Chapter 409: Chapter 409

I stopped dead.

My hand froze halfway to my pocket. My stomach dropped, that cold, instinctive lurch that always came with something important, something dangerous. I stared at the panel longer than I meant to, reading it again and again like the words might rearrange themselves into something less inconvenient.

Dirty Closet.

Find the truth about Bellings.

The system didn’t hand out quests like this for nothing. Not main quests. Not with rewards like that. This wasn’t some optional side bullshit. This was the system planting its feet and telling me, very clearly, that walking away was no longer an option.

Slowly, I glanced back over my shoulder.

The door to Chase’s office was open now.

He was sitting behind his desk, posture relaxed, one hand resting near his laptop, the other folded loosely over it. He was smiling at me. Not wide, not forced. Calm. Professional. The kind of smile that was meant to put people at ease.

Instead, every nerve in my body screamed.

Something was wrong.

I couldn’t tell if that feeling came from the system, from the quest notification still burning in the corner of my vision, or from something more instinctual. Something older. Something I’d learned to listen to the hard way. Either way, the sensation crawled under my skin and refused to let go.

I exhaled slowly, reached up, and mentally accepted the quest.

The panel vanished.

I turned around and walked toward the office.

Chase looked up as I stepped inside. “Mr. Marlowe,” he said smoothly. “Did you decide you wanted to come in after all?”

“Yeah,” I replied, closing the door behind me. I nodded once. “Figured I might as well.”

He gestured toward the couch across from his desk. “Have a seat.”

I sat down, leaning back slightly, careful to look relaxed. Chase turned his laptop toward himself and began scrolling through something, fingers moving with practiced ease.

“Evan Marlowe,” he said aloud. “Anxiety, right?”

“Right,” I said easily.

He glanced up. “So, did you do all the homework I’d given you last time?”

“Yeah,” I said without missing a beat. “I did.”

That was a lie.

Every single assignment he’d given me was still sitting untouched in my notes app, half-read and mostly ignored. Breathing exercises. Social exposure journaling. Mindfulness tracking. I wasn’t socially anxious. Not really. I just knew how to play the part when it benefited me.

“I practiced the breathing techniques,” I continued, crossing one ankle over my knee. “Especially in crowded places. Helped more than I expected.”

Chase nodded approvingly. “Good. And the journaling?”

“I kept up with it,” I said. “Mostly focused on identifying triggers. Work stress came up a lot.”

“That’s normal,” he replied. “Awareness is the first step toward managing it.”

He went back to his laptop, typing something. I watched him closely, noting every movement, every micro-expression. His posture stayed open. His breathing was steady. No visible tells. If there was something off about him, it wasn’t obvious on the surface.

We talked for a while after that. About stress. About work. I told him half-truths wrapped in believable details. That managing people at TechForge could be overwhelming. That responsibility sometimes felt heavier than expected. That I worried about letting people down. All true, just selectively framed.

He listened attentively, occasionally interjecting with gentle questions, steering the conversation the way a good therapist did. Nothing about it felt wrong. If anything, he was competent. Charismatic, even.

Which only made the unease worse.

Eventually, the conversation lulled into a brief silence. Chase folded his hands together and leaned back slightly.

“By the way,” I said casually, like the thought had just occurred to me, “that girl earlier. Ivy. She’s your girlfriend, right?”

He blinked once, then smiled faintly. “Not officially.”

I nodded. “Figured.”

“I heard you two arguing,” he added, tone curious but not judgmental. “What was that about?”

I chuckled softly. “Well… maybe you should pay me to talk about that stuff, huh?”

He laughed, genuinely amused. “Fair enough. I know Ivy, and I know you’re good friends. Should I call it coincidence that you’re here to see me because of her?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Because of Ivy?”

He tilted his head slightly. “Are you in love with her, perhaps?”

I snorted before I could stop myself. “God, no. No, no, no. Nah. I’d rather fall in love with a fish than her.”

He smiled wider at that. “Oh. I thought you two were… well, then what were you fighting over?”

“Kinda personal,” I said. “Sorry.”

