“Look on the bright side, there’s no way a zombie can climb up eighteen floors, and aerobic exercise is better than waiting to die outside,” Xia Ao tried to comfort him.
They had already climbed to the sixth floor. Xia Ao still felt fine, but behind him, Shi Zuo An was leaning on the handrail, gasping for breath.
“You’re fine… I woke up this morning with weak legs. Just making it this far is already impressive,” Shi Zuo An said, left hand on the handrail, right hand holding his trembling knee. “Yeah, right… I’m about to reach hell—”
Buying a place with eighteen floors, hard to understand!
“Don’t complain. The price for an eighteenth-floor apartment is nearly ten percent cheaper than the lower floors,” Xia Ao said.
OK, he couldn’t afford it anyway.
Shi Zuo An wisely shut up.
Fourteenth floor, fifteenth… seventeenth!
Stepping onto the last step of the seventeenth floor, Shi Zuo An felt as if all his strength had been drained. His knees buckled, and he pitched forward.
Xia Ao, walking ahead, had no choice but to use his body to catch the weight pressing from behind.
“Strong arms,” Shi Zuo An muttered.
“…Strong arms won’t carry you. One last floor, come on,” Xia Ao replied.
Deadly machine.
Shi Zuo An grabbed the leg of Xia Ao’s work pants and used the leverage to haul himself upward.
Fortunately, Xia Ao stayed steady, with the force Shi Zuo An had just used, if Xia Ao hadn’t stabilized him, the stairwell might have seen two deaths.
Finally reaching the eighteenth floor, both were panting heavily. Xia Ao pushed open the stairwell fire door, and suddenly, a shadow lunged out from behind it!
! Who is it?!
Xia Ao instinctively dodged to the side, but Shi Zuo An, behind him, was exposed, facing the shadow head-on.
Fortunately, he reacted quickly, lifting his long leg to block and kick the shadow away, readying himself for the next attack.
“Ahh—”
?
Not a zombie?
It was a human scream.
Shi Zuo An froze.
The shadow seemed to realize that they had mistaken him for a zombie and shouted quickly to avoid getting beaten:
“[1]“Ge” is a Chinese term meaning “older brother,” but in entertainment and fandom contexts it’s often used as a fond, admiring way to address or refer to a handsome or admired man, whether or … Continue reading jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1361079_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1361079_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });Xia Ge! Xia Ge, it’s me!!”
You know them?
Shi Zuo An looked at Xia Ao, eyes filled with confusion.
So he knows him…
“Song Zi Qiao, what are you doing here?”
The flashlight on his phone illuminated the stairwell. A young man raised his hands, his face pale, eyes wide open. He wore a wrinkled shirt and jeans, hair messy, looking like he had been stuck here for a long time.
This seemingly timid, crew-cut guy was a high school classmate of his, a chatterbox, and arguably the one he had maintained the closest relationship with over the years, even after going abroad, they hadn’t lost contact.
Back in high school, Shi Zuo An never would have imagined that this underperforming little talker would, years later, ride the wave of the times and create several popular marketing accounts.
Back to the matter at hand: the two of them had even had lunch together yesterday at noon, and Xia Ao personally sent him home. So why was he here today?
The boy named Song Zi Qiao suddenly broke down crying. “Xia Ao! I’ve been waiting for you forever! My girlfriend, well, my ex-girlfriend, also lives here. I went to confront her, but she wouldn’t open the door! I tried to go downstairs, and the moment I got off the elevator, there were zombies everywhere, I had no choice but to come find you, and you weren’t home either!”
“All night long, Xia Ao, where were you running off to? Not home a single night!”
Wow, his tone sounded exactly like a scorned lover catching her husband cheating.
Shi Zuo An glanced again at the person beside him, wanting to speak but stopping, stopping but wanting to speak, finally swallowing the words he couldn’t bring himself to say.
…
Xia Ao first felt a headache from all the noise, then caught an ambiguous look from Shi Zuo An.
He sighed and pulled Song Zi Qiao up from the floor. “How long have you been waiting here?”
“Since… since 8 p.m. last night, until now.”
He had gone out for dinner at five the previous afternoon and hadn’t returned since.
That checked out.
After venting a whole night about his ordeal, Song Zi Qiao finally had the presence of mind to notice Shi Zuo An, who had nearly kicked him to the afterlife just moments ago.
“And this is…?”
