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Chapters 41–45 are real-world chapters. Skip to Chapter 46 for game content.
As the saying goes, good news lifts the spirit.
And it wasn't just Maverick riding high — Max was too.
Max's cheeks were flushed today. Not from Jasmine hitting him. For that explanation, we need to go back to this morning.
Jasmine had been ready to move in immediately after seeing the apartment. The reality was that the place was missing too many things, and between an empty guest room and a general shortage of basic supplies, the practical decision was a hotel night and a fresh start in the morning.
So early the next day, Max began helping Jasmine unpack.
Besides the two suitcases she'd brought herself, Jasmine had also placed several online orders for daily necessities — including one large box, approximately five feet long and two feet wide, delivered with the specific promptness that made you briefly believe in things.
While Jasmine organized the room, Max took up the position of Package Opener. It was, he would later reflect, a role he had underestimated.
The large box, for instance, had a profile that strongly suggested its contents were a body pillow.
Max worked a utility knife along the seam and called through to the bedroom: "What's in the big box? Body pillow?"
"No. Mattress."
"Ah? Mattre—"
[SLAP]
By the time his brain registered the threat, the mattress had already unfolded.
What followed was a three-square-meter panel of compressed memory foam deploying at speed directly into Max's face, which sent him backward across the entryway floor with the kind of velocity that left a person lying there for a moment reassessing things.
Jasmine emerged from the bedroom at the sound of the impact, looked at Max on the floor — one hand over his cheek, the other trembling as it pointed accusingly at the snow-white mattress now fully expanded across the entryway — and waited.
"You hit me," Max said, with the wounded dignity of a man processing a genuine injustice. "A mattress hit me. Not even my dad has ever hit me."
"Uncle sounds like he was a kind man."
"That is NOT the point—"
"Isn't it? Never mind, never mind." Jasmine crouched down, hands extended. "Does it hurt? Let me rub it."
Max performed what could only be described as an evasive maneuver — a lateral roll that got him upright and two steps back before Jasmine's hands could make contact.
Since barbecue the previous evening, he had noticed that Jasmine's hands were not idle. She had a specific habit of finding things to pinch, and her preferred targets were distributed around his kidney region in a way that was beginning to feel less like absentmindedness and more like surveying. He hadn't objected out loud, but there were limits, and his currently-red cheek was not a location he wanted subjected to Jasmine's version of comfort.
He declined.
Jasmine paused. Looked at her hands. Looked at Max.
Then she stood up, tucked the mattress under one arm — the full mattress, under one arm, as though it weighed something reasonable — and carried it back into the guest room without further comment.
There was always tomorrow.
And if she was being entirely honest with herself, things obtained too easily weren't particularly satisfying. The interesting part was the journey. The difficulty. The slow, careful process of not startling the prey before it realized what was happening.
She was a patient person.
She had done five years of military service. She could wait.
Jasmine quickly wiped the corner of her mouth before Max could turn around.
It was only the first day. She needed to maintain the appearance of a normal, reasonable person who was simply splitting rent with an acquaintance.
Be a lady. Can't scare off the prey.
There was plenty of time.
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