Chapter 11: A Narrow Road

Ada's POV

Compared with clothes and seeds, buying medicine was a far more troublesome business. The first two could be stockpiled all at once.

Buying medicine, however, was even more troublesome.

If you bought a large quantity of drugs in one concentrated burst, you would draw the kind of unnecessary attention that was very hard to shake off, and there was always the risk of being flagged by the system, filed away as a person of interest.

In my last life, the apartment across the hall belonged to a woman fresh out of surgery. Couriers were always at her door, and she would sign for painkillers, antibiotics, gauze, and other medical supplies right there on her doorstep.

On the third day after the outbreak, someone knocked and introduced himself as a "community volunteer," asking whether she happened to have any medicine at home.

The next day, when I looked out through my peephole, her door had already been pried open.

In a post-apocalyptic world, any detail can become the reason someone sets their sights on you. Medicine, therefore, must not be bought in one large batch. It has to be purchased in small quantities from multiple different pharmacies, scattered across a span of at least half a month.

I could not help feeling a small, quiet relief that I had come back to a point in time still a full month before the real disaster arrived. A month was enough to prepare everything.

I went to that CVS downtown first. Just inside the door, the shelves were on your right, and the prescription counter sat at the very back of the store. I stepped up to the counter. I had just been about to ask where the fever medicine was shelved.

The words never left my mouth. Someone standing beside the counter had caught my attention instead.

She had a doll-like face, chestnut curls spilling carelessly over a cream coat, and a paper bag bearing the logo of some dessert shop dangling from her hand.

In my last life, Brad called her "the neighbor girl." It was only afterward that I found out this "sister" of his and he had been in the same bed behind my back for a long time already. The day I finally went to settle things with Brad, he dragged her in front of him and used her as a human shield. Her name became the first one crossed off my list of people to kill.

I had no intention of having any exchange with her at all. The debts of the previous life had already been paid in full. What I wanted now was to have nothing whatsoever to do with her, to be a stranger to her in every possible way, and to quietly, peacefully stockpile my supplies.

She, evidently, did not share that intention.

"Hey! Are you Miss Reyes? What are you doing here, are you feeling unwell?"

Her voice sounds sweet, carrying a kind of deliberately manufactured intimacy and concern, as though there were some profound friendship between us.

I turned to look at her, and a touch of well-measured confusion rose to my face. "I'm sorry, do we know each other?"

"You don't know me." She smiled, and wiggled the phone in her hand. "I've seen your photos together on Brad's phone, so I recognized you right away. My name is Chloe Lansing. I'm Brad's neighbor."

As she spoke, her gaze slid down from my face and stopped at my empty neck.

"Where's your pendant?" Her voice jumped suddenly, sharp and loud in the quiet of the store, and she reached out to grab my wrist. "Where did your pendant go?"

Why would she know about the pendant? I stepped sideways, out of the reach of her hand, and frowned. "What pendant?"

"The one your mother left you. The one you always wear. How is it gone?"

"What business is my pendant of yours?" I looked at her. "Brad's neighbor, is it? He and I have nothing to do with each other anymore. Please don't bother me."

A flicker of anger crossed her face and was quickly tucked away again. "I'm sorry, Miss Reyes. I didn't mean to offend you. It's just that Brad always talked to me about how much you valued that pendant, and I've always been curious what it looked like."

That dumb bastard had actually told her about the pendant.

But her interest in it was far too abnormal for mere curiosity. The urgency in the back of her eyes looked less like a stranger's nosiness and more like the panic of someone who had lost something of vital importance.

I narrowed my eyes. Something here was beyond what I had judged to be true.

"You hurt Brad's hand last time," she said, when she saw I was unmoved, bringing him up again. "He's still in the hospital being treated. Comminuted fracture of the finger bones. The doctor says that even after it heals, that right hand of his is finished."

"Aren't you going to visit him?" There was a careful, tentative probing in her eyes. "He's been waiting for you."

"That serious?" I raised an eyebrow and covered my mouth in mock astonishment. "If I'd known, I would have smashed it a couple more times that day."

Chloe visibly froze. She had probably assumed that what I had just said was nothing more than anger talking, and her tone softened into persuasion. "Brad didn't even call the police to hold you responsible. He said you must have misunderstood him, that he still loves you in his heart."

I folded my arms and leaned against the counter. "Loves me? He loves my money."

"Go back and tell Brad not to come provoking me again. Otherwise I will absolutely make him pay for his stupidity."

Brad had not gone to the police because of any deep devotion. He had not gone because going to the police would not have been worth it. A broken finger, compensated to the absolute maximum, would come to a few tens of thousands at most, and he would have had to spend months walking through the procedures to get it. What he wanted was considerably more than a compensation payout.