“One jin of pork, 88. One jin of vegetables, 120. A box of instant noodles, 99. A barrel of bottled water, 50…”
Lin Su stared at these outrageous prices and sighed, some people were really going to make a fortune off this disaster.
Next door, Wen Shiyun, who was busy on his computer, frowned as he heard Lin Su muttering these prices.
Father Wen, eating breakfast at the table, also couldn’t help exclaiming, “Old Lin, if you don’t hold a big sale, you’re about to make a killing…”
He was just joking. Father Lin shook his head and sighed after hearing it. “Think about it, temperatures are over forty degrees now. Many households have already stocked up a lot of supplies. Is this really necessary?”
Mother Lin looked puzzled. “Susu, hasn’t the government been controlling prices? How can people still inflate them like this?”
The Lin family, whose supermarkets were still operating, were very aware of the price regulations. The higher authorities had already sent notices long ago: no price gouging, daily purchase limits on food and drinking water for each person, and limited supply of other goods. They fully agreed with these measures.
Unexpectedly, while they were strictly following the rules, some people were trying to game the system.
Lin Su held up his phone and said, “These prices are from a group chat. There are so many of these groups now. Even if the government tries, they can’t monitor them all.”
Once a price list like this appears, a long chain of people rushes to buy. Everyone is in such a hurry, as if they’re afraid of missing out.
Lin Su found this puzzling. Even ignoring other cities, there are five Lin family supermarkets in An City alone. How could people be so short on supplies?
Still confused, Lin Su checked the group again and saw the notice: sold out.
What Lin Su didn’t know was that those buying supplies at high prices now were the same rational-minded people from before. They thought a big sale at Lin family supermarkets was just a clearance, and of course, they didn’t want to give their money to capitalists.
But rising temperatures, combined with news of global crop failures due to heat, had made them panic.
Last night’s national news broadcast was the final straw. Those who hadn’t stocked up enough were now going crazy.
At this moment, Wen Shiyun spoke up, “Those people don’t have that many supplies to sell anyway. Once they sell it, they might regret it later.”
Looking at the frenzy in the trading groups, Lin Su wholeheartedly agreed with Wen Shiyun.
At the same time, in the high-end district next door, Cheng Jiajia was also having arguments with her family over supplies.
That’s right. On the 28th, Cheng Jiajia finally got her family together. How difficult the process was, she didn’t talk about. When they arrived at the neighborhood, Cheng Jiajia realized that more people had come than just her parents. Following them were her eldest aunt’s son, her cousin, nearly thirty, still doing nothing with his life.
Seeing this unfamiliar cousin happily selling off most of the supplies she had painstakingly stacked in the kitchen, Cheng Jiajia felt her chest tighten with anger.
“Hey, Jiajia, why are you angry? Your cousin is just trying to help you make a lot of money. Don’t worry, this time I sold your supplies. Once the supply controls are over, I’ll pay you back double.”
“Pay me back? With what? Don’t you know everything outside is under purchase limits?”
Even after being yelled at like this, her cousin didn’t get angry. With the expression of a goody-two-shoes, he looked toward her uncle and aunt.
Then Cheng Jiajia heard a long lecture trying to persuade her. That she had plenty of supplies, selling some was just to return her some money. That they were family, and she shouldn’t be so calculative, and so on.
Cheng Jiajia couldn’t understand. She hadn’t been home for a year, so why were her parents so biased toward this cousin she barely knew?
She wanted to scold him again, but at that moment she heard voices in the hallway.
“Yeah, it’s so hot outside! When the sun goes down this evening and it’s not so hot, we’ll go to Qingshui Lake to fetch water…”
“Okay, okay, make sure to call me then…”
Judging by the voices, this conversation was probably two aunties from the neighboring houses chatting.
It was August 30th. Last night, the community had notified everyone about the water outage, and the city’s water supply had been cut off in the early hours. Still, every household had stored some water last night. Who knew these neighbors were so proactive, they were already planning to go to the lake to fetch water today.
Thinking this over, Cheng Jiajia looked her unfamiliar cousin up and down. Skinny like a little dog, he probably couldn’t even carry a full bucket of water.
But Cheng Jiajia decided to make him do it. Even though she had stored plenty of water in her space, seeing her parents indulge this cousin reselling her supplies made her determined to keep a close eye on them.
As for the household being out of water? Let this cousin go fetch it with her parents, she’d stay out of it.
Lin Su spent a quiet day at home.
Although the government had temporarily required workplaces to operate on a night-shift schedule, she knew that many people no longer had jobs to go to. First, air conditioning costs were too high to afford; second, office workers couldn’t find places to eat lunch.
As a business owner, she didn’t need to work at all.
Being forced to sleep during the day and work at night was something Lin Su simply couldn’t get used to.
So during the day, she stayed at home with her parents, using the gas stove to prepare all kinds of food. Once the sun set in the evening, Lin Su finally had a chance to go out for a walk.
The neighborhood looked much the same as before, except the lawns had turned yellow, and the ornamental trees were drooping miserably.
