“Dad.” Lin Shaoan stuck the foxtail grass into the ridge between the fields, stood up, and brushed the dirt from his hands.
“The crops inside the space… if we harvest them, will they grow back?”
“I don’t know,” Lin Qingtang answered honestly. “I’ve never tried.”
“Then we’ll find out.”
The moment he finished speaking, he rolled up his sleeves and got to work.
The harvester rumbled across the rice field.
Golden waves of rice fell row by row as grain poured into burlap sacks with a steady rustling sound.
They left the livestock sheds untouched for the time being. The chickens, ducks, and geese were still laying eggs, and the goats were still producing milk.
By the time they had harvested every mature crop inside the space, night had already fallen outside.
“We’ll come back tomorrow,” Lin Shaoan said, wiping the sweat from his forehead as he tossed his mud-covered gloves into the sink. “If the rice and vegetables have all grown back by then, we won’t have to worry about food anymore.”
“And if they don’t?”
“Then we start stockpiling immediately.”
His answer came without the slightest hesitation.
“I’ll start raising funds tomorrow.”
The next morning, before dawn had fully broken, Lin Qingtang entered the space again.
The moment she stepped onto the field ridge, she froze.
The rice they had harvested yesterday had returned to its full golden glory. Every vegetable patch was lush and overflowing once more, exactly as it had been before.
Abai barked happily beside her, his tail wagging so hard it looked ready to fly off, as if proudly declaring, See? I didn’t eat anything!
“Dad!”
The instant she left the space, Lin Qingtang dashed straight into her father’s study.
Lin Shaoan was in the middle of a phone call. The moment he saw the excitement on her face, he told the person on the other end, “I’ll call you back,” and immediately hung up.
“They grew back?”
She nodded so hard it was almost comical.
“They did.”
“Good.”
He quickly scribbled something onto a sheet of paper, crossed it out, and started writing again.
“That means food isn’t our priority anymore.”
“We’ll focus on everything else.”
“Medicine. Weapons. Generators.”
“And everything the space doesn’t already provide.”
“Seafood,” Lin Qingtang added.
“And seasonings.”
“Salt, sugar, soy sauce, vinegar, every kind of condiment we can get. Even after the apocalypse, people need food that actually tastes good. Living on bland food forever will crush your spirit.”
Lin Shaoan’s pen flew across the paper faster and faster.
“Sanitary pads. Toilet paper. Wet wipes. Trash bags.”
“Those are daily necessities the space doesn’t have.”
“Water purifiers,” Lin Qingtang continued.
“Just in case the space ever…”
“The river inside the space probably won’t run dry,” Lin Shaoan interrupted, “but we’ll prepare anyway.”
“Portable water purification tablets too.”
“And solar chargers,” she said.
“There won’t be any signal after the apocalypse, but our phones will still hold photos, notes, and information. If they run out of power, we’ll lose all of it.”
“Walkie-talkies.”
“Once communication networks collapse, those will become essential.”
The father and daughter continued adding items one after another until they had filled three entire sheets of A4 paper.
“Qingtang.”
“Yeah?”
“…In your previous life…”
He paused.
“Did you have any of these things?”
Lin Qingtang fell silent for a moment before gently shaking her head.
“No.”
“The apocalypse came too suddenly.”
“I wasn’t prepared for anything.”
“This life will be different.”
Lin Shaoan set his pen down.
His voice wasn’t loud, but every word carried absolute conviction.
“This time, your father will prepare everything that can possibly be prepared.”
“No one…”
“No one will ever hurt you again.”
He never looked up while he said it.
He simply kept writing.
But Lin Qingtang noticed how tightly he was gripping the pen, the knuckles of his hand turning white.
“Dad.”
She spoke softly.
“You have to stay alive too.”
“I can’t survive alone.”
His pen stopped moving.
Without raising his head, he quietly replied,
“…I know.”
Over the next several days, Lin Shaoan began the most aggressive liquidation of assets in his entire life.
The first to go were his publicly tradable stocks, which he sold off in three separate batches.
Next came his fixed assets.
