Maybe this person really likes it when someone pats his head?
Xia Ao, bold and daring, entertained that thought in his mind.
He quietly placed his hand on the part of Shi Zuo An’s head that wasn’t wounded.
After about three seconds, there was no reaction. So Xia Ao gently rubbed it a couple more times, testing the waters.
To his surprise, Shi Zuo An didn’t suddenly jerk away or push his hand off.
In the dim stairwell, all that remained were the synchronized sounds of their breathing and the faint rustle of fingers brushing through hair.
After an unknown amount of time, Xia Ao felt his wrist getting sore. Looking down, he realized the person lying on his thigh had fallen asleep.
Eyes closed, eyelashes trembling slightly.
He carefully took off his own jacket and draped it over Shi Zuo An, and in the end couldn’t resist smoothing his hair twice more.
Urgent footsteps approached from outside the stairwell.
Xia Ao looked up and saw Jiang Si and Song Zi Qiao returning.
As soon as Song Zi Qiao entered, he waved his hand to greet, but Jiang Si immediately noticed Shi Zuo An asleep and quickly covered his mouth, silencing whatever he was about to say.
As they came closer, she handed Xia Ao the things she was carrying, whispering, “There are no functional medicines in the supermarket, only some supplements. I got these from the car.”
Inside the bag were painkillers, anti-inflammatory medicine, and fever medicine just in case, all things originally taken from her and Xia Ao’s home.
After discarding expired items, there weren’t many actually usable.
This made Xia Ao realize that they might still need to make a trip to a pharmacy.
In a situation like this, it would be extremely hard to handle injuries or illness without proper medicine.
But for now, the priority was taking care of their wounds.
Xia Ao carefully disinfected Shi Zuo An’s injuries with iodine from Song Zi Qiao’s hand and bandaged them.
His movements were gentle, careful not to wake the sleeping Shi Zuo An.
Finally finished, Xia Ao lowered his hands, stiff from holding them up, and exhaled in relief.
Only to accidentally tug at his own injured shoulder.
Annoying.
Jiang Si noticed his frustrated expression and saw his shoulder moving unnaturally.
“Xia Ge, you should take care of the wound on your shoulder too. Should I help?”
“…” Unless he could stay completely still while applying the iodine, he might wake the sleeping Shi Zuo An. “No, I’ll take care of it later.”
Jiang Si glanced at him and immediately understood, he was worried about Shi Zuo An.
She nudged Song Zi Qiao, signaling him to take off his jacket for her.
Taking the jacket, she quickly folded it into a soft little pillow. “It’s fine. Put him on this, he won’t wake up.”
“And if you don’t properly take care of his wound, when he wakes up he’ll make a fuss again, which isn’t good for his recovery.”
Xia Ao admitted that the second part did indeed threaten him.
So he slowly moved Shi Zuo An’s head off his thigh and placed it on the small folded pillow Song Zi Qiao had made.
He tried to stand up next, but his knees had been pressed for too long. As soon as he got up, his legs went numb, almost causing him to stumble back.
Fortunately, he didn’t fall with a knee onto Shi Zuo An’s face, otherwise, the guy would have killed him the moment he woke up.
Finally, he used Song Zi Qiao as a human crutch to steady himself.
He changed position and sat down, took off his shirt, and had Jiang Si help apply medicine. Only after confirming Shi Zuo An was sound asleep did he speak in a low voice.
“Ansel and Matilda apologized to me earlier. They thought we were following them to assassinate their boss.” He put on his short-sleeved shirt. “Their boss is a big deal, as bodyguards, they have to eliminate potential threats.”
“Just because they say he’s important, that makes it okay? That Matilda hits you and Shi Zuo An, and then a verbal apology is enough?”
Song Zi Qiao, still dissatisfied, questioned Xia Ao for accepting it so lightly.
“Then go, you go fight her, and after beating her, make her come and kowtow to us!”
Jiang Si was speechless at his brainless bravado. He told Xia Ao to just go deal with Matilda one-on-one. Bragging here wouldn’t do anything.
Xia Ao ignored their bickering and continued: “I asked them, but Matilda said the boss’s identity must be kept secret, and they can’t reveal it.”
“After this, we can stay here, but we can’t appear in front of their boss.”
???
“How is that possible? This supermarket isn’t theirs, so why should he have the final say?”
Jiang Si also disagreed, frowning at Xia Ao. “How can we guarantee that? We can’t stay in the stairwell forever, but we don’t know what their boss looks like or where he is. How can we be sure he won’t find us first?”
It was completely unreasonable.
They only came to the supermarket to get some food, they had no interest in who their boss was.
But now, if their boss happened to be wandering around the supermarket and ran into them, it would somehow become their fault.
Xia Ao sighed. “They didn’t offer a solution for that.”
“Let’s just wait until Shi Zuo An wakes up, sort out the food, and leave as quickly as possible.”
There was no other choice.
At least the stairwell gave them a temporary safe space provided by the bodyguards. The four of them rested for a while.
By the time Shi Zuo An woke up, only about two hours had passed.
The gash on his head had already stopped bleeding and was wrapped in several layers of gauze. No one knew which idiot had even tied a bow on top of it.
