Immortality Starts With Selling Pills

Chapter 9: Chapter 9: Gwen’s Mother Is A...

””Alone?”” Two sharp voices echoed in the room.

One of them was Gwen herself, and the other was her mother, Mrs. Kim Lee.

While her father and his mother just stared at him like he had grown another head.

”Take him out to the garden,” Patrick coughed while shooting his wife a look. ”You kids can talk there freely.”

”It’s almost time for her to leave; she will miss the train,” Kim cut in, just as fast. She doesn’t have time for—”

”She has a few minutes,” her father said, his voice was low, but the weight behind his gaze even made her flinch. ”It’s not like she has a train to catch this second. The station is nearby, and her train does not leave for another 4 hours.”

Derrick shook his head before it could turn into an argument. ”It’s fine. We can talk here.”

”Are you sure, dear?” He may look fine, but Rebecca was worried for him. She felt like he was pushing himself too much.

Derrick shook his head with a small smile, making her stop, but she was still worried. Her eyes landed on Gwen’s mother. ’It’s all that bitch’s fault.’

Derrick did not notice the coldness in his mother’s eyes and proceeded to tell Gwen everything that had happened to him since he woke up in this body.

If he wanted to get her to tell him everything she knew, he had to gain her trust and make her believe that he was not lying to her.

It was not hard to gain her trust. There was already a bond there; he just had to take advantage of it.

”I just hope you can understand that I did not mean to break our promise. If I had my memories, I would have done everything in my promise to keep my power.” Derrick was surprised by himself. He never knew he could act so well.

Of course he did not talk about the transmigration and his old life. That was only reserved information for the people he would come to trust in the future.

But that trust needed to be immovable, and even then he knew he could talk about the system.

His transmigration might as well be a worthless secret compared to the system. He did not want to endanger the lives of the people he cared about by putting the burden of his secrets on them.

He only told Gwen about his amnesia, the doctors, and the hours he’d spent unconscious on his own doorstep.

”...such a thing happened?”

He watched doubt flicker across Gwen’s face; her first thoughts were that he came here to sell her the lie he told before, but then her beliefs faltered completely the moment she turned to Rebecca and saw the confirmation written plainly there.

Her sadness pierced through her heart like a butcher’s knife. Her face went pale and she snapped back to him. Her ”hands flying all over his body to check any signs of injuries, ”Are you—are you okay?”

Kim’s frown deepened at the concern in her daughter’s voice. She could stand seeing them being so close. But she could only bite her lips before her husband.

She didn’t ask if he was okay. She didn’t seem to care whether he was okay at all.

Patrick, unlike her, pulled the boy into a bear hug. ”Why do bad things happen to good people? You’re alright now, my boy? I can arrange the best doctors in the city right now; you don’t have to worry about the payment. I will handle all that.”

”I’m alright; there’s no need for that, but I do appreciate the concern.” Derrick genuinely thanked the man. He could tell that the man was not lying based on his Author’s POV skill at least. If he was some psycho who was good at hiding his emotions, that was another thing. ”But I can’t pretend everything’s normal when I don’t recognize the people who are supposed to matter to me.”

”I don’t know what you guys meant to me, but I do not want you all to be hurt because of me.” Derrick spat the bullshit he did not know he was capable of in real life. ”I can tell that you are a good guy, Patrick. I wish I could have remembered our time together.”

Gwen’s eyes turned glassy, just like her father’s. ”I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—I didn’t know. Will you come with me? To the school, I mean, if we hurry, maybe—”

”I already missed the trials,” he said gently. ”I need a scholarship, and I’ll have to wait a year so I can apply again.”

”The other schools are not open for trails right now as well. I will have to rethink my future and what I want to do next.”

She looked like she might argue, but seeing the serious look on his face, she swallowed the words back down.

”There is something I wanted to ask you?” Derrick finally got to the point he wanted to talk about, ”Can you tell me about our school life?”

”Come with me.” Gwen stood up from the sofa and dragged him out of the house without even waiting for her mother to say something.

”I don’t need to know everything. Just tell me someone wants to harm me.” Derrick said once they were outside and no one else was hearing them.

And as it turned out, the answer was plenty of people.

Gwen explained, haltingly, that ever since word got out that Derrick had tested at eighty percent Impurity-Free for the body purity index, beating her own respectable seventy-eight, he’d become a target for the jealousy and envy of many.

His classmates were jealous.

How could a nobody like him, who had no father, be so talented?

That thought irked them, and they could not stand it.

Even the people who called themselves his friend started to distance themselves from him because they felt inferior.

People who couldn’t stand watching someone climb faster than they could.

Kenny was one of them too. According to her, he had only ever scored sixty percent himself and had never once let Derrick forget that he resented him for it.

He would gather people and try to bully them every chance they got.

”Maybe it’s better you don’t go to the school at all,” she added, almost apologetically. ”His older brother’s already there, and he is an Enhanced Stage, super-abled.”

”He can even use enhanced energy to attack. It wouldn’t be a fair fight. One swing from him and you will be bed-ridden for months. No one would even stop him; his family has ties to the guild. They even donate credits to the school to maintain their influence.”

Derrick filed the name away carefully.

Kenny West. Are you the one responsible for my sufferings?

Once they were done talking, the two of them walked back inside to see the three parents talking to each other.

Seeing him, Rebecca straightened. She realized it was time to leave.

Before they left, Derrick thanked Gwen and said his goodbyes to her father, who hugged him once more.

Just as they were about to leave, something happened.

Kim stopped him at the door.

”A word,” she said, her smile stretched thin as wire; Rebecca had already stepped ahead onto the driveway, so she could not hear her voice. ”Stay away from my daughter. Don’t contact her again.”

”...” Derrick had spent one full lifetime being polite to people who thought money bought them the right to talk down to anyone below their tax bracket.

He’d used up his entire quota of patience for that particular breed sometime around his third bestseller.

He lowered his eyelids halfway and looked at her with his cold, green, emotionless eyes. Just a look from him made the woman’s throat go dry.

”I can’t really stop your daughter if she decides she wants to keep chasing after me, can I?” he said quietly, stepping close enough that only she could hear it.

”But if someone isn’t careful, I can make sure she never wants to come back to this house again. Maybe I would even take her out for a veryyy... long night. It would be just the two of us in each other’s arms. Enjoying the night?”

He stared at her stunned face; a faint smile appeared on his face as he leaned in to whisper, ”What do you think? Wanna join?”

Kim’s face went red with fury, her mouth already opening for a retort.

Derrick didn’t give her the chance.

He stepped back, putting distance between them, and continued, at a normal volume, pleasant as anything: ”Please, Mrs. Lee. I respect you... as little as it may be. So you should try treating me like a human being too before I stop thinking of you as one.”

”And you don’t want me to see you as a beast. You know what we do to those beasts.”

Without waiting any further, he left her standing in her own doorway, speechless, and caught up to Rebecca without looking back.

Neither of them saw Kim pull out her phone the second the door shut behind them, thumb already scrolling to a frequently dialed contact.

On their way back home, the two ran into Cassandra. She was wearing a black top with blue jeans and a pair of matching sneakers. Even though it looked odd, the outfit worked on her.

She was in a bad mood because she was being stalked.

It was some boy, same age as Derrick and Cassandra, who was chasing behind her the same way as Kenny was pestering Gwen earlier.

”Please, Cassandra. At least give me a chance, I can give you happiness. Please, go out with me.”