Miss Assassin is heavily addicted

Chapter 15, Section 15: A Sad Dream
Dream.

Was it a dream...?

A gentle breeze from the dock brushed against her cheek. Nicole slowly opened her eyes. She was sitting on a wooden post, watching the ship docked in front of the pier, and the men coming and going carrying sacks, one after another, like ants carrying loads.

The air was so salty and humid, it felt like being at the seaside.

The sun shines brightly, and seagulls spread their wings.

"Oh, my little Nicole, what would you like for lunch?"

Suddenly, a rough, large hand touched her head.

Nicole looked up and saw her familiar grandfather, a dockworker, with a towel draped over his shoulder to wipe his sweat.

"Anything is fine," Nicole replied instinctively.

"Haha... How many words do you know in school? Mr. Foley told me you're the smartest kid there. I was thinking if you're really good at studying, I'd definitely send you to college."

"Is university far away?"

"Not far, but very expensive."

The faint voice seemed to drift away with the sea breeze.

Soon, Grandpa, having finished his chat, went back to moving sacks filled with potatoes transported from afar. Nicole sat on a wooden stake, looking on blankly, unable to recall anything.

She felt like she had forgotten something.

Then suddenly, some commotion was heard on the dock, and people were muttering.

"Hey, what's that dead rat over there? It stinks!"

"Throw it away!"

The noise soon subsided.

But no one noticed that there was a flea on the dead rat. It hopped onto the departing man's ankle and began to feast on it, and red pimples gradually appeared on the spot where it was biting.

Nicole, for some reason, could see it all clearly.

She was a little sleepy and closed her eyes.

……

Then I woke up again, it seemed to be the third day.

In the cramped basement, water droplets seeped from the walls, and mold took root in the cracks. Next door was Mr. Lecter's house, and the two houses were separated only by a curtain. This place, which barely provided shelter from the wind and rain, was Nicole's home.

Grandpa has been coughing non-stop today, so he must be sick.

He wanted to work at the dock, but his high fever and cough made him stagger, so Nicole had to help him out. When they got close to the dock, he pushed her away.

"No need to help me, Nicole, I'm perfectly healthy."

Next, Grandpa and the manager were talking.

"You're sick too? That's strange. This is the seventh case at the dock. At this rate, I'll have to hire some temporary workers."

"Okay, okay, I understand..."

The man in charge reluctantly agreed to Grandpa's request, allowing him to join the packing team. He scratched his head and calculated the day's earnings with meager numbers.

So Nicole sat on the dock again, watching her grandfather carrying sacks back and forth under the sun, but he was clearly struggling more than usual.

Seagulls are circling.

Grandpa suddenly collapsed.

"Hey! Hey! Boss! Dorek has fainted!"

"What? Hey! I told you not to force him..."

Nicole felt a sudden emptiness in her heart. She wanted to go forward and help her grandfather, but found that she couldn't reach him. She could only sit helplessly to the side and shed tears.

Watching the adults carry him away, he followed alone behind, feeling like he was someone no one wanted long ago, all he could do was wrap himself tightly in his tattered clothes and follow the fleeing crowd.

Tears welled up in Nicole's eyes and streamed down her face. She just wanted to rub her eyes to clear her vision and make it less blurry and sore, but she found that the scene had changed again.

I don't know when I got back to my cramped home.

The woman's muttering could be heard nearby.

"Damn it, another infectious disease outbreak? What are we going to do? The medicine in the hospital is so expensive, it could kill someone if they take it..."

Nicole recognized her voice; it was Mrs. Lecto's muttered words. Mr. Lecto was also ill at home, breathing heavily and laboredly.

Sitting beside the straw mat, watching my grandfather cough up blood, I felt dazed.

She placed her hand on her grandfather's body.

Grandpa's groin had developed a black lump the size of an egg, and black spots had appeared on his skin. He vomited bile from time to time. He could no longer eat much bread and often sighed with a pained expression.

"You need to see a doctor."

Seeing her grandfather's miserable state, Nicole sadly realized that this was the only way; she couldn't keep trying to tough it out. She begged her grandfather to give her his money pouch, which contained his savings from many years of hard work.

Thirteen thousand crowns.

That means we're going to send Nicole to college.

"Then you won't be able to go to university in the future."

Grandpa lay on the floor, chuckling to himself, looking like a candle flickering in the wind, his sunken eyes filled with sadness.

Nicole ran to the hospital.

Medicines that could treat infectious diseases were too expensive, and hospitals were overcrowded at the time. The doctors in white coats with stethoscopes couldn't free their hands at all. The corridors were filled with people wailing and sighing. Their pity had turned into numbness, and there were even priests from monasteries there to comfort people.

Nicole squeezed through the crowd, waving her money bag at the doctor, and was finally noticed and placed at the front of the stage.

"How is the patient?"

Nicole described her grandfather's condition in a trembling voice, her eyes filled with sorrow, and said sadly, "Please save him!" The doctor's face remained expressionless. After listening, he simply wrote down a prescription. Nicole couldn't understand the words on it, but they were mostly the names of the medicines. The numbers that followed were astronomical to her.