The first to notice that he had woken up was Xia Ao.
Meeting Shi Zuo An’s hazy gaze, he thoughtfully raised his eyebrows in a silent question: How are you feeling?
“…No one’s asleep. You can just open your mouth and talk. Doing it like this is way too ambiguous.”
They weren’t so in sync that they could read each other’s micro‑expressions, were they?
The corner of Xia Ao’s mouth twitched.
The other two, who had been implicitly excluded, pretended to be deaf and blind, looking left and right, yet never daring to let their eyes land on Xia Ao or Shi Zuo An.
“With a mouth that sharp, I guess your head doesn’t hurt at all anymore.”
Who are you calling sharp‑mouthed?!
Shi Zuo An scrunched his nose and bared his teeth at him in an exaggerated snarl.
Xia Ao ignored his antics and repeated what he had said earlier while Shi Zuo An was asleep, showing none of the lingering fear of having just been struck on the head.
“They may be great fighters, and they even cracked my head open, but!” The last two words were especially forceful. “In the end, they’re still flesh and blood. And us, we’re holding thermal weapons!”
Times have changed, Shi. Now it’s the age of hot weapons!
Having someone firmly on the same wavelength as him for once, Song Zi Qiao was ecstatic. He nearly wanted to grab the incendiary bottle right away and go throw it straight in that what’s‑her‑name Matilda’s face.
Xia Ao once again corrected him with a speechless expression. “Her name is Matilda. In the D‑country language, it means courage and bravery. If you say it wrong in front of her next time, I can’t guarantee you’ll make it out alive.”
“Yeah yeah, got it, got it.”
He didn’t look like he had actually remembered. Xia Ao was still uneasy and was about to warn him again when his sleeve was tugged by Shi Zuo An beside him.
“Hm?”
“They’re both from D‑country?”
“The one called Ansel is a D‑country man. Matilda seems to be of Chinese descent.”
Xia Ao thought it over.
Matilda had an unmistakably Asian face, but when she spoke, her D‑country language was extremely fluent, so the likelihood that she was ethnically Chinese was fairly high.
“And you two, stop always thinking about blowing people up with incendiaries. We’ve only got a few left, using them isn’t safe.”
“Alright, alright, we know. Why do you sound like a kindergarten teacher?”
Shi Zuo An replied perfunctorily, then, while Xia Ao wasn’t paying attention, shot Song Zi Qiao a look.
Song Zi Qiao immediately understood what kind of mischief he was planning and quietly returned the gesture.
No matter what, staying in the stairwell indefinitely wasn’t a solution. Xia Ao hoped for a quick resolution, ideally, they would finish gathering food today and leave as soon as possible.
He grabbed the suitcase, and the remaining three backpacks were just enough for the other three to take one each.
“Be careful. Don’t even think about confronting those two head-on.”
The other three hurriedly nodded in agreement.
The top priorities were purified water and the most filling supplies, compressed biscuits.
As for the original plan to catch a zombie for research, that would have to wait for another opportunity.
As usual, to save time, they split into two groups. But since this time the team included two injured members, they didn’t use their usual grouping.
Instead, Shi Zuo An paired with Song Zi Qiao, and Xia Ao paired with Jiang Si.
When Shi Zuo An and Song Zi Qiao left, covering their uncontrollable smirks with their hands, a sense of foreboding grew in Xia Ao’s mind.
But before he could voice any concerns, Jiang Si dragged him toward the drinks section.
Shi Zuo An hid behind a shelf, keeping his eyes on Xia Ao and Jiang Si as they walked away.
“Are they gone yet? Are they gone yet?” Song Zi Qiao was already getting impatient.
“They’re gone. Let’s go find the electronics section,” Shi Zuo An said, equally excited. “Even kids’ toys will do, just take the batteries out.”
The unstoppable demolition duo was ready to go.
The two of them completely forgot the promise they had just made to Xia Ao: don’t attract the attention of those two D‑country people.
“Shi Ge, what size battery do you need? Size AAA okay?”
Song Zi Qiao pried two AAA batteries from the base of a toy car and held them up, asking Shi Zuo An.
“Any size works. After you take out the batteries, try to get the wiring and the heating elements for me too.”
“? How do I take them out?”
The question was audacious.
Shi Zuo An stopped what he was doing and stared straight at Song Zi Qiao, as if he had just said something completely absurd.
“Are you serious?”
“Hm?”
Shi Zuo An took the toy car from him, under Song Zi Qiao’s curious gaze, slammed it hard onto the ground, and stomped on it a few times.
The car’s plastic shell shattered into pieces almost instantly.
…Was that really necessary?
Having figured out the method, Song Zi Qiao tried it himself, and in less than two minutes he had happily accepted this approach.
This was far more satisfying than watching those soap-cutting videos.
Smashing the appliances they usually treated like sacred treasures, all just to extract a tiny portion of their internal components.
Before long, they had collected a good batch.
Shi Zuo An counted the parts and, seeing it was enough, planned to tell Song Zi Qiao to stop and move on.
Unexpectedly, when he turned his head, he saw Song Zi Qiao leaning on a TV, looking at him with eyes full of hope.
He even pointed to the LCD screen he was pressed against.
…Fine. Just this once.