Mandy Donovan exhaustedly climbed onto her top bunk.
While no one was paying attention, she quickly smuggled an unwrapped compressed biscuit out of her Space and took a bite.
‘Compressed biscuits are so good.’
‘Who would have thought a once-mighty apocalypse survivor could be so happy just from sneaking a bite of a compressed biscuit!’
Looking down at her own scrawny, sixteen-year-old hands, Mandy Donovan forced herself to accept her new identity as an orphan in The Wasteland.
‘I’m not a mighty survivor anymore!’
The people lying on the second and third bunks not far away suddenly sat up.
Like starving wild dogs, they sniffed the air.
“What’s that smell?
It’s so good!”
“Someone’s sneaking a biscuit.”
‘Noses like bloodhounds.’ Mandy had deliberately chosen a less fragrant compressed biscuit, but she hadn’t expected to be found out after just one bite.
Her mouth was full of dry crumbs, so she didn’t dare speak.
She could only chew faster.
Just then, the two who had spoken climbed down from their beds.
They began prying open the mouths of people in the nearby bunks, leaning in close to sniff.
Mandy tensed.
She never imagined things would go this far.
If they pried her mouth open, she’d definitely be exposed.
Anyone who’s eaten a compressed biscuit knows it’s not something you can swallow in one go.
It’s so dry in your mouth you can barely get it down.
“Maggie, Amy, what the hell is wrong with you two?”
“What other people eat is none of your business!”
A few of the girls started arguing.
‘They won’t get to me just yet.
This is my chance.’ Mandy quickly pulled out a small bottle of water, took a swig to wash down the biscuit, and drank a few more sips before storing the rest of the bottle back in her Space.
She pulled out a mutant orange leaf she’d harvested outside earlier, tore off a piece, and stuffed it into her mouth.
Forcing herself to endure the bitter taste, she chewed hard and called out, “Who has a biscuit?
Bring it out and let everyone have a try.”
‘Biscuits are precious.
If someone really had one, who would be stupid enough to share it?’
Mandy actually had more, but she would never share.
In the ten years since she’d arrived in The Wasteland, she had seen too many starving people fight tooth and nail, sometimes to the death, for a single mouthful of food or a sip of water.
‘And I don’t want to die!’
The girls below exchanged a few more barbs before returning to their bunks.
Maggie snorted, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Everyone’s about to turn sixteen, aren’t they?
Those of you without any prospects better hurry up!
If you don’t qualify to buy a house or get a job, you’ll just become vagrants.”
At her words, even the girls who had been indignant just moments before fell completely silent.
Mandy had nothing to say either.
The day they came of age at sixteen, girls like them had two choices: get married to a man, or take a husband.
Only after marriage could they qualify to buy a house or get a job.
She wanted to take a husband, but since arriving here, everyone she’d seen at the welfare center was just a scrawny, undersized kid.
‘Never mind coming of age at sixteen; in my book, you’re not an adult until you’re eighteen.’
‘How could I possibly pick one of them?’
But if she didn’t get married, she’d become a vagrant.
Vagrants were worse than beggars.
They had no identification, no food or water rations.
Those with severe contamination had long since lost their minds and would do anything for a full meal.
Lack of food and water was something she could handle; Mandy had her Space, which gave her a safety net.
But the ever-present contamination in the air was what truly terrified her.
Her small frame was just over five feet tall and weighed barely over fifty pounds.
She was already at a moderate contamination level, not far from severe.
“I’m going out for a bit,” Mandy said, climbing down from her bunk on the fourth level.
Her body was exhausted, and every bone ached.
Ten years in this new life, and she still hadn’t gotten used to this place.
The bunks below hers—the third, second, and first levels—were all empty.
Two of the girls had gotten desperate from hunger, ventured too far into the foraging zone, and were killed by Mutant Beasts.
The other girl had gotten married.
Maggie sniffed the air again.
“There really is the smell of a biscuit.”
After Mandy left, she quickly climbed up to Mandy’s bunk.
She rummaged through her belongings, sniffing everywhere.
“It smells so good right here!
Why isn’t there anything?”
“Maybe the hunger’s getting to your head.
Get down from there before Mandy comes back and flips out on you,” one of the other girls warned Maggie.
