Flip the Coin [BL]-Chapter 466. Entering the City

Black cargo pants, a black t-shirt with some wolf symbol thingy, and comfortable black sneakers—wasn’t that the perfect getup for the first day at work? Naturally, I also put in my contact lenses, looking as normal as one could be.

Given that they knew part of our abilities, I figured we wouldn’t get transferred into an office but somewhere dirty with menial labor. Let’s see if they can top the prison from the commander’s world, where they had people smash away stones all day long.

I stepped out of the room, pleased with my outfit, and saw Henry standing across from me, leaning against the wall.

He stared at his palm absentmindedly while donning long, dark outdoor pants with a bunch of pockets and a long-sleeved black shirt that wasn’t tight enough to spot each of his well-defined muscles but enough to hint that there was indeed explosive power underneath.

Handsome as hell.

"What’s wrong with your hand?" I asked while stepping toward him.

His eyes, also already in contact lenses, snapped to me, as if waking up from a reverie, before he licked his lips and came speedily up with something.

"Something is missing."

I raised my eyebrows, and he took my hand, leaning forward to whisper.

"You were missing." He tugged at my hand innocently as if he hadn’t just deflected my question in the cringiest way possible.

"The second-hand embarrassment is killing me. I am ashamed to be associated with you."

Henry laughed and leaned his head against the wall to look down at me with a roguish grin.

"Associated as one can be~~" he corrected, raising two fingers and making a victory sign.

Everyone not seeing his smug and horny look would think this gesture was innocent, but with today being the second day I shoved something into my ass, I was especially perceptive to the number two.

I blankly raised my hands to show him two middle fingers in counter, and Henry broke into laughter, bending down while holding onto my shoulders.

See? I knew it. That damn fucker.

"As you said on the roof, maybe we should call off—" I couldn’t even finish my icy announcement when the laughter stopped abruptly.

Henry hugged me and whimpered softly.

"What do you want to call off? Nothing will be called off; I didn’t say anything, and you didn’t either." He let go of me and stepped behind me to push me forward to the kitchen, his voice laced with panic.

"Let’s eat, I am hungry, let’s go eat." Only a faked ’lalalaa~~’ was missing to accentuate his panic and unwillingness to even entertain the thought of calling it off.

Pfft.

I suppressed a chuckle and let myself be pushed in.

What’s for breakfast, one might ask?

’Nothing,’ was the answer served.

The kitchen was empty, the pots were cold, the plates were—I don’t know either; they weren’t on the table.

We heard people coming from upstairs, and Henry and I leaned back instinctively to get a look ... and ask for food.

My grandmother walked down the steps languidly, her eyes narrowing when she saw us.

"I thought I had to wake you up personally." She scoffed with sarcasm, eyeing my outfit in distaste.

Behind her was Ethan in a beige linen suit; behind him, the staff sergeant was carrying the kid.

Ren beamed as usual, waving at me happily.

"Yeah, no thanks." I answered while waving back.

She grimaced hatefully when she came to a stop right in front of me.

"Quiet. Go to work, and try not collecting new felonies," she hissed.

"Yeah, same to you. Where is breakfast?"

The old dragon smiled with spite.

"Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are prepared by the government. Why should I continue feeding you?" She motioned with her chin to the door as if compelling me out.

I didn’t have any comeback and was contemplating really conjuring up the house across from this one, including its food and Emma to prepare it.

But then her conjured-up self would probably get bitten by an unhappy dog... Such a hassle; let’s give the government food... a... chance...

I wasn’t by any means picky before, but the recent few food comas seemed to have made me a changed man.

My grandmother, in mid-motion, stopped and froze as if she had spotted something.

Then she walked to the shoe shelf beside the door.

On that big shelf were a bunch of shoes from everyone, surely also from Henry and me, but nobody had ever pointed that out to me, so I used either the shoes that lay on the floor beside our closet or conjured some up. For example, every time I teleported around while in my pajamas, I didn’t run around barefoot or something.

