“My name is Qin Yu. Thank you for saving me.”
He looked cold, but he was quite polite. Lin Qiu nodded and introduced herself too. “I’m Lin Qiu. Um, do you want to take your temperature again?”
The thermometer gun was right there on the coffee table, she pointed at it. Qin Yu followed her gaze, picked it up, and measured, close to normal, no problem at all.
The measuring done, Lin Qiu had no idea what to say. For the first time she felt the space was cramped. She wanted to chew her nails.
“May I ask where the bathroom is? Would it be all right to use it?”
“Over there.” Lin Qiu felt a wave of release, her voice rising unnaturally high before she clapped a hand over her mouth. Can’t be loud, it’ll draw the zombies.
Once Qin Yu went into the bathroom, she collapsed onto the sofa and stared at the ceiling. So tired. Talking to people was so tiring.
The sound of running water came from the bathroom. Lin Qiu got up, went to the kitchen, took the frozen dumplings from the fridge, set them in the steamer, and turned on the heat. She’d switched on only one light, the dim kind.
What should she say to him in a bit? Ask if he wanted to leave? But who knew how dangerous it was outside. Then he’d stay? And wait to starve to death alongside her the day the food ran out.
So lost in thought was she that she didn’t notice the running water in the bathroom had stopped, nor the something that cracked and dropped to the floor a moment later, a sound that lasted only a few seconds, easy to miss if you weren’t listening.
Qin Yu looked at his palm, where a block of ice had formed. Soon the ice gave off a cold vapor, yet Qin Yu felt no chill in his hand at all. The water in the sink had frozen over too, in the same state as the ice in his palm.
Qin Yu had come to Light City half a month ago. The rainstorm had left a strong impression, his car had been in no small accident, slamming into the guardrail with him in it in the rain.
The rain wouldn’t stop, the city flooded badly, visibility was low, and the medics couldn’t reach him in time, so Qin Yu had gritted his teeth and treated himself.
The next day the rain stopped. Qin Yu had meant to head for the Light City military base, but floodwater blocked the roads, leaving him to apply for aerial transport. The application went unanswered for a long time, and he sensed something was wrong.
The virus had turned people into zombies, their claws reaching for those closest to them. He could scarcely imagine that a single rainstorm had turned Light City into a hell on earth.
His collapsing at Lin Qiu’s door had been pure chance. He’d burned through all his strength dodging zombies, since that morning he’d felt something off, weak and burning with fever, and assumed he’d caught the zombie virus.
Now it seemed he’d only triggered some kind of energy within himself, brought on by that fever.
Qin Yu had been unconscious too long and had lost contact with the outside world. Quietly, he cleaned himself up, and only then remembered he had no clothes, and the person outside the bathroom… he’d never seen anyone quite so timid.
His impression of his savior was frail and timid, the sort who would have a hard time surviving the apocalypse.
He pulled open the cabinet beside him, and inside was, of all things, a brand-new bathrobe. Qin Yu was a little surprised, he’d only thought to take a look, never expecting a pleasant surprise like this.
His own clothes were soaked through and unwearable. He cleared his throat and asked, Lin Qiu’s voice floated in from the kitchen. He said thanks, then took out the robe.
In the living room the two of them sat quietly, each to one side. Lin Qiu heaped the steamed dumplings and dipping sauce in front of him, her mouth working a moment. “You can use the tablet to check the news.”
She even kindly set the tablet in front of him, then sat back down where she’d been. Qin Yu took it and glanced at her, a woman in a white short-sleeved top and loose trousers, perched awkwardly at the far end of the table, putting the maximum possible distance between them.
If it wouldn’t have been rude, Qin Yu suspected she’d have liked to vanish on the spot.
Shoulder-length hair, bangs a touch too long, slightly veiling a pair of clear, sharply defined eyes. She was very pale, the pallor of someone who never saw daylight, with thin limbs. A pair of large black-framed glasses sat on her small face, her cheeks still had a bit of baby fat, lending her a young, almost childish look, and she seemed rather dazed all over.
She clearly dreaded contact with people. She could barely keep herself safe, yet she’d still saved an unconscious stranger, no telling whether that was a good thing or a bad one.
Qin Yu drew his gaze back, opened the tablet, and began reading the news, the further he read, the graver his face grew. The situation was even more dire than he’d thought. He tilted his head up slightly and glanced at the dumplings on the table, still steaming, fresh out of the pot.
For a fleeting moment Qin Yu felt unmoored, as if maybe nothing outside had happened at all, no zombies, no wailing and praying. He looked again at the person sitting diagonally across from him, she seemed a little more relaxed now, though her hand had drifted unconsciously to her mouth to gnaw at it. She was watching the news too.
Lin Qiu had cooked a lot, a whole big plate, afraid the just-woken patient wouldn’t have enough, paying no mind to the fact that food was now a scarce thing.
She had no idea what he was thinking. The truth was, those dumplings were a flavor she disliked, she’d mis-tapped and ordered several bags by mistake, and they’d been sitting untouched ever since.
