[Reward delivered: +10 Affection (Hart). D-Rank Gauntlet inside storage ring.]

The affection bar caught my attention.

[Hart — Affection: 60 / 100]

I tapped it.

A new screen unfolded, broken into tiers, with descriptions beside each one.

The System had decided I needed reference material. I read through it while Hart wheeled the scanner cart toward the examination bed, her back turned, her ears still pink.

[AFFECTION REFERENCE]

[0–20 — Hostile.] She doesn’t want you near her. At the low end of this range, she’d actively work against you. At the high end, she’d tolerate your presence only because professionalism demands it.

[21–40 — Wary.] Civil but distant. No personal interest. Any compliments you give her makes her want to vomit. She isn’t thinking about you when you’re not in the room.

[41–49 — Neutral.] Acquaintance territory. She knows you, she has no strong feelings either way, and she’d treat you the same as any other student or colleague. The baseline for most relationships.

[50 — Interested.] She’s noticed you. She’ll catch your eye across a room without meaning to. She remembers small details you’ve mentioned. Overly flirting might decrease her affection for you.

[60 — Charmed.] She’s into you and she’s annoyed at herself about it. Blushes when you make a move, and fights smiles and loses. She’ll make excuses to be in the same room. Her body language softens when you’re close, but she’ll deny it under direct questioning. She’s still telling herself this is unprofessional.

[70 — Drawn.] She wants to be touched. Casual contact starts to linger. Her eyes drop to your lips when you talk. She’s started thinking about you when you’re not in the room. The self control gets weaker.

[80 — Wanting.] She’d kiss you if you closed the distance. The professional mask only holds in public. In private, the tension between you has its own rules. She finds reasons to be alone with you. She’d accept any reasonable invitation. The first time you took it past kissing, she might say no.

[90 — Surrendered.] The walls are down. She wants you, she’s admitted it to herself, and she’s stopped pretending the relationship is anything else. She’d spread her legs for you.

[100 — Devoted.] She’s yours. She’d reshape her life around you, defend you against anyone who came at you, and accept the consequences of being publicly involved with you. She would die for you.

I closed the screen.

Currently, Hart was charmed by me. She was into me, just as much as i’m into her. She is angry at herself about it, and she was currently pretending to calibrate a scanner cart while her ears stayed pink at the edges and her hand kept brushing the same strand of hair behind the same ear.

Forty more points to get her where I wanted her.

I sat up on the examination bed, pulled my shirt over my head, and folded it beside me on the paper sheet.

"Ready when you are."

Hart stared at my chest for a long moment. Her eyes traced the line of my collarbone, then down the centre of my sternum, then across the shape of my shoulders where the muscle had thickened overnight.

The increase of my rank and attribute points from the choices had played a role. The change wasn’t a small one, my body was incredibly fit, and dense with lean muscles.

"Your body has changed. Your muscle mass has increased by a good margin."

I smiled.

"Do you like what you’re seeing?"

A flush climbed her cheeks. Her mouth opened on a reply, then closed again, and she shook her head once at herself.

"Let me focus." She picked up the sensor from its cradle. "I need to examine your core."

She brought the scanner cart in close and started the readings.

The holographic display unfolded over my chest the same way it had the day before. She didn’t speak for almost five minutes.

When she finally drew the sensor back and set it in its cradle, she stayed leaning over the display for another beat, reading the numbers along the side of the projection.

Her brow furrowed.

"Okay, your core has stabilised. For some, some weird reason. The expansion has slowed to a normal C-rank growth curve. I don’t think it’s going to reach B-rank."

Her hand came up to her chin, pressing two slender fingers against her lower lip.

"But, that doesn’t make sense."

Her eyes weren’t on me anymore. They were on the holographic display, on the numbers in the column beside it, and her brow stayed furrowed in the way it did when she was running a problem her training hadn’t given her the answer to.

"According to what you told me, you awakened an A-rank skill. A-rank skills don’t pair with C-rank cores. The skill should be drawing the core upward. The expansion should be continuing past C, at minimum into low B, just to support the channel load the skill demands when it’s active. That’s the rule. That’s how every case study I’ve read describes it."

She tilted her head a fraction.

"And yours has stopped. This is weird, Ash. This is really weird. I’ve never read about a core that does this. We should keep an eye on it. Come back tomorrow morning, same time. I want to take another reading and see if it’s still holding."

I nodded.

"Tomorrow."

I reached for my shirt. After getting dressed, I gave her a small wink before leaving for my class.