Mandy went to find the caretaker, Archie Young.
She was in the kitchen with the helpers, preparing dinner for the welfare center’s children.
“Dinner,” as it was called, was actually just a thin porridge made from some kind of mutated, sweet-potato-like root vegetable boiled with grain flour.
Breakfast was the same, though it came with an extra piece of fifty-gram hardtack.
These two meals were provided for free, but only until a child’s sixteenth birthday.
And she was almost sixteen.
“You needed something, Mandy?” Archie Young asked, vigorously peeling a massive root she held in her hand.
Mandy grabbed a root bigger than a person’s head and picked up a crude little knife to start peeling.
“Auntie Young, you know a lot of people.
Do you know anyone suitable you could introduce me to?
My standards aren’t high—he just has to be good-looking!”
One of the kitchen workers snorted with laughter.
“You call that ‘not high’?
You should be happy just to get married at all.
What are you asking for, the moon?”
The rest of the kitchen workers laughed too.
“You just live one day at a time.
Who knows when you’re gonna kick the bucket.”
“Take this stuff, for example.
Legend says before the Great Cataclysm, this was pig feed.”
“I wonder what pork even tastes like…”
Their faces filled with longing.
Mandy’s stomach gave a sharp pang, and her mouth quietly began to water.
Her Space didn’t just have pork; it had beef, lamb, chicken…
‘Too bad I can’t take any of it out.’
“You’ve got to have some dreams to live for, right?
I used to dream of taking a husband, and look, it came true!” Mandy retorted.
It was a common fantasy from the short-form videos she used to watch—taking a man home, one on each arm.
And now, she could actually do it.
It was just her luck she ended up transmigrating to The Wasteland!
“Don’t pay them any mind.
Not a good one in the bunch,” Archie Young told Mandy.
She explained that the kitchen workers had also grown up in the welfare center.
After being married off, they got lucky in the job lottery and were assigned back to the welfare center’s kitchen.
‘Only someone like Archie Young would insult people right to their faces,’ Mandy thought as her lips twitched.
“Auntie Young, I’ll be sixteen in just a few days.”
Archie Young said offhandedly, “How about I ask a contact to set you up with someone from the Defense Force?”
‘She’s a sixteen-year-old, and guys in the Defense Force are at least in their twenties.
To her, they’re practically old men.’ But Mandy couldn’t refuse so bluntly.
She chose a more tactful approach.
“Aren’t most of the men in the Defense Force already married?
Besides, I’m the one who’ll be taking a husband.”
Archie Young stopped peeling.
She shot a glance at the other kitchen workers, then pulled Mandy into a corner of the kitchen and lowered her voice.
“Who told you everyone in the Defense Force is married?
There are plenty of them who can’t find a wife.
You can get away with saying that in the welfare center, but don’t say it outside.
The men in the Defense Force fight Mutant Beasts year-round.
They have very short fuses.”
‘He has a bad temper, and she still wants to introduce him to me?’ Mandy didn’t actually think Auntie Young was trying to screw her over, though.
After all, she was the one who asked for the introduction.
“I won’t say anything reckless outside.”
She had never been a social person, neither before she arrived here nor after.
Combined with the secret she carried, her caution was the only thing that had kept her alive this long.
“Actually, it’s only kids who grow up in the welfare centers that are forced to come of age at sixteen.
Outside, men are considered adults at twenty and women at eighteen.
However—as long as both parties are willing, the minimum age for marriage can be lowered to sixteen.” Auntie Young revealed a truth Mandy hadn’t learned in her entire decade here.
There were many welfare centers like this one, where non-vagrant orphans and the children of fallen Defense Force members could be raised for free until they came of age at sixteen and had to leave.
Aside from the atmospheric contamination and Mutant Beast attacks, the food shortage was the harshest reality of all.
Mandy could only stick to her two conditions.
“I’m taking a husband.
He has to be around my age, and he has to be good-looking.”
“Can you eat good looks?” Auntie Young truly didn’t understand Mandy’s logic.
From her perspective, they were surrounded by a patch of sallow, scrawny runts.
What was there to be picky about?
‘Marrying one is the same as marrying any other, isn’t it?’