It was around then that news came from back home. I heard it from a fellow villager who'd come to Seaview City to buy goods.
"God, it's awful. Just awful." He shook his head, gnawing on a stick of sugarcane. "That state-run factory—the boiler room blew up. Word is the new guy violated protocol. Was even smoking inside."
My heart lurched. Derek's smoking habit was legendary.
"What happened to him? Dead?" I asked.
"Not quite dead, but close enough." He spat out a wad of pulp. "Both legs blown clean off. Face burned so bad it doesn't look human anymore. Heard the old couple at the village chief's place cried themselves unconscious."
I took a silent sip of soda.
If I hadn't sold that slot, the one lying in that hospital bed—legless, faceless—would be me.
Or the Jade Fox of my last life.
Fate. Sometimes it really does come down to a single choice.
So what about Jade now?
She was probably ordering Quinn around, making him dig for gold.
I guessed right.
At that very moment, behind the Fox family's place in the Back Hills, screams erupted from a broken-down thatched hut.
"Quinn Mason! You useless piece of trash! I told you to dig that hole in the Back Hills—why the hell didn't you go!"
Jade covered her swollen, beaten face and shrieked.
Quinn clutched a liquor bottle, eyes vicious as a wolf's. "Shut your goddamn mouth, you nasty bitch! Keep yelling and I'll chop you up!"
In my previous life, Quinn dug up that gold mine because I noticed the vegetation on that stretch of mountain was abnormal. I was the one who dug through county records and geology books, confirmed the general location, and only then persuaded him to try.
And by that time, Quinn had already quit drinking. His temper had mellowed.
The current Quinn was just an irritable drunk.
Jade only remembered "there's gold in the Back Hills," but she didn't know exactly where. She forced Quinn to dig around like a headless fly. Other than unearthing a pile of rotten rocks, there wasn't jack shit.
"Impossible… it was obviously right there…"
Jade curled up in the corner, staring at the bare walls of the broken house. Then she thought of me "going to the city to enjoy the good life," and regret crashed over her like a wave.
But she still wouldn't give up.
"As long as I dig up that gold… as long as I dig up that gold, I'll grind Evelyn Fox under my heel!"
She was gambling.
She just didn't know the dealer had already changed.