She was wrestling with whether Qin Yu would leave later. If he did, she’d pack up all the nutrient solution and dumplings for him to take. Lin Qiu had no plans of her own, she couldn’t make it to the shelter bases. Of the five great shelters, even the nearest one normally took two or three days by plane, with transfers.
With Light City still flooded, zombies everywhere, and supplies short, Lin Qiu knew she didn’t have what it took.
Dust drifted in the air and the light was dim, and in the silence it seemed she caught the sound of footsteps. Pat, pat, an irregular rhythm, walking then stopping, over and over.
Terrified, Lin Qiu clutched her phone and held her breath, one hand gripping the edge of the table as she looked to Qin Yu. He gave her a reassuring look, but his eyes were so cold that Lin Qiu couldn’t read any reassurance in it.
The sound outside lasted only a moment before it faded. Whether her soundproofing was simply that good or it had been a hallucination, a long blank stretch passed, and not another sound could be heard.
Lin Qiu picked up her phone to keep browsing, but the page refreshed to a blank screen. The network was down.
What had to come had come. The whole city’s communications system had been destroyed, and then the last light went out as well. Apart from the faint, ghostly glow of the phone, there was nothing.
It was exactly as Qin Yu had expected. Communications and power equipment had been upgraded many times over, so it took zombies a while to wreck them, but from his collapse to his waking had been a full week, and no matter how sturdy, it couldn’t hold forever.
“Once you’ve finished eating, do you want to keep resting? Or… do you want to leave?”
Qin Yu set down his chopsticks. Perhaps because she’d recklessly poured nutrient solution into him while he was out, his stomach wasn’t hungry now. He was used to looking people in the eye when he spoke, that way he could read what he wanted out of their eyes.
But Lin Qiu wasn’t used to that. She was used to keeping her head down and minding her own business, and even when she did meet someone’s gaze, her own eyes rarely gave away any feeling.
“And you?” Qin Yu asked. The fact that he now had an esper ability wasn’t something it was convenient to reveal yet. He didn’t know whether there were others outside who’d awakened abilities like his, if he were the only one, exposing it would be extremely dangerous.
“Me? I’m not leaving. This is my home.”
She had no great attachment to staying alive. Birth, aging, sickness, death, the ordinary lot of every person, this was simply the timeline being nudged forward a little.
What she feared wasn’t death itself, but the stretch of time fear dragged out before it. She could die, just not be slowly tortured to death.
“If you’re going, take the food in the fridge with you. And you’ll definitely need the map to the shelters.”
With nothing else to do, she’d hand-drawn a map. Perhaps she’d foreseen the power failing, because over these past days she’d actually made preparations.
Qin Yu couldn’t leave just yet, there were things he needed to find out before he could quit Light City.
“Thank you for your kindness. I think I’ll have to impose on you a while longer and stay.”
“Ah—” came Lin Qiu’s surprised voice in the dark. She’d been certain he would leave, she’d never expected Qin Yu to make the other choice.
“Then stay.” Her voice was flat and even, stay or go, she was honestly fine with either.
While Lin Qiu got up to fetch something, Qin Yu walked over to the window. The heavy curtains, three layers in all, shut out every source of light.
He’d noticed earlier that there was something unusual about this apartment: the walls were built of sturdier, more soundproof material than an ordinary home’s, and the layout was strange.
Through the front door was the entryway, a little further in, the bathroom, then the kitchen and living room.
On the other side of the living room, down a short hallway, was the room he’d woken in. The living room itself had only one window.
The place looked like a three-bedroom, one-living-room layout, yet past the guest room, when you came back out, there was nothing on one side but a blank white wall.
The guest room wasn’t large either, a table, a wardrobe, and one floor-to-ceiling window sealed tight behind curtains.
Lin Qiu found what she wanted in the cabinet, blew the dust off it, and located the button switch on the back, a small night light, able to brighten only so much.
She set the night light on the table. The area outside this living room was actually far from safe, a zombie could break in at any moment, even though she’d barricaded it with all those tables.
“It might not be very safe out here. If you want to rest, you can come in here.”
She swiped at her watch, and the next second the white wall Qin Yu had been looking at split open to both sides, revealing a silver-grey door behind it, covered in all sorts of patterns.
He studied the door closely, which left Lin Qiu a little embarrassed, she’d had those patterns custom-made, the same ones from the hottest anime IP, dripping with mystery.
When the door opened, all of Qin Yu’s questions were answered. Behind it was another room, or, more precisely, two rooms knocked into one.
A computer glowing with rainbow LED strips, a pink-and-white gaming chair, an entire wall of bookshelves crammed with every genre of book.
Several notebooks were stacked on the desk, the wide desktop was reasonably tidy.
The wall above the computer was covered with all kinds of plushies and figurines, and there was a big bed, the same three layers of curtains blocking out the light.
She’d turned one apartment into two homes, a real talent, in her own way.