The conditions loaded slower than usual, like the System was deciding how to phrase something.
[OBJECTIVE CONDITIONS LOADED.]
[WARNING: HOST’S CURRENT ROMANTIC COMPETENCE IS... CONCERNING.]
Garrett was used to system theatrics
[RECOMMENDATION: PLEASE DO NOT PANIC.]
[SECOND RECOMMENDATION: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO BUY HER AFFECTION.]
[THIRD RECOMMENDATION: SERIOUSLY. ]
"I wasn’t going to," he said to an empty flat, which didn’t make the sentence any less defensive.
The full objective unrolled underneath it, one line at a time, like the System wanted him to sit with each part before moving on.
[EMILIANA VALE: SPECIAL ROMANTIC OBJECTIVE]
[FINAL OBJECTIVE: MAKE EMILIANA VALE ASK THE HOST ON A DATE.]
[PROGRESSION REQUIREMENTS:]
[1. BECOME SOMEONE EMILIANA VALE REMEMBERS.]
[NOTE: BEING REMEMBERED AS "THAT WEIRD GUY" TECHNICALLY COUNTS.]
_______________________________________________
[RECOMMENDATION: AIM HIGHER.]
_______________________________________________
[2. MAKE EMILIANA WILLINGLY INITIATE ONE CONVERSATION WITH THE HOST.]
[3. CAUSE EMILIANA TO DEVELOP GENUINE ROMANTIC INTEREST IN THE HOST.]
[4. MAKE EMILIANA CHOOSE THE HOST OVER AT LEAST ONE ALTERNATIVE ROMANTIC OPPORTUNITY.]
[5. EMILIANA VALE MUST PERSONALLY ASK THE HOST ON A DATE.]
Five steps, and no shortcut built into any of them as far as he could tell, nothing about spending, nothing about status, nothing he could simply throw money at until it caved. Just her, choosing, five separate times, of her own accord.
He put the phone down on the arm of the sofa and stared at the ceiling for a while.
He thought about the courtyard again, properly this time. Brian Gilbert. Raymond Carter. The other guys he’d barely bothered to identify. They weren’t simply richer than him — they moved differently, they knew people, they belonged to families whose names opened doors before they even reached them. Even the way they stood around Emiliana carried the confidence of people who had never seriously considered that she might be out of their league.
Garrett had. He didn’t need the System to tell him where he stood. His first thought wasn’t how he was going to beat them. It was why Emiliana would ever notice him at all when men like that were already competing for her attention.
His phone buzzed.
[HOST APPEARS TO BE EXPERIENCING A CONFIDENCE DEFICIT.]
"That’s one way to put it."
[SYSTEM HAS SEEN WORSE.]
"That wasn’t reassuring."
[IT WAS NOT INTENDED TO BE.]
He almost laughed. Almost.
The money crossed his mind, obviously. £9,501.12 was difficult to ignore when it was the single largest fact currently true about his life. For a few seconds he imagined what it could buy — better clothes, a better phone, a car eventually, things that might make him look less like the broke university student he’d been two weeks ago. The thought lasted about three seconds before he discarded it. Money could change what people saw. It couldn’t manufacture the kind of person he wanted Emiliana to actually be interested in.
His phone buzzed again.
[HOST’S FINANCIAL STATUS HAS IMPROVED.]
[HOST’S SOCIAL STATUS HAS NOT.]
Garrett stared at the screen.
"I noticed."
[SYSTEM ADVISES AGAINST ATTEMPTING TO SOLVE SOCIAL PROBLEMS WITH MONEY.]
"I wasn’t going to."
[HOST CONSIDERED IT FOR 3.7 SECONDS. ]
"That’s not a crime."
[CORRECT. IT IS SIMPLY NOTED.]
He put the phone face-down again. Apparently even becoming richer hadn’t made him less predictable.
The first useful thought came to him the next afternoon, halfway through a lecture. Brian Gilbert leaned over three rows to say something to a girl who very obviously hadn’t asked him to. She laughed anyway, politely, the kind of laugh that came with an exit already built into it.
Garrett had watched Emiliana. She hadn’t even glanced over once.
That was when it clicked. Every guy around her was trying to get her attention — compliments, money, status, cars, connections, whatever else they thought would make them stand out and it wasn’t working. Not because they were doing it badly. Because there were too many of them doing exactly the same thing.
Garrett couldn’t compete with that. He didn’t have the money they’d had even with the System, their families, their connections, their confidence, or their place in that social hierarchy. Trying to become a cheaper version of them would only make him look exactly what he was.
So maybe he shouldn’t compete at all. He didn’t need Emiliana to notice him because he’d managed to shout louder than everyone else. He needed her to have a reason to notice him when nobody was asking her to.
That wasn’t a plan yet. But it was at least somewhere to start.
Over the next days he noticed her more often. Not because he followed her, their university routines simply overlapped more than he’d realized. A lecture theatre. The student union. The library. A corridor outside one of the seminar rooms. Every time, the same pattern appeared: people approached her, she dealt with them, then she moved on.
Most of what Garrett saw was exactly what everyone already knew. Emiliana was popular. People wanted her attention. She was polite to most of them, but rarely seemed interested in giving them anything beyond that.
Then, outside the student union, he noticed something different. One of the guys around her made a joke — loud, confident, clearly designed for the entire group to hear. Everyone laughed. Emiliana laughed too, half a beat late, and her eyes moved toward her phone the moment the laughter faded. She wasn’t checking anything. She simply needed somewhere else to look.
Nobody else seemed to notice. Why would they — they were all waiting for their own turn.
Garrett filed it away without deciding what it meant. He wasn’t trying to manipulate her. At least, that was what he told himself. He was simply learning the person he’d been asked to understand.
He didn’t decide to approach her. Not yet. Walking up to Emiliana, introducing himself, and hoping she somehow found him more interesting than everyone else wasn’t a strategy. It was volunteering to lose.
He needed a reason to talk to her that didn’t feel like an attempt to talk to her — something natural, something that would put them in the same moment without requiring him to force his way into hers. He still didn’t know what that moment would look like.
Then, two days later, he found out.
He was walking back from the library with Daniel half a step behind him, still talking about something Garrett wasn’t listening to. He saw her before Daniel did.
No crowd this time. No Brian. No Raymond. No one hovering around her. Just Emiliana, alone, walking along the same path. Toward him.
Garrett slowed without deciding to.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out.
[OPPORTUNITY DETECTED.]
He glanced at the screen, then back up. She was closer now, close enough that he could see she hadn’t noticed him yet, her attention fixed somewhere past his shoulder.
Garrett looked down at the phone again.
[SYSTEM RECOMMENDATION: PLEASE DO NOT SAY SOMETHING STUPID.]
"That’s not very helpful." He whispered
[SYSTEM IS AWARE.]
He put the phone away. She was only a few steps away now.
Then Emiliana looked up. Their eyes met.
She stopped walking.