These plants had previously been maintained by someone, but starting today, the property management no longer had water to care for them.
“How’s it going? Did you manage to sleep during the day?”
The one speaking to Lin Su was Liu Meilin, the wife of Lai Huaming from Building 5. She was pushing a stroller, in which sat a babbling little baby.
Lin Su shook her head and smiled at her. Although they weren’t familiar with each other, the baby in the stroller was very cute. She couldn’t help but say, “Even though the sun has set, it’s still at least forty degrees outside. Your child looks so little…”
The other woman clearly understood Lin Su’s concern and smiled back, “It’s not good for her to stay in the air-conditioned room all the time.”
Lin Su nodded. She understood the reasoning. Just like in her own home, no matter how hot it got, the air conditioning was set around twenty-eight or twenty-nine degrees. Not for any other reason, but to help the body gradually adapt to the extreme heat outside.
If someone couldn’t even handle forty degrees now, when the temperature eventually broke fifty, it would be even harder to endure.
Their conversation was short. Since they weren’t familiar with each other, they soon parted ways along the landscaped path.
Lin Su had gone out this time to check on Qingshui Lake.
Since people had been so concerned about water yesterday, she thought she might as well see the situation for herself. If the people from the villa district came to fetch water, then her family and the Wens would definitely need to go along. Otherwise, others might assume their families had an abundance of supplies.
The Wens’ villa had already been renovated like the Lin family’s. Lin Su had previously stored some supplies for them in the basement. Once those were used, she would send more. In a way, the two families’ supplies were effectively pooled together.
As for the He family, who had previously helped Lin Su find medical supplies, she hadn’t just paid them. During the later supply restrictions, she sent them a full truckload directly from the warehouse. Since the Hes had their own channels, they probably had stockpiled plenty as well.
Qingshui Lake was a semi-artificial lake. Most of its edge was fenced off, while a small unfenced section had a pavilion. At the junction of the pavilion and the lake was a staircase with more than ten steps.
Now, the stairs were packed with people. Many were still queuing on the steps, the line extending beyond the pavilion. People fanned themselves while chatting with acquaintances.
The scene surprised Lin Su.
It was only the first day of the water outage, yet there were already so many people here.
As she approached the pavilion, Lin Su could hear people complaining about having no water to flush their toilets at home.
“How come there’s no water? Didn’t you store a lot last night? I could hear your house dripping all night, it kept me awake!”
The older man next door wasn’t expecting his complaint to be met with an argumentative reply. The woman didn’t hold back, hands on her hips: “The government said we work at night and rest during the day. So what! Did running water at night bother you? Don’t you run water too?”
“My house only has two buckets, but yours…”
Before he could finish, the woman slapped him across the face.
This left many bystanders stunned. Of course, some people noticed the meaning behind the man’s words, wasn’t it obvious that the woman’s household had stockpiled plenty of water?
After slapping him, she noticed the curious looks around her. She stomped her foot and shouted, “Enough! My family stored several buckets last night. That good-for-nothing son of mine, the moment he got up, said it was too hot and used up the water for a bath. Otherwise, who’d come here to fetch water from the lake? Aren’t you afraid of parasites?”
This woman had lived through disastrous times. She knew well that in a world like this, anyone with valuable supplies needed to hide them. Otherwise, someone could come and steal them any day.
The man was stunned by the slap. Just as he was starting to recover and thinking of retaliating, his wife, who had appeared out of nowhere, grabbed him and pulled him away. She had been apologizing to the older woman the whole way.
The incident seemed like a minor hiccup. But after that, nobody in the water-fetching line spoke to neighbors or acquaintances anymore.
Lin Su knew why, everyone was afraid of letting it slip that their home had supplies.
Meanwhile, on the stairs leading from the pavilion down to the lake, several people were throwing plastic buckets tied with ropes into the water. After filling half a bucket, they would pull it back with all their strength.
This method of fetching water was exhausting, but there was no other choice.
The heat had caused Qingshui Lake’s water level to drop significantly, exposing a muddy area near the pavilion.
If you didn’t mind getting your clothes dirty, you could step across the mud with the bucket and reach the water directly.
Lin Su stood there watching for a while. Seeing the exposed mud and the current water level of Qingshui Lake, she didn’t hold much hope for relying on this lake in the future.
Although Qingshui Villa had few buildings, fewer than 200 households total, if everyone fetched a bucket of water every day, combined with evaporation from the heat, the lake wouldn’t last long.
At that moment, every resident’s phone in the neighborhood received a text simultaneously. Lin Su listened to the various notification sounds and opened her phone to read the community notice:
“The water truck has arrived!”
As soon as the news came, half the line disappeared. Lin Su didn’t leave immediately, her father was responsible for fetching their water.
With fewer people in line, the queue moved much faster. After about an hour, only a dozen or so people remained.
Then Lin Su heard the sound of a cart behind her. She turned and saw Old Cheng from Building 9, pushing a large delivery-style cart with several people. The cart was full of various pipes.
Seeing this, Lin Su thought to herself: This is going to be bad!