Chapter 5 Finally eating a decent meal

His phone vibrated almost immediately inside his pocket.

But before Jay could even remove his hand from the car window to check the notification...

Vrrrrt!

The tinted window suddenly slid down halfway making jay to flinched in shock.

Only then did he realize there had been someone sitting inside the car the entire time.

A teenage boy around eighteen or nineteen stared back at him from the driver’s seat with a suspicious expression. Loud music was playing faintly inside the vehicle, and the kid looked both irritated and confused.

“Hey What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the teenager snapped immediately.

Jay’s eyes widened slightly.

“Oh sorry, I. I, ummm,” he stammered awkwardly While quickly pulling his hand away from the car.

He genuinely hadn’t noticed anyone was inside. The dark tinted windows completely hid the interior.

The teenager narrowed his eyes at him suspiciously.

“Were you trying to break into my car or something?”

“No. No, I wasn’t,” Jay said quickly while raising both hands slightly. “I was just admiring the car.”

The excuse sounded weak even to his own ear and the teenager clearly didn’t buy it either.

“Yeah?” the kid scoffed. “Then how about you get the hell out of here before I burst your stupid ass.”

As he spoke, the teenager lifted his shirt slightly, revealing the firearm tucked into his waistband as a clear warning to Jay.

Jay immediately backed away from the vehicle with an awkward expression.

“Relax, men. It’s not that serious,” he muttered.

“Then stop touching people’s cars like a weirdo,” the teenager shot back instantly.

“Yeah. fair enough,” Jay admitted quietly while rubbing the back of his neck helplessly.

Honestly, from the outside perspective, he probably did look suspicious as hell.

Standing outside someone's luxury car late at night with his hand pressed against the window definitely wasn't normal behavior. In this part of the city, car break-ins were common, so Jay couldn't really blame the kid for being arrogant towards him.

As for the gun he was carrying despite his age, it was a clear sign that he's involved with some kind of gang. It was a sad reality, likely the result of poor guidance and a difficult upbringing that had led the kid down the wrong path in life.

The teenager gave him one last wary look before rolling the tinted window back up.

Vrrrrt!

A second later, the Mercedes engine started, and the car quickly pulled out of the parking lot and disappeared onto the road.

Jay stood there silently for a moment before finally pulling out his phone to check the bank alert.

The moment he saw the updated balance again, a grin slowly spread across his face despite the awkward encounter.

His account balance was now sitting at eighteen thousand six hundred and seventy six dollars.

Jay stared at the number on his phone screen for several long seconds.

He had never seen his bank account contain that many digits before in his entire life.

Not even close.

For years, his balance had always hovered around double digits, sometimes barely reaching triple digits before bills swallowed everything again.

But now there was almost nineteen thousand dollars sitting in his account and more unbelievable he had earned it all in a single night.

Everything still felt unreal.

After taking one last glance at the balance, Jay slipped his phone back into his pocket and walked toward the grocery bags he had left near the store entrance.

He bent down and picked them up one by one before he began walking back toward his apartment.

The bags were extremely heavy, weighing down both his arms almost immediately. but still, it wasn’t anything unmanageable.

His apartment building was only a short distance away, and at this hour, the streets were nearly empty anyway. Very few vehicles passed by, and waiting around for another taxi would honestly waste more time than simply walking home himself.

So Jay kept moving forward.

The cold night breeze brushed lightly against his face while the grocery bags rustled with every step he took.

Oddly enough, despite how exhausting tonight had been, Jay felt lighter than he had in months.

Maybe it was because, for the first time in a long while, he wasn’t walking home worried about tomorrow’s survival.

In no time, Jay finally reached his apartment building and climbed upstairs.

Click.

The apartment door opened once again and the moment he stepped inside, Jay immediately dropped the grocery bags onto the floor with a heavy sigh of relief.

“Damn that heavy,” he muttered to himself while stretching both his arms and rolling his shoulders, trying to ease the soreness from carrying all the weight back home.

After resting for a few seconds, he began taking the groceries into the kitchen one after another and started arranging everything where it belonged, and the more he stocked the kitchen, the stranger the apartment began to feel.

Two months, the place had looked empty and depressing.

But now the shelves were actually filled with food.

Real food.

The sight alone brought an unfamiliar sense of satisfaction to him.

A few minutes later, after finishing everything, Jay leaned against the kitchen counter and glanced at the stocked groceries around him.

Then his stomach growled loudly once again.

Jay immediately laughed.

“Alright, alright. I get it.”

Without wasting another second, he quickly got to work preparing himself a proper dinner.

An actual meal worth feasting on.

He pulled out the beef, cracked a few eggs into a pan, and started cooking rice while the rich aroma of sizzling meat slowly filled the apartment.

The smell alone almost made his mouth water.

He couldn't help but stand by the stove quietly, watching the food cook while steam rose into the air.

Minutes later, the food was finally ready—fried beef, boiled rice along with rich steaming egg sauce poured generously over the top. and beside it sat an ice-cold bottle of soda to go along with the meal.

The aroma alone nearly drove Jay crazy with hunger.

Without wasting another second, he carried everything over to his bed, set the plate down carefully, and immediately started digging in mercilessly.

“Uhhm. so good...” he mumbled with his mouth half full.

The beef was juicy, the rice perfectly hot, and the egg sauce tasted far better than anything instant noodles could ever compare to.

For someone who had spent weeks surviving on cheap ramen and leftovers, this meal honestly felt luxurious.

Jay ate like a starving man who hadn’t seen proper food in years.

And maybe. in a way. he really was.

As he continued eating, his attention slowly drifted toward the faint glowing stats that had been sitting quietly in the corner of his peripheral vision ever since the system fully bonded with him.

Earlier, he had ignored them because too much was happening at once.

But now that things had finally calmed down, curiosity naturally crept into his mind.

Jay focused his gaze on the floating stats, and almost instantly...

Whoosh!

The interface expanded into full view before him, almost as if the system had read his thoughts.

[ Host: Jay Wayne ]

[ Age: 24 ]

[ Intelligence: 16 ]

[ Agility: 18 ]

[ Charisma: 2 ]

[ System level: level 1 ]

[ System Points: 0 ]

[ Account Balance: $18,676 ]

Jay stared at the screen thoughtfully while chewing slowly.

He understood the host name. age. And account balance easily enough, including the system level part.

But the others?

Intelligence. Agility. Charisma. and System Points.

Those clearly looked like some kind of ratings or attributes.

But what exactly did the numbers mean?

And why the hell was his charisma only two?

Jay frowned slightly.

“That's low?” he muttered in confusion.

Sure, his life sucked, but he didn’t think his charisma was completely hopeless. And what exactly was system points?

Without further are due, Jay decided to directly question the system.

“Hey, System.”

[ Yes, Host. ]