Chapter 173: Falling and Finding Peace
"Thank you, Ethan," she said softly. "I've realized that whenever I'm around you, my luck seems to get a lot better."
"You earned this role yourself," he replied. "It wasn't luck."
"Even if it was my own effort, part of the credit still belongs to you," she insisted. "You helped me rehearse for so long."
Ethan could feel his rationality rapidly abandoning ship.
"Get up, future superstar," he said. "Your career is just starting. The last thing you need is a scandal."
Penny laughed.
"Okay, fair enough."
After thinking for a moment, she added,
"If anyone asks about last night..."
"We stick to the same story."
"Right."
"Besides Sheldon, nobody should know anything."
"We'll just say..."
Penny grinned.
"...that we spent the whole night gaming."
"Deal."
Ethan rarely experienced a complete blackout.
To him, it represented a particularly irrational state.
You could do things, make decisions, have conversations—
And yet remember absolutely none of it afterward.
For someone with a scientific mindset, that was practically the cognitive equivalent of devolving into a monkey.
And yet, without the slightest warning or preparation, it had happened last night.
What unsettled him most was the identity of the mastermind.
Sheldon.
Sheldon had come dangerously close to succeeding.
After years of trying to teach Sheldon social skills, the universe had finally thrown the boomerang back at him with perfect accuracy.
Just what kind of cocktail had Sheldon mixed?
It had tasted sweet.
Smooth.
Harmless.
Then the aftereffects had arrived quickly, powerfully, and mercilessly.
Ethan couldn't help wondering:
Had Sheldon really mixed that drink himself?
Or had he secretly studied alchemy and brewed a batch of experimental potions?
In the end, though, the process wasn't important.
The result was.
Shaking the thought away, Ethan focused on making breakfast while trying to reconstruct the events of the previous night.
Unfortunately, his memory felt as though someone had cut out the middle of a film reel.
The beginning remained reasonably clear.
The ending was completely blank.
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't figure out one crucial detail:
How had they gone from "let's have a few drinks"
to
"waking up in the same bed"?
And even stranger—
how had absolutely nothing happened?
…
Ethan and Penny sat together at the dining table, eating breakfast.
The atmosphere between them was surprisingly relaxed. Despite waking up in the same bed, neither seemed awkward about what had happened the night before.
Both of them carefully avoided mentioning the kiss.
That had crossed into territory beyond friendship—and beyond the kind of casual, one-time encounters either of them could easily dismiss.
For now, everything seemed unchanged.
Ethan quietly breathed a sigh of relief.
Soon, the conversation drifted to the role Penny had recently landed.
It certainly wasn't a major part.
But it wasn't one of those nameless background extras with no lines, either.
It was an under-five role—a small speaking part with fewer than five lines.
The pay was significantly better than ordinary background work.
Her agent had negotiated four hundred dollars a day for three days of filming.
"Three days?" Ethan said, surprised.
"That's actually a pretty decent amount of screen time. Your career might finally be—"
Before he could finish saying "taking off," Penny interrupted him.
"Three days. Three different roles."
She shrugged.
"It's a hospital drama."
"Day one, I'm a nurse."
"Day two, I'm a patient's family member."
"And day three..." She laughed. "I don't even get a name."
Fair enough.
At least it was real screen exposure.
They chatted for a little longer before Penny returned to preparing for the upcoming shoot.
Ethan took the opportunity to head home.
The moment he stepped into his apartment, he ran straight into Sheldon.
His first instinct was to lecture Sheldon about the previous night's stunt.
But Sheldon spoke before he could.
The physicist had clearly been thinking about nothing except his experiment.
"Was it successful?"
He looked directly at Ethan.
"Did you two have sexual intercourse?"
After all these years, Ethan was more than familiar with Sheldon's bluntness.
That didn't mean he was ever prepared for it.
Taking a deep breath, he suppressed the urge to correct the wording.
"No."
He shook his head.
"We spent the whole night gaming."
"Penny was really excited about getting that dungeon drop, so afterward I took her through a few PvP matches."
Sheldon looked disappointed.
"But," Ethan continued, "I don't think you need to worry about her bothering you anymore."
"Why?" Sheldon immediately asked.
"Because besides sex," Ethan said calmly, "a career can pull people out of gaming addiction too."
He explained the situation.
"Penny landed a role in a hospital production."
"Right now, all her energy is focused on preparing for that."
"You can go back to your normal routine. I don't think she's going to stay obsessed with the game."
"Yes!"
Sheldon clenched a fist in victory.
Penny had returned to a normal schedule.
Her acting career was finally showing signs of progress.
Sheldon had successfully completed his own personal salvation.
As for Ethan...
It felt like he'd done nothing at all.
And yet somehow, he'd been involved in everything.
Either way, life had finally returned to normal.
The first official beneficiary of the Rayne Foundation was the same young woman who had once walked into the clinic and hesitantly asked:
"What's the most economical way to use insulin?"
The first time she appeared, exhaustion clung to her like a second skin.
Her body.
Her finances.
Her future.
She had lowered her expectations for all of them to the bare minimum.
Ethan's treatment had pulled her from merely surviving onto the path toward genuine recovery.
Her latest test results showed a significant increase in pancreatic beta-cell activity compared to earlier examinations.
She still wasn't fully healthy.
But her recovery rate continued to accelerate.
It was as if her body had finally decided to participate in healing itself.
The insulin injections she had once depended on with strict daily precision gradually became less frequent.
What had once required a rigid schedule could now be adjusted based on monitoring results.
For her, that meant freedom.
She no longer had to organize every minute of her day around medication.
She could leave the house without carefully calculating timing.
She could accept spontaneous invitations without worrying about missing a dose.
Sometimes quality of life tells the truth more honestly than medical data.
Her sleep returned to normal.
Her energy stabilized.
Her weight moved back into a healthy range.
Even her skin began to improve noticeably.
And once her body stopped constantly sounding alarm bells, she finally had the strength to face the problems she had been avoiding.
Including a relationship that should have ended long ago.
She broke up with the boyfriend who had subjected her to years of emotional and physical abuse.
Not because someone gave her a motivational speech.
Not because anyone told her she deserved better.
But because, for the first time, she had the means to leave.
The Foundation covered all costs related to her continued recovery.
Consistent medication.
Regular follow-up care.
A clear and predictable treatment plan.
Little by little, getting better stopped being a distant hope and became something tangible—something she could plan for, trust, and believe in.
At her current rate of recovery, she would likely be completely healthy within two months.
No more dependence on external insulin.
No more living under the shadow of disease.
Just a normal life.
Sometimes, the distance between falling apart and living in peace is nothing more than one genuine, effective act of help.
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