Every luxury car in the garage.
Every expensive watch.
Paintings.
Calligraphy.
Jewelry.
Antique porcelain.
One crate after another disappeared, exchanged for rapidly growing numbers in his bank accounts.
The liquidation went far faster than expected.
By the tenth day, the amount of cash sitting in Lin Shaoan’s accounts had reached an astronomical figure.
He divided every cent into four equal portions.
The first quarter went toward medicine.
Under the name of investing in overseas medical projects, he purchased enormous quantities of prescription drugs, antibiotics, anti-inflammatory medication, painkillers, hemostatic agents, rabies vaccines, tetanus vaccines, and every emergency medical supply imaginable.
The second quarter was spent on weapons.
Lin Shaoan found a luxury outdoor expedition equipment supplier and ordered precision hunting rifles, self-defense crossbows, compound bows, and mountains of arrows.
Crossbows, unlike firearms, required no gun license, yet at close range, their lethality rivaled that of a handgun.
The third quarter funded power generation.
Not ordinary household diesel generators, but industrial-grade high-output generator units, complete with massive reserves of diesel fuel.
He also purchased dozens of solar panels, inverters, battery banks, and voltage stabilizers.
The final quarter was devoted entirely to food.
Seafood.
Anything that could be bought, he bought.
Dried sea cucumber.
Dried scallops.
Tiny dried shrimp.
Seaweed.
Anything with a long shelf life was purchased in overwhelming quantities.
Then came the snacks from Lin Qingtang’s list.
Potato chips.
Chocolate.
Cookies.
Mixed nuts.
Jelly cups.
Spicy gluten strips.
“The apocalypse will be miserable enough,” Lin Shaoan said without even looking up from his paperwork.
“If there’s still a little flavor left in your food, life won’t feel quite so bitter.”
“That’s what your mother always used to say.”
Seasonings were purchased in bulk as well.
Two tons of salt.
One ton of sugar.
Soy sauce, vinegar, cooking wine, oyster sauce, chili sauce, and every other condiment they could think of.
They bought out the inventory of several supermarkets.
But it still wasn’t enough.
There was one final step left.
“Dad, we need somewhere to live.”
“Somewhere no one knows about.”
Three days later, Lin Shaoan returned with a key.
It belonged to a detached villa tucked away at the very edge of a suburban residential community.
The night they moved, a light rain fell over the city.
The father and daughter brought only the essentials.
Clothes.
Photo albums.
Everything that had belonged to her mother.
A few treasured books.
Not a single piece of furniture was moved.
Everything remained in the old house exactly as it had been, creating the illusion that its owners had merely stepped out for a while.
While packing, Lin Qingtang found an old, yellowed sponsorship registration form inside one of the drawers.
Her eyes drifted down the list of names.
Most of them meant nothing to her. They were children her father had sponsored through his assistants over the years.
Only one name stirred the faintest trace of memory.
The boy who had sold roasted sweet potatoes on the street that winter.
She could barely remember what he looked like now.
All she remembered was a thin, undersized teenager with bright red hands from the cold, standing alone behind his little cart.
“Dad.”
“Hm?”
“We’ve changed every phone number.”
“From now on, no one, not the company, not our relatives, not our friends, no one will be able to find us.”
Lin Shaoan glanced at his daughter through the rearview mirror.
She hadn’t hesitated.
There was no guilt.
No second thoughts.
No worrying about whether people would be concerned if they couldn’t reach them.
She had cut off every possible source of trouble before it could begin.
Only then did he realize something.
His daughter was no longer the little girl who needed him to smile and say, “It’s okay. Bad dreams aren’t real.”
She had truly grown up.
“All right.”
“Dad trusts your judgment.”
Standing at the entrance of their new home, Lin Qingtang looked up at the night sky.
The clouds had drifted away, revealing a handful of stars.
There were only seven days left until the apocalypse.
…
Elsewhere in the same city.
Eleven o’clock at night.
The lights in the university men’s dormitory had just gone out.
Rong Yuxuan turned over in bed.
Sleep refused to come.
