"Brother Li, is it possible for me to take a shower tomorrow?" Mi Xiaoxiao asked softly, nestled against Li Yufeng’s chest in the hotel room.
"That’s just a matter of me saying the word, isn’t it?" Li Yufeng replied.
"Really?" Mi Xiaoxiao asked with a hint of excitement. In the apocalypse, where eating and drinking were major issues, taking a shower was undoubtedly a luxurious indulgence.
"Of course. I want you smelling sweet and fresh every day too!" Li Yufeng frowned slightly. To be honest, the lovely girl nestled in his arms didn’t smell very pleasant right now, which was why he had agreed to her request without a second thought.
After more than half a month of hard work, they had cleared all the zombies from the floor where the hotel’s large private dining rooms were located. This was not a difficult task for humans, whose intelligence was countless times higher than that of the zombies. They had also scavenged some supplies.
After going through some unforgettable experiences, the female classmates had come to accept a harsh reality. If they wanted to fill their stomachs, they had to pay a price. A few girls paid with their lives, while the majority chose to pay with their bodies. Those who paid with their lives were freed; they would never go hungry again. The girls who paid with their bodies gradually understood a principle: in the apocalypse, if a woman wanted to survive, she had to choose to rely on a man. This post-apocalyptic world was simply too unforgiving to women.
After clearing the entire floor, the few remaining boys were all assigned their own private rooms. Before the apocalypse, most of these boys had been sheltered students, full of longing for intimacy but too timid to act on it. Now, with all constraints gone, their first tastes had left them practically addicted. Aside from going out to risk their lives fighting zombies, eating, drinking, and sleeping, they spent most of their remaining time fooling around with the girls. Fortunately, while the boys inevitably suffered casualties when they went out to fight, the girls had mostly survived. As a result, there hadn’t been any situations where the boys fought each other over the girls.
After their bout of passion, Li Yufeng lit a cigarette and asked, "Between me and Luffy, who’s better?"
Panting softly, Mi Xiaoxiao froze for a moment. "Pfft, of course you are. Luffy is small and lacks power. How could he ever compare to you!"
In the darkness, Mi Xiaoxiao blinked, a single tear slipping from the corner of her eye. Since when did she have to fawn over such a poor student, speaking words that went against her heart, just so she could fill her stomach and take a cold shower?
"Heh, go to sleep!" Li Yufeng chuckled, drifting off to dreamland.
Mi Xiaoxiao tossed and turned, unable to fall asleep. She didn’t know how long had passed when she faintly heard a cell phone ringing. At first, she didn’t pay it much mind. It was probably just an alarm going off on a phone belonging to one of the zombies. It rang for about three minutes before stopping, which only confirmed her suspicion. But five minutes later, the alarm rang again, repeating in a loop.
Finally, she could no longer remain calm. She nudged Li Yufeng beside her. Li Yufeng opened his bleary eyes and snapped angrily, "Do you have a death wish? Go to sleep!"
"There’s noise outside!"
Li Yufeng sat up as well, faintly catching the sound of the ringtone.
"Fuck, which idiot is that? I told everyone to keep quiet!" Grumbling, he hopped out of bed, threw on a few random pieces of clothing, and opened the door.
"Uh!"
After a brief moment of shock, Li Yufeng quickly slammed the door shut.
"How can this be? How is this possible?"
Immediately after, the frantic sound of BANG BANG BANG echoed from outside as something beat against the door.
"What’s wrong?" Mi Xiaoxiao asked, a lingering sense of dread creeping into her heart.
Looking panicked, Li Yufeng scratched his head and said, "There are zombies everywhere outside! So many of them!"
Hearing the tremble in Li Yufeng’s voice, Mi Xiaoxiao was confused. She asked in bewilderment, "Then just clear them out again! Just like before!"
"What do you know?" Li Yufeng said darkly. "The number of zombies in the hallway right now is ten times what it was before! The entire floor is swarming with zombies. How are we supposed to clear them?"
"Then what do we do?" Mi Xiaoxiao asked, gripping Li Yufeng’s arm.
"Fuck!" Li Yufeng roughly shook off her hand. "How the hell should I know?"
He was deeply puzzled. By all logic, there should have been almost no free-roaming zombies left in the hotel. He had personally locked the main doors that allowed entry and exit. So where did all these zombies come from? He truly couldn’t figure it out. However, that didn’t change the established fact: they were trapped to death in the hotel’s various private rooms. On one side were countless zombies; on the other was a seventeen-story drop. No matter what they chose, it meant certain death.
In the emergency stairwell at the end of the corridor, Luffy stared at the densely packed horde of zombie heads before him, sneering inwardly.
At this moment, the hotel was packed with enough zombies to fill several entire streets.
That very night, someone was caught off guard. After they opened their door, the zombies rushed into their private room, and bloodcurdling screams echoed through the building. Luffy could hear that one of those voices belonged to their homeroom teacher. As a homeroom teacher, he had done absolutely nothing after the apocalypse began. He had allowed Li Yufeng and his cronies to target Luffy and even took the lead in bullying some of the female students. He was no different from that infamous teacher on TV who had abandoned his students and fled alone during an earthquake. He deserved to die!
The following days were relatively peaceful. By now, Luffy was sitting inside an abandoned Land Rover on the street.
Suddenly, a muffled THUD rang out. Luffy recognized the sound; it was the noise of someone jumping from a building and their body smashing against the ground. He got out of the car. From afar, he could see a figure twitching on the concrete floor. A pool of fresh blood beneath them slowly spread outward, enticing Luffy.
It was Mi Xiaoxiao.
Luffy’s gaze was drawn to a wound on Mi Xiaoxiao’s arm. Some muscle tissue was missing, and the wound had clearly been sliced open by a sharp weapon. Luffy could easily guess the sinister reason behind it.
Looking up, he saw a man’s head peering out of a window. It was Li Yufeng. On Li Yufeng’s face, Luffy saw expressions of remorse and regret, but above all, sheer despair. Following that, more heads poked out from other windows. With the first "trendsetter" leading the way, over the next few days, more and more people chose to follow suit.
Among them was Li Yufeng.
The others were slightly better off, as they still had companions in their rooms. But ever since Mi Xiaoxiao jumped, Li Yufeng had been left all alone in his private room. Outside were endless zombies, and inside, there were zero supplies. Hunger, loneliness, and helplessness constantly consumed his heart.
In the end, copying Mi Xiaoxiao, he carefully climbed up onto the window ledge. There were no intact corpses left on the ground below. The few who had taken their own lives had all been devoured by zombies drawn to the commotion. Because they died instantly upon impact, they at least hadn’t suffered the agony of being eaten alive by the zombies.
He had tried other methods of suicide, such as banging his head against the wall. However, due to his insufficient power, he couldn’t kill himself and only ended up attracting the attention of the zombies outside the door. He had also held a dagger to his neck but couldn’t muster the courage to plunge it in.
Perhaps jumping off the building was the best way to commit suicide. Just close your eyes, spread your arms, and try to imagine you’re a soaring eagle. With a single leap, you wouldn’t have to endure the churning hunger in your stomach anymore.
Look, a few young eagles were soaring in the sky, calling out to him, urging him to take that step.
Li Yufeng closed his eyes and leaped from the window.
In his dying moments, he saw a terrifying figure looking down at him from above...
As the surrounding zombies gnawed on Li Yufeng’s body, the hatred in Luffy’s heart dissipated.