Anyway, the old dragon sped to the shelf, reached for something, and raised her hand, holding a tiny piece of leather.

"What is that??? WHERE ARE MY SHOES???"

I gave her a look that hopefully told her how crazy I thought her to be.

"What shoes?"

"THE BOOTS! FROM YESTERDAY???"

"Oh, the ones you kicked me with while pulling my hair in a frenzy??" I asked, and she pointed at me with her fingernail, painted in silver.

"I WOULDN’T HAVE TO PULL YOUR HAIR IF THEY WEREN’T SO LONG, YOU HIPPIE!"

Lies. She was just in a ’meh’ mood.

Nevertheless, I grabbed my hair; it really was quite long, nearly reaching my neck. Maybe I should cut them?

"No," Henry, standing behind me, tapped my hand around my hair.

"It looks good."

"YOU!" She turned to Henry,

"DID YOU DO THIS TO MY SHOES?" She shook the little patch of fabric as if presenting evidence and a grievance to a court.

I looked up at Henry and grinned at him, telling him he did a good job. He offered it; he had done it—a man of his word. I also love the little detail of leaving behind a bit of fabric.

"YOU DESTROY AN OLD LADY’S ONLY SHOES?!" She screeched.

’Only shoes.’ Yeah, sure, just turn around, you old hag.

"Mrs. Howard, we will have to leave now." Ethan stepped in, and even the staff sergeant said quietly, "Evey," while handing Ren over to me.

The little one hugged me happily as if he wanted to come with me as my personal backpack, worn on my chest.

I raised my eyebrows to look from the staff sergeant’s endearing nickname for my grandmother, whose wrath had now focused on the old man, ready to capitate him.

Hmm... So he hadn’t asked her for permission to call her that? Was that just his very first, very bold try?

Seeing the tension between the maybe-or-maybe-not couple escalate, there was only one thing left for me to do:

"Meh?" I asked, and my grandmother put all her attention back on me, straining her body as if she would lunge at me any moment.

This is really... her switch, huh?

I put Ren down and patted his head quickly before bolting out of the door, Henry right behind me, and even Ethan walked quickly, closing the entrance door after crossing the threshold.

He even opened the car from afar, which told us which one we would take.

Well, I already knew from my vision with Kitty.

Ethan entered the driver’s seat while I opened the door for Henry to step in.

He laughed happily while doing so, and I looked at him, asking myself about what his sudden burst of happiness was about before stepping in myself.

The moment the car doors were closed, there was a collective sigh of relief.

"First day of work..." Ethan said to himself dispiritedly and started the car.

I looked out of the car window and saw my grandmother doing the same, just from the second floor of the house.

Creepy. She must have raced up the stairs to arrive upstairs so soon, but now she looked down, all composed like a ghost.

"I have all our documents for the registrations, oh, and also—" Ethan reached to his side, producing a phone.

"Mr. Howard, your friends have tried to contact you multiple times."

I took over the phone; he presented it to me while driving securely.

"That’s not my phone; where is mine?" I looked at Henry.

"In the sock drawer of our closet," Henry said while looking out of his window, as if that was the most natural place for a phone to be.

I hummed questioningly, but the puppy feigned ignorance.

"...This phone has an eSIM identical to your...other, so you will be able to see all the messages," Ethan explained, noncommittal about the rest.

I looked at my new phone, and oh boy, yes, I could see the flood of messages.

Worried, congratulating, then angry that there was no answer, especially from Danny; Omar constantly asking how I was and informing me that we’d have to leave the city; Jordan constantly telling them in the group chat that I would probably just rest and that they should calm down.

I messaged them that I was fine, and then another flood of messages came, as if they had all been staring at their phones.

The puppy beside me changed his posture from staring out of the window to slowly inching closer, and in the end, his head was on my shoulder reading with me.

I told the guys that we were on our way to our first day of work after calming them down, and slowly a normal conversation was formed.

