Free Web NovelChapter 34: First Day At School
Sean stood up from the chair.
"I will be," he said.
He crossed the kitchen and stopped in front of her. She looked up at him. Blue eyes steady.
He reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She stayed very still.
"Thank you for today," he said. "All of it." freeweɓnøvel.com
She smiled. Soft. "You’re welcome. All of it."
He kissed her once. Brief. But real. Then he stepped back.
"I should go upstairs," said Sean. "Let you rest."
Makima tilted her head slightly. "You don’t have to."
Sean looked at her for a moment.
She wasn’t performing anything. No games. No strategy. Just a woman who had spent three months alone holding something impossible together, and who had finally let someone in, and wasn’t in a hurry for that to end.
"Okay," said Sean. "I’ll stay."
Something in her expression settled. Warm and quiet.
She pushed off the counter and walked past him toward her living room. Paused at the doorway and looked back.
"Come on then," she said.
Sean picked his phone up off the table. Looked at it one more time.
His balance: $1,885,480.
The 10x rebate was live. He hadn’t been able to use it today. Danny’s arrival had taken the whole evening. But tomorrow was a different story. He was already thinking about it. What to spend on Makima. How to do it naturally. How to make it feel like what it actually was, genuine, and let the system reward him for that.
The second bind slot notification was still waiting. Three names sitting there.
Vanessa. Olivia. Rebecca.
He’d look at it properly tomorrow.
He put his phone in his pocket and followed Makima into the living room.
He could wait tomorrow , right now he should enjoy his time with Makima today.
His phone buzzed one final time.
[Second Bind Slot: Available]
[Qualifying Targets Detected:]
[Vanessa Chen — Beauty Rating: 8.8]
[Olivia — Beauty Rating: 8.6]
[Rebecca — Beauty Rating: 8.5]
[Select a target to bind or dismiss for later]
Sean looked at the three names briefly.
Then he put his phone face down on Makima’s coffee table.
Tomorrow.
—----------
[The Next Morning]
Sean’s alarm went off at seven fifteen.
He sat up in his own apartment, alone this time. Makima had left earlier to handle a plumbing issue on the third floor before tenants woke up. He’d heard her moving around through the floor sometime around six thirty, the quiet click of her front door, footsteps on the stairs.
He sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, just breathing. The apartment was quiet. Sunlight was starting to creep through the curtains, the pale gray light of early morning before the city fully woke up.
He thought about yesterday. The system milestone. The second bind slot sitting in his notifications, unselected. Danny showing up with bags of food and too many questions before Sean ever got the chance to actually test the new rebate tier. Richards. The name kept circling back through his mind like something he couldn’t quite shake loose.
He got up. Showered. Stood under the water longer than he needed to, letting his thoughts settle before the day actually started.
When he got dressed, he skipped the suit. Today called for something different. Dark jeans, fitted black shirt, a leather jacket that looked expensive without trying too hard to prove it. He wanted to look sharp without looking like he was performing for an audience. He’d done enough performing at the party.
He checked his phone before grabbing his bag.
[Balance: $1,885,480 ]
[Second Bind Slot: Available — Selection Pending]
He stared at the notification for a second. Three names had been sitting there since last night. Vanessa. Olivia. Rebecca.
He hadn’t decided yet. Some part of him already knew which way he was leaning, but he wanted to actually see her again before he made it official. Not just tap a button on a screen and call it decided.
He put the phone in his pocket and headed downstairs.
James was waiting outside with the Rolls Royce, leaning against the door with his hands folded in front of him the way he always stood when he was on duty.
"Morning, sir," said James. "Campus?"
"Campus," said Sean.
He got in the back. The car eased away from the curb. Sean watched the city slide past the window, people walking toward bus stops with coffee cups in hand, a line already forming at a food cart on the corner, two kids racing each other to a school bus while their mother yelled after them to slow down.
Normal life. Indifferent to everything that had happened to him in the last week.
"You’re quiet this morning, sir," said James, glancing at him in the rearview mirror.
"Lot on my mind," said Sean.
"Anything I should know about?" said James. There was something careful in the way he asked it. Not prying. Just leaving the door open.
Sean considered it for a moment. "Maybe later," he said. "Right now I just need to get through today."
James nodded once and didn’t push further. That was one of the things Sean appreciated about him. He knew when to leave a silence alone.
—---------------
The Rolls Royce pulled up outside the main quad at eight forty.
James opened the door. Sean stepped out, adjusting the strap of his bag over one shoulder.
He felt it immediately. The shift in the air around him. Heads turning. Conversations stalling mid-sentence. A group of three girls near the fountain who’d been laughing about something went completely silent, then immediately started whispering, eyes locked on him without even pretending not to stare.
"That’s him."
"The Rolls Royce guy?"
"From the party. The one who humiliated Anthony Reyes."
"He rejected Rebecca Hart three times. In public. I heard she actually cried."
Sean kept walking. He didn’t acknowledge any of it directly, just let it wash past him the way water moves around a rock. He’d expected this. Word traveled fast on a campus this size, and a Rolls Royce pulling up outside a college party wasn’t exactly subtle.
