Infinite Cashback: My Wealth Rebate System

"Give me a second," Marcus said, already reaching up to feel his damp hair. "I need to dry this before I leave looking like I just survived a swimming pool."

Jason glanced at him.

"You have a towel."

"A towel is not a solution. It’s an invitation to spend the next twenty minutes looking like a wet dog."

Ben shook his head.

Marcus was already turning back toward the gym.

"I’m using the hand dryer."

"That’s for your hands."

"Then they should’ve made it more versatile."

Before either of them could argue, Marcus disappeared back through the gym doors.

A minute later, he emerged from the locker room, hair still damp, gym bag hanging crookedly from one shoulder. He was already talking before he’d fully cleared the doorway.

"You will not believe the argument I just had with a hand dryer. That thing personally offended me. I stood there for thirty seconds, Jason. Thirty seconds of my one wild and precious life, wasted on a machine that clearly hates me."

"Machines don’t have preferences, Marcus."

"That one does. It definitely does."

He dropped onto the bench beside them, the bag sliding from his shoulder and landing with a dull thump against the floor. Apparently satisfied that the crisis had been documented, he moved on without missing a beat.

"Anyway, did either of you actually finish the reading for today, or are we all planning to sit through the lecture and hope our presence counts as participation?"

"I skimmed it," Ben said.

"Skimming isn’t reading."

"It is if you’re confident enough."

Jason glanced at Ben.

He’d heard that tone before. Ben had already decided he was right, which meant there was probably no point arguing.

Marcus, unfortunately, had never been burdened by such restraint.

"That’s the worst thing you’ve said all week," he said. "And you told me your protein powder tastes like ’chalk, but sad’ on Tuesday."

"It does taste like that."

Marcus stared at him.

Jason felt a laugh building before he could stop it.

"That’s not the point," Marcus said, pointing accusingly at Ben. "The point is that you can’t criticize my reading habits when you’re voluntarily drinking sadness for breakfast."

Jason let the two of them run their usual loop, half-listening, mostly amused, until Ben eventually checked the time and declared the window for pretending they had more time than they did officially closed.

They gathered their bags and headed out, the morning sun a little higher now, campus fully awake around them by the time they hit the main road.

"So where were you two days ago by the way?" Jason asked, glancing over at Marcus as they headed out. "You just vanished."

Marcus’s expression shifted into the particular look he wore whenever he’d been caught doing something he knew sounded ridiculous.

"My cousin needed help moving some stuff. Whole ordeal." He adjusted the strap of his gym bag. "I told him I had class. He told me family comes first. I told him that’s a very convenient philosophy for someone who doesn’t have a Statistics midterm coming up."

Jason waited.

Marcus sighed.

"Then I carried a couch down two flights of stairs."

Ben snorted.

"Couldn’t have just texted us that?" Jason asked.

"I was busy being emotionally manipulated by furniture, Jason. Texting wasn’t exactly at the top of my priorities."

That got him.

Jason felt the corner of his mouth lift before he could stop it, and Ben was already laughing properly beside him.

Marcus looked between them, apparently satisfied with himself.

"Exactly. Mock me all you want. None of you understand the psychological warfare of moving day."

They stepped out into the brighter stretch of campus, the noise of the gym fading behind them.

The conversation wandered from Marcus’s cousin to the upcoming midterm, then somehow to whether a couch technically counted as a weapon if you dropped it on someone.

None of it mattered. That was what Jason found himself appreciating.

He didn’t have to think about where the conversation was going or search for something clever to say. He could just walk between them, listening, occasionally throwing something in when he felt like it.

The lecture hall came into view a few minutes later, and Jason felt that small, familiar shift that always happened when he walked through its doors. Not dread exactly, more like recognition.

He’d spent enough hours in this room for the place to have developed its own personality in his mind, built from repetition the same rows, the same faded walls, the same particular smell of dust and old air-conditioning that greeted him every time.

The projector in the corner flickered twice before settling into its usual glow, the same half-second stutter it had been doing all semester.

Apparently, it was too minor to justify anyone fixing it. The chairs squeaked whenever someone shifted their weight, each one producing its own slightly different complaint. By now, nobody even looked up anymore.

Somewhere behind them, the same guy who always seemed to arrive early enough to sleep before class had already claimed his usual spot, head tipped against the wall, mouth slightly open, completely undisturbed by the room gradually filling around him.

Ben made straight for their usual seats near the middle-left aisle, dropping into one with the territorial confidence of a man reclaiming ancestral land, despite the fact that none of the seats were actually assigned.

Jason dropped his bag onto the chair beside him.

Then his eyes wandered, he hadn’t meant for them to.

Across the room, Amanda was laughing at something, her hand resting casually on the arm of a guy Jason didn’t recognize. They sat close enough to look comfortable, tucked into a small world of their own while students continued filing past them, bags hitting desks and conversations overlapping all around.

Jason’s gaze stayed there a second longer than it should have.

Already.

The thought barely had time to form before Ben’s shoulder moved into his line of sight, blocking Amanda and the guy beside her completely.

Jason glanced at him.

"Don’t" Ben said.

He hadn’t even turned around.

"Wasn’t."

"You definitely were. Eyes locked in on her and you did the pause thingy"

"I was looking for a seat."

Ben finally looked at him.

"On the other side of the room?"

Jason opened his mouth and nothing useful came to mind so he closed it again and shrugged.

Ben stared at him for another second, apparently deciding that was close enough to an admission, then let the matter die.

He turned back to his bag and began digging through it for a pen, despite the fact that Jason had never once seen him find anything in that bag on the first attempt.

Marcus dropped into the seat on Jason’s other side a moment later, still muttering something about his ongoing feud with the hand dryer.

Jason leaned back.

The projector hummed overhead. Students continued filing into the hall, filling the empty spaces one seat at a time, their conversations blending into a low, indistinct murmur.

Ben was still searching for the pen and Marcus was still complaining about the dryer.

And somehow, with both of them beside him, the room felt normal again.

Then the door at the front of the hall opened.

Jason noticed her before the room did. A few conversations continued for another second, then another, until the change began spreading outward through the rows. Voices lowered. Someone stopped halfway through a laugh. Chairs shifted as students turned in their seats.

By the time she reached the podium, the scattered noise had dwindled into a silence that seemed to settle over the entire hall.

She didn’t say good morning, she just walked straight in.