Time to face the music

Amy slowly yawns and stretches her arms out, waking up slowly. She smiled as she saw you, saying "Best sleep I've had in a long time, thanks for sticking around with me, I know you hate waking up late".

It's like she was trying to make you feel even more guilty about what you had just done.

"Yeah, about that", you started. "I didn't really have to wait around that long, it's only 6 AM".

"That's weird", Amy responded, a bit puzzled. "I always hated waking up early, but I've never felt more refreshed than I do now. Maybe that's because you were with me, or maybe I should just start waking up early instead of staying asleep until almost noon".

Damn, she was making this really hard for you to do. She was giving you so many different avenues to back out on this. You had to remind yourself that you would eventually have to do this anyways, and what better chance to do it than when you have her alone for a week and her scores are already wildly positive.

"Amy, there's something I need to talk to you about", you started again, your first segue having been thwarted.

Amy, sensing the uneasy tone in your voice, immediately tried to make you feel better by responding with "What is it?" and laying her head on your shoulder as the two of you sat up on the back of the bed.

"You know how a couple weeks ago you asked me if you thought we were moving too quickly?" you asked.

"Yeah, I do", Amy responded with a slight nod. "And I remember that you said something like how we spent so many years together without moving forward".

"Did you ever wonder if there was a reason why we just now started this?"

"Not really, I just figured that last year, we were both busy accustoming to campus life, but now we essentially had the whole world in front of us, so we could just do whatever the heck we felt like. I figured that we just naturally clicked, and with the carefree environment that we were in, we just both thought this was the next best step. Why, do you think there's a reason behind it?"

"As a matter of fact, I do think there is one", you pulled out your phone as you spoke.

"If you're about to go all supernatural on me, I better warn you right now, Cody. I don't believe in ghosts or magic or any of that crap".

"It's not necessarily supernatural, per se, but I'm not really sure how it happened".

"Alright, I'll bite. What is it?"

"So, on the day of the first football game, I was in the bathroom during practice. I checked my phone since I couldn't do it during practice due to Mrs. Adams yelling at me, and I noticed this weird app that I didn't ever download called the Affection Multiplier." You boot up the app. "See?"

"I'm not seeing anything. Sounds like a virus".

Weird, you thought. Oh well, I'll just carry on and see what happens.

"Well, I opened it up because I was curious. I thought it was some sort of joke that you had downloaded, but then I opened it. It had the name of the college at the top, and pictures of both you and the band director on it. I thought that was pretty strange, because you two were the only two people I had interacted with since about noon that day. I clicked on the pictures and it brought me to some sort of character sheet with these three little bars. At first, it was only the affection bar which I had. Mrs. Adams' score was -33 and yours was 102, both on a scale from -150 to 150".

You saw her blush a little bit when you mentioned that her score was 102. "Wow, that actually seems pretty accurate to what I saw back then", she said, a bit quieter as if she was processing everything. "Mrs. Adams hates you and I really saw you as a great friend back then."

"Then I started interacting with a lot of different people. They all got their own profiles with scores, then two new scores popped up: a love score and a lust score. The app explained that since those two were different from affection, they also got different scores on the same scale."

"Hold up, so this Affection Multiplier supposedly does what now? Tracks your different scores with people? Seems like a misnomer to me."

"No, it said that relationships between me and people I have on this app increase at 5 times the speed of which they normally would. Additionally, once I max out a certain person's score to 150 on any of those bars, I get some sort of currency which can be used to purchase little upgrades."

"Five times faster...that explains a few things. I'm not sure I believe in this yet, but you're certainly making it somewhat palatable. What sorts of upgrades do they have in there?"

"Have you noticed me getting in shape recently?"

"You're such a dork, but yes I have. I just thought that was because of your exercise regiment with Isabella."

"That's because I bought this trait called 'Great Athlete' which makes me better at getting in shape. I also bought this one called 'Sleep Optional', which is actually a misnomer, because it halves the amount of sleep I need. I got it for you as well, which is why you woke up so early feeling refreshed. You had slept for only about 5 hours, but it felt like 10 hours to your body."

"That makes sense then. But why can't I see it, if it's truly on your phone?"

"I have no clue. Maybe some built-in security measure".

"Okay, okay. Wow, this is a lot for me to take in."

You let her sit there for a while, thinking it all through.

"I have my final verdict", she said in a bit less of a friendly tone than you anticipated.

"Verdict?" you said, a bit quizzical.

"Yep", she said without skipping a beat. "I'm not mad at you. Quite the opposite. As you said in the cafeteria that one time, we spent so long just being friends and nothing more. And if it took supernatural powers or whatever to get us over that hump, then I should be thanking you for using that, because I love where we are now."

You were relieved beyond belief.

"Just one more thing", she began. "Two, actually. One, can you just check with me next time you alter anything about me?"

"Yeah, of course. I just got a little impulsive last time."

"I forgive you for that, because waking up at 6 when we had to come over here was actually terrible, so this should be a nice benefit to my life. Two, what are my scores?"

You load up the app, where it shows you her scores.

"Hey, that's kinda weird", she says before you can tell her. "I can actually see the app now. Holy shit..."

You assume that she must've seen her scores.

"150 in affection? And a 150 in love? Not to mention the 101 in lust?" she says incredulously, looking a bit flustered as she reads them aloud.

"Yeah, you really are head-over-heels", you say jokingly.

"Shut up!" she responds, shoving you.

Just then, the Affection Multiplier gave you a notification.