“Lin Fan! What are you waiting for? I’ve already taken it off!”
The shrill voice cut through the music and chatter on the cruise ship’s sun deck. Nobody seemed to mind. Superiority sounded normal here.
Lin Fan didn’t need to look up to know who it was. Zhao Na, the sales department’s top closer, was summoning him like a servant.
As an intern, he shouldn’t have been at the company party at all. He was only aboard because Zhao Na had told their supervisor she needed a grunt to carry things.
Around him, women in bikinis lounged by the pool, champagne glasses in hand. This was the kind of crowd that had never worried about money.
Zhao Na was stretched out on a white sun lounger near the pool.
Her red bikini left very little to the imagination. Thin straps dug into her shoulders and barely held her in place.
She held a bottle of sunscreen oil in one hand and beckoned to Lin Fan with a crooked finger.
It was the way you’d call over a dog.
“Lin Fan! Zhao Na’s calling you. Are you deaf?”
Wang Qiang, their department supervisor, appeared out of nowhere and kicked him hard in the calf. The toe of his shoe caught bone, and Lin Fan’s leg throbbed.
He swallowed his anger and walked over without a word, jaw tight.
Zhao Na rolled onto her stomach and casually untied one of the straps behind her back. The movement bared most of her smooth back, her waist narrowing before curving out again.
“Spread it evenly.” She tossed the bottle onto the tray beside her. “This oil costs several thousand yuan a bottle. Don’t waste a drop. Count yourself lucky. I don’t let just anyone touch me, but you’re obedient enough, and you’re not bad-looking. For a broke nobody, today’s your lucky day.”
The cool oil hit her warm skin.
As soon as Lin Fan’s hands touched her back, several male coworkers who had been chatting nearby turned to stare, eyes wide with envy.
“Damn. That guy’s getting paid to rub her down,” one of them muttered, watching Lin Fan’s hands. “I’ve dreamed of getting my hands on that waist.”
“That’s what happens when you’re her personal errand boy,” another said mockingly. “Someone has to do the grunt work. Lucky bastard.”
They’d brought their girlfriends along, but that didn’t stop their eyes from wandering to Zhao Na. Whatever affection they had for their partners clearly wasn’t enough to hold their attention.
Zhao Na seemed to enjoy being watched. She was perfectly content to let everyone look, until Lin Fan’s hand made her flinch.
She glanced over her shoulder, irritation flashing across her face.
“Easy! What are your hands made of, sandpaper? You’re all calluses. Don’t scratch me!”
Lin Fan took a deep breath and kept rubbing the oil in. Since he couldn’t get out of the job, he might as well do it properly.
But before long, his gaze drifted past Zhao Na toward the roped-off VIP section of the deck.
That was where the real head-turners were.
Su Qingxue, CEO of Sheng Tang Group.
And Liu Feifei, one of the country’s most popular actresses.
Su Qingxue wore a plain white one-piece. The cut was conservative, but it did little to hide her figure. Even behind her sunglasses, she radiated an intimidating confidence. Her legs were crossed, long and pale in the sunlight.
Liu Feifei was her complete opposite.
She wore a purple bikini under a sheer lace cover-up. Whenever the sea breeze lifted the fabric, her figure showed through. She was busy taking selfies, seemingly oblivious to the attention she drew.
Lin Fan took one look and felt his throat tighten.
“What are you staring at? You think women like that are for you?”
Wang Qiang smacked the back of his head, hard enough to make his ears ring.
“Know your place. You’re punching way above your weight. Keep staring like that and I’ll gouge your eyes out.”
Having finished humiliating Lin Fan, Wang Qiang’s face transformed at once. His wrinkles crumpled into an enormous, fawning grin as he hurried toward the VIP section, every inch the eager servant.
“Ms. Su! Ms. Liu! Are you comfortable? Do you need more ice? Some fresh-cut fruit, perhaps?”
Su Qingxue didn’t even look up.
Liu Feifei, however, gave him a polite, professional smile and pointed toward her empty glass.
That single effortless smile was enough to make Wang Qiang melt. He hurried back, grabbed the fruit platter from beside Lin Fan, and rushed to serve her.
Lin Fan had just finished with the oil and was about to steal another glance at Zhao Na when Wang Qiang cut him off.
“Get down to the lower deck and haul the liquor! Stop standing around like an idiot. Don’t dream above your station!”
Wang Qiang shoved him aside.
