Divine Milking System-Chapter 35 | The Price Of A String Cheese Is Two Points And My Dignity
I stepped out of that elevator feeling like I’d just discovered fire.
Seven days. Seven whole days on the clock.
The system notification glowed faintly in my peripheral vision, waiting for acknowledgment. I dismissed it with a mental flick and let myself into the apartment, already pulling my phone out to check the exact numbers.
◆ DIVINE MILKING SYSTEM ◆
Lifespan: 7D 4H 18M
Points: 550
Five hundred fifty points in the bank and a full week to figure out my next move. A week ago I’d been staring at seventy-two hours like it was an execution date. Now I had breathing room. Actual breathing room.
I could work with this.
The apartment was dark when I entered. No sign of Hikaru. Probably still at the library or the gym or wherever she went to avoid human contact. The girl treated social interaction like a biohazard.
Smart, honestly. Safer that way.
I dropped my blazer on the couch and headed straight for the kitchen. My stomach had started making aggressive demands about three minutes into the walk back, which made sense given I’d just burned through a solid chunk of mana keeping Euphoric Feedback running for forty minutes straight.
The fridge hummed when I opened it. Bright white light spilled across the tile floor, illuminating a selection of meticulously organized food that definitely belonged to my roommate. Everything labeled, everything dated, everything arranged with the kind of precision that suggested military training or obsessive-compulsive tendencies.
I spotted a package of string cheese on the second shelf. Four individually wrapped sticks, perfectly aligned.
Next to it, a six-pack of blue sports drinks. HunterAde, same overpriced garbage from the dining hall.
I grabbed one of each.
Listen. I’d just added a week to my lifespan by drinking Silver tier essence straight from the source. I’d brought a genuinely sweet girl to multiple screaming orgasms in a pocket dimension while she fed me supernatural milk that tasted like vanilla cream. I’d increased my stats, banked five hundred points, and secured my first devoted partner in this absolutely deranged survival game.
I deserved a cheese stick.
The plastic wrapper crinkled when I tore it open. I bit off the end, twisted the cap off the sports drink, and took a long pull of chemical blue nonsense that pretended to be fruit-flavored.
And then, because nobody was around to witness it and the high of not dying was hitting me like expensive liquor, I started singing.
"I feel good!"
My hips moved on their own. A little shimmy, nothing fancy. I spun around toward the living room, cheese stick pointed at the ceiling like a microphone.
"I knew that I would, now!"
James Brown would have been proud. Or horrified. Probably horrified, but I chose to believe in the proud option because my mood was too good to care about the objective quality of my performance.
I slid across the kitchen tile in my socks, nearly wiping out on the turn but recovering with what I considered impressive grace given my current body’s coordination stats.
"I feel good!"
The sports drink sloshed in the bottle. I took another swig, then held it out like I was toasting an invisible audience.
"I knew that I would, now! So good!"
I did a spin. Bit off another chunk of cheese. The string cheese texture was perfect, that slightly rubbery pull that reminded me of being twelve and packing my own lunches because my mom worked doubles. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮
"So good! I got you!"
Another spin, this time with more commitment. I closed my eyes, letting the momentum carry me through the rotation, arms spread wide like I was accepting applause from Madison Square Garden.
When I opened my eyes, Hikaru was standing in the hallway.
I froze mid-spin, one arm still extended, cheese stick dangling from my mouth.
She’d just come from the shower. Her black hair was damp, hanging loose instead of styled, and she wore an oversized grey hoodie that completely buried her frame. Black basketball shorts underneath, the kind that hit mid-thigh and had enough fabric to comfortably hide what I knew was underneath them.
Water droplets clung to her jawline. Her red eyes were wide, processing the scene in front of her with the expression of someone who’d just discovered their roommate worshipping a pagan god in the living room.
I pulled the cheese stick out of my mouth.
"Oh. What’s up, Hikaru."
Her eyes tracked down to my hand. The cheese stick. The sports drink. Then back to my face.
"That’s my stuff."
Her voice was flat. Low. The kind of tone that suggested I was already dead and my body just hadn’t gotten the memo yet.
I looked down at the evidence in my hands. Cheese stick, half-eaten. Sports drink, definitely opened and currently being consumed.
Right.
"So here’s the thing," I started.
"Put it back."
"I already ate half of it."
"Then pay me for it."
Hikaru took a step forward. The hoodie shifted, and for a split second I caught the outline of her body underneath before the fabric settled again. Even buried under oversized athletic wear, her proportions were obvious if you knew what to look for.
Which I did, because I’d read the goddamn novel and the author had spent three full paragraphs describing what Hikaru looked like when she finally dropped the disguise in Chapter Forty-Seven.
Focus.
"Five points," I said. "I’ll transfer you five points right now."
"The cheese is two. The drink is three. That’s five total."
"Yeah. Five points. That’s what I said."
She stared at me. I stared back. Water dripped from her hair onto the hardwood floor with a soft plip sound that seemed unreasonably loud in the silence.
Then she pulled her phone out of her hoodie pocket.
"Transfer it."
I pulled up the academy app, navigated to the point transfer screen, typed in her student ID from memory because I’d looked it up earlier, and sent over five points with a note that said "cheese tax."
Her phone buzzed. She checked the notification. Then she looked back at me, and I swear to god there was the faintest flicker of something that might have been confusion or possibly amusement before her expression locked down again into neutral ice queen territory.
"Don’t touch my food again," she said.
"Noted."
