She Stole My Pain, So I Took Her to Antarctica Chapter 02
I took my time looking at her.
Her face was so red it looked ready to burst. Her clothes were soaked through with sweat. Each breath tore out of her in ragged gasps, as if her lungs were about to give out.
I covered my mouth and laughed softly.
“Vivian? Since when do you care about me?”
“I just felt like exercising. You know, running in this kind of heat wave is actually pretty satisfying.”
Vivian’s face twisted with anger.
Today, she had deliberately gone to a construction site to hand out water to the workers. She had even hired an assistant to film her, to capture the whole performance.
At first, it must have felt wonderful.
She stood under the vicious sun and walked back and forth for hours without feeling a thing. Instead, she felt cool and comfortable, as if she were standing in an air-conditioned room.
But just as she was secretly marveling at the power of the sensation-swap system, everything changed.
The cool comfort vanished.
In its place came the feeling of running inside a sauna.
I watched the color drain and return across Vivian’s face. Just like that, I lost interest in teasing her.
“Vivian, end your little system game,” I said. “Otherwise, this will not end well for you.”
Panic, anger, and calculation flickered across her face.
Then she hung up.
When I called back, I found she had blocked me.
Soon, the heat burning through me disappeared. Vivian must have ducked into an air-conditioned room.
Only then did I stop running and go home.
Logan came over at once with a glass of ice water. His expression was gentle, almost tender.
“Babe, drink some water.”
“Don’t scare me like that again.”
I frowned and refused. My guard was already up.
A second later, something slammed hard into the back of my neck.
The world went black.
When I woke up, Logan had taken me to a mountain resort more than three thousand feet above sea level.
The place stayed cool all year round. Even at its warmest, it barely reached seventy-seven degrees Fahrenheit.
My stomach dropped.
How long had I been unconscious?
Why was I here?
Before I could make sense of the panic, Logan pushed the door open and smiled at me.
“Erin, come outside with me. Everyone’s waiting for you.”
He did not give me a chance to refuse. He dragged me out the door.
Outside, a pool party was already underway.
Everyone there belonged to Logan’s friend group. I had never been close to them. I had always felt their vague hostility, the kind that hid behind smiles and side glances.
“Erin, thanks for hosting us,” one man said with a grin. “We’ve never been to a resort this expensive before.”
He was smiling, but the look in his eyes made my skin crawl.
I turned to Logan.
“What is this supposed to mean?”
He was just an ordinary employee. The only card he could use was the authorized-user credit card I had given him.
Logan held my hand and spoke gently.
“Babe, you hate the heat. This is my surprise for you.”
Then he jumped straight into the pool and yanked me into the water with him.
Rage shot through me. I slapped Logan hard across the face.
For his precious Vivian, he had truly used every trick he could think of.
No matter how much I moved around here, I would never get warm enough to hurt her. Vivian’s city, though, was blazing like an oven. The heat and dizziness rolling through me meant she had started performing again.
She must have gone back under the cameras, playing saint as she handed out water in the heat.
In my last life, that was exactly how she went viral for her fake kindness.
Meanwhile, I had died of heatstroke in an air-conditioned room.
Now that I was no longer behaving the way they wanted, Logan planned to trap me at a mountain resort.
“Get the hell away from me!”
I shoved him aside and tried to climb out of the pool.
A hand slammed down on me.
I was pinned hard in the cold water.
Logan’s gentle mask finally slipped. His smile turned cruel, and his grip turned rough and brutal.
“Erin, if you insist on going against Vivian, don’t blame me for what I do next.”