Shi Zuo An stepped forward, extending his hand. “Hello, I’m Shi Zuo An. Sorry for kicking you earlier, I thought you were a zombie.”
The boy’s outfit was extremely odd: an oversized sweatshirt on top, and below, only a towel wrapped around his waist.
Next to him, his good friend seemed to be wearing a matching outfit, or rather, nothing on the upper half at all.
Song Zi Qiao: ?
He tried to make sense of the scene with his foggy brain and finally came up with an explanation for their current situation:
They hadn’t seen each other for two days, and now they were suddenly… dating?
He shot Xia Ao a loaded look, leaving Xia Ao utterly confused.
“Hi, I’m Song Zi Qiao. I’ve known Xia Ao since high school.” He shook Shi Zuo An’s hand, still hanging in the air. “We’ve been friends for seven or eight years. He’s a very cold person, never heard him talk about dating…”
“Stop, stop, stop.” Xia Ao interrupted firmly. “Standing in the hallway waiting to be zombie bait? If you want to talk, go inside.”
With that, he pulled out his keys and led the way.
The three of them walked toward Xia Ao’s apartment. Shi Zuo An noticed that there were about five or six units on this floor, spaced far apart, each likely quite spacious.
Xia Ao’s unit was the farthest left, close to the stairs but far from the elevator, usually quiet.
The moment the door opened, Shi Zuo An took in the interior: a spacious living room, pure white walls, a kitchen island with a two-meter-long cold jade quartz countertop, and white pendant lights hanging above.
Definitely “minimalist” in style.
But recalling Xia Ao’s fiery behavior last night, Shi Zuo An felt his cheeks heat up slightly.
Still, that assessment was a bit biased.
Song Zi Qiao, familiar with the place, walked right in and collapsed onto the sofa. “Oh god, finally safe.”
“Xiao Xia Zi, bring me two bunches of grapes—”
Xia Ao didn’t even respond, closing the door and handing Shi Zuo An a pair of brand-new slippers.
“Thanks.”
“No problem. You haven’t eaten all day. I’ll check what food we have at home and, if possible, get you guys something to eat.” Xia Ao checked all the window locks and then headed to the kitchen.
The fridge still had quite a bit of food, but the power was out, and water was already dripping from the freezer compartment.
Xia Ao frowned and grabbed a cloth to wipe up the puddles.
“Need help?” Somehow, Shi Zuo An was standing behind him.
“No, it’s fine.” Xia Ao wrung out the cloth. “Song Zi Qiao? You can chat with him for a bit.”
“He passed out the moment he sat on the sofa.” Shi Zuo An had never seen anyone fall asleep so fast.
“…This kid,” Xia Ao muttered, at a loss.
With the small space now reduced to just the two of them, the awkwardness leftover from last night finally had room to fill the air.
The apartment owner said he didn’t need help, but Shi Zuo An stood frozen at the kitchen doorway, his toes subconsciously tracing castles on the floor.
Food from the fridge was carefully sorted, various fruits and vegetables. This guy clearly knew how to live better than him.
The freezer still had several large packs of rice cakes.
“You’re a local?”
Shi Zuo An only knew that locals tended to stockpile rice cakes like this.
Being from out of town, he was fine with this kind of food, but one of his former colleagues would bring huge rice cakes back to the office every year during the New Year, giving them away while the rest of the staff accepted them with awkward expressions.
At first, he thought it was strange that his colleagues looked uncomfortable, turning this into a local specialty, surely the locals liked it?
“From breakfast on the first day of New Year to dinner on the last day of the holiday, I finally managed to escape back to work, and Mom still had to stuff a few big packs in my luggage.” Xia Ao laughed. Those large packs of rice cakes had originally given him a bit of a headache, but in this situation, they might actually be a good thing.
“Your mom made all of these too?”
“Yes. She brought them for me the first day I returned to the country. I’ve been eating them for almost half a month, and there’s still this much left.”
Whoa, a returnee from abroad.
“Then now you have a chance to finish them before going abroad again.” A hellish joke, but the tension between the two finally eased a little.
“Alright, eat more later,” Xia Ao said, turning on the gas stove. Fortunately, it still worked. “Any dietary restrictions?”
“No,” Shi Zuo An answered immediately, but glancing at the ingredients on the table, he added, “Uh… I don’t eat ginger or garlic.”
Not eating ginger or garlic, how does that decisively follow from “no restrictions”?!
Xia Ao silently labeled him “full of nonsense” once again.
