Chapter 4: Mission Impossible! One Proper Meal
"Alright." Marcus clapped the sedan once. "We’re done, boss."
Finally. Adrian let his shoulders drop, one long breath going out of him like he’d been holding it since the third flight of stairs.
Marcus caught the look and grinned. "Pleasure doing business with you, kid." He stuck out a hand. "Hope the place treats you well."
"Yeah." Adrian shook it. "Hopefully better than it did with the stairs."
Marcus laughed like that meant something. The movers got into the truck. The engine lighted and The truck took the noise around the corner with it.
The apartment held still behind the door. No footsteps but his own. Just the fridge humming and the particular quiet of a space that hadn’t decided yet if it was a home or a room full of furniture that happened to be his.
Bzzzt.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
BEGINNER FOUNDATION MISSION
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
☑ 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 ⓘ
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Mission Rewards
✨ +20 Wealth Points
🎁 Starter Reward
🔓 Skill: Investment Insight (Lv.1)
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Time Remaining: 09:57:41
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Nine hours left. He took another glance at the apartment. Unstacked boxes. Unarranged furniture and the floor painted almost like a crime scene. Yeah. I’ll get this done by then.
His eyes scanned the check list next. Two boxes checked off he hadn’t asked for. Efficient. Slightly insulting. He hadn’t even broken a sweat on those two and the thing wanted credit anyway.
Four tasks left between him and being a billionaire. Said out loud it sounded like a joke he hadn’t finished writing.
He got moving anyway.
Floors first, bucket and citrus floor cleaner, long strokes from the corner out. The smell chased off the cardboard dust that had clung to everything since he’d unlocked the door. Counters next, the mover’s streaks gone in a minute flat.
Then the boxes. Tear, fold, dump, sort, flatten, stack by the door. Clothes onto hangers he hadn’t known he owned until the box said otherwise. Books onto the shelf spine-out, alphabetizing a problem for a more functional version of him.
Box after box. The pile by the door climbed. His shoulders started a conversation he didn’t want to have.
Then his hand stopped on one before his brain caught up with why.
Misc. His own handwriting, except too fast, too slanted. Probably something he had written in a hurry, or maybe when he was distracted.
He knew what this was without touching the tape. Maya’s box. Not marked with her name, because he hadn’t been able to write it that night, so he’d written the closest thing to a shrug instead.
He didn’t peel it back.
His hand sat flat on the top flap for a second longer than made sense, like weighing something he already knew the answer to. Then he picked the whole box up, careful in a way he wasn’t with anything else on the pile, and set it on the top shelf of the closet, behind the towels he hadn’t unpacked yet.
Future him could open it. Present him had a mission timer running.
He shut the closet door and didn’t look at it twice. Mostly.
===
Bzzzt.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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: 9:17:09]
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Finally. He took a lengthy sigh. He read through the checklist again.
Two left. Eat a meal. Dispose the trash.
The trash was nothing. Ten seconds, tops. And the meal was basically a blessing. He grabbed the flattened stack under one arm, hooked two fingers through a trash bag on the way past the kitchen, reached for the door. Then he stopped.
A smell hit him that had nothing to do with the citrus still hanging in the air. He lifted his arm on reflex, sniffed once, and regretted it immediately.
Dear lord. Is that me? He scoffed, affirming it. I smell like piss!
Right. Ten hours of stairs and mop water had a bill. Apparently it was due now, in his own hallway, with no one around to witness the crime scene.
Trash could wait. He set the bag by the door and went straight for the shower.
The water ran cold for four seconds and he stood in it anyway- sharp beat, nothing. Then it evened out and his shoulders unknotted one degree at a time, a full-body invoice for a day he hadn’t planned on surviving.
He thought about nothing for a while. Luxury, that.
Then, predictably, her. Not a memory. Just the handwriting on the box, and a plain feeling. Two years distilled down to a word he couldn’t bring himself to write and a shelf he was never opening again.
He let it sit there a second instead of doing the thing where he pretended it away too fast to count.
Then he turned the water up half a degree and let that be the end of it. Not because it worked. Because he’d decided it had to.
Besides, he had bigger things to worry about. If the system turned out to be real, this could be the best day of his life. If it didn’t. Well, he didn’t know what he’d do with that.
He shut the water off. Dressed in whatever was closest , black, apparently the only setting his wardrobe came in, filed away without examining too closely, and caught his own reflection clearing in the mirror. Tired. Clean, at least. Something to work with.
Trash bag in hand, boxes under his arm, one line sitting uninvited in his head.
Eat one proper meal before the day ends. In the company of another person, preferably.
Yeah. He’d get right on that.
A stranger counts as the company of another person, right?
A worthy thought for a heartbroken guy. But there was only one way to find out.
He stepped out and let the door click shut behind him.
~~~
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