“Mm,” Chase hummed, nodding. He clapped his hands together once, light and decisive. “Welp, I guess that’s our time.”

“Yeah.”

He glanced at the clock. “I’ll text you your next homework, Mr. Marlowe. I hope you can manage that as well.”

“I’ll try my best,” I said, standing up.

We exchanged goodbyes. Polite. Professional. I walked out of the office and into the hallway, the door clicking shut behind me.

As soon as it did, the tension I’d been holding leaked out of my shoulders in one long exhale.

Well.

That didn’t go as planned.

I hadn’t learned anything concrete. No slip-ups. No red flags. No dramatic reveal. Just one thing, sitting heavy in my chest.

The system didn’t make mistakes. And now I knew one thing for certain.

Ivy and Chase weren’t just a thing.

They were a problem.

❤︎‬‪‪❤︎‬‪‪❤︎

I was back behind my desk, fingers moving on autopilot over the keyboard while my mind was very much somewhere else. The soft hum of computers, distant chatter from the hallway, and the muted clicks of keyboards around me should’ve been grounding, familiar, normal. Instead, everything felt slightly off, like the world was tilted just enough to make standing still uncomfortable.

Yesterday had been weird. Not the normal kind of weird I was starting to get used to, either. The system UI popping up like that, handing me a main quest out of nowhere, was not something I could brush off. It wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t optional. It was the system practically grabbing me by the collar and pointing at Chase Bellings like, hey, pay attention to this one.

I leaned back slightly in my chair and rubbed my face with both hands before exhaling. Whatever this was, it wasn’t going to resolve itself. Especially not when the system got involved.

Another thing that kept circling back into my thoughts was Indicfrelation. The word itself felt heavy, like it carried history and consequences I hadn’t even begun to understand yet. From what little I’d managed to dig up so far, it wasn’t just some casual gathering or a metaphorical competition. It was an actual event. A contest of gods. Or goddesses, in this case. Influence, control, subjects, power, all of it wrapped into one horrifyingly abstract concept.

And Mana was the strongest among them.

That alone made my stomach tighten. Strength, when it came to goddesses, didn’t just mean brute force. It meant reach. Authority. The ability to bend rules, break them quietly, and make reality shrug and accept it afterward. I’d already seen a glimpse of what she could do, and I didn’t like how calm she’d been while doing it. Calm meant confidence. Calm meant control.

Which made her dangerous in a way that was far worse than someone loud and violent.

I glanced down at my phone, unlocking it again despite having checked it barely a minute ago. My thumb moved almost aimlessly as I scrolled through search results, articles, cached pages, and archived mentions of Chase Bellings. Therapist. Licensed. Clean record. Media darling in some circles. A professional smile in nearly every photo.

Everything was straight. Too straight.

There wasn’t even a hint of scandal. No whispers. No buried accusations. No legal disputes. If I hadn’t already seen the system quest myself, I would’ve assumed Delilah was just being paranoid. Hell, I was starting to wonder if I was being paranoid.

I opened the reviews again, scrolling more carefully this time.

Most of them praised him. Words like empathetic, insightful, life-changing popped up again and again. People thanked him for helping them through grief, addiction, anxiety, depression. It was almost impressive how spotless his reputation was.

Almost.

The bad reviews were few, but they stood out because of how out of place they felt. One of them was from a guy who had apparently worked at Chase’s office. The review was bitter, poorly written, and clearly fueled by resentment. Complaints about low wages, long hours, no benefits. I dismissed that one almost immediately. Spite reviews happened all the time.

The women, though, were different.

One of them wrote about how Chase didn’t even try to understand her problems. She said he dismissed her concerns, redirected conversations constantly, and made her feel like she was overreacting. She didn’t accuse him of anything dramatic. No abuse. No misconduct. Just a complete lack of emotional connection.

The other one was harsher.

She called him a balloon inflated by media attention. Said he was a bad therapist who didn’t listen, didn’t care, and relied more on rehearsed phrases than genuine engagement. It wasn’t a rant. It was short, sharp, and oddly specific.

I read both of them again, slower this time.

Patterns mattered.

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