Chapter 64: Strange meeting

Chapter 64: Chapter 64: Strange meeting

Sunday morning arrived the way most mornings did now, quiet, unremarkable on the surface.

Garrett went through his usual routine, shower, coffee, the small mechanics of getting a day started. But underneath all of it, last night’s conversation with the system kept surfacing, uninvited, drifting back into focus every time his mind had a spare moment to wander.

He didn’t sit down and force himself through some deliberate breakdown of it. It just kept coming back on its own, pieces surfacing in no particular order while he moved through the flat.

Emiliana had a secret buried deep enough that no amount of searching or asking around would ever find it. Genuine romantic progression was apparently the only road that led anywhere close to it. He needed to elevate his social status, whatever that actually meant in practice. Failure meant losing everything, the money, the apartment, and somehow, apparently, the people too. The system had all but confirmed he wasn’t limited to one relationship, a detail he still hadn’t fully processed. And somewhere in all of it, he’d unlocked another dashboard he knew absolutely nothing about yet.

He thought about the £175,000 sitting in his account, the number no longer as unfamiliar as it had been a few weeks ago. Money gave him options, plenty of them, but he understood well enough by now that throwing it around carelessly wasn’t going to solve what was actually in front of him. He already knew how the Value Multiplier worked, understood its limits. He couldn’t just buy Emiliana something expensive and expect her secret to fall out of the sky because of it. Genuine progression couldn’t be fabricated. The system had made that painfully clear.

The bigger question sat there, unanswered, more persistent than the rest.

’What’s actually in that new dashboard.’

He turned it over without landing anywhere solid. Something to do with social status, maybe. Some other track of progression he hadn’t been shown yet. Access to a part of the system that had been sitting locked this whole time, waiting for exactly this trigger. He had no way of actually knowing, and the system, true to form, hadn’t bothered explaining any of it beyond the bare minimum.

Eventually he gave up trying to guess.

He wasn’t going to spend his entire Sunday staring at his phone, trying to predict what the system might do next. That wasn’t going to get him anywhere it wouldn’t already take him on its own timeline.

Garrett decided to leave the apartment, mostly because sitting in it any longer felt like a worse option than doing something with the day.

Sunday meant nothing urgent waiting for him anywhere. No classes, no system deadline breathing down his neck for once, nothing pulling him in any particular direction. He got dressed and headed out, no real destination in mind, just the vague intention of walking until he felt like stopping.

The city moved at its usual weekend pace around him, slower than a weekday, less urgent. He walked without hurrying, taking it in without really trying to.

Shopfronts he passed without really registering the details of. Restaurants with people spilling out onto outdoor seating, plates and conversation drifting past him as he walked. Couples walking close together, a few families with kids trailing slightly behind, someone’s dog straining at its leash toward a patch of grass.

Every so often, something caught his attention longer than it needed to.

A group of men outside a café, easy and confident in a way that had nothing to do with what they were wearing, more in how they carried themselves, like the space around them simply belonged to them without needing to be claimed.

Elevate your social status.

He didn’t suddenly decide he needed to be famous, or wealthy in some flashier, more visible way than he already quietly was. That wasn’t really what the moment made him think, watching strangers laugh easily outside a café on a Sunday morning.

It was smaller than that. Quieter. Just the observation that some people moved through the world like it had already made room for them, and he still wasn’t entirely sure what that actually required, or how someone built it from where he currently stood.

He kept walking, letting the thought sit there without chasing it any further for now.

Garrett found a small café a few blocks further along and decided to stop instead of heading straight home.

He picked a table near the window, ordered something simple, and let the morning settle into something unhurried. The café carried the comfortable noise of a Sunday morning, cutlery against plates, low conversations, and the occasional laugh from somewhere behind him.

He ate slowly, watching the room without really trying to.

A couple two tables over shared something from one plate, barely paying attention to the food. An older man sat near the counter with a newspaper. A family was losing an increasingly one-sided battle to keep their toddler in one seat.

The couple caught his attention for a moment.

Freya came to mind.

He liked being around her. The teasing, the easy conversations, the way she noticed things about him that most people didn’t bother with. Somewhere along the way, whatever existed between them had stopped feeling like something connected to the system.

It was simply something he wanted.

His thoughts shifted to Emiliana.

That situation was harder to put into a sentence. He wanted to get closer to her, but now there was a secret sitting behind everything, one the system claimed could only be uncovered through genuine romantic progression.

He took another bite.

There were too many pieces and not enough answers.

Garrett finished his breakfast and left the café without finding any of them.

Back in his apartment, Garrett dropped onto the couch and checked his phone, through his socials and then WhatsApp.

Most of the messages were from Daniel. A couple of memes, a question about food sometime this week, and the usual pointless conversation Garrett had somehow gotten used to.

He replied to a few before continuing down the list.

Then he saw the name.

Jacey: Can we sit down and talk?

Garrett stopped scrolling.

He read it once.

That was all.

He stared at the message for another second before locking his phone and setting it beside him.

Whatever she wanted, He didnt care.

He continued his doomscrolling until he was evident he needed to do something else. Netflix.

Later that evening, Garrett’s phone buzzed.

The number wasn’t saved.

He opened the message.

Meet me at The Ashford Grand at 7:00 p.m. tomorrow.

Don’t be late⚠️.

This concerns Emiliana.

Garrett stared at the screen.

He read it again.

No name. No explanation. Just a place, a time, and Emiliana’s name.

He checked the number.

Nothing.

The Ashford Grand was one of those hotels he’d heard of plenty of times without ever having a reason to walk through its doors.

Garrett looked back at the message.

Whoever sent it knew enough about him to know exactly what would get his attention.

Seven o’clock tomorrow.