It was still far from Shen Ruoran’s bedtime.
Huang Xiaoya lowered her head dejectedly, her words punctuated by soft sobs. “Sometimes they come very early, sometimes very late. Someone leaves food behind there, but it’s only a little bit—small and tasteless.”
She pointed toward the expensive wood carving.
Shen Ruoran looked in the direction the girl was pointing and felt a jolt of alarm. Her current position was far too close; when someone delivered food, they would easily spot her. She grabbed Huang Xiaoya and quickly moved to a new spot before sitting back down.
Shen Ruoran continued her questioning. “How is the food distributed? How much do you and your mother get each day?”
The little girl continued to answer in her soft, weak voice. A child’s thoughts were simple; she felt that if she answered more questions, the pretty older sister might be kind enough to give her a little bit of meat.
“At first, everyone fought for it. It was lucky if Mommy and Xiaoya could grab a few crumbs. But then Grandpa Chen set a rule so everyone shares equally. Now, Mommy and Xiaoya get half a cracker every day.”
Every day—twenty-four hours—and all they get is half a cracker?
Shen Ruoran fell silent. The situation was far worse than she had imagined.
“Didn’t you bring any food with you before you came here?”
Reasonably speaking, based on Shen Ruoran’s time surfing the web, her impression was that the people of Country H loved to hoard supplies. It seemed impossible for them to be living this miserably.
Huang Xiaoya’s head bobbed frantically. “Daddy and Mommy brought so, so much food.”
Then, as if triggered by a terrible memory, her nose reddened and her milky voice cracked into a heavy sob. “But then the people from upstairs stole it all. They took Daddy away, too.”
“Waaaah… waaaaah…”
As the little girl’s crying grew louder, Shen Ruoran clamped a hand over her mouth. Her method of comforting children was unique: “Stop crying. If you wake up Cai Juanhua, she’ll go back to scolding you and your mom.”
The threat was effective. The filial Huang Xiaoya didn’t want her mother to be hurt; despite her young age, she miraculously stopped her tears, using her hands to take turns wiping the snot that wouldn’t stop running from her nose.
The sight intensely triggered Shen Ruoran’s germaphobic nerves. She fought the urge to pull out a tissue to wipe the girl’s face, instead leaning back to keep a safe distance from the snot-covered child.
Huang Xiaoya had no idea of Shen Ruoran’s internal distress. As the older sister moved back, she moved forward, trying to stay close to the pretty girl. If she stayed close, maybe the sister would be kind enough to share some meat.
“Stop. Don’t come any closer.” This was the first time Shen Ruoran had encountered someone so persistent.
In the past, people who tried to force their way into her space usually had their limbs broken by the second attempt… She firmly practiced a “three strikes and you’re out” rule.
Stopping Huang Xiaoya in her tracks, Shen Ruoran tried to negotiate patiently, given the child’s age.
“Don’t cry anymore. When they distribute the food tomorrow, I’ll give you half of my share. But you cannot tell anyone—not even your mother. Do you understand?”
“If you tell anyone what happened tonight, I won’t give you anything, and you’ll never see your mother again.”
Huang Xiaoya pressed her lips together and let out a weak whimper. “Pretty sister, I don’t want to leave Mommy. Please don’t be like that, okay?”
“As long as you don’t say anything, nothing will happen. In fact, I’ll even reward you with food.”
Huang Xiaoya nodded and gave a heavy “Mhm.” She would definitely remember this.
Dozens of meters away, the sleeping Cai Juanhua smacked her lips in satisfaction and rolled over. Her eyes caught a blurry glimpse of a tall figure and a short one standing together, but exhaustion quickly forced her eyes shut as she drifted back into a deep sleep.
A bald man, completely shirtless, walked with an arrogant swagger. A few stray chest hairs clung to his torso. He let out a light, disdainful hum and intentionally walked closer to the people sleeping on the 15th floor, randomly spitting a glob of phlegm onto one of them.
Then, carrying an 18-inch jet-black suitcase, he leisurely sauntered from the 15th floor down to the 14th.
On the 15th floor, the residents had gathered near the stairwell to fight for food. Within seconds, the sounds of fierce cursing and scrambling for supplies echoed into the hallway. The bald man gave a sinister smile, his face full of mockery.
When he reached the 14th floor, the situation was the exact opposite. These people slept far away from the stairwell; no one woke up early specifically for the food.
The bald man squatted down, unlocked the combination lock on the suitcase, quickly pulled out a bag of thin crackers, and relocked the case.
There were ten crackers in the bag. Following the boss’s orders, the bald man picked out two of them and took a bite out of each. They were dry and hard, but he forced himself to swallow.
The instruction from the “Military Counselor,” Yang Jinchen, was that for every floor they delivered to, they had to take a bite out of two or three crackers. They weren’t allowed to waste them; the bites had to be swallowed.
This was a tactic that exploited human psychology. Those who received a mangled, bitten cracker would feel psychologically alienated from the others. It was the first step in dismantling any alliance on a floor.
The second step was delivering the food at irregular intervals. Sometimes early, sometimes late. This ensured the first person to discover the delivery was never the same person; selfishness and desire would eventually defeat any sense of unity.
This was exactly why they felt comfortable leaving groups of people freely on the same floor without any guards.
The bald man’s attitude toward the people on the 14th floor was entirely different from his treatment of the 15th. After dropping off the crackers, he cast a wary glance toward the spot where Old Man Chen was sleeping, picked up his suitcase, and headed downstairs.
In a blind spot of the stairwell, Shen Ruoran waited until the sound of footsteps vanished. She removed the newspaper covering her face, sat up, and glanced at the bag of crackers lying on the floor in the distance.
The group of early sleepers began to wake up one after another.
“Baldy’s timing is quite early today,” Cai Juanhua said loudly, rubbing away large grains of sleep crust from her eyes as she tapped her back and knees. Sleeping on the hard floor made her body ache all over.
Seeing Tu Zhouzhou getting up to stretch, Cai Juanhua started her chatter again. “Xiao Tu, how did you sleep? I think I woke up in the middle of the night and saw something, but I forgot what it was. I was just too tired.”
Tu Zhouzhou didn’t understand what Cai Juanhua was trying to imply. She gave a simple response and got up to go to the bathroom.
It smelled terrible.
She went to the innermost stall of the ladies’ room and used her strength to pry open a loose tile. In the small space behind it, she had hidden a 1.5-liter thermos and a pack of beef-flavored instant noodles.
The water level in the thermos was at about 1.3 liters. Tu Zhouzhou carefully opened the lid and took a very, very small sip—she didn’t even dare to wet her lips properly for fear that someone would notice something was wrong. She then tightened the lid and replaced the tile.
By the time she came out, Old Man Chen had already begun breaking the crackers, splitting each one in half. He handed them out one by one.
No one fought for them. Even the talkative Cai Juanhua waited quietly for the old man to reach her.
Shen Ruoran watched suspiciously as the old man extended his left hand toward her. His grimy palm was covered in ugly calluses and wrinkles, and the white cracker he held bore a prominent bite mark.
“This is your food for the day. Take it, quickly.”