"Any news?" Jin Xueli asked as she sat down. "I'm planning to make a trip over in the next day or two."
"A group is temporarily short-staffed. They're looking to hire an experienced Hunter with no Family Faction ties. I immediately thought of you."
The bartender's Shar-Pei-like face was still hidden behind the bar. He seemed to be squatting, scrubbing hard at a cabinet door. Amidst the SHHH-SHHH of the rag, he said, "The pay isn't great—three thousand bucks. You'd leave next week. Of course, you'd have no claim on the final prize."
A few years ago, three thousand bucks would have made her eyes light up like a pair of flashlights. Now, it wasn't even enough to be worth the trouble of getting her to move.
"I can't work with a team right now. I've got some personal business to take care of. Are there any other jobs?"
"In that case, no—"
He'd barely started his sentence when urgent music—DA-DUM—blared from the TV. Jin Xueli glanced up at the screen. It was breaking news.
"We have just received a report," the female anchor said, her expression grim, "that Mr. Westley, founder, shareholder, and CEO of the Qunmu Conglomerate, was found dead this morning at his Upper State Manor. He was 59 years old. The suspected cause of death is sudden cardiac failure. Police have launched an investigation... Mr. Westley was also a state councilman and philanthropist..."
Jin Xueli froze. "He's dead?"
The Shar-Pei-like face peeked out from behind the bar. Looking at the screen, he asked, "You knew him?"
"No, not personally. But I have a client who had some dealings with him... I thought I might be able to get a job from him someday. A shame." As she spoke, Jin Xueli put the matter of Blackmoor City's deceased richest man out of her mind. "So, you don't have any other jobs?"
"You could wait a few days. Something might turn up," the bartender said, starting to wipe down the beer taps. "When are you planning to leave?"
Jin Xueli pulled out her phone, intending to check the time, but saw over twenty new text messages. They were all from unknown numbers. Even without opening them, she could tell they were a mix of pathetic pleas, vulgar profanity, and threatening curses.
She'd already blocked four or five numbers, but it did nothing to stop the stalker.
"I'm going tonight. If there's no job, so be it." She put her phone away, her voice chilling over. "I have a problem—not huge, but disgusting—that requires me to go and get something before it can be solved."
The bartender nodded. "The usual? Or to go?"
"Yes," Jin Xueli affirmed. The mere mention of the drink made her feel the color drain from her face. "I didn't bring a container. Just find a couple of plastic bottles for it."
The moment she thought of the concoction he prepared, her stomach started to churn before she'd even had a drop. It was as if her body wanted to preemptively vomit out all its organs.
No matter how many times she drank it, Jin Xueli could never get used to the taste of alcohol. By forcing herself to drink over the past few years, she'd practically become one of Pavlov's dogs. Sometimes, just the smell of liquor on someone's breath was enough to make her legs go weak and a wave of dizzying nausea wash over her.
"Only the blend you mix has the effect I need. Other liquor numbs my mind, but my limbs get heavy and weak, and I pass out the moment I close my eyes. That's just toying with my life, isn't it?"
A flicker of a smile crossed the bartender's face. "But alcohol still isn't efficient enough, is it? I'll keep an eye out for a suitable drug for you."
'If only I could take a pill for the same effect. That would be perfect.' However, until she could get her hands on such a drug, she had no choice but to brace herself and force down the liquor.
Not if she wanted to keep living like this.
When night fell, Jin Xueli changed into running shoes and workout clothes, tying her hair into a tight bun.
She packed her usual gear into a backpack—not a school bag, but one of those massive hiking packs that could easily fit a sleeping bag.
Although she didn't plan on staying long, Jin Xueli couldn't afford to be careless. She still packed a Hunting Knife, a ladies' handgun, and a can of bear spray.
'What a shame. With the law being what it is, I can't use any of this directly on the stalker. I have to take the long way around.'
The time on her phone flipped to 9:43 PM.
A flood of harassing messages, each from a different number, kept pouring in. They piled up at the bottom of her screen, none of them read. The unread message count was already up to 129.
Jin Xueli had discovered hours ago that the stalker had posted her number on several porn sites. Since then, the incoming messages were not only sickening, but also came from so many numbers they were impossible to block.
She finally just stuffed the phone into the very bottom of her pack. Out of sight, out of mind.
Night stained the floor-to-ceiling glass window black. She sat on the floor before it, seeming to float in mid-air, suspended between the skyscrapers and innumerable lights of Blackmoor City.
The neon glow, like shattered diamonds, would burn through the night and into the dawn. The largest, most prosperous metropolis in the world never slept, never stopped.
She forced herself to swallow the bartender's concoction, gulp by painful gulp. Soon, her consciousness grew light and hazy, as if burned away. Her blood seemed to GURGLE and boil in her veins. Even in the silence of her apartment, she could hear a faint humming.
A primal fear, honed over millions of years of evolution, was not something one could overcome through mere repetition.
Without drinking a massive amount of alcohol to dull her senses and cloud her mind, Jin Xueli wouldn't even have the courage to walk to the edge of her balcony. She was deathly afraid of heights; she couldn't even bring herself to ride a roller coaster at an amusement park.
Her hands trembling, she gripped the balcony railing, took a breath, and stepped onto the chair she had placed there earlier.
The heavy pack weighed down her shoulders. As she hoisted herself onto the railing, the bag caught for a moment. The lurch nearly sent her heart and stomach acid leaping from her throat. It took all her effort to steady her breathing, her palms slick with cold sweat.
Even drunk, she didn't dare look down, forcing her gaze to stay fixed on the city skyline.
In the distance, rivers of traffic flowed between buildings, their lights blurring into bright splotches in the misty rain. A fine, cool drizzle slanted down, pattering against her skin. Jin Xueli worried it might shock her back to sobriety, robbing her of the blessing of her numb consciousness.
'…Time to go.'
She sat on the railing, her back to the neon glow of Blackmoor City. She looked at her reflection in the glass door, and beyond it, the faint outline of her living room.
"I'll be right back," Jin Xueli whispered to her apartment. "Wait for me."
She closed her eyes, leaned back, and fell straight into the cool night air of early November.
*I've landed, folks! The first thing I did was eat my fill. God, it felt like I'd just been released from prison, I ate so much my eyes were bloodshot—no, what am I saying, the first thing I did was get right back to writing, for real!
Hehehe, sorry for switching away from Mai Mingle after only four chapters. I need to introduce the world-building from multiple perspectives, otherwise you'd be confused for too long, and that's no good. I won't switch POVs so frequently in the future.
I should've given you a heads-up at the end of the last chapter, but I forgot... Donkeys have bad memories. You guys have your hippocampus, I have a "donkey-campus." The pirated version of my brain doesn't work so well, but my official readers will definitely forgive me (right?).
I've always found that one of the biggest barriers to entry for Western fantasy is the names... so I've adapted the Western names in this novel to be more memorable for a Chinese audience. For example, "Jin Xueli" is my adaptation of "Sydney Gyn." If I'd just called her "Siney Jie," who the hell would even remember her, right? This is a trick I learned while writing Milady. It works! I'd give it 4.8 stars on Yelp.
*So why am I putting all this nonsense here after the chapter? Because I ran out of space in the author's notes section, and I just couldn't resist talking crap. Anyway, this chapter is free, so you can't accuse me of padding the word count.