The sun had already set, and the streetlights in the neighborhood had flickered to life.
At 8:50 PM, Jiang Ting, dressed in cool short sleeves and shorts, walked along the path to collect their supplies, her hand held firmly in Cong Yixing’s.
People were trickling out of the nearby buildings, all heading in the same direction.
Some were chatting with familiar neighbors.
“Master Wang, are you the only one from your family going to collect?”
Master Wang replied, “Yeah. How come your whole family is out?”
The person said, “We have nothing else to do at home, so we thought we’d join the fun. We’re treating it like a post-dinner stroll. Have you eaten?”
Master Wang: “I have.”
Jiang Ting stood on her tiptoes and leaned into Cong Yixing’s ear, whispering her own silent reply: “I’ve eaten, too. I was so stuffed from lunch that I couldn’t eat dinner, but my husband still insisted on steaming a bowl of egg custard for me.”
The air from her breath tickled Cong Yixing’s ear intensely. Hearing her call him “husband,” even though he knew she was just being playful, still made his heart skip a beat. He turned his head and whispered back, “Call me ‘husband’ again when we get into bed tonight.”
Jiang Ting’s face instantly flushed red. She looked around like a thief, and seeing no one immediately in front or behind them, she quickly gave his waist a sharp pinch, warning him: “You’re not allowed to talk like that outside!”
“Alright, baby.”
The two of them strolled along, taking over ten minutes to cover a distance of just a few hundred meters. It was already past 9:00 PM when they arrived.
The open space in front of the community service center was packed with people, with several staff members wearing red armbands maintaining order. The distribution area was inside the courtyard. Everyone was clearly eager; some had arrived half an hour early to wait in line, which is why the queue stretched all the way outside.
Cong Yixing observed for a moment before leading Jiang Ting to the end of one of the lines. He whispered, “We probably aren’t the first batch to collect. They look like they’ve done this before.”
Jiang Ting gave him a look that said ‘I’m definitely smarter than you,’ and whispered back, “Of course. Even though our neighborhood is the closest to the service center, we’re in Building 17. The notice today was for Buildings 10 through 17, so Buildings 1 through 10 must have already finished!”
As a tenant, Jiang Ting hadn’t joined the Jingle Neighborhood residents’ group, so she couldn’t get these updates in real-time. However, she figured such things were obvious if one just thought about it.
She didn’t know why Cong Yixing was being so “slow,” so she lectured him: “Look, this courtyard isn’t big, and neither is the open space outside. It’s impossible for thousands of people from one neighborhood to come out at the same time; there wouldn’t even be room to stand. So, they must be doing it in batches.”
Cong Yixing acted as if he had been enlightened. “So tomorrow will probably be the turn for Buildings 18 to 20. Those three are twenty stories tall and have quite a few residents—maybe even more than our group.”
“Probably.”
“But isn’t 9:00 PM a bit late to start?”
“A lot of people probably aren’t working right now. It’s so hot during the day that everyone has become nocturnal. 9:00 to 11:00 PM isn’t that late.”
The two chatted away, and the wait in line didn’t feel boring at all.
However, it was incredibly hot outside. Even at night, there wasn’t a hint of a breeze. The ground, which had been baked by the sun all day, seemed to retain a residual heat. Jiang Ting felt that the air around her calves was slightly hotter than the air around her head.
Cong Yixing, wearing long pants, didn’t feel it as much. He noted with surprise, “I didn’t agree with you wearing short sleeves and shorts earlier because I was afraid you’d get bitten by mosquitoes, but I didn’t expect there to be none out here tonight.”
Jiang Ting didn’t understand it either. “There have been very few mosquitoes this summer. Is it so hot that they’ve all died?”
Cong Yixing pulled his phone from his pocket to search, reading the results aloud to her: “It’s true! Mosquitoes breed in water; they stop developing when the temperature hits 35°C and die when it reaches 40°C.”
