Wrong Girl, Right Payout

Sean Dawson called me vicious in front of everyone and told me to get lost.

His system had told him: [Your target is Claire Holland.] But there were two Claire Hollands in our class. One was me.

The other was the transfer student he kept shielding behind him. He brought her breakfast and went to the hospital with her.

That night, a notification suddenly appeared on my phone. [Incorrect target.

Firstorder compensation triggered.] [$600 in compensation has been deposited.] I couldn't stop laughing. Did he even know his system came with an ontime delivery guarantee?

Chapter 1 The first breakfast Sean delivered to the wrong girl was a bag of crab roe buns from that place on the south side of town with the ridiculous line.

The bell for morning study hall hadn't rung yet when he walked into the classroom carrying an insulated bag. The kids in the back immediately started teasing him.

I was Original Claire. The transfer student was New Claire. Sean went straight to New Claire's desk without hesitating.

His ears were a little red as he set down the bag. “You said you wanted these yesterday.” New Claire looked at him, pleasantly surprised. “How long did you wait in line?” “Not long.” Actually, the place only sold a limited number each day.

Sean had gone there at five in the morning. That was what the classmate who sat next to him said. The whole class burst out laughing.

I lowered my head and went back to memorizing vocabulary. My phone vibrated in my pants pocket. I wasn't going to look, but it buzzed three times in a row.

There was no incoming call on the screen.

Just a white popup. [Current task action: Feeding.] [Designated recipient: Claire Holland.] [Actual recipient: Claire Holland.] [Identity verification failed.] The names on the two lines were identical.

I had no idea what I was looking at, but more lines kept appearing. [You've automatically received free OnTime Task Protection.] [First order misdelivered.

Triple compensation.] [$600 has been transferred to your account.] A text from my bank arrived almost at the same time. My balance really had gone up by six hundred dollars.

I stared at the numbers, my heart giving a little jump. Was I actually the person Sean was supposed to win over? When I looked up again, the buns had all been handed out.

New Claire offered Sean the last one, but he didn't take it. “They're all for you.” My phone buzzed again. [Additional feeding. Compensation: $40.] I paused midstep.

Sean looked up at me. He probably misread my expression. His brow quickly furrowed. “If you want some, buy your own.” I nodded.

Forty dollars would cover half a month's cafeteria meals. Please, sir. Whatever you do, don't figure out you've got the wrong girl. Over lunch, I figured out the insurance policy.

Sean had been bound to a system for winning someone over. It had matched him with a target, and he had a hundred days to complete the mission.

Each time he completed a task action, he would earn points. Those points could be redeemed for a wish.

But the service came with a promise: the benefits of each task had to reach the designated recipient. Late delivery meant compensation. Misdelivery was all the more reason to pay.

It was a little like the ontime guarantee I bought when I ordered food. Even if the driver was only a minute late, I could get a few dollars back.

The only difference was that Sean's policy cost a little more. All the compensation was deducted from his wish balance.

I flipped to the identity information page. [Name: Claire Holland.] [Class: Grade 12, Homeroom 7.] [Last four digits of ID: 0716.] I froze. My student ID ended in 0716.

New Claire was a transfer student. Hers ended in 0749. It wouldn't be hard to check. When I went to find Sean during PE that afternoon, he was practicing volleyball with New Claire.

Chapter 2 New Claire couldn't receive the ball, so Sean stood behind her to show her how. They were very close, with people watching all around them.

I was trying very hard to psych myself up for this. Not that I was some saint, but what if his wish was something really important?

I felt a little guilty making money behind his back like this. “Sean, the teacher said you wrote down the wrong student ID. 0749.” New Claire blushed.

Sean stepped in front of her. “So I wrote down Claire's ID. Did you really need to come all this way to tell me?” I tried to make the hint a little more obvious.

Before I could finish, he cut me off. “Don't use this as an excuse to get close to me.” His voice wasn't loud, but everyone around us suddenly went quiet. My face froze.

Did this moron seriously think I had a crush on him? Someone behind me laughed. New Claire tugged at his sleeve. “Stop.

