Chapter 3Pillow Talk of Death

I didn't immediately pursue that anonymous text message.

Because the second date was approaching.

April 3rd.

In my previous life, on that day, I almost had an accident during my pharmaceutical chemistry lab class.

Two reagent bottles had their labels swapped.

I had followed the labels and taken ethanol for a dissolution experiment, but it was actually hydrochloric acid. It reacted violently with another reagent, and the beaker exploded.

My hand was badly burned.

At the time, everyone thought it was a lapse in lab management.

Vera cried hysterically, “Eleanor, I’m so sorry! I must have accidentally bumped something when I was helping you organize your lab bench… Please let me pay for your medical bills…”

Nathan had said, “She’s a liberal arts transfer; how would she know the difference between these chemicals? It’s your fault for not checking, why blame her?”

I hadn't blamed her.

My past self never blamed her.

But this time, I was going to film how "accidental" she was.

March 28th, six days before the lab class.

I went to see Mr. Miller, the lab administrator.

“Mr. Miller, do we have security cameras in our lab?”

Mr. Miller shook his head.

“We used to, but they broke down six months ago. The university hasn’t allocated funds to fix them.”

I’d expected that.

In my past life, there were no cameras in the lab, which is why Vera dared to act.

“However…”

Mr. Miller pointed to a camera on the hallway ceiling. “There’s one in the hallway outside the lab door. It can record who comes and goes.”

Not enough.

I needed footage from inside the lab.

That afternoon, I bought a mini recording device online.

It was the size of a fingernail, magnetic, and could be attached to a metal shelf.

On the evening of March 31st, I entered the lab when no one was around.

I stuck the recording device to the top of the reagent shelf directly opposite my lab bench.

The angle perfectly covered my entire work area.

Then I waited.

April 2nd, 11:40 PM.

I was scrolling on my phone in the dorm when the recording device’s app pushed a motion alert.

Movement detected in the lab.

I tapped to open the live feed.

In night vision mode, the screen was green.

A figure pushed open the lab door.

Walked to my lab bench.

Pulled a pair of rubber gloves from their pocket and put them on.

Then retrieved a small pair of tweezers from another pocket.

She crouched down, carefully peeling off the labels from two reagent bottles.

Using the tweezers, she gently lifted a corner of each label, peeling off the entire thing without a single wrinkle.

Then she swapped the two labels and stuck them back on.

The entire process took less than three minutes.

Her movements were clean, precise, and without any hesitation.

She stood up, removed the gloves, and stuffed them and the tweezers back into her pocket.

As she turned to leave, her face was perfectly aimed at the recording device.

Vera.

Her expression was calm, her eyes focused.

No nervousness, no fear.

I downloaded the video, encrypted it, and saved it to my cloud drive.

April 3rd.

Lab class.

I arrived at the lab ten minutes early. In front of the other students, I meticulously checked every reagent bottle.

Pretending to discover the swapped labels.

I raised my hand and called the professor over.

“Professor, it looks like the labels on these two bottles are swapped.”

The professor came over, saw they were indeed misplaced.

“Who moved the reagents on this lab bench?”

No one confessed.

Vera sat in the observation area nearby.

Liberal arts auditing students weren’t required to do experiments, but they could watch.

She tilted her head with an innocent expression.

“Eleanor, what’s wrong? Is there a problem with the reagents?”

I looked at her.

“Nothing, someone just swapped the labels. Luckily, I found it in time.”

Vera’s expression remained unchanged.

The lab class concluded smoothly, with no fires, no burns.

After class, I went to the university’s academic affairs system to look up Vera’s admission file.

I’d wanted to do this for a while.

The file showed:

Vera, female, twenty-one years old, a third-year student in the Chinese Literature department, applied to audit classes in the Pharmacy department in her second year.

From a remote mountainous area, financially disadvantaged, father bedridden due to an industrial accident.

I knew all of this.

But there was a line in the file I hadn’t noticed before.

College entrance exam preferences.

First choice: Pharmacy.

Second choice: Pharmaceutical Chemistry.

Third choice: Chinese Literature.

Her first choice was Pharmacy.

Not Chinese Literature.

She had wanted to study pharmaceuticals from the start.

She had only been assigned to the Chinese Literature department because her exam scores weren’t high enough for her first two choices.

Would someone whose first choice was Pharmacy not know what causes pollen allergies?

Not know the importance of reagent labels in a lab?

Not know that an epinephrine auto-injector has an expiration date?

She knew everything.

She was just pretending not to understand.

I closed my laptop, and my phone vibrated.

It was that unknown number again.

[April 3rd, safe?]

I hesitated for a few seconds, then replied.

[Who are you?]

The other party quickly responded.

[Doesn’t matter. May 18th, your epinephrine auto-injector. Be careful.]

When I tried to send another message, there was no reply.

This person knew Vera’s entire plan.

Every date, every move.

Even where the pollen was purchased.

Was he Vera’s accomplice?

Unlikely.

If he were an accomplice, why would he warn me?

Then he must be Vera’s enemy.

Or… another victim.