As the sky gradually darkened, Mi Beibei continued standing guard at the entrance of the apartment complex. Her eyes remained fixed on the passing pedestrians, unwilling to miss even a single potential customer.
One by one, the streetlights flickered on, their dim yellow glow falling across her exhausted face and casting a long shadow behind her.
By now, there were only a handful of people returning home from work. Every so often, someone hurried past without sparing even a glance at her little stall.
Looking at the sparse crowd, Mi Beibei sighed helplessly and began packing up her things.
Her movements were slow as she placed the remaining instant noodles and self-heating rice meals back into the bag one by one.
With every item she packed away, her disappointment grew a little deeper.
Dragging her weary body, she slowly returned home.
Unlike usual, she didn’t rush to satisfy her growling stomach.
Instead, she eagerly reached into her pocket and pulled out every last bit of money she had.
She spread the wrinkled banknotes and scattered coins across the table, smoothing each bill carefully before counting them one by one.
After finishing, she quietly murmured,
“Forty-six yuan and fifty cents.”
During the evening, she had sold six packs of instant noodles and two self-heating rice meals, earning a total of twenty yuan.
As she calculated the extra twenty-something yuan she had made, the corners of her mouth unconsciously lifted.
A small but indescribable sense of joy quietly welled up inside her.
She had earned this money through hours of standing under the blazing sun and enduring countless rejections.
Every single coin was soaked with her sweat and perseverance.
But the tiny flame of happiness had barely begun to burn when thoughts of her enormous online loan debt and the monthly mortgage payment surfaced in her mind.
It was as though a torrential downpour had instantly extinguished that tiny spark.
Compared to the mountain of debt she owed, this small amount of money was nothing more than a drop in the ocean.
Filled with helplessness and exhaustion, Mi Beibei slowly walked into the kitchen.
Mechanically, she filled a pot with water and placed it on the stove to boil.
She casually grabbed a handful of dried noodles and dropped them into the pot.
Once they were cooked, she took out soy sauce and sesame paste from the cupboard, poured some into a bowl, stirred everything together with a pair of chopsticks, then quietly sat at the dining table and began eating.
The noodles were plain and nearly tasteless.
Even so, she ate every bite seriously.
Because this simple meal was all that sustained her life at the moment.
After finishing, she didn’t even bother washing the dishes.
She dragged herself to the bedroom and collapsed onto the bed with a heavy thud.
Staring blankly at the ceiling, countless thoughts drifted through her mind.
Yet she was far too exhausted to think any further.
Before long, sleep swept over her like a tide, and she sank into unconsciousness.
That night, her dreams were a tangled mess.
In the darkness, she found herself endlessly running along a road with no end in sight, chasing after something vague yet incredibly important.
Her footsteps were frantic.
Her heart pounded wildly.
The scenery around her was blurred, unfamiliar, and terrifying.
Every time she felt she was about to catch whatever she was chasing, it dissolved like smoke and slipped through her fingers.
She struggled somewhere between sleep and wakefulness.
Finally, gathering all her strength, she managed to tear herself free from the suffocating nightmare.
Mi Beibei slowly opened her eyes.
Outside, the sky had just begun to brighten with the pale light of dawn.
Morning sunlight filtered through the gap in the curtains, casting long, narrow beams across the floor.
She reached for her phone.
The screen lit up, displaying the time.
5:15.
Staring at those numbers, countless emotions filled her heart.
She couldn’t help letting out a long sigh.
She had spent the entire previous day working herself to exhaustion, yet now she was completely awake.
Not the slightest trace of sleepiness remained.
She pulled back the blanket and slowly walked toward the kitchen with her stiff body.
The kitchen was dark and silent.
Out of habit, she poured herself a glass of water and drank it in one gulp.
The warm water slid down her throat.
Only then did she finally feel as though she had truly returned to reality.
Yet the confusion and anxiety inside her heart remained.
Her stomach growled loudly.
She immediately thought about boiling another pot of noodles.
However, when she opened the cupboard, she discovered that she had completely finished the remaining noodles yesterday.
Helpless, she walked toward the tiny storage room.
She remembered buying some dried noodles not long ago.
