“What’s your end goal, then? I didn’t ask you to kill anyone, but now you’ve taken two lives! What are
you going to do about this?”
The woman was so furious that she trembled non-stop, her face void of any color.
Yet, the person over the phone merely laughed.
“Ms. Snow, you said you want to give Susan Jadeson a taste of what it feels like to suffer a fate worse
than death, so it’s only natural that we come to such decisions. Besides, weren’t you already prepared
for outcomes like these the moment you agreed to be a part of this?”
“You!”
Upon hearing that, the woman found herself unable to retaliate.
But he’s right. It’s already over for me. Why am I still acting like I have the moral high ground? If I were
that afraid of getting blood on my hands, I wouldn’t have contacted them in the first place. The fact that I
reached out to them means I had already intended to do all this.
The other party hung up without another word.
Susan and Felicia arrived at the nail salon half an hour later.
“Welcome! Are you here to get your nails done?” an employee greeted.
“Yup. Crystal nails for both of us, please.”
Susan immediately mentioned the kind of service she wanted.
The lady readily agreed and led them into the store.
After taking a seat, Felicia said to Susan right away, “Susan, these are the exact same seats we were led
to when I followed Zaylynn here.”
Hearing that, Susan nodded and waited for the lady from before to serve them.
Manicures were a popular beauty treatment in today’s age, and many women—including Susan herself
—would have visited a nail salon at least once.
That was why Susan thought nothing of all the tools and bottles that the beautician had brought over,
and the only thing she looked at was a bottle of clear nail polish.
“Is this what you’ll be using on our nails?”
“That’s right.”
The beautician nodded.
Not asking anything more, Susan and Felicia let the lady work on their nails, and they were done in an
hour.
Upon getting up, Susan prepared to get Ian to have Xayden look into the nail polish’s contents.
But just as she walked out of the store and arrived at the roadside, a sudden thought crossed her mind,
causing her to stop in her tracks.
“What’s wrong, Susan?” asked Felicia.
“I just remembered something you told me about Zaylynn’s nails. They were quick-drying, right. Is that
what you said?”
“Yeah,” Felicia replied, albeit still puzzled.
Susan immediately glanced at her shiny nails. “Then, why did we have to cure our nails? Were we not
clear enough with our instructions? Did the lady give us a different kind of manicure?”
“Huh?” Felicia only grew more bewildered.
Seeing that, Susan said nothing else to her, instead turning and heading back into the nail salon.
“Excuse me, ma’am. Can I confirm that we were just given crystal nails?”
“Yes, you were,” the busy owner of the salon appeared confused to see them return. “It was our current
best-selling crystal nail manicure. What’s wrong? Is something the matter?”
“No. It’s just that I heard from another friend that her nails were quick-drying when she got the same
procedure done, but both of us here had to cure our nails. So, why the difference? Is there something
different about the materials used this time?” Susan asked.
Hearing that, the boss hastily walked toward them and glanced at their nails.
“How could that be? All our nail services require curing. Could you have misheard something your friend
said? We apply multiple layers of polish to each nail, then cure every coating and make sure it’s dry
before moving on to the next layer. That’s what makes this a crystal manicure. There’s no way each
coating can dry that quickly just by blowing on them with a fan,” she explained.
Susan fell silent for a long while.
Then, she sat on the couch and requested, “I think you might want to let me have a look at your store’s
surveillance footage from yesterday. Someone from our school died because of your nail polish. It’d be
troublesome if I were to inform the cops now.”
With that, everyone inside the salon turned to her—including the beautician who had just tended to her
and Felicia.
How is she so smart?
Didn’t they say she’d be easy to deal with? She’s only in her early twenties! How could she have figured
out something so trivial?
Taking advantage of the commotion in the store, the woman left in a panic as the owner went to retrieve
the surveillance footage.
Meanwhile, Susan quickly noted from the footage that Zaylynn did not have her nails cured while she
was here yesterday.
Not only that but her nails were coated many more times than they should have been.
“I… I never taught her to do it that way. Who on earth is she, anyway? I’ve never even met her!” the
owner exclaimed.
As realization dawned on her, Susan hurriedly dialed Ian’s number while getting Felicia to call the police.
Whatever happened last night caused such a huge stir, and surely the cops must’ve come here since it
had something to do with the girl’s nails, right? But why didn’t they figure out anything after dropping by?
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