Paid to Rest: My Lazy Life System

Was There A Room Here?

“Bro, there’s a bed in here,” Marcus whispered. “There was no bed in here.”

Evan came up behind him and stopped in the doorway.

An hour ago, the master bedroom had been bare walls and wooden floor. Now a huge bed with white sheets stood against the far wall, and thick gray curtains blocked out half the morning light. In the corner, a striped hammock hung between two wooden posts.

A small card sat on one of the pillows. Evan crossed the room and picked it up with fingers that weren’t quite steady.

You’re welcome. Sleep in. —H

He read it twice while the back of his neck prickled.

Quick footsteps clicked down the hall behind them. Vanessa came around the corner with her tablet and stopped so fast that her heels squeaked on the floor. Her stylus slipped out of her hand and bounced across the boards.

“That room was empty.” Her voice came out high and thin. “I did the walkthrough myself at seven this morning.”

She swiped through the listing photos on her tablet with a shaking finger and held one up. It showed the same room, completely empty, with the time stamp from that morning in the corner.

Evan’s mind went blank. His mouth opened, and nothing came out.

“Staging company,” Marcus blurted. “Very fast staging company. They’re, uh, ninjas.”

Vanessa looked from the bed to Marcus, then to Evan, then back to the bed. Her lips moved without a sound. Then she picked up her stylus, tucked her tablet under her arm, and walked out of the penthouse without saying goodbye. The front door clicked shut behind her.

Marcus swallowed. “Is she calling the police?”

“Relax,” Hammock yawned in Evan’s head. “By tonight she’ll decide she remembered wrong. Humans do it all the time.”

Evan let out his breath slowly and turned around.

Tessa was standing in the hallway with her planner held against her chest. She didn’t say anything. She just looked at him for a long moment with her head tilted to one side, and her eyes moved from the hammock to his face and stayed there.

Evan’s ears went hot. He looked down at the card in his hand.

A gray box slid into view.

[Urgent Mission reward: Fully furnished master suite + Skill: Master Chef Basics. You’ll learn kitchen skills fast, and your hands will remember what they’ve learned.]

“The hammock is for me,” Hammock added. “Spiritually.”

Marcus wandered out into the living room and turned in a slow circle. Every other room in the penthouse was still completely empty, with no couch, no table, and not a single chair.

“So we got one bed,” Marcus observed, “and a hammock for a guy who doesn’t exist.”

He went back into the bedroom and flopped sideways into the hammock. It spun once and dumped him face-first onto the floor.

“Not for you,” Hammock sniffed.

That evening, Marcus already had a pizza app open on his phone when the next window appeared.

[Mission offer: Cook dinner for people you like. Reward: $100,000. Accept?]

Evan stared at it. The most he had ever cooked was instant noodles, and once he had even managed to burn those.

But Tessa was on the kitchen floor with her laptop, still working on the closing paperwork, and Marcus had been eating room service for two days. He wanted to give them something that wasn’t a delivery bag.

“Put the phone down.” Evan’s voice came out firmer than he expected. “I’m cooking.”

Marcus squinted at him. “You can’t cook, bro.”

“Then I’ll learn.”

Tessa looked up from her laptop with one eyebrow raised.

Evan walked to the grocery store on the corner and came back with two heavy bags. He propped his phone against a jar on the counter and pressed play on a video called Easy Garlic Tomato Pasta for Beginners. The first clove he sliced came out crooked, and the second was crushed to paste. He glared at the video.

By the third clove, something had changed. His knife moved like it belonged to someone who had done this for years. He crushed the garlic under the flat of the blade, sliced it thin, and tipped it into hot oil at exactly the right moment. The sizzle filled the empty kitchen, along with the smell of garlic and butter.

Marcus stood frozen in the doorway with his phone still in his hand. On the floor, Tessa’s fingers had stopped moving on her keyboard. Evan diced an onion so fast that the knife blurred, and he only realized what he was doing when he looked down at the neat pile of pieces.

“That’s the skill,” Hammock murmured. “It doesn’t cook for you, Host. It just makes you a very fast student.”

His throat went tight without warning. His mother used to stand at a stove like this every Sunday, humming while she cooked, back before he started working weekends and stopped going home. He blinked hard and kept stirring.

Twenty minutes later, the three of them sat on the kitchen floor with their backs against the cabinets, eating pasta out of the pot with three plastic forks. Marcus ate so fast that he had to stop and cough.

Tessa took one bite and went still. She chewed slowly, staring at the fork in her hand.

“Where did you learn to cook like this?” she asked quietly.

“YouTube,” Evan answered, which was true for the first four minutes.

She gave him a long, flat look that told him exactly how much she believed it.

He passed her the bread. Their fingers brushed around the paper bag, and neither of them pulled away right away. Her hand was warm. Evan’s heart thumped hard against his ribs, and he let go a second later than he should have.

Tessa tucked her hair behind her ear and looked down at the pot. A small smile pulled at the corner of her mouth, and she didn’t try to hide it.

[Mission complete. $100,000 deposited.]

Marcus wiped his mouth on his sleeve and scrambled to his feet. “I’m testing the projector. Nobody follow me. This is a sacred moment.”

Then it was just the two of them on the floor, with the city lights coming on through the windows.

Tessa set down her fork and turned to face him fully. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” Evan answered, though his stomach dropped.

“Who do you keep talking to?” Her voice was gentle and very direct. “In the boardroom, your lips were moving while nobody was speaking. Marcus says you yell at the ceiling. And that bed wasn’t there an hour ago, Evan. I was standing right behind you.”

His heart started to pound. This time the skill let him breathe through it, but it couldn’t make the answer any easier to say.

“Your secret, your timing,” Hammock offered quietly. “I’d just pick carefully.”

Evan looked at her face in the city light. She had stood in front of Gordon for him three times. She deserved the truth, and he had no idea how to say it in a way that wouldn’t sound like a breakdown.

Not tonight, he decided.

“I talk to myself when I’m stressed,” he said, forcing a laugh. “It’s a numbers-guy thing.”

Tessa studied his face for a long moment. Then she picked her fork back up.

“Okay,” she murmured. Her eyes stayed on him while she ate, and she didn’t sound convinced at all.

On the counter above them, Evan’s phone started to buzz. It buzzed three times in a row, went quiet, and then started again. Neither of them reached for it.

The building intercom buzzed on the wall by the front door.

Evan got up and went to it, but he didn’t press the button yet. His hand stopped an inch away.

“Mr. Hale, this is Raymond at the front desk.” The night doorman’s voice crackled through the speaker, and he sounded uneasy. “There’s a Mr. Gordon Pratt here in the lobby. He says he isn’t leaving until he sees you.”

Behind the doorman’s voice, a second voice shouted something Evan couldn’t make out. He didn’t need to. He had heard that voice yell his name across an office floor for six years, and the pasta turned to a cold lump in his stomach.

On the floor, Tessa’s fork clattered against the pot.

“Day two of seven,” Hammock reminded him, with no joke in its voice at all. “Whatever you say to that man now counts. Your call.”

Evan’s finger hovered over the intercom button, shaking slightly, while the speaker hissed and the doorman waited for an answer.