The panel bloomed in front of him
[DAILY QUEST COMPLETE]
[Full Body Recovery: Initiated]
The familiar warmth spread through him almost instantly, the same wave from the day before, muscles loosening, the ache draining out of his limbs like someone had quietly reset the counter on his exhaustion.
His body still remembered the workout, still carried whatever quiet improvement it had earned, but the punishment for earning it simply evaporated.
He sat up feeling, impossibly, like a man who hadn’t just fought a war with his own core muscles thirty seconds ago.
"I could get used to this" he said to the empty apartment, and immediately regretted saying it out loud, like the universe might take it as a personal challenge.
Then a second notification slid in behind the first, and this one made him sit up a little straighter.
[2-CONSECUTIVE-DAY BONUS UNLOCKED]
[Calculating reward]
Jason stared at it, genuinely curious now. The system had mentioned this days ago, it was some vague promise about a bonus for consistency and he’d mostly forgotten about it in the chaos of everything else.
His mind went, unhelpfully, straight to the five hundred dollars sitting in his account from last night’s hug, and he had to consciously stop himself from expecting fireworks.
Don’t get greedy. That was a special request. This is just attendance, basically. Gym class participation.
The panel finished loading.
His phone which was sitting face-down on the nightstand where he’d abandoned it after the run, buzzed insistently against the wood.
He grabbed it. Two messages.
Ben: you coming or not
Ben: let me know
Then, right behind it
Ben: bro I’m leaving without you
Jason’s thumbs moved before his brain fully caught up.
Jason: NO NO NO NO NO
Jason: give me 15 minutes
Ben: you always say that man
Jason: and I meant it yesterday too. give me 15.
Ben: 👀 👀 hurry up
He was already moving before Ben’s second eye-roll landed, tossing the phone onto the bed and diving into the shower with the urgency of a man late for something considerably more important than school.
The whole routine, shower, teeth, clothes, the fastest version of getting dressed his body had ever managed took closer to twelve minutes than fifteen, and he was still tugging his second shoe on as he stepped out the apartment door.
Ben was waiting exactly where he always was, leaning against the low wall outside his building, arms crossed, wearing the specific expression of a man who’d been standing there just long enough to compose several complaints.
"Fifteen minutes" Ben said, checking an imaginary watch on his bare wrist
"You said fifteen minutes"
"It was fifteen minutes"
"It was seventeen"
"That’s basically fifteen"
"That’s not how numbers work, man"
Jason jogged the last few steps to close the distance, and Ben pushed off the wall to meet him halfway, already grinning despite the complaint.
They fell into the easy handshake they’d been doing since before either of them could remember why they did it that specific way grip, pull, shoulder bump, release and started walking.
Ben set the pace, hands stuffed in his pockets, sunglasses pushed up into his hair even though the sun hadn’t fully committed to the day yet.
"Bro, my sister asked me yesterday if I still remembered her birthday’s coming up. Like obviously I remember. I just don’t remember the date"
"Those are different things."
"Are they, though?"
"Yes. Massively" Jason kicked a loose stone off the sidewalk without really aiming for it.
"One means you forgot her. The other just means your brain doesn’t do calendars."
"See, that’s what I told her, and she wasn’t having it."
"Because that’s a terrible defense."
"It’s an honest defense."
"Those aren’t mutually exclusive with terrible."
Ben huffed out a laugh and shook his head, letting the topic go the way conversations between them usually did dropped mid-argument, picked back up an hour later like it had never paused.
They walked another stretch in the kind of comfortable quiet that didn’t need filling, until Jason remembered something and glanced over.
"Marcus wasn’t around two days ago. You know what that was about?"
Ben shrugged. "No clue. Might’ve had that thing with his cousin the wedding stuff, remember? Or he just skipped. Wouldn’t be the first time."
"True."
"I’m not gonna pretend I keep close tabs on Marcus’s whereabouts."
"Fair enough."
They both let it drop there, unresolved, the way most minor mysteries about friends usually stayed.
Jason pulled out his phone to check the time, it was 9:04 and he did the quick mental math.
Nearly two hours before class actually started.
"We’ve got time to burn," Ben said, apparently reading his mind, or more likely just reading the same clock
"Gym. Let’s go."
Jason’s whole posture changed. "No."
"No?"
"No." He said it with more finality than the topic probably deserved, mostly because he had zero interest in explaining that his body had already been through a war this morning courtesy of a floating blue screen and twenty increasingly hostile sit-ups.
"I’m good. You keep inviting me knowing damn well that I’m not going to go with you"
Ben squinted at him.
"You never know, it might work one of these days. I’ll keep pushing until you get in with me on this gym journey"
"That won’t ever happen man. I’m not voluntarily signing myself up for daily torture"
"Sigh, coming from someone like you that’s fair, actually." Ben studied him another second, unconvinced, then shrugged it off.
"Whatever, man. You’re being weird."
"I’ve heard that a lot in the last twenty-four hours."
"Concerning pattern."
"Very concerning."
Ben didn’t argue further, he just slung an arm around Jason’s shoulder, casual and immovable, the universal gesture of a friend who had already decided the conversation was over.
"You’re coming anyway. To watch me workout"
Jason sighed, long and theatrical, mostly for effect.
"Fine."
The gym sat two streets over from school, tucked between a barbershop and a place that sold protein shakes in colors no food should naturally be. Inside, it smelled like rubber mats and effort the low clank of weights meeting weights, a couple of guys grunting through something on the bench press, one older man doing lat pulldowns with the unbothered rhythm of someone who’d been coming here since before Jason was born.
Ben was already peeling off toward the free weights, greeting the front-desk guy by name like they went way back, which they probably did.
Jason hung a few steps behind, phone buzzing in his pocket. He pulled it out.
Marcus: where are you guys. been in school a while
Jason: at the gym with Ben
Marcus: okay coming
He locked the phone and slid it back into his pocket, and in the small gap of nothing happening, his brain wandered somewhere it hadn’t planned to go Sarah, and the fact that he still, somehow, after everything, didn’t have her number.
We hugged. We had an entire emotionally significant evening. I know her coffee order. I do not know her number. Truly a well-organized system of priorities I’ve built for myself
"Yo!" Ben’s voice cut through it, already halfway to the rack of dumbbells, waving Jason over like he was flagging down a cab.
"Let’s go, you’re lifting today."
"I will kill you," Jason called back, not moving any faster than strictly necessary,
"before I touch a single dumbbell today."
"That’s assault threats before nine thirty. New record."
"You earned it."
"I always do."
Jason finally crossed the floor toward him, shaking his head, and Ben was already grinning like a man who’d won an argument he hadn’t technically had yet.