Chapter 104: First Voucher Found

"Look," she said, her voice dropping into a tired, quiet murmur. "I know you’re trying to do something good here, Ethan, but I can’t just take your help like this. I don’t owe you anything, and you don’t owe me anything. Accepting all this... it just feels wrong."

I looked at her, seeing the stubborn independence that kept her standing despite being on the brink of collapse. I respected that. Forcing help on someone like Patricia would only push her away.

"Fair enough," I said, relaxing my posture and shifting the topic smoothly. "I respect that. So let’s forget about all the big talk for a second."

I reached into my jacket and pulled out a fresh stack of lifestyle magazines, holding them up with a subtle grin. "Let’s just go inside. I brought these, and I figure we can do some voucher hunting. You said it was relaxing, right?"

Patricia stared at the colorful magazine covers in my hand, blinking in complete disbelief. "Really?" she asked, eyeing me suspiciously. "Are you seriously trying to impress me with magazine vouchers?"

"Nope," I chuckled, tossing the stack lightly in my hand. "Not trying to impress anyone. Just offering a peaceful way to pass the morning without you collapsing on a sidewalk."

She hesitated, looking back toward the road and then down at her uniform.

"And as for the restaurant," I added, my voice turning calm and resolute, "if they try to slap you with a breach penalty for taking a sick day after literally being hospitalized, I’ve already told you—I’ll handle it. You won’t pay a single cent. Now, come on. Let’s go back inside."

She reluctantly turned around and walked back up the stairs, leading me back into her apartment.

"Do you have a copy of your contract?" I asked as she kicked off her work shoes.

"Yeah, I have the soft copy," she murmured, pulling out her phone. She tapped away on the screen for a minute, located the file, and forwarded it directly to my phone. I didn’t waste a second—I immediately forwarded the document straight to Chloe’s email.

Meanwhile, Patricia walked over to the dining table and looked down at the pile of magazines I had set down. She picked one up, flipping through the glossy cover with a skeptical look on her face.

"Did you just go out and gather a bunch of random magazines or something?" she asked, raising an eyebrow at me.

"Yep," I said with a shrug, leaning against the counter.

She shook her head, a small, knowing smirk playing on her lips. "That’s not how voucher hunting works, Ethan. You don’t just grab a bunch of random issues off a newsstand. The odds of finding a single usable voucher or gift card in a random stack like this are basically zero."

I suppressed a smirk of my own. She had no idea that inside those very pages sat $1 million worth of Zenith-sponsored gift cards and high-end promotional vouchers, all meticulously rigged and seeded just for her.

"Well," I said, holding her gaze with a calm, easy smile, "we won’t know if we don’t try, right?"

"Yeah... I guess we won’t," she murmured, still looking skeptical as she took a seat at the small wooden table.

We cleared a space, sat down together, and began flipping through the pages. I let her take the lead, watching her fingers skillfully page through the issues with practiced ease. As we worked, the tension in her voice started to melt away, replaced by a warm, nostalgic energy.

"You know," she said, a soft glow coming into her eyes as she carefully smoothed out a page, "the absolute best find I ever had was a $1,000 grocery gift card tucked inside a holiday special issue years ago. I remember screaming so loud my mom thought I had hurt myself."

She gave a small, faint laugh at the memory.

"I’m pretty sure I’ll never find anything like that again, though," she added, her voice dropping into a quiet, wistful tone. "That was just pure, one-time luck. But honestly... it’s not even just about the prize. It’s the thrill of the hunt. Every time I open a fresh issue and flip through, it brings back the feeling of sitting at the kitchen table with my mom on Sunday mornings. It just... makes me feel close to her again."

I listened quietly, keeping my face completely composed while she turned another page, completely unaware that her "one-time luck" was about to hit her all over again.

Her hands froze mid-page. The quiet, nostalgic look on her face completely vanished, instantly replaced by sheer, wide-eyed disbelief.

"Wait... what?" she breathed out, her voice barely a whisper.

She blinked rapidly, as if expecting her eyes to play tricks on her. Slowly, carefully, her fingers gripped the edge of the sleek, gold-embossed insert and tore it neatly along the dotted line. She held the voucher up to the light, staring at the bold, raised lettering printed across the heavy paper.

ZENITH ENTERPRISES GLOBAL OUTREACH OFFICIAL PROMOTIONAL REWARD: $700k FASHION & LIFESTYLE SHOPPING SPREE

"This... this can’t be real, right?" Patricia stammered, her fingers visibly trembling as she read the terms on the back. "A seven hundred thousand dollars voucher... for a Zenith-sponsored fashion shopping spree?!"

She dropped the magazine onto the table and frantically grabbed her phone from the counter, her thumbs typing like crazy. "There’s a QR code and a verification code on the back. I have to verify this. There’s no way this is real. It’s probably some promotional advertisement or a misprint..."

I sat back against the chair, crossing my arms with a subtle, amused smirk on my face, watching her heart rate spike in real-time as she scanned the code on her screen.

The screen flashed bright green, displaying an official Zenith verification tick alongside a bold confirmation message: AUTHENTICITY CONFIRMED — REWARD VALUE: $700k.

Patricia stared at her phone, completely paralyzed. Her jaw was practically on the floor.

"No freaking way..." she breathed out, her voice shaking. "It’s legit. It’s actually legit! But wait—how is this even possible? Zenith didn’t run any public advertisements about a campaign this massive!"

I leaned back, resting my chin on my hand with a completely smooth, effortless expression. "Well, think about it. If a mega-corporation like Zenith announced a million-dollar voucher hunt publicly, millions of people would be tearing through every bookstore in the country. It’d turn into absolute chaos. A quiet, stealth launch makes way more sense."

"Yeah..." Patricia murmured, processing the logic with a slow nod. "Yeah, that actually makes sense. Wow."

Still trembling from the shock, she carefully slid the -voucher onto the table and leaned back, completely overwhelmed. She looked at the remaining pile of magazines and shook her head, pushing them slightly aside.

"I’m done," she laughed breathlessly, running a hand through her hair. "There’s no way I’m opening another one. This is the absolute peak of my luck. I’ve officially used up every drop of good fortune I have for the rest of my life."

I picked up another fresh issue from the stack and tossed it lightly in front of her, a subtle, knowing smirk playing on my lips.

"Nah," I said calmly. "Who says that’s the peak? We might still get lucky."

She looked at me like I had lost my mind, letting out a soft, skeptical laugh. "Ethan, be serious. Lightning doesn’t strike twice in the exact same minute. The odds are literally impossible."