Mosquitoes were the insects Jiang Ting hated most. Hearing this, she said, “High temperatures actually have some benefits.” But she quickly added, “But the downsides are worse. It’s just too hot.”
The line moved quite quickly, and they reached the front half an hour later.
The courtyard was brightly lit. Stacked against the far wall were large supply crates, each printed with the national emblem.
A temporary shed had been set up in front of the crates with two long tables, behind which sat four staff members with red armbands.
On the tables were several stacks of records and two scanning machines.
Jiang Ting pulled up her electronic ID on her phone and aligned it with the scanner; it was processed in less than a second.
The display on the other side of the machine showed her registered information. Of the two staff members behind the table, one operated the machine while the other wrote something in a ledger.
Following the instructions, Jiang Ting left through a lane marked off with barrier tape. At the end of the lane stood two more staff members, who handed her a red eco-bag that had already been packed.
Jiang Ting took the bag and thanked them. She gave it a little lift—it was quite heavy.
Cong Yixing was right behind her. The two stepped out one after the other. Jiang Ting couldn’t wait and pulled the bag open to peek inside. The streetlight was dim, so she could only see that the bag was quite full, but she couldn’t make out exactly what the items were.
Jiang Ting said with disappointment, “I guess I’ll have to wait until I get home to see.”
On the way back, she mentioned Liu Fengyang to Cong Yixing: “I didn’t see her tonight.”
Cong Yixing always responded to whatever she said. He remarked, “It might be too late. I noticed it was mostly young people working tonight.”
Back home, Jiang Ting changed her shoes and immediately began studying the supplies. She dumped the contents onto the coffee table, tossing the eco-bag aside.
“Essential balm and mentholated oil… why give these? Don’t they sell them at pharmacies?”
Cong Yixing: “I don’t know. Maybe some people wouldn’t think to buy them.”
“Huoxiang Zhengqi liquid and pills—we already have those at home.”
Cong Yixing: “It’s fine. It doesn’t hurt to have extra.”
“Wow, cooling patches and cooling spray! I’ve never used these before!”
Cong Yixing: “You rarely go out in the summer, so you probably never bought them.”
“Oh! This must be that new material sun-protection clothing people were talking about!” Jiang Ting pulled out the largest item, tore open the plastic packaging, and spread it out to look.
It was a silver-white, tight-fitting bodysuit. It was extremely stretchy; even a very large person could probably wear it.
Jiang Ting felt it carefully but couldn’t quite tell what it was. She said, “What kind of material is this? I’ve never seen it.”
Cong Yixing, crouching beside her, also felt it. “I haven’t seen it either. Didn’t they say it’s a new material?”
Cong Yixing picked up the plastic packaging and looked at it. There was no detailed description, only a product name.
He said to Jiang Ting, “It’s not sun-protection clothing; it’s a ‘Composite Fiber Insulation Suit.'”
Jiang Ting thought for a moment. “An insulation suit… does that mean it keeps you cool when you wear it? It does feel a bit cool to the touch!”
“You can try it on.”
“Does it need to be washed first?”
Cong Yixing looked at the packaging again and found the answer on the back: “Do not wash with water.”
Jiang Ting: “Then I’m not wearing it. You put it on and let me see!”
The insulation suit was indeed very elastic. Even though it was issued to her, it didn’t look much smaller on Cong Yixing. However, a tight-fitting bodysuit looked quite strange on him, as it completely highlighted his physique. Jiang Ting glanced at a certain unignorable bulge on Cong Yixing and thought to herself that he definitely couldn’t wear this directly outside.
Cong Yixing went to the bathroom to look in the mirror and silently took the insulation suit off when he came back.
Jiang Ting asked him, “How does it feel? Is it cool?”
“It’s alright. It’s not very noticeable in an air-conditioned room; I might have to try wearing it outside.”
Jiang Ting giggled. “You’d better wear clothes over it, or else everyone will see everything!”