The fridge contents were scattered on the table. The weather wasn’t hot, and with the power system down for only about half a day, the frozen meat was still safe to eat.
It would be wasteful not to use these ingredients, so it was better to cook as much as they could eat.
Xia Ao decided to use both burners: braising the pork belly and half a chicken in the pressure cooker, and boiling the rice cakes on the other.
“Do you usually cook for yourself?” he asked Shi Zuo An, then, recalling his track record, added, “Be honest!”
“Uh… not really.”
That was a clear “no.”
Automatically recalculating, Xia Ao decided to give him a lighter task. “I’ll handle the chicken and meat. You wash the vegetables, pluck the leaves, and soak them in water.”
“Got it!”
He wasn’t a kindergartener, washing vegetables didn’t need a lesson.
Clear water slid through Shi Zuo An’s fingers, dripping onto the vibrant green leaves.
A novice in the kitchen, his cooking skills aside, the vegetables were thoroughly cleaned. Every small leaf was picked up and the soil at the roots carefully rinsed off.
The process was long. Shi Zuo An had nothing else to do, so he started chatting with Xia Ao.
“You just came back to the country. Which country were you in before?”
“Country D. Why?” He had gone abroad right after high school and had stayed there until now.
“You’re still studying?” Shi Zuo An’s expression instantly turned pale. He stopped what he was doing in shock and looked at him.
So he was talking to someone who was still a student…
His expression was easy to read. Xia Ao saw him looking conflicted and smiled. “I’m doing my PhD now, just two years younger than you.”
Fortunately, fortunately, the sin wasn’t too serious.
“You’re young and accomplished, already doing a PhD, your education isn’t ordinary, Comrade Xiao Xia,” Shi Zuo An exhaled in relief and added with a sigh, “Well, now you can’t go back to studying either.”
The smile on Xia Ao’s face suddenly stiffened. He was silent for a moment before saying, “I don’t plan to go back.”
He didn’t seem to be in a very good mood. Shi Zuo An sensed it and didn’t press further.
The food was successfully simmering in the pot, steam rising and condensing into small droplets on the tile surface.
Although it wasn’t summer yet, standing by the stove made both of them sweat, so it was better to stay busy with something else while they had the chance.
By the time they walked into the living room, Song Zi Qiao was already snoring, one leg thrown over the sofa back and a pillow hugged to his chest.
“You go into the left room. On the balcony there are two laundry basins: one stay on the balcony to collect water, the other bring into the bathroom,” Xia Ao instructed in a low voice.
He only continued after confirming Song Zi Qiao hadn’t woken up.
“I’ll start filling water in the bathroom. The basin here is small, so when you bring the big one in, we can refill it. At least with bottled water, this way we’ll have a few more days.”
Earlier, the two of them had already inventoried all usable household resources. Drinking water consisted of only half a tank from the water dispenser and the expensive red wine the homeowner had reluctantly donated after a ten-second internal debate.
That amount would barely last three days for the three of them.
Shi Zuo An was tasked with fetching a basin on the balcony.
The room connected to the balcony showed obvious signs of daily life: a charging laptop and several foreign-language books on the bedside.
The foreign text was dense, and Shi Zuo An felt a headache just glancing at it. He moved efficiently, opened the faucet, and then carried the other basin to Xia Ao.
The water gushed into the basin. With a basin this big, filling it would take three or four minutes. Shi Zuo An started making small talk to pass the time.
“You cook really well, did you learn this while studying abroad?”
“Yes. The food there didn’t suit my taste, so I learned to cook myself. The recipes came from my dad, I can replicate about seventy percent accurately. Even if it’s not perfect, just swallow it obediently later,” Xia Ao said with a smile and a wink.
He squatted to fill the basin, and Shi Zuo An, standing next to him, could see his fluffy hair and half of his face.
Short hair fell across his forehead in pieces, partially covering his eyebrows. His facial features were striking, with silver-rimmed glasses perched on a high nose bridge, the lenses reflecting the rippling water.
When he smiled and winked, a faint under-eye line appeared, not wide, but enough to dissolve the cold distance between his brows.
“I don’t care what I eat as long as I’m hungry. Right now, I could even grab a whole cow by the tail and gnaw it,” Shi Zuo An thought, famished after almost a full day without food.
“Alright, then eat plenty later,” Xia Ao said, letting Shi Zuo An stay on the balcony to watch, making sure the water didn’t overflow and flood the apartment.
References[+]