Chapter 18: GOOD MOOD

His expression turned dark in an instant. He leaned forward aggressively and grabbed her upper thigh hard, fingers digging deep into her soft flesh right next to her exposed pussy. She gasped sharply, her whole body jolting from the painful grip.

"I let you wear these fucking slutty clothes," he snarled, voice low and vicious. "I let you model for that magazine. I even kept your cheating ass with me after what you did, you fucking slut. Don’t you dare stand there and tell me I don’t change."

She winced, legs trembling under his rough hold, but didn’t pull away.

I took a slow sip of my coffee, smirking behind the cup.

"Well, well," I muttered under my breath. "Someone’s in a real healthy relationship, eh?"

Oh, both of you.

Just you fucking wait.

Just wait.

╭━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╮

MAIN MENU

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

NAME: Chance Brooks

LVL: 4 [50/156]

RANK: -

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[ CORE STATS ]

> CHA: 11

> END: 5

> PER: 10

> LCK: 3

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[ ENERGY ]

> LUST: 140/140

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[ ACTIVE PERKS ]

> [The Outsider]

> [The Gentle Protector]

> [Empathic Resonance]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

SIN POINTS: 365

╰━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╯

❤︎‬‪‪❤︎‬‪‪❤︎

Another grueling night shift was finally in the books.

I dragged my feet toward the bus station and checked the time on my screen. Midnight. We had officially closed the doors at eleven, but carrying the heavy outdoor tables inside, scrubbing down the greasy floors, and bleaching the toilets always swallowed up way too much time. I’d nearly missed the final bus out because of how much grunt work was piled onto me at the last second. Jacob had offered to drop me off, but it looked like he and his buddies were heading straight to a local bar to hang out. He’d shouted for me to tag along, but nah. I was completely dead on my feet.

A few seconds later, literally seconds, the last bus hissed to a halt, and I hopped in. Thankfully, the vehicle was completely empty. I quickly claimed a seat at the very back, right where that idiot Hubert had been sitting the other day. Fucking hell, every single bone in my body was screaming in protest.

"So tired..." I mumbled, resting my head against the cold glass window.

Suddenly, a familiar interface pulsed quietly in the dim lighting of the bus.

╭━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╮

TARGET: Sarah Angi

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[ RELATIONSHIP ]

> Partner: [Hubert]

> Loyalty: 57% [▼3%]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[ SYSTEM SYNC ]

> Favor: 56%

> Threat: None

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

> GRIEVANCE LOG

╰━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╯

Huh? Sarah’s loyalty toward her husband randomly dropped a few percentages out of nowhere? First of all, how did this system even track that stuff in real time? And second... why now? Maybe she and her husband were currently having a massive fight? At this hour? Damn, that was curious.

"Eh, whatever..." I muttered, scrolling through my phone to pass the time. "Let’s see what that other bitch is up to."

I opened up Jennifer’s social media profile and checked for updates. Yeah, nothing. No new photos or stories posted.

Fifteen minutes later, the brakes screeched, the bus stopped, and I hopped off. The backpack slung over my shoulder felt like a literal sack of bricks. My hand automatically drifted to my pocket, feeling the familiar silhouette of my cigarette pack. At least I didn’t have to waste time hitting the gas station to buy another one tonight.

My phone was still set to total mute because my sister just wouldn’t stop fucking calling me from every number imaginable. She’d call from her own phone, then from her friends’ phones, she just wasn’t stopping with the constant nagging. And honestly? I didn’t care. She could go back to her boyfriend, or her husband, or whatever the fuck they were to each other since they’d already divorced twice, and just leave me the fuck alone.

I turned the corner toward my building and stopped dead in my tracks.

There he was. Cole. Standing by that same tree in the street, waiting for his dog to finish pissing. His girlfriend, Jennifer, was standing right beside him, her hoodie pulled low over her face as she stared blankly at her phone screen. My hand instinctively tapped my pocket where my phone sat. I still had that photo from the coffee shop... maybe it was time to think about blackmail material?

"Come on, Buster. Fucking piss already, man," Cole barked, tugging lightly at the leash.

I quickly backed around the corner out of sight and peeked out cautiously. Damn it, I couldn’t just waltz right up to my flat while he was standing right there in the path. I guess I was stuck waiting for them to pack it up and leave. But by the look of that dog, it was taking its sweet time. Jesus, what kind of stuff were they feeding that animal, making him drink nothing but soup and water?

"My mother just texted me," Jennifer’s voice drifted over, sounding tired. "She said she’s..."

"Good boy," Cole interrupted her completely, crouching down to pat the dog’s flanks. "You’re finally done, huh? Let’s go, buddy."

He clearly ignored her entire sentence... but there was absolutely no loyalty drop on her end from the system. Was the interface bugging out or something? Why wouldn’t her loyalty tick down after being dismissed like that? I guess her threshold for his bullshit was higher, or maybe she was just used to it.

The moment they cleared out of the street, I quickly slipped into the apartment lobby and closed the heavy door behind me. Since my unit was just a step away on the right, I unlocked the door fast and got inside the safety of my own space. I walked straight into the dark bedroom and peeked outside through the blinds. They were gone, for sure.

"Fucking hell," I breathed, tossing my bag onto the floor.

╭━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╮

PERCEPTION CHECK: ✓

[Needed: 22] - [Result: 22]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CRITICAL SUCCESS

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Sarah is awake, in a good mood.

Text her about the anime.

╰━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╯