Beep. Beep. Beep.

I eased myself out of my bed and turned off the alarm. The analog clock read seven. With a groan, I carefully made my way to the small bathroom, mindful of how little space there was between the bed and the end table. After brushing my teeth and a quick face wash, I was out and headed towards the kitchen.

Four days. That’s how long it’d been since I started the job.

I gulped down the instant coffee and made my way to the small walk-in closet. The space was almost completely bare, unlike the rest of the place, but it held a single large item. I picked up the toolbox and headed towards the front door.

I made my way outside and headed towards the main office. I still didn’t have a phone line or cable TV set up yet, so I had to get a list of orders from Hiroi in person. Besides, I’d still need to get the owner’s manuals for whatever appliance I had to fix from there, so it wasn’t too much of an annoyance. But the lack of TV on the other hand was. I planned to do something about that after today, now that the weekend was about to begin.

“Mike, Mike! How are you, sweetie?”

I turned my head to see a familiar older woman. She was slowly making her way down the sidewalk with a cane, but stopped to wave at me.

“Hi Glinda!” I shouted back. “How’s the microwave?”

“Oh, it’s wonderful! Everything heats up evenly now, so I don’t have to deal with my husband’s cooking anymore!”

“Well I’m glad to hear that. Let me or Hiroi know if something else breaks, I’ll be glad to fix it.”

“Of course! And you should have said something earlier about not being Hank’s replacement. I was about to invite you over to fix something else! Haha!”

I hid the shiver that went down my spine.

“Oh, is something wrong, dearie?”

“Huh? Nothing, I’m just running a bit late is all.”

“Then I won’t keep you, I’m sure you have plenty of other residents to help out.”

“Right, see you later!” I said, waving goodbye to the old lady and continuing towards the office.

Glinda was a nice friend. But it was hard to build on that friendship when an invitation to her place was a coin toss between tea and a threesome. I just had to find someone who had absolutely no interest in me sexually…

“Hey, Mike!” came a gruff shout.

A large man with bulging veins began walking towards me. The last time I’d seen him, he was ready to kill a man. Even without the bloodshot eyes or threatening screams, Harold was still plenty scary enough to make me freeze in place.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost!” the large man exclaimed as he slapped me on the shoulder. Hard. “The oven’s even better than before! What kind of magic did you work on that old thing?”

“Oh, you know. Just some skills,” I shrugged. And Skills. Especially [Tinker]. The [Diagnose Problem] perk let me skip the hard part of finding what was wrong and jump right into fixing things.

“Well that’s some damn fine skill!” exclaimed Harold with another slap on my shoulder.

“Take it easy, man,” I said with a halfhearted chuckle. “My skin’s going to shine red at this rate.”

“You know, I’d love to do that, but I’ve been working nonstop to replace the window that asshole broke, and to get an apology gift for my wife. I’m hoping that’ll cheer her up.”

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“The asshole?”

“The one who tried fucking my wife.”

“Oh yeah, him.” I quickly nodded. I wasn’t about to correct him on what really happened.

“So yeah, I get that the whole thing only happened because she’s been feeling down, so I figure another gift should cheer her up!”

I cleared my throat and thought for a moment before responding. “You know, maybe you should actually take it easy on the job instead? I bet your wife would actually be a lot happier about it.”

“Huh?” Harold looked at me with a strange look. It was equal parts puzzled and frustrated. His grip on my shoulder began to tighten. “Is that some kind of joke? Because I don’t think it’s very funny.”

“No, really!” I raised my hands to placate him. “I remember her saying that she was lonely, that she didn’t get to spend enough time with you.”

“I don’t know…” His grip loosened, but I could still feel the pain.

“Look Harold, I know you two truly love each other, and each others’ company would be a greater gift than anything money can buy! Just try it out, maybe take a day off and spend it with her, just to see how she feels?”

My shoulder felt like it was about to be pulled out of its socket, or crushed to pieces. But all of a sudden, Harold let go and the pain disappeared.

“Hmm, I guess it’s worth a try. Thanks Mike, I’m glad I can trust you.” Harold gave me another slap on the back and walked off back to his place.

“Yeah,” I whispered. “I’m probably the least likely person in the entire world to fuck your wife.”

I felt a cool breeze blow across my face. “And that probability is zero, by the way.” I quickly added.

I turned around and continued back towards the office. My mind soon began to wander towards the kind of work I’d be doing today.

Most of what Hiroi assigned me was pretty standard, and I was starting to get the hang of fixing the most common problems. Clogged toilets, dryers filled with too much lint, and shorted out microwaves. Those weren’t always the only problems, however. Especially with the microwaves.

One man tried heating up a fleshlight in his, and it exploded. Thankfully he hadn’t used it first, but it took almost as long to clean out as Becky’s dishwasher did, and I almost told that guy he should’ve just microwave his dick instead. The only reason I held my tongue was because I leveled up in [Tinker] right after.

That was the weird thing about that Skill. It worked on just about every kind of machine, but it seemingly only leveled up when I fixed something with a clearly sexual purpose, or sexual-adjacent. Becky’s dishwasher was used to clean her collection of sex toys, and the other guy’s microwave was being used to warm up his.

One of the books I’d gotten from the Newark library said that leveling up was absolutely trivial at early levels, that it would take less than a week to reach level 10 in just about anything! But I was only at level 4 in almost all of my Skills despite having them for much longer. In fact, my main level was also stuck in place!

I guessed that the System just didn’t deem what I was doing as worthy of leveling. Being an apartment complex’s resident handyman was apparently too boring for it.

I looked up at the sky and let out a long, raucous laugh. “Like I give a shit! I’m happier than I’ve ever been!”

One person saw me and gave me a strange look. I glared back at him and he quickly ran away. I knew his secret, so if he tried spreading any rumors about me being a weirdo, he knew I’d let word of his microwave incident slip.

But really, I was happier than I ever have been in my life. I’d fight to keep things as they were.

I continued onward, and it didn’t take me much longer for me to reach Hiroi’s office. The door was locked, so I knocked on it. No answer. I knocked again and double checked the hours listed on the window. 6 am - 3 pm. The old man was a hard worker, waking up bright and early every morning. If he wasn’t there, maybe something was wrong…

“Oof!” came a shout from behind me. I turned around and looked around for its source. “Aah!” it came again. My ears traced it to the walled off section that housed the dumpsters.

I dropped my toolbox and ran towards the sound. There was no mistaking it, that voice belonged to Hiroi.

I turned the corner and entered the secluded area, slamming into the wall to stop my momentum. Inside, amongst the dumpsters, was my boss. He was keeled over, arms grabbing at his stomach. Standing over him was a man in a gray pinstripe suit, purple tie, and white fedora.

“C’mon old man, I didn’t even hit ya’ that hard!” the strange man said with a strong New Jersey Italian accent. He had a toothpick between his teeth. He lazily turned his head towards me and gave me a frown. “And who da hell are you?”