She was just trying to give you a headsup.” That only seemed to add fuel to the fire. Sean looked at me even more coldly. “I'm saying this for the last time.

Stay away from me.” Fine. I was done trying. I felt dumber just breathing the same air as him.

On the way back to the classroom building, my phone vibrated. [Target has been rejected.] [Service experience severely impaired.] [Compensation: $1,000.] I glanced at the deposit notification.

Much better. Excellent compensation policy. I'd give the system a good review. Three days later, my maternal grandmother suddenly collapsed and was hospitalized.

Her test results on admission were very bad. The billing office asked me to pay twelve hundred dollars toward her hospital stay up front.

Mom worked out of town as a livein caregiver. The elderly person she looked after had just had surgery, and she couldn't get time off.

Her voice shook over the phone. “Honey, ask your uncle for a loan for now.” No way. Mom's brother had borrowed four thousand dollars from us the year before.

He still hadn't paid it back. I paid using the compensation I'd received from Sean.

When the receipt came out at the payment window, I had to admit I was a little grateful for his sheer stupidity. That insurance policy was useful.

When Grandma woke up, she asked where the money had come from. I told her the school had given me a scholarship. She didn't question it.

She just urged me to hurry back for afterschool study hall. By the time I reached school, I was late.

Our homeroom teacher was out, and Sean was sitting on the teacher's desk, keeping order. He wrote my name on the tardy sheet.

New Claire quietly pleaded my case. “Maybe she had an emergency.” Sean stuck to the rules. “Late is late.” I didn't explain.

I'd barely sat down when another popup appeared. [Target has been singled out.] [Compensation: $160.] Good, Sean. Keep that attitude. Please keep picking on me.

The system had some strange criteria, but it was quick to pay. Sean was busy over the next week. He saved New Claire a seat. I got forty dollars.

He brought her an umbrella in the rain. I got a hundred and sixty. When it was her turn to clean the classroom, he helped wipe down the blackboard. I got twentyfour dollars.

The biggest payout came when she had a fever. He skipped competition prep to take her to the hospital. The system paid me twelve hundred dollars.

I didn't go out of my way to get close to them. I didn't stir things up to make money, either. I was just curious: didn't his system give him any warnings?

Still, that wasn't really my business. I went to the hospital after school every day, as usual.

Once Grandma's condition was stable, I still had more than two thousand dollars in my account.

I finally bought the sensors I'd put off buying for six months and replaced my old computer, the one that kept crashing. The school science fair was coming up.

The flood warning device I was building needed just one final round of adjustments. Chapter 3 Last summer, an elderly woman in our neighborhood had fallen in standing water.

The ambulance was held up for twenty minutes. That was when I'd started building the device. It wasn't anything particularly hightech.

All I'd wanted was an earlier warning when lowlying stretches of road started to flood. I'd been ready to give up because I couldn't afford the parts.

Now Sean had kept the project going, though he didn't know it. I'd also tried studying the compensation rules.

If I deliberately steered Sean into delivering something to the wrong person, the system would consider it a staged incident. It wouldn't pay a cent.

I couldn't even prompt New Claire to ask him for things. Every misdelivery had to result from Sean's own choices. That line of fine print was a relief.

I didn't want my life to revolve around his mission. I especially didn't want to deal with the temptation of money falling into my lap.

Compensation could only get me through an emergency. If I wanted to get rich, I'd have to do it myself. The night before Grandma was discharged, she noticed the burns on my hand.

Solder had landed on the skin between my thumb and index finger, leaving two blisters.

She felt so bad for me that she couldn't stop crying. “Couldn't you stop working on it?” I shook my head. It wasn't really about the competition or my résumé.

But I'd spent a year on this. I wanted to finish what I'd started. Grandma stroked my head. The next day, she pressed the sixty dollars she'd kept under her pillow into my hand.

The bills were crumpled. Ones and fives, all saved from selling vegetables. I didn't turn her down. That sixty dollars was different from the system's payouts.

I put it in my toolbox, separate from the rest. Before the school selection round, New Claire submitted a project too. Its subject was exactly the same as mine.

