Chapter 324: A Rather Peculiar First Date (GT Bonus - )

Mary felt utterly alone.

No one who truly saw her, no one who cared how she felt, no one who would even notice whether she stayed there or vanished forever.

"I wish I’d never been born..." she murmured through her tears.

But it was right then, at the lowest point of her entire existence, that a voice startled her from behind.

"Hey... are you okay?"

Mary turned toward the voice and found a guy roughly her own age looking down at her with genuine concern.

It was Mark.

He came stumbling in slightly, tie loose, shirt wrinkled, a bottle in his hand.

It was obvious he was coming back from work, and coming back drunk.

But the moment the smell of alcohol reached her, Mary’s whole body tensed up on instinct.

Because that unsteady stagger reminded her far too much of what she’d just left behind in the apartment.

Mark, however, was nothing like her mother.

Where she was pure aggression, he was a calm drunk, with a goofy smile and gentle eyes.

The moment Mark’s eyes dropped down to Mary, his expression softened, and a small smile crossed his lips.

"...Cute."

Mary didn’t know how to respond to that unexpected compliment.

But then Mark’s smile faded when he got a better look at her face. Blood was running from her nose.

"Whoa... that’s quite a hit you took," he said, crouching beside her, his movements a bit clumsy from the alcohol. "Here, let me help."

He reached a hand out toward her, and Mary, purely on reflex, smacked it away.

"Don’t touch me. I’m fine, leave me alone."

"Hey, relax, I just want to—"

"I said don’t touch me!"

When Mark persisted and leaned in again, she reacted on pure instinct.

She threw her fist without thinking and caught him square in the face, hitting him far harder than she’d meant to.

The sharp blow knocked Mark off balance, sending him stumbling back several steps as he clutched a hand to his cheek.

In that instant, Mary’s heart seemed to stop.

She knew exactly what came after hitting a drunk man. She’d lived through it too many times with her mother.

Mary curled in on herself, shut her eyes tight, and braced for the punishment.

But it never came.

Instead, she heard Mark let out a soft laugh.

"Ouch... okay, guess I had that coming," he said, rubbing his reddened cheek without the slightest trace of anger. "We don’t even know each other, after all."

Mary opened her eyes, and what she saw left her completely thrown, because Mark wasn’t looking at her with hatred, wasn’t raising a hand against her.

Before she could process what was happening, he took off his tie and carefully placed it in her hand.

"Here, for your nose, you’re losing a lot of blood," he said. "And don’t tilt your head back so much, it’ll never stop bleeding that way. Lean it forward a bit and press it right there."

Mary stared at him, completely bewildered.

She’d just punched him in the face, and instead of hitting her back, he’d simply kept trying to help her.

Without noticing, her body slowly began to relax, and the tension she’d been holding since she first saw him started to fade.

Finally, following Mark’s instructions, she brought the tie up to her nose and pressed it there to stop the bleeding.

Mark nodded, satisfied, but then his eyes started sweeping over her more carefully.

He took in her arms, her legs, and finally her face, noticing the bruises covering her skin.

Some already had that yellowish tint of wounds that had been there a while, while others still carried a deep, fresh red.

Those marks spoke for themselves, making it pretty clear what kind of life that girl was living.

Mark’s goofy smile dimmed a little.

"Hey, I live right here, upstairs," he said, his tone gentler. "I’ve got a first aid kit and some bandages. Why don’t you come up for a minute and let me patch those up properly? You can’t be walking around like that."

Mary hesitated, because every fiber of her body screamed at her not to trust him, that a stranger inviting her up to his place couldn’t mean anything good.

But then she thought about her own apartment, about her mother waiting for the beer she didn’t have the money to buy, and about the beating waiting for her the second she came back empty-handed.

Going back now would only speed up the inevitable, and compared to that, going up one floor with this stranger almost seemed like the better option.

"...Fine," she muttered, resigned. "But if you try anything weird, I swear to God I’ll kick you in the balls."

"Deal," Mark answered with a smile, and stood up, offering her his hand again.

This time, Mary took it.

The walk up to his apartment turned out to be quite the ordeal.

Mark was so drunk that walking in a straight line seemed to be beyond his abilities.

He swayed with every step, leaned against the walls, and more than once nearly tripped over his own feet.

But the real trouble started when they reached the stairs.

Mark put one foot on the first step and almost immediately lost his balance. His body tipped sideways and slammed into the handrail, leaving him dangerously close to the edge.

Mary reacted on instinct.

She grabbed him by the jacket and yanked him back just in time, keeping him from tumbling over the side.

"Watch it, you idiot!"

"Oops... thanks," he said, as if he hadn’t just realized he’d nearly gotten himself killed.

Mary sighed and slung an arm around his back to steady him better as they climbed the stairs.

’I don’t even know who’s helping who here anymore,’ she thought, glancing sideways at Mark, who leaned against her with a peaceful smile. ’I swear I have the worst luck with drunks...’

Between stumbles and the occasional yank on his jacket, the two of them finally made it to Mark’s apartment, just one floor above her own.

The moment he opened the door and they stepped inside, Mary discovered the place was just as messy as her own apartment, maybe even worse.

Clothes lay scattered across the floor, unwashed dishes piled up in the sink, and empty takeout boxes littered various corners.

Overall, the whole place radiated an obvious sense of neglect.

"Sorry about the mess... wasn’t expecting company," Mark mumbled as he pulled away from her. "Sit wherever you can, alright?... I’ll go grab the first aid kit... just give me a second."

He kept walking unsteadily until he disappeared through the bathroom door.

Mary sat carefully on the edge of the bed, still pressing the tie against her nose, and studied the apartment in silence.

At first she was only looking out of curiosity.

But then a word surfaced in her mind.

Steal.

The idea came so naturally it almost made her sick with herself. She could take some valuable item, sell it, and use the money to buy her mother a beer.

If she was lucky, maybe that would be enough to keep her from getting hit again that night.

It was a miserable kind of logic.

And the worst part was, she was already used to thinking that way.

Her mother had managed to turn the simple act of avoiding a beating into something more important than anything else.

Even her own dignity.

Mary lowered her gaze slightly, ashamed of herself, but ended up sweeping her eyes across the apartment again anyway.

If she was going to do this, she at least needed to find something worth taking.

The problem was there was nothing.

The place was as much of a dump as her own, full of old furniture and cheap appliances, nothing worth carrying off.

Nothing, until her eyes landed on a corner, and there it was.

A computer.

A good one, the kind Mary recognized on sight, because she herself had dreamed of owning one just like it.

A powerful tower, a huge monitor, and high-end peripherals.

That was worth a lot of money, maybe enough to keep her mother happy for weeks.

’Jackpot...’ she thought, unable to tear her eyes away from the setup. ’Now I just need to figure out how to—’

"Pretty nice, don’t you think? Took me months of saving up to afford it... You have no idea how much work it took to buy it."