“Ah!”
Fu Qingdai bolted upright in bed with a sharp scream.
Cold sweat clung to her skin, soaking right through her sheer white nightgown.
It was another nightmare.
She sat there, chest heaving in shallow, ragged breaths, her terrified eyes welling with tears.
The endless rain, the gnawing hunger and biting cold, the creeping madness, the cannibalism… the entire world reduced to a living hell.
These visions had plagued her for nearly half a month. Every time, it felt unbearably real—mountains of corpses and seas of blood piled right before her eyes.
Even the smells in the dream were as real as anything she had smelled while awake.
If they were just ordinary nightmares, she could have handled it.
Her breathing hitched. Trembling with dread, she reached out and pulled back the curtains.
Dawn was just breaking outside, casting a faint light on the sky above.
The clouds roiled like ocean waves, rolling out layer by layer in a rigid, terrifying pattern.
Had it been daytime, such a magnificent celestial phenomenon would have drawn countless people to snap photos.
But right now, Fu Qingdai was paralyzed.
The tears welling in her eyes finally spilled over, trailing down her pale cheeks.
Her dreams mirrored reality flawlessly, starting from her mundane daily life before aggressively fast-forwarding into the apocalypse.
By the third nightmare, she had noticed the pattern.
The weather she saw while awake often matched scenes from her dreams.
Today was no exception. These strange, wave-like clouds were glaringly distinct, impossible to mistake for anything else.
Her frail shoulders shook. Her knuckles turned a deathly white as she maintained her death grip on the fabric, choking back her sobs.
Judging by the timeline of her previous dreams… that terrifying day was closing in fast.
She had warned people. She had warned her parents. But no one believed a single word.
She was only a student. She had done everything she could—what else was there? What the hell was she supposed to do?
Right then, the bedroom door swung open.
Zhang Wan walked in and sat on the edge of the mattress, looking down at her weeping daughter with utter exasperation.
Fu Qingdai whipped around and threw herself into Zhang Wan’s arms, her choked sobs dissolving into desperate wails.
“Another nightmare?” Zhang Wan sighed.
“Mom! It’s real, everything I said is real! The world is ending!” Fu Qingdai looked up, her vision blurred with tears. “Today’s clouds are exactly like the ones in my dream… it all matches perfectly. Mom, please, just believe me this once. We need to prepare early. Maybe we should move! Let’s move somewhere remote, somewhere away from everyone!”
“Qingdai…” Zhang Wan rubbed her temples helplessly. “You’re just stressed about your studies, that’s all. I already spoke with a doctor about this. Your exams are just a month away. Put all that nonsense aside and concentrate on school. You will feel less stressed if you focus on your studies.”
“Knock out some extra practice questions at school today, go to bed an hour early tonight. Get some proper rest and you’ll be right as rain.”
“Mom!” Fu Qingdai’s voice cracked, the tears she had just forced back spilling over once again. “Can you just let me finish!”
“Fine, fine, out with it then,” Zhang Wan sighed heavily. “But make it quick. You need to eat breakfast and get to school.”
Swallowing her despair, Fu Qingdai frantically recounted the horrors of her vision.
Zhang Wan listened, shaking her head again and again.
Noticing her mother’s glazed-over look, Fu Qingdai snapped, “Mom, are you even listening to me?!”
“I’m listening. Isn’t this exactly what you told me yesterday?” Zhang Wan dismissed.
“No!” Fu Qingdai’s eyes widened intensely. “I wasn’t finished! This time it was different… I saw a man. And I heard a voice telling me—”
“What?!” Zhang Wan’s gaze instantly sharpened, zeroing in like a bloodhound catching a scent.
Seeing her mother suddenly taking her seriously, a spark of desperate hope ignited in Fu Qingdai’s chest.
Just as she opened her mouth to explain, Zhang Wan sternly cut her off. “Qingdai, are you dating a boy behind my back? This is the absolute worst time for you to be fooling around! Dating this young will do you no good!”
“Mom!” Fu Qingdai felt herself coming apart. “Do you believe me or not?!”
“I believe you, I believe you… now get dressed and come eat.”
Her patience entirely spent, Zhang Wan stood up and turned toward the door.
Fu Qingdai reached out and grabbed her mother’s sleeve, her voice dropping to a miserable whisper. “Mom… can I have some money?”
“Don’t I usually give you money?”
“I need a little extra. I haven’t been eating well at school lately, and… and I want to buy some extra prep books.”
“Fine. How much?”
“…F-five hundred.”
Five hundred? Zhang Wan’s blood pressure spiked.
She was definitely mixed up in something at school. Asking for five hundred right off the bat—what could her daughter possibly spend that much on?
“Absolutely not! I’ll give you fifty, tops. Now get your act together and get to school.”
