Austin Hale saw the dark look on Joanne White’s face and tried to comfort her in a low voice. "Joanne, the apartment in the school district is all repaired. We can move back in a few days. As for the actual renovations, we can work on those slowly after we move in."

"So what if we move back?" Joanne White snapped, her usual gentle demeanor gone. "Utilities are ridiculously expensive, and you’re jobless! Are we supposed to move out and live on air?!"

"Joanne... Why are you acting like this? You’re not normally like this." Austin flinched at her yelling and stared at her in disbelief. She was always so gentle; he’d never heard her scream like this before.

Joanne snorted and rolled her eyes. ’With my life in such a complete mess, how could I possibly act as sweet as usual?’

For the past few days, her morning sickness had been relentless, leaving her groggy from the oppressive heat. She wanted to turn on the air conditioner, but Mrs. Hale refused to let her.

The water was only on at noon and 7:00 PM each day. The previous evening at 7:00, Joanne had wanted to shower, but Mrs. Hale insisted on using the time to fill containers for storage.

The water pressure was extremely low, and the shower needed a strong flow to work. As soon as Mrs. Hale turned on the other faucet to fill her containers, the water from the showerhead cut out completely, making it impossible for Joanne to bathe.

She hadn’t had a proper shower in days, and her scalp was unbearably itchy. Her nails were long, and she’d scratched her own scalp until it bled, leaving painful, stinging marks.

She couldn’t stand the stale, sweaty smell clinging to her body, so she doused herself in perfume to try and cover it. The cloying scent only made her morning sickness worse.

And so, Joanne White endured a month of this living nightmare with the Hale family.

To make matters worse, ever since Austin was fired, he did nothing but mope around the house, sighing constantly and paying little attention to how Joanne felt.

At first, Joanne had suppressed her own frustration and comforted Austin gently. But as the situation grew more precarious and all the resumes he sent out were met with silence, she gradually lost her patience with him.

’I’m still young,’ Joanne thought. ’I can’t throw my future away on Austin!’

Joanne took a few deep breaths to calm herself, then said softly to Austin, "Austin, this pregnancy has just been really hard on me, and I’ve been on edge. Please don’t take it to heart. By the way, I can pick up my graduation certificate in a few days. I was thinking of staying at the school for a couple of days. Could you give me a little money?"

"Go back to school? I’ll go with you," Austin said at once.

"There’s no need, Austin. I’m staying in the women’s dorm, so it wouldn’t be convenient for you. You should use this time to focus on finding a job," Joanne said gently. "The baby will be expensive when they’re born. We need to save some money, don’t you think?"

Austin nodded. He knew she was right; he really did need an income. For Joanne and their baby, he resolved to pull himself together and keep searching for a job.

Austin transferred what little money he had left to Joanne. "Call me when you’ve picked up your diploma," he said. "I’ll come get you."

Joanne just smiled and nodded, saying nothing.

*

Melody Summers was jolted awake by her alarm early that morning. She planned to go help out at Crystal Mart. The panic buying over the last two days had nearly emptied the supermarket’s warehouse shelves, so today it was closed for reorganizing and restocking.

She had been busy in the Arcadian Space until late the previous night. The apricot and plum trees in its forest were beginning to bear ripe fruit. The golden apricots were sweet, while the plums had a sweet-tart flavor and a rich, fruity fragrance.

Melody had eaten her fill while picking them in the forest and had also harvested a large batch of apricots to make into dried fruit.

While she was picking fruit, she also found a beehive deep in the forest.

Her curiosity piqued, Melody put on a protective suit, climbed the tree, and carefully cut down a piece of the honeycomb. She then processed it into honey in her workshop.

The honey was golden and viscous. Its rich, sweet scent was mingled with a delicate floral fragrance. Albus loved the taste, too, and lapped up a good amount of it.

Melody soaked dried honeysuckle buds in the honey to make a special infusion. She mixed a spoonful with water and drank it down, immediately feeling refreshed and clear-headed. The fatigue and oppressive heat from her long hours of work vanished.

Melody made a batch of ten jars of the honeysuckle-infused honey. She put five in the refrigerator for her family to mix with water, set aside three to take to the Lynch family at Crystal Mart, and planned to give the remaining two to Sophie Thorne.

Sophie Thorne had come over to the Summers family’s house for dinner a few days ago, bringing Melody a variety of fruits: honeydew melons, sweet oranges, grapes, watermelons, and apples—all grown in the Rhodes family’s indoor facilities.

Sophie’s parents had divorced when she was young, and she had been raised by nannies, so she truly loved the warm atmosphere of the Summers household.

Even though she was the daughter of a wealthy family, she was completely down-to-earth once you got to know her, and the whole Summers family was fond of her.

Albus was also very fond of Sophie. He would get excited every time he saw her, circling around her as if he were looking at a walking, talking moneybag.

Ronan Rhodes had been busy at his company lately, so Sophie would come hang out with Melody whenever she had free time. Before long, their nodding acquaintance had blossomed into a real friendship.

*

When Melody arrived at Crystal Mart, she saw a line of supplier trucks parked out front. The government was providing fuel subsidies for these kinds of delivery vehicles to ensure the steady flow of goods. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

The supplies were being delivered in batches. Winnie Summers, Colin Summers, and Grace Sutton helped the delivery drivers haul the goods into the warehouse, while Melody and Crystal Lynch were in charge of unboxing everything and stocking the shelves.

As they worked, Crystal Lynch whispered to Melody, "Thank goodness you warned me. My family stocked up on a ton of water, and then I did what you said and hoarded a lot of food and medicine at home. Our house is like a warehouse now—the floor is covered three layers deep with supplies."

Melody was relieved to hear that. After a moment’s thought, she reminded Crystal to be careful not to let anyone else find out.

Crystal’s father and brother had left before dawn to drive to the bottled water plant’s warehouse. It wasn’t just Crystal Mart that had been completely bought out of water; other supermarkets were also running low. The water plant’s regular suppliers were overwhelmed, so Shawn and Finn Lynch decided to drive to the various plants to pick up their stock themselves.

Crystal was checking the inventory with a supplier. She glanced at the invoice and frowned. "The prices on this shipment have jumped way too much. This canned luncheon meat used to be 10 a can. Since April, you’ve raised it to 14, then 18, and now this batch is 30?"

The supplier wiped the sweat from his brow and stood in front of the air conditioner for a moment before replying, "All the factories are shut down now. This is just leftover stock from when they were rushing production before the shutdown."

"At the government’s request, during the power rationing in residential areas, every factory was pushing production to its absolute limit. Their machines were practically running red-hot."

The supplier continued, "Word is, production isn’t starting up again anytime soon, so you should just take what you can get. If supplies really dry up later, you could sell these for 80 a can and people would still buy them. Everyone’s got to eat, right? No matter how expensive it gets, they’ll have to grit their teeth and pay up."

Hearing this, Melody asked, "At the current rate of distribution, when do you think your inventory will be completely gone?"

The supplier scratched his head. "We’re a small food plant, so we don’t have a huge inventory. At the rate things are being shipped out, we’ll be completely out of stock in a month or two, tops. The bigger food companies have more than us; they have multiple local warehouses. They can probably keep supplying for three or four months, but I’m not really sure."

After the supplier left, the group got to work organizing the inventory in silence. The prices had risen so drastically that almost all the profit they had made recently was immediately swallowed up by this new order.

Just as they finished organizing the goods, Finn and Shawn Lynch returned.

They had left with two large trucks but had come back with only a single, partially filled one.