Resonance Harem: I Level Up Through Sincerity

Ch 9. Debug at Dawn

I showed up at Clara's door at 2:47 AM with two coffees and a bag of convenience store donuts.

I knocked twice.

The camera clicked. The door cracked its usual two centimeters, chain still on.

One gray eye appeared in the gap. "Password."

"I brought caffeine."

The chain slid free, and the door opened.

I stepped inside and immediately understood why Clara never invited anyone in.

Her apartment looked like a hacker's wet dream crossed with a NASA control room. Three monitors mounted on the wall, two laptops open on the desk, cables snaking everywhere like spaghetti.

Clara herself was in an oversized hoodie that said "sudo make me a sandwich" and shorts that were... short. Very short. The kind that made my brain briefly forget how to form sentences.

She caught me looking. "Eyes up here, Cross."

"I was admiring your cable management," I lied.

She grabbed one of the coffees from my hand and took a long sip. "Not decaf?"

I shook my head.

She dropped into her desk chair and spun to face the monitors. "Sit. Don't touch anything. If you break something, I'm billing you."

I sat on the floor because there was literally nowhere else. The only other chair was buried under what looked like disassembled drone parts.

One screen showed the funding campaign dashboard. Another had scrolling lines of code that might as well have been ancient Sumerian. The third displayed a network traffic graph that looked like a seismograph during an earthquake.

"Okay," she said, fingers already flying across the keyboard. "Here's what I found. Someone's using a bot network to flood your comment section with spam, which tanks your credibility. But the real problem is here."

She pulled up a screen full of API logs. "See these micro-transactions? Five percent of every donation is being redirected before it hits your account."

"That's..." I did the math. Failed again. "Small?"

"On eight hundred bucks? Sure. On fifty thousand? That's twenty-five hundred dollars skimmed off the top. The more you raise, the more they steal."

My stomach dropped. "Who's doing this?"

"It's using a custom plugin I wrote," she said quietly. "For a client. A while ago."

"Can you shut it down?"

"Yes. But..." She rubbed her face. "The exploit is buried in code I swore I'd never touch again."

"Why?"

She turned to look at me. "Because the client who commissioned it turned into a stalker."

The room went very quiet except for the hum of the computers.

Mira's voice whispered in my head. "Trust Quest activated. Don't screw this up."

[Trust Quest: Protect Clara Until Exploit Neutralized]

[Warning: Abandoning quest = permanent RSN penalty]

"Okay," I said carefully. "Do you need me to leave? Or stay?"

She studied me for a long moment. "You'll get bored."

"I'm great at being bored. I once watched paint dry for three hours because I couldn't afford Netfl1x."

"That's pathetic."

"I'm aware."

Another pause. Then: "Fine. You can stay. But if you start asking stupid questions—"

"I'll ask very stupid questions," I corrected. "It's kind of my thing."

The ghost of a smile. "Grab that laptop. Open the support ticket portal. We need to report the fraud while I patch the leak."

I did as told. For the next hour, she typed code that made my eyes hurt, and I navigated customer service hell, reading out CAPTCHAs like a parrot.

"What's the seventh character?"

"Looks like a B. Or an 8. Or a snake."

"It's a B."

"Confidence. That’s new. I like it."

At some point around 4 AM, Clara leaned back in her chair and stretched. The hoodie rode up slightly, exposing a strip of pale skin above her shorts. My brain short-circuited.

She caught me staring again. "Really?"

"I'm tired. My eyes are malfunctioning."

"Your eyes are functioning fine. It's your brain that's broken."

"Fair assessment."

She grabbed an energy drink from a mini-fridge I hadn't noticed and cracked it open. Took a sip. "You want one?"

"Will it kill me?"

"Eventually."

"I'll take two."

She tossed me a can. I caught it badly. It bounced off my hand, hit the floor, and rolled under her desk.

"Smooth," she said.

"I loved peaking from under the tables in middle school."

I crawled under the desk to retrieve it. That's when I realized Clara's legs were right there, bare and way too close to my face. I grabbed the can, backed out fast, and cracked my head on the desk edge.

"Ow. Fuck. Ow."

Clara spun her chair around. "You good?"

"I've been better. I've also been worse. This is solidly middle-tier suffering."

She leaned forward, and suddenly her face was very close to mine. Gray eyes sharp and focused on me. "Let me see."

"It's fine—"

"Evan."

I tilted my head. She reached out, fingers brushing through my hair to check the spot. Her touch was light, but my pulse decided to throw a rave anyway.

"No blood," she said. "You'll live."

"Disappointing."

"Most men would prefer living."

"Most men haven't met my landlord."

She pulled back, but not before I caught the faintest hint of a smile.

[RSN +1]

[Clara Voss — Tech Path]

[Resonance (RSN): 10 → 11]

"Back to work," she said, spinning to face the monitors again.

By 5:30 AM, we'd made progress. The spam comments were slowing. The API exploit was half-patched. But Clara kept pausing, staring at a specific section of code.

"What?" I asked.

