รักลับๆกับคุณอาข้างบ้าน 18+

"Ah!"

Nicole Floyd jolted upright in bed, gasping. Sweat streamed down her forehead, her eyes unfocused and hollow.

The sight in front of her cut through the haze in her mind.

This was her old apartment, the one from before the apocalypse.

Ding, ding…

Text alerts kept chiming. She grabbed her phone from the nightstand.

September 14, 2029. 9:32 a.m.

Nicole had more than a dozen unread messages. All of them were warning about a super typhoon named Cleaver, projected to make landfall early on the 17th along the coast. There would be category-breaking winds and days of relentless rain.

Nicole stared at the screen, dazed.

Hadn't she died? She remembered dying in that cannibal world devoid of light. Had her refusal to accept it dragged her into some dying hallucination?

Ding!

Another alert came in, updated at 9:37 a.m.

Nicole twisted her arm hard. Pain shot up her nerves, sharp and real.

This wasn't a dream. She had been reborn, back to three days before the storm that cracked the world open.

No. To be exact, two and a half days.

Nicole didn't feel happy. The exhaustion had settled deep in her bones.

Typhoons, floods, deep freeze, extreme heat, earthquakes. One hell after another. What was there worth reliving?

And yet, she was back.

Was she supposed to sit still and wait to die all over again?

Not a chance!

Nicole splashed cold water on her face. The mirror showed a younger version of herself with smooth skin and clear eyes, no hollowed-out desperation yet.

For a moment, everything looked fine.

Her gaze dropped to the crystal pendant at her neck.

She had been wearing it when she was abandoned at the hospital as a newborn. Later, Edward Austin had taken it from her and given it to the school's beauty queen, Mary Cannon.

Three years into the apocalypse, Mary still looked flawless. Her clothes were clean, her skin rosy, as if the old world never ended for her.

Once, when Nicole collapsed from hunger, she saw Mary casually pull a vanilla ice cream bar out of that pendant and lick it, slow and unbothered.

Nicole's breath hitched.

She grabbed a blade, sliced her fingertip, and let a drop of blood fall onto the pendant.

A blinding light exploded.

When her vision cleared, she stood inside an empty apartment with no front door. There was running water and electricity, but no furniture.

The place had two bedrooms and a living room, totaling about 860 square feet. The ceilings were nearly 10 feet high. Next to the balcony was a small garden, roughly 110 square feet, filled with dark soil.

A glowing timer floated in the living room.

01:56:13.

This was the storage space that let Mary live like royalty. Or rather, the one she had tricked out of Nicole's hands.

When Nicole stepped out, the space stayed with her, embedded in her mind. The moment she focused, she could sense everything inside.

Nicole tested it with boiling water. Everywhere except the balcony and the garden kept things perfectly fresh.

She could store things using thought alone. When nobody entered physically, the timer froze. Once she stepped inside, it started counting down.

There wasn't time to unravel how it worked.

She had a second life and a storage space. That was enough for her to change her gruesome fate last time.

In her past life, she had survived only three years. She had no idea what disasters came after.

With that in mind, Nicole searched online for types of natural disasters. When she looked at the results filling the screen, she nearly collapsed on the spot.

Gosh, staying alive was hard!

Pushing aside the extra emotions, she took out a pen and notebook and started listing supplies.

Nicole grew up in an orphanage. It looked peaceful on the surface, but underneath, the fighting was constant. That place taught her early how to protect herself and never take a loss.

She had been insecure by nature. In elementary school, she collected cardboard and recyclables. In middle school, she worked part-time tutoring, doing homework for others, and cleaning bathrooms. As long as it paid, she did it.

She ranked near the top in every major exam. Even after getting into the medical program and reaching her sophomore year, she was still tutoring five seniors preparing for college. She charged 40 dollars per session.

Nicole had a nose for money. She had sold insurance and run a small video channel, chasing any legal hustle she could find. Over more than ten years, she had saved about 40 thousand dollars, thinking that if she kept going, she'd have enough for a down payment by graduation.

Now, it was all meaningless.

She was supposed to have classes in the afternoon and tutoring at night, but none of that mattered anymore.

She messaged the parents, saying she had been hospitalized and wouldn't be able to tutor for a long time. She asked them to find replacements and settle the fees.

Tutoring fees were paid every two weeks. The parents weren't short on money. Two of them even sent her 100 dollars as a get-well gift. Altogether, 1,200 dollars hit her account.

Before closing the chat, Nicole reminded them that a once-in-a-century typhoon was coming and that they should stock up on food and emergency medicine.

Natural disasters never came alone. Just the medication list alone filled three full pages. Many of those drugs were expensive, and some couldn't even be found in regular pharmacies.

Nicole snapped photos and sent them to a pharmaceutical sales rep who also happened to be her childhood friend.

[Urgent order for a big-spending client. Needs delivery tonight. Help me out with a serious discount.]

Jeremy Cross replied instantly. [Got it.]

Less than five minutes later, her phone rang.

"This list is weird as hell. Are you messing with me?" Jeremy asked.

"The money's already transferred. The only requirement is that everything arrives tonight," Nicole replied.

She had no time to argue. She hung up and sent ten thousand dollars with a note.

[Let me know if it's enough.]

There was too much to prepare.

Nicole grabbed her keys and headed out, then caught sight of the limited-edition Air Jordans sitting on the table. She almost wanted to smash her head into the wall.

She had always been practical.

Then she met Edward, and she completely lost her mind.

To pursue him, Nicole moved out of the dorms and rented an overpriced apartment near campus. She stood in line at dawn outside a sneaker store just to buy those shoes for him.

She never spent more than 60 dollars on her own shoes, but she didn't blink at dropping over 1,700 on those Jordans. And what did she get?

Edward accepted the gift, asked for her pendant, and never gave his answer to her confession. During the typhoon, he and Mary ate through all the food Nicole had stockpiled.

During three years of disasters, Edward had never helped Nicole once. When she was beaten and slaughtered by monsters, he only watched coldly from the side.

Had she known how it would end, she would've rather fed those Jordans to a dog than give them to him.

This time, Nicole wanted to see how well he and Mary could live without her supplies or her storage space.

The super typhoon lasted half a month, followed by three straight months of record-breaking rain. The entire city drowned.

Nicole lived on the 18th floor. The floodwater never reached her, but her life was still miserable.

-

After leaving the complex, Nicole stopped at a roadside diner and ate until she was full.

Without wasting a second, she went to a rental lot and picked up a box truck. Her first stop was the sneaker store.

The clerk was stunned by her return request. After all, this was a brand-new limited-edition pair of sneakers. People were lining up to buy them.

Nicole got back about 1,700 dollars, which was enough to buy rice, flour, oil, and canned food to last two or three years.

That was way better than having a man.

She drove to a street packed with door and window suppliers and ordered two extra-thick stainless steel security doors with triple-bolt top-and-bottom locks. Even a sledgehammer wouldn't break them. Installation included, the total came to about 1,200 dollars.

To save time, Nicole had measured everything before leaving home.

The shop owner worried about accuracy at first, but once he heard which apartment complex and building it was, he relaxed. He had done plenty of jobs there.

"If you need it rushed, we can install the day after tomorrow," he said.

Across the street was a glass shop. Nicole chose the thickest impact-resistant glass available, sparing no expense. Installation was scheduled for the same morning.

Let them knock. Let them smash.

In this life, no one was getting through her door with a knife ever again!