Evan Clark’s little trumpet mouth chattered away energetically, “Then let me play you the new demo I just wrote. You’ll be my very first listener, okay?”

Brian Young was glad he’d changed the subject and went along with it, “Go ahead.”

Evan Clark took out his phone and tapped a few times.

Melodious instrumental music floated out from the speaker, incredibly catchy. After a long day, the music flowing into Brian Young’s ears felt like it was massaging his tense nerves.

He dozed off, leaning against the comfortable leather seat.

The system couldn’t help but remind him, “Mr. Ford, there’s no need to use skill cards so frequently.”

Just now, Little Ford had used another hypnosis card on Brian Young, lasting a full hour and a half.

Little Ford himself didn’t mind at all: “Just testing it out. Besides, isn’t favorability something you can get as much as you want?”

…That logic was flawless.

A person’s favorability toward another naturally fluctuates up and down. When couples argue, their favorability for each other plummets to rock bottom, wishing they could strangle each other, but when things are sweet, it shoots right back up.

Just now, after Little Ford’s flurry of actions, Brian Young’s favorability bounced back to 72, exactly matching the initial data.

Little Ford summed up, “All for a car he didn’t even have to pay for, I lost a total of 14 favorability points.”

System: “……” Weren’t the last 10 points lost because you snapped at him?

Little Ford continued analyzing, “A beauty aura card that lasts 10 minutes, plus a few soft words, and the favorability comes right back. And redeeming another beauty aura card with the same effect only costs 5 favorability points. So, all in all, favorability is pretty easy to farm.”

System: “……”

Did Little Ford deliberately snap at Brian Young just to test the fluctuation range of favorability?

And that word “farm” gave the system a bad feeling.

Little Ford said, “Right now, as long as Brian Young’s favorability toward Evan Clark is passing, that’s enough. The extra 12 points, check the warehouse for me, see what I can redeem.”

The system was stunned.

In the past, his hosts always tried to max out the target’s favorability to 100 as fast as possible before worrying about anything else.

After all, no one knew if insufficient favorability would affect the mission’s progress.

This was the first time the system had seen someone daring enough to hover right at the passing line from the very start.

The system checked the warehouse: “For 10 favorability points, there’s a 30-minute ‘beauty aura,’ a 5-minute ‘karate black belt buff,’ a 1-hour ‘painless buff,’ and a 5-minute ‘heartthrob aura’…”

Little Ford listened carefully to the list: “I’ll take the first one.”

After the transaction succeeded, he asked again, “Is there a longer-lasting ‘heartthrob aura’?”

The system replied, “Yes. The longest is 1 hour, and it costs 40 favorability points.”

Little Ford mused, “Then I’ll save up a bit more.”

…The system felt that Little Ford’s tone was like treating Brian Young as a pig in a meat factory—cutting the front leg today, the belly tomorrow, cut and regrow, regrow and cut, on and on for generations.

A slightly creeped-out system said, “With the remaining 2 points, you can only buy some small props and novelty items.”

Little Ford: “Oh wow.”

System: “…Mr. Ford, we are a proper system.”

Little Ford didn’t say anything, just chuckled knowingly.

The system was so unsettled by his laughter that its data even fluctuated slightly: “We don’t provide that kind of service. ‘Novelty items’ refers to some tangible, relationship-enhancing props, like bouquets, river lanterns, fireworks, and so on.”

Little Ford said, “I’ll take a firework.”

“One firework costs 3 points.”

Little Ford said straightforwardly, “I’ll take one.”

System: “…”

Little Ford: “Why are you just standing there? If it’s not enough, just charge it to me.”

The system thought helplessly, Of course it’s charged to you, who else would it be charged to?

After the redemption succeeded, a crisp bell rang, indicating the item had been added to the inventory.

Little Ford waited for a while, “Where’s the firework?”

The system replied, “The target of the strategy…” He’s still lying there offline.

“Who said it’s for him?” Little Ford said, “Right now, set it off.”

The system was a bit confused, but did as told.

A peony firework with eight layers of petals bloomed in response, falling like snowy threads, dropping like meteors, painting the pitch-black sky with a stunning embroidery of light.

The firework exploded in the distance, so the light arrived before the sound. As the pearls of light scattered, Little Ford suddenly said to the system, “…This is for you.”

Before he finished speaking, there was a belated bang as the firework burst.

The system stared in a daze at the scattering shooting stars.

The car’s rearview mirror reflected Little Ford’s face. He was smiling.

Although Little Ford was using Evan Clark’s face, his real smile was completely different from Evan Clark’s pure and harmless one. His peach blossom eyes curved slightly, a hint of mischief mixed with a lazy, nonchalant air, carrying a natural, captivating charm that made it impossible to look away.