"This part." She highlighted a block of text. "I wrote this when I was freelancing. Thought I was being clever. Custom encryption, minimal footprint."

"And?"

"And the guy who hired me, Derek Vance, weaponized it." She scrolled through commit logs. "See? His username. Right there in the traffic logs."

I leaned closer. Sure enough: DVance_Dev appeared multiple times in the access history.

"So this guy is basically stealing from a leukemia fundraiser," I said. "That's... villain DLC."

"He doesn't care. He just likes proving he can."

"Can we report him?"

"To whom? He's exploiting a code I wrote. If anyone's liable, it's me."

Her voice cracked slightly on the last word.

"Hey," I said. "This isn't your fault."

"I built it."

"It's on him how he uses it." I handed her the donut bag. "Here. Stress-eat with me."

She took a donut without looking. Bit into it. Chewed mechanically.

For a while, we just sat there in the glow of the monitors, eating stale donuts and listening to the hum of too many machines.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked suddenly.

"Doing what?"

"Sitting here at five in the morning. Helping me fix code you don't understand. You could've just left."

"It’s my funding campaign," I said. "And..." I hesitated. "You moved my boxes once when I wasn't home. So we're even."

She blinked. "I never moved your boxes."

"Oh. Well. Then I'm just nice."

"You're not nice. You're nosy and weird."

"Those are my two best qualities."

[RSN +1]

The sky outside started to lighten. Sunrise was creeping in through the window, painting everything in shades of gray and gold.

Clara's fingers flew across the keyboard one last time. "Got it. Exploit patched. Redirected funds rerouted back into the campaign account."

"How much did we recover?"

She checked the logs. "Forty-two point thirty-five dollars."

"Better than nothing."

She ran a final diagnostic. "And... done. Your page is clean."

I exhaled hard. "Clara Voss, you're a genius."

"I know."

[Synergy Link: Clara Voss — Tech Path: Trust Level Achieved]

[Skill Unlocked: Basic Hack Toolset]

[RSN +2]

[Clara Voss — Resonance (RSN): 11 → 13]

The notification flashed across my vision. New skill, new tier, and Clara now glowing faintly in my HUD with a soft blue outline.

Mira's voice purred in my head. "Welcome to the Tech Path, rookie."

Clara stood and stretched again, arms over her head, hoodie riding up. This time, I didn't even pretend not to look.

"Staring again," she said without turning around.

"Yep."

"At least you're honest."

"It's literally all I have going for me."

She turned and leaned against the desk, arms crossed. The sunrise backlit her like some kind of hacker angel. "You're weird, Evan Cross."

"I've been told."

"But you stayed."

"I said I would."

She studied me for a long moment. "Most people don't do what they say."

"Most people are idiots."

"Including you?"

"Especially me."

This time, she actually smiled.

Then her phone buzzed on the desk.

She glanced at it, and her face went pale.

"What?" I asked.

She turned the screen toward me.

DVance_Dev: [Funny seeing you meddle again, Clara. Nice little cancer cash-cow you've hitched yourself to.]

My blood went cold.

"He knows I fixed it." She scrolled through her notifications. "He's been watching."

Another message appeared.

DVance_Dev: [Say hi to your new boyfriend for me. Hope he's worth the trouble.]

Clara's hand tightened on the phone.

I stood up. "Do you have building security cameras?"

"Why?"

"Because if he's watching, he might be—"

Her phone buzzed again. A notification from the building's security app.

MOTION DETECTED: LOBBY — 5:47 AM

She pulled up the camera feed.

A man in a dark jacket stood in the lobby, face tilted up toward the camera, smirking.

He waved.

Clara went very still.

"Clara?" I said.

"That's him," she whispered. "Derek."

[Warning: External Threat Detected]

[New Objective: Secure Clara's Safety]

"Okay," I said, forcing my voice to stay calm. "Okay. First, we lock the door. Second, we call—"

"He's already inside the building." Her voice was scared.

"Then we—"

Her phone buzzed one more time.

DVance_Dev: [Sixth floor, right? See you soon.]

The screen went dark.

For a second, neither of us moved.

Then Clara turned to me. "You need to leave. Now."

"I'm not leaving you here."

"Evan—"

"Not happening."

She stared at me. Then, slowly, nodded.

"Fine," she said. "But if he shows up at my door, you let me handle it."

"Deal."

I pulled out my phone and texted Jade: [Building security issue. Might need backup.]

Three dots appeared immediately. Then: [On my way.]

Mira's voice was calm in my head. "Crisis Management active. Keep Clara steady. Don't be a hero."

"Too late," I muttered.

Clara was already moving, pulling up security feeds on her monitors. Tracking Derek's location through the building's camera network.

"He's in the stairwell," she said. "Fourth floor. Moving up."

My pulse kicked into overdrive.

[Quest Updated: Debug the Disaster]

[New Objective: Protect Clara from Stalker]

[Warning: Link stability at risk]

I stood by the door, fists clenched, heart hammering.

"Evan?" Clara's voice was soft behind me.

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for staying."

I turned. She was still at her desk, surrounded by glowing screens, looking small and scared.