Chapter 6: Sympathy and Suspicion

Chapter Six

"Please... don’t call the cops. I’m not a bad person..."

"Two days ago, I delivered food to a woman who also asked me to leave it at the door, but then she turned around and complained that she never got it..."

"I had to pay over $50 in compensation, and the app docked my rating."

"You know, we drivers don’t make much money every day..."

"Now, whenever this happens, I have to see the customer actually pick up the food before I dare to leave..."

He looked smaller now, shoulders hunched, clutching his phone like a lifeline, voice cracking at the edges.

His explanation eased my nerves a bit.

As a fellow working person, I started to sympathize with his situation.

I comforted him, telling him he could just take a photo of the food at the door as proof, and assured him it was fine to go.

This time, he didn’t say anything else. After hanging up, I heard his footsteps recede, and the hallway lights went out.

It seemed he’d really left.

Still, the whole encounter left me uneasy.

The peephole’s view was limited—I couldn’t see everything outside.

So I messaged Natalie, my old college friend who lived diagonally across in apartment 504, and asked if she could check through her peephole to see if the driver had really left.

Natalie was the type who once drove across state lines to bail me out of a bad date—if anyone could talk me down, it was her.

At the same time, the AI’s countdown was now at [1 minute and 52 seconds].

The timer kept dropping from [3 minutes and 21 seconds]—the exact amount of time I’d spent talking to the delivery guy.

In other words, the driver leaving hadn’t changed the countdown at all.

According to the AI, I’d definitely die in just over a minute.

My thumb shook as I tapped out the message to Natalie. I tossed in a crying-laugh emoji and a cake sticker, hoping she couldn’t read the panic between the lines. My breath fogged up the peephole, and every passing second felt stretched out and brittle. The thought of dying alone in this echoey, linoleum-floored apartment suddenly didn’t feel so far-fetched.