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Chapter 5: Dumpster Girl

Chapter 5: Dumpster Girl

The lock finally caught on the second try. He pocketed the keys and grabbed the trash bag which rested at his sides.

The hallway hit him different than it had a few hours ago. A TV arguing with itself behind 204. Somebody two doors down losing a fight with their phone carrier and the faint smell of fried oil baked into the carpet, old enough that it had started being a fact about the building.

Not the quiet he’d gotten used to. Didn’t hate it either.

***

The dumpster lid never stayed up on its own. He clocked that from ten feet away, watching a girl lose the same fight with it he was about to have. One hand on her trash bag, the other bracing the lid, and the lid winning like it had somewhere better to be.

He didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to. He crossed the last few steps and took the weight off her hand.

"I got it."

She dropped her bag in without a glance back, like holding a dumpster lid barely qualified as chivalry. Fair. It probably didn’t.

Adrian tossed his in after hers. Let the lid fall. It hit with a flat clang that didn’t quite finish echoing before either of them spoke.

"Thanks." Her voice landed somewhere between bored and amused, but surprisingly charming. A bit too charming.

Dude. He paused. Chil out.

"No problem." He aimed for a casual tone. Landed somewhere closer to a guy who’d just thrown his back out moving a mattress.

She looked at him a second longer than the moment required. Not rude about it. But he couldn’t exactly tell what it was.

"Haven’t seen you around before." She brushed her groomed red hair behind her ear. "You the guy that just moved in?"

"Heh." Adrian blinked. "What gave it away."

"Hard to miss the moving truck that was outside all afternoon." She tilted her head, playful. "Either someone was moving in, or somebody bought way too much furniture."

A quiet laugh escaped him.

"...I’d be worried if it was the second." His eyes flickered momentarily to the fine curves of her lips as she smiled.

Pretty lips. A bit too pretty. Close enough to Maya’s that his brain filed the comparison before he could stop it. He shut it down mid-thought and looked somewhere that wasn’t her mouth.

"Welcome to the building." Her charming voice brought him back to reality. "Hope the neighbors treat you well."

"They’re off to a decent start."

Something moved at the corner of her mouth. Perhaps a giggle. She offered one last friendly smile before heading toward the staircase.

Adrian’s eyes followed her retreating figure, particularly lingering a second longer than necessary on the sway of her ass beneath the fitted shorts.

"...Mm." He remained still. "She’s... hot."

And then some instinct fired a half-second ahead of disaster and yanked his gaze back up right as her head started to turn.

Not fast enough to look natural. Fast enough not to get caught.

She stared for another moment before she moved to the stairwell. Didn’t wave. Didn’t pause. Just went in like the whole exchange had already left her memory on the way up the stairs.

Close.

That was the whole thought. A near-miss, survived by about a second. He filed it under wins and didn’t look back at it either.

His phone buzzed before he’d made it three steps toward the car.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

BEGINNER FOUNDATION MISSION

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Objectives:

☑ Assist in unloading all furniture ⓘ

☑ Arrange all furniture inside the apartment ⓘ

☑ Unpack all essential belongings ⓘ

☑ Dispose of empty boxes and packing waste ⓘ

☑ Accumulate 90 minutes of physical activity ⓘ

☐ Eat one proper meal before the day ends ⓘ

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Time Remaining: 09:11:09

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

One thing left. He scanned the list. Hell yeah. Almost a functioning adult.

Well. Kinda. His shoulders still ached from the mattress. His legs felt worse from moving through too many flights of stairs carrying things heavier than they had any right to be.

Didn’t matter. He was about to get his reward. Hopefully.

His phone buzzed before he’d made it three steps toward his used Toyota Corolla.

Bzzzt.

Bzzzt.

Bzzzt.

Hm. What’s this? He paused, feeling the unending vibration. A new task?

He pulled out the phone and there he saw.

☎️ Calling => Mom.

He caught himself smiling before he could stop it.

He picked up on the second ring. "Hey, Mom."

"There he is." Her voice arrived already mid-sentence, like conversations with her never really had a start. "Tell me you made it in one piece. And the apartment... does it look like the pictures, or did the listing lie to you the way listings do?"

"Apartment’s fine, ma." He unlocked his sedan and stepped into the driver’s seat. "I just finished unpacking."

"Fine like actually fine?" A beat. "Or fine like you’re standing in a pile of boxes lying to your mother?"

He glanced back at the building. Third floor. His very own clean apartment. "The first. Trust me."

"Mm-hm." He could hear her not believing him from two hundred miles away. "Did you eat?"

"About to."

"Adrian."

"I’m about to."

"You’d better be. I don’t want you living off gas station coffee again."

"I know..." He rested his other palm on the steering wheel. "You don’t need to worry."

He almost smiled. Almost.

"Alright. Anyway..." A small hitch. Barely there, but he caught it. "Something came up on my end. Work’s been a bit slow, so your father and I aren’t really as steady as we thought."

He went still in the driver’s seat. Already knowing this wasn’t going anywhere good for his wallet.

"Okay." He kept his voice level. "You guys gonna be alright?"

"I’m always alright, Ady." She replied. "That’s not the point of this call."

Of course it wasn’t.

Always as selfless as always.

A smile drew on his face.

"I’m fine, Mom. I’ve got enough saved to keep me going ." He paused. "Don’t worry about me."

Not entirely true. True enough for a phone call.

"I’ll call you tonight." He added.

"Promise?"

"Promise." The call ended. The car went awfully quiet. He was starting college with no allowance and he’d just figured out how much that was going to suck.

He opened his bank app. The account balance stared back at him.

Account Balance: $193.47.

He looked at it long enough that looking harder might’ve talked the number up. It didn’t.

Right. I’m broke, and so is she. He grunted. And I still have to eat a meal for the system.

Well. That wasn’t exactly option. He still had to eat as the human he was. He just couldn’t do it the way he’d have wanted. No ordering whatever looked good, no ignoring the total.

Twenty...or fifteen? He stared at the balance for a moment. Definitely fifteen.

And after that, well the system could do whatever it planned to do next.

One meal. That was all the mission wanted. It never said how much he had to enjoy it.He started the engine.

~~~

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