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Chapter 6: The Mission Got Worse

Chapter 6: The Mission Got Worse

The neighborhood scrolled past at fifteen miles an hour, in no hurry to introduce itself.

C’mon... He grunted as his eyes flickered to the fuel gauge. Half way to empty. He filed that away and returned his gaze to the street. There has to be somewhere I can get food close by.

A laundromat with half its sign burned out. A pharmacy that looked older than the block it sat on. And a barber pole spinning slow circles nobody was watching. Nothing that seemed important at the moment.

Then... a convenience store. Lights on. Parking lot half empty. Exactly what he’d hoped for.

Jackpot.

He pulled in like the place owed him money. He got out and step in. It seemed pretty simple, with the sweet apple air freshener brushing through his nose.

Basket in hand, he proceeded. Eggs first, lighter than they should’ve been. Not like he minded. At least the price was in his favor.

Next was instant noodles promising chicken, delivering salt water at best. Water, because the tap in 206 tasted mostly like crap. Three snack bars, tossed in just because.

He moved through the isles, passing the various shelves as his eyes swept through the constituents.

No. No... He brushed off the various commodities his eyes met until-

The cooler.

Iced coffee. Looked decent enough, and right now, coffee didn’t sound that bad. He picked it and checked the price.

Price: $12.99

Checked it again, like a second look might change the math.

It didn’t.

Damn near his whole budget for a drink with a foil seal on it. He put it back with more care than the moment probably deserved and kept moving.

The cashier had the specific tired look of someone counting down to a shift that wasn’t ending fast enough. Late teens, lanky enough that "lanky" felt generous.

He scanned everything without reading a single price, the way you do a job you’ve stopped caring about weeks ago.

The total hit the screen.

Total price: $27.34

Adrian stared for a moment. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t even sigh. Just got quiet and precise, already calculating his way out.

"Umm." He straightened himself. "Could you take off the noodles?"

The cashier’s eyebrows moved half an inch, the universal face for watching a stranger negotiate, and voided it without comment.

Total price: $20.74

Still too high.

"And one of the waters."

Another silent adjustment. The cashier’s expression settled somewhere between mild curiosity and utter exhaustion. Not judgment. Recognition.

Total payment: $17.74

He could live with that without hating himself in the parking lot.

Card tap. The half-second wait that always stretched longer than it had any right to.

Green light.

Payment Approved!

The card system exclaimed in a mechanical voice.

"Have a good one." The cashier was already looking past him at the next person in line.

Adrian said something back. Thanks, probably. Though he couldn’t have sworn to it. His brain was three steps ahead, already doing math on what was left.

He pulled up the banking app before he’d even reached the car door.

$176.60. Smaller than it had been an hour ago, and it felt personal.

Not great. But underneath the sting of it, one more objective and the Starter Pack was his.

He got in the car.

Groceries landed on the passenger seat in a slump of plastic as Adrian’s hands moved to the first snack bar.

He opened the first snack bar and ate it in four bites without tasting it. The second went the same way. By the third he’d finally slowed down enough to register the flavor, something in the general neighborhood of oats and quiet regret, and washed it down with water that had gone lukewarm in the cupholder.

He leaned back against the headrest and let his eyes close for a second.

For the first time since waking up, his stomach had stopped filing complaints. Small victory. He’d take it.

He pulled out his phone, opened the system, and braced for the click of a checkmark he was pretty sure he’d earned.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

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

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Still empty.

The hell?

He blinked at the screen like it had personally offended him. Refreshed it, on the off chance the system was having a worse day than he was.

Nothing changed.

"...Why won’t you fucking tick?" A low breath left his lips. "Please don’t tell me you were actually a scam."

His eyes drifted, mostly in search of hope, it landed on the small ⓘ sitting beside every line of the mission log.

Hm. He paused, his tension halting. Was that always there?

It was. The kind of thing you don’t see until the moment you need it.

He tapped it.

The info window opened.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Objective: ☐ Eat one proper meal before the day ends

Info: Certain criteria’s must be completed. Criteria’s include-

• Snack foods do not qualify.

• Beverages do not qualify.

• Meal must meet standard nutritional criteria.

• Meal must be shared with another individual.

• Recommended: female companion, for enhanced reward potential.

• Companion must be previously unknown to Host.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

He read it twice. Then read it a third time, mostly because he felt a bit like an idiot at this point.

He looked at the wrappers on the passenger seat.

"...That would’ve been useful five minutes ago."

Fine. Okay. Work the problem.

A proper meal. A woman. A stranger.

Jenny surfaced first, unprompted — the one close female friend he actually had. Cheap meal, no pressure, could work.

Then the fourth line caught up with him.

Previously unknown to Host.

"...Never mind." No frustration in it. Just another name off a short list.

A second thought followed, less convenient than the first.

I’d have to walk up to a complete stranger. He paused. And ask her to have dinner with me.

He turned the sentence over like it might sound less insane the second time.

"...Ohh." A pause. "That’s why the timer was twelve hours."

A little insulting, if he thought about it. Did the system really think he needed half a day to talk to a girl.

Worth a shot anyway. How hard could it be.

But, first things first, if he was gonna ask someone out, he needed to be utterly realistic and raise his options from anything that could bring him down. Starting from....

He looked down at himself.

Black shirt. Black jeans. Black sneakers. He did the math and didn’t love the answer.

Yeah. He almost laughed. This is definitely not cool.

Grief counselor probably wasn’t the vibe he was going for, but it was the one he’d apparently been wearing for a year and a half without noticing.

One problem at a time.

He pulled out his phone, opened Maps, typed clothing store and out came the results.

The five-star places didn’t get a second look. The second the price range loaded in, so did the answer.

4.8⭐️. Nope.

He scrolled.

4.6⭐️. Skip.

He kept scrolling until the ratings dropped into territory that matched his bank account instead of his aspirations.

3.8 ⭐️. Sin’s Peace. Weird name, decent enough rating.

He tapped in, scanned a few reviews.

Cheap.

Good enough for the price.

Decent selection, nothing fancy.

Sounded about right. And it was close too. Only two blocks away.

He nodded once, like he’d just closed a deal with himself.

"That’ll do."

He hit Start. The route populated. He pulled out of the lot, groceries riding shotgun, the meal mission still sitting open on his phone... patient, unbothered, in no hurry to let him off the hook.

~~~

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