Jordan didn’t remember the drive.

One second he was looking at a painted number three on a concrete wall. The next he was sitting in his parking spot at The Cooper Garment Lofts with the engine off and no memory of how twenty minutes had disappeared.

He climbed out. Locked the car. The elevator button glowed when he pressed it.

Fourth floor. His door. Key in the lock.

Inside Unit 404, everything looked clean. The floors he’d scrubbed yesterday. The kitchen counters that gleamed under the overhead lights. All of it felt like evidence of a different person’s life.

His shirt was still damp with sweat from the gym. He pulled it off and dropped it on the couch.

The bathroom. Hot water. Get the sweat off.

Jordan turned the shower on and stripped down to nothing. Steam started filling the space. He stepped under the spray.

The water hit his shoulders and ran down his chest, hot enough to make his skin prickle. He stood there with his eyes closed and his hands braced against the tile.

The Prada bag guy.

The name echoed. Bounced around inside his skull where it couldn’t be scrubbed out or washed away or fixed with better posture.

She’d told Alexis. She’d told her friends. They’d laughed about it over mimosas or whatever the fuck Tier 1 girls drank at brunch. Twenty-eight hundred dollars reduced to a punchline. Two months of his life packaged into an anecdote she could pull out whenever she needed to feel better about herself.

Fuck.

Water ran over his face. Salt mixed with the spray. His chest hurt like someone had reached inside and squeezed.

Fuck fuck fuck.

He’d called his dad yesterday. Told him he was done wasting money. Done being pathetic. Done throwing cash at problems and hoping they’d solve themselves.

And twenty-four hours later here he was, standing in a shower crying over the same girl who’d already cucked him in a parking lot on Christmas.

The water kept running.

Jordan opened his eyes and looked down at the drain. Watched the water spiral and disappear.

The System had given him abs. Given him a jawline. Given him money and quests and a literal percentage tracker that told him when women were starting to think he wasn’t completely worthless.

And he was still the Prada bag guy.

He turned the water off.

The silence in the bathroom was heavy and wet. Steam clung to the mirror and fogged up the glass. Jordan grabbed a towel and dried off mechanically. Face, chest, arms, legs. Routine movements that required no thought.

He wrapped the towel around his waist and walked to his bedroom.

Grey sweatpants. Underwear first. He pulled them on and stood there in the middle of his loft looking at his bed with its clean sheets.

His phone sat on the nightstand where he’d left it.

Jordan picked it up.

Notifications. Leo had sent four more messages. Kyle had sent one asking if he was okay. The System had logged something about proximity alerts.

Jordan swiped past all of it and opened his browser.

Twitter dot com. Incognito mode. The login screen appeared.

His fingers hovered over the keyboard.

He had an account. A secret one. The kind you made when you were fifteen and horny and didn’t want anyone connecting it to your real name. Sixty-three thousand followers who only knew him as a burner account that posted links to sites with women who got paid to look at cameras while guys like him sent them money.

He could log in right now. Scroll for ten minutes. Find something that would make his brain shut up long enough to get the rage out of his chest.

The Ceaseless Discharge trait. The System’s garbage bronze pull. It was good for something, right? Good for exactly this. Burning through the pain until his body was too tired to feel anything else.

Jordan’s thumb was already moving toward the login field.

But remember what you told your dad.

The thought arrived like cold water.

He’d called his father yesterday. Stood in his car and said he was done being the person who threw money at problems. Done wasting opportunities. Done lying.

And now what? He was going to jack off in his apartment at one PM because a girl he hadn’t even dated had laughed about him to her friends?

Jordan locked his phone.

He set it face-down on the nightstand.

Fuck.

The pain was still there. Sitting in his chest like something physical. Something that needed to come out or it would just keep building until he did something stupid.

He needed to move.

Jordan went downstairs. His apartment was quiet except for the faint hum of the refrigerator. The living room stretched out in front of him with the clean couch and the spotless coffee table.

A deck of cards sat in the drawer under the TV. He’d bought them months ago thinking he’d learn poker or something equally pointless. Never opened the box.

Jordan pulled the drawer open and grabbed the deck.

There was a thing. Some famous football player did it. Flipped cards and did exercises based on the number. Burned through a whole deck until your muscles gave out and your brain stopped screaming.

Jordan ripped the plastic off the box and dumped the cards onto the coffee table. Shuffled them once. Set the deck face-down.

He flipped the first card.

Eight of hearts.

Pushups. Eight of them.

Jordan dropped to the floor. His hands hit the concrete. Shoulders over wrists. Core tight. He lowered himself until his chest nearly touched the ground and pushed back up.

One.

Two.

Three.

His arms burned by six but he finished all eight and stood back up.

Next card. Ace of diamonds.

Aces were fifteen. He’d decided that in the two seconds it took to flip it.

Jordan dropped again. Fifteen pushups. His shoulders started shaking at twelve but he didn’t stop. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.

He stood. Breathing harder now. Good. Pain was good. Pain meant his brain had something else to focus on.

King of spades.

Kings were thirteen. Squats.

Jordan spread his feet shoulder-width apart and dropped his hips. Thighs parallel to the ground. Back straight. Up. Down. His quads started burning at eight but he kept going. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen.

Two of clubs.

Two squats. Easy. Down, up, down, up. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Next card. Seven of diamonds. Seven pushups.

Jordan kept going.

===

〘Traore’s Thoughts〙

Hey guys, I decided to make a Power Stone Goal for this novel.

Every 200 Power Stones this week = +1 Extra Chapter. (MAX 14 ChapterS)

We can have the normal 2 Daily Chapters + 2 Extra Chapters Every Day, is all up to you ;)