They should still be stored there.
Stepping into the dim storage room, she was greeted by the stale smell of stored belongings.
She instinctively looked toward the small window set into the wall.
A thin layer of dust covered the glass, making the little light that filtered through appear even dimmer.
She walked over and gently pushed the window open, hoping to let in some fresh air to drive away the stuffiness.
With a soft creak, the window slowly opened, allowing a cool breeze to flow into the room.
Turning around, she walked toward a storage shelf piled high with miscellaneous items.
Frowning slightly, she began searching for the dried noodles.
She moved bottles and jars aside, shifted several bags of dried vegetables, and finally found the package buried underneath everything else.
Just as she picked up the noodles and was about to leave, a strange sound drifted in through the open window.
It came in intermittent bursts.
At times it sounded like someone groaning in pain.
At others, it resembled something sharp scraping across a rough wall.
Mi Beibei’s heart skipped a beat.
She froze in place.
Almost instinctively, she turned toward the window.
The moment she looked outside, her heart nearly stopped.
The blood throughout her body seemed to freeze.
She had expected to see the familiar neighborhood square.
Instead, an unfamiliar and eerie street appeared before her eyes.
The apartment complex’s small plaza had completely vanished.
In its place was a scene of utter desolation.
The road was littered with blackened scorch marks, as though a devastating fire had swept through the area.
The surrounding buildings were in ruins.
Their walls had crumbled away, exposing rotten internal structures.
Windows were shattered, allowing cold wind to howl through them.
The once-lush green trees had become nothing more than twisted, withered branches stretching toward the sky like skeletal hands.
At that moment, the source of the strange noise entered her field of vision.
A person…
Or something that looked like one.
It moved painfully slowly, every step as though weighed down by thousands of pounds.
Its face was an ashen gray, completely devoid of life.
Its feet shuffled forward mechanically while its arms swung limply at its sides.
Its clothing was torn to shreds and stained with dried blood.
The dark stains looked horrifying beneath the gloomy light.
The storage room window was small, preventing Mi Beibei from seeing farther into the distance.
Fear instantly gripped her heart.
With a loud bang, she slammed the window shut.
Turning around, she ran desperately into the kitchen beside the storage room.
Panting heavily, she hurried to the kitchen window and looked outside.
Everything appeared perfectly normal.
The peaceful neighborhood garden was still there.
Every so often, someone carrying breakfast hurried across the small square.
It was as though the horrifying scene she had just witnessed had been nothing but an illusion.
Taking several deep breaths, Mi Beibei tried to calm her racing heart.
Suppressing her fear, she cautiously returned to the storage room.
Her hands trembled as she slowly and quietly reopened the window.
Carefully, she leaned forward and looked outside again.
The strange figure was still there, slowly shuffling down the ruined street.
The devastated landscape remained exactly the same.
Nothing had changed.
Fear and confusion filled her heart.
What… was going on?
To make sure she wasn’t hallucinating, Mi Beibei began running frantically from room to room.
She first rushed to the bedroom window and looked outside.
There she saw the familiar apartment roads.
Cars were neatly parked.
Green trees gently swayed in the breeze.
Everything looked completely ordinary.
Next, she hurried into the living room and looked through its window.
The same peaceful neighborhood greeted her once again.
But when she returned to the storage room and looked through that tiny window…
The scene outside was completely different.
Ruined streets.
Blackened remains of collapsed buildings.
Withered trees.
It looked exactly like the post-apocalyptic world described in novels.
The slow-moving figure with its grayish face, ragged clothes, and dried bloodstains looked unmistakably like one of the zombies from legend.
Mi Beibei rubbed her eyes in disbelief.
Then she looked again.
The horrifying scene remained unchanged.
Could it be…
Was there another world outside this window?
Her hands trembling violently, Mi Beibei slammed the storage room window tightly shut, as though doing so could completely seal that terrifying apocalyptic world away.
She hurried out of the storage room, her legs weak beneath her.
With great difficulty, she made her way to the dining table before collapsing into a chair.
Her chest rose and fell violently.
Her heart pounded like a drum.
Only after a long while did it finally begin to calm down.