A small sound escaped her. Not quite a sigh. Not quite a moan. Something in between that belonged exclusively to this girl and this specific gesture and this particular moment in a kitchen that smelled like burnt eggs and fresh coffee.

Jordan kept his hand there for five full seconds. Then he removed it.

Kumiko swayed on the stool. Her eyes had gone half-lidded and glassy, her pupils wide enough to drown in. A strand of hair stuck to her lip where the coffee steam had made her skin damp.

"That’s cheating," she mumbled, though she was smiling now, that real smile that turned her entire face into something incandescent. "You can’t just... disable my anxiety with your magic hand every time I have a feelings speech. I spent forty minutes on that speech. I rehearsed it in the bathroom mirror at four AM."

"Kumi."

"Mm."

"I’m not going to get bored of you."

"You don’t know that."

"I know I woke up and my first thought was ’where did she go’ and my second thought was ’something is on fire’ and my third thought was ’she’s trying to cook for me and she’s going to burn down the building and I need to go help her before the fire department arrives.’ That’s three thoughts and you were in all of them."

Kumiko’s bottom lip trembled. Her eyes filled.

"Don’t cry into the omelet," Jordan said. "I put cheese in that."

"I’m NOT crying." A fat tear rolled down her left cheek and landed directly on the remaining triangle of egg. "That’s... condensation. From the coffee steam. It’s a physics phenomenon."

"You’re crying into my omelet."

"It’s MY omelet now! You GAVE it to me! I’ll cry on my own property if I want to!"

Jordan let her cry. Not because he didn’t care, but because he’d learned something in the past four weeks that the old Jordan never understood: sometimes people needed to feel their feelings without someone trying to fix the feeling. Chloe had taught him that. Chloe, who processed her emotions in complete silence and then emerged fully formed like she’d never been upset at all. Kumiko processed hers out loud, in real time, with maximum volume and minimum filter, tears and laughter and snot all mixed together in a cocktail of overwhelming sincerity that would have sent the old Jordan into a panic spiral.

The new Jordan poured her more coffee and waited.

After about ninety seconds, Kumiko wiped her eyes with the hem of his henley, exposing her stomach and the line of her strawberry waistband in a gesture so unselfconscious it made Jordan’s chest do something complicated. She sniffed twice, loudly, and then picked up her fork and resumed eating the omelet like nothing had happened.

"I want to learn," she said between bites.

"Learn what?"

"How to cook eggs. Your way. With the tilting." She pointed her fork at the stove with forensic intensity. "I want you to teach me so that next time I can make you breakfast without committing a food-adjacent war crime."

Jordan grinned. "Next time?"