Chapter 95| Maren’s Favour

Chapter 95: Chapter 95| Maren’s Favour

Tuesday. 6:20 AM.

Zane arrived at the training grounds at exactly the right time for once.

Maren was already on the pad. Fitted training gear. Hair tied back. The specific pre-session stillness that had stopped being just a training posture sometime around week three and had become simply what the start of every worthwhile morning looked like.

She looked up when he arrived.

Something in her expression said she’d been thinking about the favour since yesterday.

He dropped his bag at the edge of the pad and walked to the wall without saying anything. Some mornings didn’t need an opening line. This was one of them.

They just took a brief moment smiled and waved at each other.

The system surfaced.

『 Daily Quest — Impact Breaker activation speed 』

『 Target: 0.70 seconds 』

『 Current: 0.74 seconds 』

『 Reward: Activation speed +0.01 seconds per completion 』

『 Milestone reward unlocks at 0.70 seconds 』

’Back,’ Zane thought. ’Finally, I can’t do the same routine without any reward.’

He pressed his palm flat against the reinforced wall.

Impact Breaker — B-rank 20%.

The shockwave rolled through the composite surface with a quality that still surprised him slightly every time. Not just deeper than the C-rank ceiling but wider. The 4.2 meter range sitting at a threshold C-rank had never reached. The wall absorbing it with noticeably more effort than it used to.

He started his reps.

Maren’s burst sequences ran behind him. Overdrive at minimum output. Cut before the fatigue window. Re-engage. The rhythm that had been running in this corner every morning for seven weeks and had become the ambient sound of what training was supposed to sound like.

She called her usual water break at twenty reps.

He walked back to the pad and sat beside her.

The distance between them was different from the pre-Sunday version. Not dramatically. Just recalibrated. The specific comfortable proximity of two people who had shared something and had adjusted their default spacing to reflect that without announcing it.

She was drinking. Looking at the facility around them with the assessment expression.

He waited.

She lowered her water bottle.

Looked at him.

"The favour," she said.

"Yes, I still remember," he replied. Obviously she won’t forget it just a day from our bet.

She looked at the facility.

"I want you to cook for me," she said.

Zane looked at her.

’Cook,’ he thought.

He said it out loud just to confirm he’d heard correctly.

"Cook," he said again.

"Dinner," she said. "Something proper. Not cafeteria food. Not whatever those second years you hang around with eat from those mystery containers." She kept her eyes forward. "I want to see if you can actually cook or if you’ve just been surviving on cafeteria output since you arrived."

He stared at the training grounds.

’She used the favour,’ he thought. ’The favour from a pushup competition where she narrowly beat him on Overdrive output at full capacity. And she used it to ask him to cook dinner.’

’That is the most Maren possible use of a favour in the history of favours,’ he thought.

"When?." he asked.

"Thursday," she replied. "I’ll sort out the location. You figure out what you’re making."

He looked at her.

She was already back to her water bottle. The expression of someone who had said what she needed to say and had mentally moved on to the next item.

"What if I can’t cook," he added.

She glanced at him sideways.

"Can you?" she asked, staring at him keenly.

He thought about it honestly.

He searched through what fragments of his previous life had carried over. Cooking appeared somewhere in there. Basic things, the kind of muscle memory that surfaced without warning when the situation called for it. He’d used the dorm block kitchen twice since arriving at Aldren. Rice both times. It had been edible.

’Edible,’ he thought. ’Not the strongest endorsement for someone being asked to cook dinner as a favour.’

"Working on it," he said.

She gave him the flat look. The specific version that meant she’d heard that answer before and had filed it.

Then the corner of her mouth moved slightly. The thing it did when she’d decided to let something in without making a production of it.

"On Thursday," she said. Final. Non-negotiable.

She stood up and went back to her drill.

Burst sequences. Overdrive at minimum output. Cut before the fatigue window. Re-engage.

Zane watched her from the wall between reps.

The fitted training gear doing what it always did in this corner at this hour. He couldn’t quite put it into words but the lower half of her suit seemed to fit considerably tighter than the upper or maybe it had always been that way and seven weeks of early mornings had simply made him more observant about it. Either way the effect was the same. Every burst sequence. Every direction change. Every cut and re-engage.

Her butt bounced with each movement in a way that the training suit was doing absolutely nothing to contain or conceal.

He pressed his palm flat against the wall.

’Focus,’ he told himself.

The system surfaced.

『 The system observes the host’s extended observation period. The system notes this is the seventh week of the same observation. The system is not judging. 』

’I said focus,’ Zane thought.

『 The system is simply logging. 』

He pressed his palm flat.

’Focus,’ he told himself.

He charged impact breaker at B-rank 20%.

He released it.

The shockwave rolled through the wall — deeper than anything the C-rank ceiling had produced, the composite material compressing at the contact point with a force that still felt slightly foreign at this tier. Like wearing shoes a size bigger than expected. The fit was right. The power was there. He just hadn’t fully broken it in yet.

’Cook dinner,’ he thought between reps. ’She used her favour on dinner. With rice. Because that’s her preference.’

Then the system surfaced.

『 System Note: Cooking dinner for a bond target in a private non-academic context creates conditions for genuine extended interaction. Thursday presents a natural opportunity to increase bond depth. The system recommends making the most of it. 』