She Thought Today Would Be Just Another Ordinary Day

Vanessa opened her mouth, but her throat felt clogged with a wad of cotton soaked in cold water. Not a single word came out.

Winnie worked at a bakery, dressed well, and had a warm smile. She had everything Vanessa longed for, yet all she wanted was to "stay alive."

And Vanessa? She had two bachelor's degrees, and now she hauled corpses from a hospital and slept in a morgue.

Vanessa always felt the world should not be like this, but she could not imagine what it should be like.

All the beauty and hope she yearned for came from her own fantasies. She had never seen any of it.

Looking at her friend before her, she could only remain silent.

Winnie had dropped out after just six months of schooling, yet she had always helped Vanessa continue her education.

Getting into university from an orphanage was hard. Vanessa could never have done it without Winnie's help. Back then, the two of them would always huddle beside the stove and dream, imagining that knowledge would open a door to a respectable life for them, that they might even become "somebodies."

Opportunities did exist. They simply had nothing to do with Vanessa.

-Where were all those bright futures supposed to come from? She was like a fly on a windowpane: a bright future ahead, but no way out.

A sudden ache touched Vanessa's heart. She had no idea what Winnie had been through. While she was still lost in unrealistic fantasies, Winnie had long since learned to bow to reality.

Yet looking at her pretty face, Vanessa could not help feeling that she deserved better.

"You could marry someone richer, someone important with more status..."

"Allen is very capable. He'll definitely become somebody one day." Smiling, Winnie reached out to straighten the wisps of hair the wind had blown across Vanessa's forehead, then gently patted the top of her head in reassurance. "He's here. I'm going over to him."

Winnie waved at a figure in the distance. "Allen!"

Vanessa turned to look, only to discover a familiar face-the thin man who had shown her the way on her first visit to the Wild Dog Gang!

He had changed into a long coat that covered his tattoos. Terror appeared on his face when he saw Vanessa, and he instinctively stepped back, his voice changing pitch.

"Y-you're that lunatic!?"

"Don't talk to Shasha like that!" Winnie pinched Allen's arm hard. Vanessa saw the corner of his mouth twitch with pain.

"Shasha is my friend... Oh, right, wait a moment. I'll be right back!"

Remembering something, Winnie turned and jogged away, leaving Vanessa and the man behind as the atmosphere grew awkward.

"..."

Vanessa frowned at the man. The longer she looked, the stronger the nameless anger in her heart grew.

He was as skinny as a malnourished bamboo pole, with messy hair and shabby, worn clothes-the very picture of a lowly street thug struggling to survive. Any day now, he might die in the street and become cold "cargo" on her flatbed cart.

How could someone who might not live to see tomorrow deserve Winnie?

"...Hello. I'm Winnie's friend." Vanessa took a deep breath and greeted him first.

The man stiffly tried to force a smile, and very obviously failed. "Allen."

Then he clamped his mouth shut, as though she were some terrifying creature waiting to devour someone, wishing he could vanish on the spot.

Only then did Vanessa remember how badly the being controlling her had frightened him. But she did not know how to explain it, either. She could hardly tell him that the being controlling her had already left, could she?

She suddenly remembered that the folding knife was still in her pocket, so she casually took it out.

"Is this yours?"

Allen's face twitched. He unobtrusively took another step back, his gaze growing even more wary as he looked at Vanessa.

Vanessa awkwardly stuffed the folding knife back into her pocket. She really could not get along with this man.

No, I have to find a chance to have a proper talk with Winnie!

"Shasha!" Winnie's clear voice came like salvation. She jogged back with a paper bag and a small flowerpot in her arms, and both people facing off quietly sighed in relief.

Winnie thrust everything into Vanessa's arms at once.

"For you!"

A paper bag that seemed to contain bread, judging by the feel, and a small pot of flowers.

Wait, flowers?

"Bellflowers. They're about to bloom. You have a place to stay now, don't you? Having some flowers around will make you feel much better!" Winnie patted Vanessa's head. "See you, Shasha."

She took Allen's arm and left, chatting and laughing-or, more precisely, she was the one chatting and laughing. The man still looked nervous, glancing back out of the corner of his eye from time to time.

Holding the flowerpot and paper bag, Vanessa was at a loss for a moment.

Winnie had actually given her a pot of... flowers?

That was certainly very "Winnie." Even during the hardest times at the orphanage, she would keep a few pots of flowers and plants on the windowsill and tend them carefully.

But the problem is... I have nowhere to put them!

She did have somewhere to stay now, but she slept in a morgue drawer meant for corpses. Was she supposed to put the flowers in there?

Sleeping in a coffin was strange enough, and now she was supposed to put flowers beside her?

Vanessa was utterly flustered.

Forget it. What's done is done. I'll eat the bread first...

The sky darkened completely. The night watchmen set up tall ladders and used specially made long hooks to light the gas lamps along the street, one by one.

The dim yellow halos struggled to pierce New Scandinavia's thin, ever-present mist, casting wavering patches of light across the cold, damp flagstones.

With the flowers in one arm and her other hand pulling the flatbed cart, Vanessa headed toward the hospital. She thought this was merely another day so ordinary it was almost numbing: tedious work, fleeting warmth, unpleasant people, a biting cold wind... no different from countless days and nights before.

Most people remained immersed in this illusion, believing today's uneventful life would continue forever, until one day the road beneath their feet broke apart without warning and they plunged into the abyss. Only then did they realize that the everyday life they had taken for granted had long since been silently collapsing like a sandcastle.

Vanessa was no exception.

When she raised her head in some surprise, she found a dark figure blocking the road in the alley ahead.

This was not the first time Vanessa had encountered someone blocking her way.

New Scandinavia had its own twisted order at night. The sacks on her flatbed cart, with their conspicuous hospital markings, were her talisman.

Gang members and patrol officers usually chose to ignore them when they saw them. This was an unspoken rule among those at the bottom.

As for the vagrants and desperate robbers...

People on the streets all understood what a hospital "orderly" meant.

Corpses were worthless on the streets. No one would go to the trouble of robbing a pile of flesh that would soon rot. Thus, although Vanessa often encountered danger, she always managed to come through unscathed in the end, and had even grown somewhat numb to it.

"I'm a hospital 'orderly.' There's no money here, only corpses."

She stared at the dark figure before her, taking up her weapon as she spoke.

Vanessa had a filthy wooden club for self-defense.

Many steel nails had been driven into one end, and it bore quite a few dark bloodstains. According to Old Razi, the previous orderlies had all used it to defend themselves.

This time, however, was different.