Chapter 176: Snow Mountain (1)
After settling down in Dalami City, Old John took out the papyrus and iron gall ink he had packed from the gas station and continued experimenting on the paper, trying to decipher the text in Everly’s photograph.
When he grew tired of research, he would step out of the room and use the materials he had gathered to repair Everly’s Grand Cherokee, which had suffered some minor damage during the campus shooting incident. He would also take the opportunity to improve the car’s performance, using the work to clear his mind.
As for Rebecca, she was the kind of person who couldn’t sit still. After wandering around the city for a bit, she quickly found a busy flea market, returned to her old trade, and started setting up a stall to do fortune-telling.
In short, both of them adapted well to life in the new city and kept themselves quite busy.
With that, Everly could finally return to school with peace of mind and continue her studies.
From Monday to Friday, she and Misha attended classes as usual, using their free time to write reports and papers. On weekends, the two of them would move to the small cabin. During the day, Misha would go to work, while Everly stayed behind—tinkering with the car alongside Old John, or wandering through the birch forest, reviewing some of the wilderness survival skills she had learned in the past.
Two months passed in the blink of an eye. From November to the end of December, everything around Everly remained unusually calm—not a single strange incident occurred… though, perhaps things were happening quietly in places she couldn’t see, in ways that didn’t affect her. After all, during final exams, there were inexplicably a few more empty seats in the exam hall.
But then again, this was a university. In eight out of ten horror movies, reckless American college students end up as the main characters, so a higher body count was hardly unexpected.
Everly had long since learned to turn a blind eye to suffering that had nothing to do with her. Once exams were over, she and Misha smoothly switched modes—from student life straight into winter vacation.