One arm rested beneath his head while the other unconsciously reached beneath his pillow.
His fingers found the familiar pair of old knitted gloves, gently tracing the worn yarn along the edge.
His phone screen suddenly lit up.
A transfer notification.
The quarterly sponsorship payment from the Lin Group had arrived, right on schedule.
Hidden inside his phone was an encrypted photo album titled:
Do Not Open
It contained thirty-seven photographs.
Every single one was of her.
Pictures from the university’s official website.
Screenshots from social media.
A candid photo someone had casually taken outside the library.
One week earlier, he had stood outside her university for two full hours.
He hadn’t gone there to see her.
At least, that’s what he kept telling himself.
He knew he shouldn’t appear in front of her.
He only wanted to catch a glimpse of her from afar.
But after waiting for what felt like forever, she never appeared.
Instead, he noticed two street thugs squatting in a nearby alley, smoking.
One of them, his dyed blond hair impossible to miss, said,
“That rich girl… the one with the surname Lin.”
“Why haven’t we seen her around lately?”
His companion laughed.
“She’s gorgeous.”
“I’d love to steal a kiss from her.”
“Oh, right.”
“You think that guy who beat us up last time will show up again?”
The blond man spat onto the ground.
“If he sticks his nose into our business again, we’ll beat the hell out of him.”
Without thinking, Rong Yuxuan charged forward once more.
This beating was even harsher than the last.
He left them sprawled on the ground, warning them coldly,
“If either of you ever lays eyes on her again, or even thinks about her…”
“I’ll kill you.”
The two hoodlums turned deathly pale.
They scrambled away in terror, swearing they would never bother her again.
Rong Yuxuan tightened his grip around the old gloves.
Years of use had left the knitted fabric thin and faded.
The pink yarn had long since softened into a pale cream color, and little pills covered the cuffs.
She had given them to him.
She had probably forgotten him long ago.
But he remembered everything.
He remembered the way she had crouched down to speak with him.
The way she had broken a hot roasted sweet potato in half and shared it with him.
The way her eyes curved into crescents when she smiled and said,
“From now on, you’re one of the kids I’m sponsoring.”
He had nothing.
Nothing except this pair of gloves…
…and a heart he didn’t dare let anyone discover.
Morning sunlight filtered through the curtains.
On her first morning in the new house, Lin Qingtang reached for her phone as soon as she woke up.
Several unread messages from Long Juanli filled the screen.
The first had been sent the previous night.
“Qingtang, you didn’t come to class today. Are you sick? I’m really worried about you.”
The second arrived at six o’clock that morning.
“If something’s bothering you, you can tell me. We’re best friends. Is it because I mentioned Junlong the other day? I was only making a suggestion. Don’t take it to heart. If you don’t like the idea, just pretend I never said anything, okay?”
The third came at seven.
“Qingtang? Can you at least reply with an emoji?”
The fourth arrived half an hour later.
The warmth in her words had finally cracked.
“What are you trying to do? Why are you suddenly ignoring me? If I’ve done something wrong, just tell me. Leaving people hanging like this is really rude, you know.”
Reading the four messages in order, Lin Qingtang could practically picture the changes in Long Juanli’s expression.
First came gentle concern.
Then hurt feelings.
Finally, impatience.
Without another thought, she blocked Long Juanli.
Then she blocked Long Junlong as well.
She set her phone down and walked over to the window.
Drawing the curtains aside, she let the late-March sunlight pour into the room.
Beyond the glass, the city continued its ordinary routine.
There were six days left until the apocalypse.
And somewhere beyond her sight, a young man she had never once truly noticed pedaled a shared bicycle through the streets.
A worn textbook rested inside the front basket.
Tucked safely into the inner pocket over his heart was a faded pair of pink knitted gloves.
As he passed beneath the apartment building where she had once lived, habit made him look up at her window.
The curtains were open.
The room was empty.
She was gone.
Lowering his eyes, Rong Yuxuan continued riding, his expression as calm as ever, as though nothing had happened.
In this lifetime…
…their story had yet to begin.