"I... I didn't bring that much money."

Nicole's voice was as soft as a mosquito's buzz as she bit her lip in self-consciousness.

A flicker of emotion crossed the doctor's eyes. Seeing this, he sighed and picked up his pen again to write a few lines. The name of the drug was still unfamiliar, but this time it was no longer an astronomical sum for her.

"These medications aren't very effective."

Nicole heard the doctor's words and knew that for people in the slums, whether they could survive a disease was a matter of luck.

Even for the cheaper medicines—Nicole was still short 1,200 crowns after handing him her purse, which made her very anxious. She wanted to ask if she could pay on credit, promising to repay him when she had the money later.

The doctor shook his head.

Nicole was kicked out.

She failed to do this simple thing well. Even with the money she saved by scrimping and saving, she couldn't afford enough medicine—it takes at least two weeks of medication to cure an infectious disease.

How to do it?

Confused, Nicole clutched her purse tightly. Fortunately, a kind person who had been loitering near the hospital noticed her and handed her a piece of paper.

"You'll have money once you sign it, but this is a loan from me. If you can't pay it back, you'll have to keep paying it back."

said the man.

Nicole looked at the clauses on the document, most of which were obscure and difficult to understand, but she only wanted to save her grandfather, even though she knew it was a loan agreement.

"Could you... could you give me 1,200 crowns?"

"Of course, but it's just a loan."

"Okay, okay!"

Following the man's instructions, Nicole wrote her name on the paper and then pressed her red handprint. Sure enough, she received 1200 crowns, but she didn't even have the energy to be happy. She just turned around and plunged into the crowd, pushing and shoving.

Finally, this time I managed to buy the medicine.

By the time I got home, the sun was already setting, and the pink sunset clouds on the horizon looked like the shape of a dragonfly. Many cargo ships that hadn't set sail for a long time were moored at the dock.

"Cough cough."

A muffled cough came from inside the house. Nicole brought good news to her grandfather. She prepared the cooking utensils and opened the medicine packet.

A bitter, strong taste lingered at the tip of my nose.

A thick, greenish medicinal liquid.

"This medicine is really bitter."

Grandpa smiled and stuck out his tongue, as if joking.

When Ni saw her grandfather regain his spirits, she felt a lump in her throat, but she wiped her eyes and smiled happily.

But the strange thing is,
As time went by, the amount of medicine bought from the hospital decreased, until finally only one packet remained. This packet was boiled in a vessel and given to Grandpa to drink.

"This medicine is really bitter."

Grandpa sighed, his eyes more moist than ever before.

Nicole couldn't help but feel guilty. She knew why, and she choked up as she told her grandfather that she was useless and hadn't been able to buy medicine that wasn't so bitter.

Grandpa remained silent after hearing this, but then touched her head with his rough, calloused hands, which were much drier than before.

"It's not actually that bad."

“Nicole...don’t be sad for me, you have a long life ahead of you.”

After saying this, Grandpa shook his head and sighed, as if blaming himself:
"It's so hard to save money... How am I supposed to go to university now? What can I do?"

Nicole couldn't understand what her grandfather meant because she couldn't imagine the kind of separation that was about to come. Over the next two days, as if in a final burst of energy, her grandfather did many things.

They went to the pier to see the sea, visited Mr. Lecter in the hospital ward, said good morning to Mr. Foley at the school, and finally went to the St. Matthew's Home for the Disabled—a place nearly 20 miles from the Cobolo neighborhood, which was too far away.

There, nuns were knitting sweaters, children were laughing and playing on the lawn, colorful flowers bloomed beside the gently flowing fountain, and crowds of people came to pray one after another.

The dome there was beautiful; Nicole remembers it vividly.

It seems this isn't my first time here.

Grandpa was talking and sighing with someone, seemingly about something related to himself, but all she saw in the end was the vice-principal shaking his head. There were already many homeless children here, not to mention that Nicole had turned 18 two months ago.

Afterwards, the two sat on a pew in the church for a long time, until dusk fell and the sun began to set.

Grandpa seemed to want to tell Nicole everything he needed to say in his life.

“Nicole, you must be kind, just like I taught you before. Kindness will help you meet better, kind people.”

"Nicole, you have to be happy too. Being happy is the way to live a carefree life in this world."

"Don't be afraid, Nicole, you have to be strong."

"Ah."

"I'm leaving."

……

"do not go……"

Coldness and darkness enveloped her, like the murmur of someone falling into an abyss. Nicole bit her lip, tears unknowingly sliding down her cheeks. She wanted to hug herself tightly, but suddenly realized it was just a dream.

I dreamt about things from the past.

She huddled in the corner, sitting on the haystack, speechless and blank. Slowly, she curled up again, hugging her legs and feeling sad. It was so dark around her that she couldn't see her own hand in front of her face, and not even a torch was lit.

(End of this chapter)