Even the sensors were in almost the same positions. Our project advisor put both entry forms on the desk and asked whether we'd worked on it together. I said no.

New Claire shook her head too, her eyes red. “I came up with this idea over the summer.” She produced an experiment log that began in July.

Her diagrams were beautiful, far neater than my rough sketches. Sean had come with her. He played a demonstration video on his computer. Everything in the video ran smoothly.

Our advisor clearly preferred her project. My device wasn't fully assembled yet, and it looked pretty rough sitting on the desk. Sean glanced at it. “Similar ideas are normal.

Whoever finishes first should get picked.” That sounded fair enough.

But there was a handdrawn diagram in New Claire's log with half of a reference number still visible in the lowerright corner. It matched the number on my original design.

I remembered taking my old computer in for repairs the month before. The clerk had said the hard drive was damaged. Data recovery cost too much, so I'd just taken the computer home.

The shop had since changed hands. As it happened, the owner's last name was Holland too. Suddenly, it all fit. I pointed to the partial number and demanded an explanation.

New Claire immediately started crying. She said she didn't know what I was talking about.

Sean blocked the diagram from view. “Claire Holland, are you done yet?” I reminded him that my name was Claire Holland too. For a moment, he had nothing to say.

Then he got even angrier. “You don't have a finished project to show, so you attack someone else.

It's a bad look.” Our advisor didn't want this turning into a bigger issue and ultimately decided to accept only finished projects.

As I left the office, my phone kept beeping with popups. [Mission: Fulfill the target's wish.] [Severe deviation from mission objective.] [Major impact detected.] [Compensation: $2,400.] An option appeared underneath.

Chapter 4 [System remedy: Apply to enter the competition independently?] I tapped Yes.

Ten minutes later, an email arrived from the organizers of the city's Youth Innovation Competition. Besides school nominations, they accepted open applications.

The deadline was that night. At one in the morning, my application was approved. A light rain fell outside the window. With my newly purchased parts in hand, I was full of energy.

Sean was so eager to make someone else's wishes come true. Well, I suppose I'd have to accept. New Claire's device made the school team, and Sean joined her group.

He'd won first prize in a programming competition, so the teacher put him in charge of optimizing the code. After that, he was constantly asking me for things.

First, he wanted to borrow my multimeter. I lent it to him. Then he asked about the flooding threshold. I rolled my eyes.

That day, he actually asked for my source code. “It's just for reference,” he said, utterly sure he was being reasonable. “We're representing the school.

You don't want us to lose, do you?” I closed my laptop. “You've got some nerve. I didn't even get picked. What's it got to do with me?” His expression darkened.

New Claire stood in the doorway, looking uneasy. She said her program kept triggering false alarms. If I was willing to help, she could add my name to the report. How generous.

She was using my design. Now she wanted my code too. I looked at them as if they were fucking idiots and flatly refused.

Sean put out a hand to stop me. “How much money do you need?” I asked what he meant. “Haven't you been short on cash lately? Name your price.

Keep your personal feelings out of the competition.” People were passing through the hallway. Some had already slowed down.

I looked at him and suddenly felt like laughing. “Sean, have you been digging into my life?” He didn't deny it. He knew Grandma was in the hospital.

He knew what my mom did for a living. So he'd decided I would sell. My phone vibrated in my palm. [Target humiliated by a monetary offer.] [Compensation: $600.] He was an asshole.

His system was pretty decent, though. “Four hundred thousand dollars.” “Are you out of your mind?” Sean clenched his fists. He looked very angry.

I shrugged. “Now you're upset because I actually named a price. Move. You're in my way.” That night, I revised my design. What they'd taken was the first version of the idea.

It triggered an alarm based only on water level, which made it prone to false alarms when the rain got heavier.

I added rainfall and flow rate, then connected it to publicly available terrain data. I was spending more and more, but there was always money left in the compensation account.

The flowers, medicine, and breakfasts Sean gave away all ended up as parts on my desk. Our two groups ran into each other at the city competition's preliminary round.

Sean looked surprised to see me. “How did you get in