They asked me to tell them where we would work, as they were on patrol today, but I shut them down.

I didn’t want them to linger around me, telling everyone who was after me that we were still in contact. No idea if I was being watched by people from the government, but the chances were high.

Anyway, the chat changed to asking where my grandma and I would move to in the future, to which city or stuff, and Omar wrote that his mother had already contacted my grandma, Danny’s mom, and Jordan’s parents and that we should all go together to the capital city.

The capital city was on the other side of the country; if you drive without breaks, it would take about two to three days. With the plane, it would take about four hours, so not really that close to us.

I nudged Henry and looked at Ethan.

"The guys say they want to go to the capital city?"

"Mrs. Howard is still thinking it over; she has already contacted acquaintances there, but we are unclear about how the circumstances are. The information we can acquire is sparse," he answered while Henry just shrugged, uninterested.

Teleportation made distances relative for the puppy and me, but as for the others...

"If portals continued to open in this city, we would have to travel back after moving across the country, and we would need to get Jeyjey to travel with us to close the portals..." I said.

Henry could teleport with her, as we had learned, but a half-dead Jeyjey wouldn’t be of much use.

Damn it, I still haven’t fed her my blood; I’ll have to do that soon.

Ethan nodded.

"Mrs. Howard wants to lengthen the distance between the Lawrence family and Ren, as well as you, Mr. Howard." He really seemed to plan on completely ignoring the fact that I had offered him to call me by my first name, but whatever.

Henry scoffed after hearing my grandma’s reason.

"Let them come."

I chuckled and patted his head, feeling him lean into my touch like a puppy starved for affection.

I told the guys I would write to them later before turning the phone on silent; that whole moving matter had to be discussed later with everyone.

If we could leave Jeyjey here, maybe in our house, then Henry and I could teleport back anytime.

I had a feeling that our house would stay intact, no matter what the government or state attorney planned to do with our city, given the bunch of... visions... I had with the green paint were coming partly off the wall, telling me that that house would age without getting destroyed.

We’ll have to see.

Ethan parked our car close to the city, in a very secluded and empty parking lot, then told us that we had to enter on foot.

Henry hung on to me; Ethan walked in front of us as we crossed the last few inconspicuous dirt paths and entered through a street that was initially wide but soon turned into a narrow side alley and led after a while to a three-laned big street.

And there... was chaos—that’s what I imagine when thinking of the apocalypse.

The streets were full of trash, there was blood on walls, sidewalks, and poles; trash bins were ripped out of the ground; stop signs were askew; traffic lights were bent down; windows were broken; and there was an abundance of packages of empty cat and dog food all over the streets.

"Woah," I said, kicking a flat empty cola can away from me.

"Part of this should be because of the rats and zombies that have crossed the city," Ethan said, looking at us.

Henry was still hanging on me but had placed his head on top of mine, and when I nodded, his head moved in the same motion as well.

This big empty street was creepy as fuck, creepier than Ghost Grandma.

"Where are we going? Why is there nobody?" I was starting to feel a bit paranoid, given how absolutely abandoned such a fucking big street was; additionally, there was not one car in sight.

Neither crashed cars nor parked ones, and I remembered clearly that this wasn’t the case when we eradicated that gang a while ago, though we had only stayed on the outskirts and didn’t go inside the city.

Ethan pointed at a big building not far away with a statue in front, with big old pillars—I needed a moment to recognize it; it was the official city hall.

Just that there were bloody handprints covering the pillars, together with a bunch of flyers, papers, and graffiti... and that there was a bunch of rubble that had still not been cleaned up from bombs.

The old building looked like a wreck.

We walked to it, passing the big three-laned street, and when we walked by one of the big pillars, I took a look at the flyers and graffiti.

The flyers were mostly about missing people, while most of the graffiti read:

HELP!

WE STARVE WITHOUT FOOD;

WE DIE WITHOUT WATER!