“…I’m not an idiot. I’m not going out in just an insulation suit to let people gawk.” Cong Yixing rolled his eyes and twisted his mouth to act like a fool: “Aba aba aba…”
“Hahahahaha!”
Jiang Ting laughed until she was doubled over. Cong Yixing kept teasing her until she was too tired to laugh anymore. She gave him a few indignant punches before he finally stopped acting like a fool.
After the joking around, Jiang Ting continued her investigation.
She opened a rectangular green cardboard box. Inside were green cubes wrapped in translucent greaseproof paper, arranged in two rows of five.
“What is this? Concentrated mung bean soup… wow, is it a ‘Mung Bean Soup Cube’?”
Cong Yixing took it from her and looked. “It’s an instant drink. Soak it in hot water for ten minutes or cold water for half an hour, and you’ll have mung bean soup.”
Jiang Ting: “It probably doesn’t taste as good as homemade mung bean soup.” Speaking of which, she really wanted some. She said to Cong Yixing, “When you get up tomorrow morning, simmer a pot of mung bean soup with rock sugar. Make a lot. Once it’s done, put it in the fridge to chill so we can have it whenever we want.”
“Okay,” Cong Yixing agreed, picking up the last item. “It’s a sun mask, the full-coverage kind.”
Jiang Ting was speechless. “Why did they give me a purple one…?” She went to rummage through Cong Yixing’s bag and pouted after seeing it: “Yours is black!”
“It’s fine, we can swap.”
Jiang Ting imagined him wearing a purple mask and shook her head frantically. “No way. It would be too weird for a guy like you to go out in a purple mask. Wouldn’t you be embarrassed!”
Cong Yixing didn’t care much. “What’s there to be embarrassed about? I’m not wearing it for other people to see. As long as you don’t look down on me, it’s fine.”
Jiang Ting: I look down on you!
Seeing that her curiosity was satisfied, Cong Yixing began to categorize and organize the supplies, placing the things they might use in a prominent place for easy access.
As he tidied up, he said, “These things are quite practical.”
Jiang Ting nodded in agreement. “The country is really good to us.”
Speaking of the country, she thought of Cong Yixing’s colleague who had left his job. Her imagination began to run wild: “Say, do you think your colleague went to build a shelter? You know, like the ones in novels—massive shelters built with top-tier technology at high altitudes or hundreds of meters underground to help people escape disaster, capable of holding hundreds of millions of people!”
Cong Yixing didn’t read web novels and couldn’t keep up with her wild ideas, but he did say with some concern, “If the temperature keeps rising, we really might have to find a way to seek refuge. If the sustained heat melts the glaciers, the rising sea levels could submerge coastal areas in serious cases.”
“However, we are inland, and the lowest elevation in Gu Province is over 100 meters. Even if the polar ice caps melted completely, it wouldn’t reach us here.”
His words made a video she had seen the other night flash through her mind, but she had something more pressing to worry about: “In novels, shelters always prioritize high-level talent or technical personnel. Your communication engineering background might still be useful, but my major is completely useless in an apocalypse. Does that mean I can only follow you as a family member? But what if there’s a limit on family members? If one person can only bring one or two people, you’d definitely bring your parents. What would I do then?”
Jiang Ting started to look quite worried as she spoke.
Cong Yixing was amazed by her forward-thinking: “…It’s fine. Didn’t my brother join the army? He might have a quota too. Let him bring my parents, and I’ll take you.”
Jiang Ting: “Then what about your older brother? What about his wife and child?”
Cong Yixing had to interrupt her chain of thought: “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Be good, it’s time to sleep.”
The two of them finished washing up.
Right before sleep, Jiang Ting suddenly thought of something else and took out her phone. “Let me show you a video!”
Cong Yixing snatched the phone from her hand. “Watch it later. We have business to attend to first.”
“What business?” Jiang Ting had a bad feeling.
“The business of calling me ‘husband.'”
“…”
Thus, Jiang Ting was forced to call him “husband” in all sorts of ways for half the night.