Tossing out her final verdict, Zhang Wan marched out of the room, leaving her daughter completely isolated in her despair.
Fu Qingdai wiped away her tears, a bitter, hollow ache gnawing at her chest.
She had zero agency. Not a single ounce of trust in her own home!
If only she were an adult. If only she had her own money, maybe her words would finally carry some weight.
Shoving her grief down, she sat at her desk and began to write.
Through the closed door, the muffled sounds of the morning news and her parents’ bickering drifted in.
“Old Fu, you need to discipline your daughter! You just sit there staring at the damn TV! Call Teacher Li right now and ask if Qingdai is messing around with some boy!”
“Yeah, yeah… I know. I’ll call him later.”
“Later, later! That’s all you ever say! Day in and day out, you dodge every single responsibility and don’t lift a finger around the house. How did I end up marrying such a useless lump of a man?!”
…..
Inside the classroom, the morning reading session was already in full swing.
Distracted, Fu Qingdai put away her schoolbag.
Apocalyptic visions continued to run on a horrific loop behind her eyes.
The classroom buzzed with chaotic chatter.
Her deskmate noticed her dead-eyed stare and nudged her. “Qingdai… did you have another nightmare?”
“Mhm…” Fu Qingdai hesitated, nodded, then turned to her friend with a serious look. “Xiaoning, everything I told you is real. The world is ending soon… if it starts to rain, whatever you do, do not touch the water. There’s something wrong with the rain. You have to hoard food right now. Seal all your doors and windows…”
Xiaoning gave her a weird, pitying look, nodded slowly, and turned back to face the blackboard, heaving a silent sigh.
She’s completely lost it!
The first couple of times, Xiaoning thought she was just being dramatic, but it had been weeks now. It was glaringly obvious that Qingdai was having a total mental breakdown.
Qingdai’s mother had contacted her earlier and asked her to keep an eye on her daughter. Judging by the look in Qingdai’s eyes today, her paranoia was only getting worse.
Shaking her head to clear the depressing thought, Xiaoning pulled out her boys’ love novel and settled down to read.
The guy sitting in front of them turned around, glanced at Xiaoning’s desk, and lowered his voice. “Hey, you’re still reading that trash? Look at Qingdai—she read novels until she went crazy. You’re not worried about ending up like her? Keep it on the down-low, the school has been checking more strictly these past few days.”
Xiaoning shot him a withering glare and whispered back, “Mine is BL. Even if I go crazy, I’ll just be obsessed with hot guys. Turn around and memorize your textbook!”
“Hah. Just lend it to me when you’re done.”
….
In the blink of an eye, the lunch bell rang.
A tidal wave of students surged toward the cafeteria.
Fu Qingdai moved like a ghost through the stampeding crowd, her frantic gaze sweeping over the sea of faces.
Finally, she locked onto her target. Breaking into a light jog, she reached out and tugged at a boy’s clothes.
Gao Peng felt the sudden tug. He spun around, only to find Fu Qingdai standing nervously behind him.
Her lovely face caught his eye.
His breath hitched in his throat.
Fu Qingdai was known as the school belle. Gao Peng had no idea who had decided that, but the name had stuck.
Countless guys had tried to shoot their shot, and every single one had crashed and burned.
Even though she had been acting like a paranoid weirdo lately and her untouchable goddess aura had taken a hit, plenty of boys still came by her classroom to ask about her.
Gao Peng usually didn’t even have the guts to make eye contact with her. Why on earth was she tugging at his clothes?
Swallowing hard, Gao Peng stammered, “Uh, did you need something?”
Fu Qingdai bit her pale pink lip, staring intently at the tips of her shoes. “Gao Peng…” she fidgeted awkwardly. “Could you… could you loan me some money? I swear I’ll pay you back next month!”
“O-oh… sure,” Gao Peng faltered, his mind racing at a mile a minute. “How much do you need? I only have about a hundred on me tops.”
He was basically broke himself, but the school belle was personally asking for a favor. Refusing her would make him look like a total loser!
Seeing him agree so easily, Fu Qingdai finally looked up and flashed a dazzling smile of relief.
Gao Peng’s heart threatened to pound right out of his chest!
Lending her money? That might actually be a good thing! She smiled at him, she tugged at his clothes… did she actually have a crush on him?!
She borrows it today, she has to pay it back next month. They would have to speak at least twice—once when she borrowed the money and once when she paid it back.
“Then I’ll take the hundred.”
…
A short distance away, a pair of beady eyes locked onto Fu Qingdai while a hand brought a phone up to an ear.
“Auntie Zhang? Yeah, Qingdai is talking to a boy in our class right now… No, no, he’s just some awkward-looking guy, they’re definitely not dating. But her delusions are getting totally out of hand. You really need to take her to a doctor soon.”