Lin Fan stumbled forward, nearly crashing into the railing. He caught himself and looked around the deck.
There were only a dozen or so men aboard, compared with several dozen women. And nearly every one of those women was stunning.
A ridiculous thought slipped into his mind.
What if every other man on this ship disappeared, leaving only me? What if all these women and I ended up stranded on a deserted island for a month?
Heh. Now that would be something.
Of course, it was only a fantasy.
Lin Fan turned and headed toward the dimly lit staircase.
Then, without warning, the sunlight vanished.
It wasn’t a cloud passing over the sun.
The sky darkened in an instant, turning an eerie shade of leaden gray. The sea breeze stopped. Even the sound of waves against the hull disappeared.
The whole world fell silent.
“What’s going on?”
“Why did it suddenly get dark?”
People took off their sunglasses and stared up at the sky in confusion. The men who had been flirting with their companions moments earlier stopped mid-conversation.
Lin Fan instinctively turned toward the distant horizon.
The next second, a chill shot through his body. Every hair on his arms stood on end.
It wasn’t a cloud.
It was a white line stretching across the horizon, joining sea and sky.
A monstrous wall of water, looking nearly a hundred meters high, was advancing toward them. It was so enormous that its movement seemed strangely slow. But anyone who had spent enough time at sea knew what that meant.
It was death coming for them.
“TSUNAMI!”
The ship’s emergency alarm erupted, tearing through the silence. The captain’s voice broke over the loudspeakers, distorted with panic.
“Hold on! Everyone, grab something solid! Hold on tight!”
The deck descended into chaos.
Screams and cries filled the air. The same people who had been sipping champagne and talking business moments earlier were now scrambling in every direction like frightened animals.
In that instant, every trace of civility disappeared.
One of the men who had been drooling over Zhao Na just moments before kicked his own girlfriend in the stomach while fighting to reach a life ring.
“Get out of my way! Move!”
The woman screamed and collapsed onto the deck, her makeup smeared across her face as she stared at him in disbelief.
So much for high society.
So much for love.
Su Qingxue hurried to her feet, her sunglasses slipping off. For the first time, fear showed on her face. But unlike the others, she didn’t run blindly around the deck. She grabbed the nearest railing with both hands and held on.
Amid the chaos, her eyes briefly met Lin Fan’s.
There was no trace of her usual arrogance now.
Only the same helpless fear that had seized everyone else.
Nearby, Liu Feifei was terrified. Her phone slipped from her fingers and hit the deck. Her legs gave way, and she collapsed, unable to do anything but scream.
Wang Qiang tried to run but tripped over someone. He scrambled toward the railing on all fours, looking like a beaten dog. The swaggering supervisor from moments earlier was gone.
Only Lin Fan had found himself in a relatively safe position.
He had been on his way to haul the liquor, and the staircase had brought him right beside a massive structural support pillar, one of the strongest points in the ship’s construction.
Instinct took over.
He threw both arms around the pillar and clamped his legs around it, gripping as tightly as he could.
A gigantic shadow engulfed the cruise ship.
It was as if the sky itself had collapsed.
“BOOM!”
The wave slammed down.
The cruise ship, weighing tens of thousands of tons, capsized in an instant.
Seawater poured across the deck. The world turned upside down.
Lin Fan felt his body lift into the air before crashing violently against a steel bulkhead. Pain exploded through him. It felt as though every organ inside his body had been shaken loose.
Then the seawater rushed in.
It flooded his nose and mouth, choking him before he could draw another breath.
As he struggled against the crushing pressure, one thought flashed through his mind.
You know what? Being a nobody at the bottom of the company really wasn’t so bad.
…
Pain.
Every inch of his body felt as though it had been torn apart and put back together wrong.
Lin Fan struggled to open his eyes.
Blinding sunlight stabbed at his eyes, forcing him to squint.
He coughed several times, then spat out mouthfuls of salty seawater.
Beneath him was scorching sand.
In the distance, waves crashed against the rocks.
I’m… alive?
He struggled to sit up.
A debris-strewn beach stretched out before him.
Wreckage littered the shore. Broken wooden panels, brightly colored life jackets, and people lay scattered across the sand. Some were motionless. Others were sprawled at awkward angles, their condition impossible to judge from a distance.
Lin Fan shook his head, trying to clear the dizziness.
Then something caught his eye.
His gaze locked onto a large rock farther down the beach…