Shen Tangtang placed her sack at her feet, stood near the window, and turned to look at Lin Daiyu, who was struggling to haul her heavy bag up onto the transport.
“Daiyu-jie, did you not help Big Brother Bai carry anything today?”
Lin Daiyu nodded with a solemn expression and replied, “I felt the bag was about the same weight as yesterday’s, so I said no.”
She still had her younger sister to support. If she exceeded the weight limit again today, she’d have to leave behind her own food, and she simply couldn’t afford to do that to Jun-ge.
“You did great! I honestly didn’t even notice.”
A bright, happy smile lit up Shen Tangtang’s face. She certainly hadn’t expected the white moonlight supporting actress to actually reject the male lead for once.
Only Lin Daiyu looked somewhat troubled. Since she had turned Jun-ge down today, she had no idea whether he’d be angry with her.
Right at that moment, it was Bai Yanjun’s turn to have his provisions weighed. Staring at the measly eight pounds of leaves in his hands, his face turned pitch black. Knowing that a full third of the food he had busted his hump to forage had just been shaved off was infuriating, but this was the wasteland, and he had no choice but to swallow his pride and hand over the penalty.
Clambering onto the bus with his sack, Bai Yanjun looked like a thundercloud. He scanned the interior of the vehicle, spotted the two girls sitting by the window, and intended to march right over and demand an explanation. Unfortunately, the aisle was packed shoulder-to-shoulder, making movement impossible. He could only shoot a venomous glare at the corner where Shen Tangtang and Lin Daiyu were sitting, pulling his provisions tight against his chest to guard them.
While Lin Daiyu kept her head down in lingering misery, Shen Tangtang took in every nuance of Bai Yanjun’s expression. It was clear they needed to keep a wide berth from the male lead; given his vindictive, petty nature, there was no telling what kind of backstabbing scheme he might cook up against them in secret.
Shortly after Bai Yanjun boarded, the bus filled to capacity. The mercenaries recorded the head count in their ledgers and signaled the driver to head back.
Rattling and swaying the whole way, they arrived at the safe zone gates a few minutes earlier than the previous day. Aunt Wang stood waiting outside with a beaming smile, organizing the other orphans who had returned on the same bus as Shen Tangtang and her group.
The moment she spotted Shen Tangtang and the girls stepping off the bus, the smile on Aunt Wang’s face froze. She had never managed to squeeze a single drop of profit out of this brat, and Lin Daiyu had picked up the exact same habit, making Shen Tangtang her absolute least favorite person in the world.
“Oh, Tangtang, you’re back! Managed to pull in a decent haul today, huh? I noticed the bags on the other kids didn’t even look half full… My, my, I always say nobody works harder than you two in the whole camp. Look at that bulging sack.”
Aunt Wang’s eyes darted slyly around. Glancing at the other camp managers nearby, she lowered her voice and said, “Tangtang dear, how about lending Aunt Wang some food? My family’s running on empty, and you wouldn’t want my little ones to starve, right?”
Shen Tangtang’s mouth twitched. Giving Lin Daiyu a reassuring pat on the shoulder, she replied, “I know you’re not actually trying to fleece an orphan, Aunt Wang. But you also know I’ll be aging out of the orphanage next year. If I don’t save up enough taxes, I’ll get kicked right out of the safe zone. You wouldn’t want to bully an orphan like that, right? If you’re short, why not just trade for it with credits? I won’t even ask for extra—just the standard orphanage exchange rate will do.”
“You—are you listening to yourself? If I had spare credits lying around, would I be asking to borrow food from you? Fine, keep your scraps! Little girl, you’ve got way too many schemes running in that head of yours.”
Rolling her eyes, Aunt Wang swished her hips and spun around to target three other girls who had just stepped off the bus.
Shaking her head, Shen Tangtang pulled Lin Daiyu over to the spot they had used yesterday to wait.
The orphanage’s internal credit exchange rate was far more lenient than the official trading lobby’s. As long as the radiation level tested below 50%, they accepted produce by weight—one catty for one credit. If they took these leaves down to the official trading lobby, fifty catties might only fetch around twenty credits; ever since nutrient paste was upgraded last year, edible leaves had become virtually worthless unless the radiation level dipped below 20%, which was the only time the nobility went into a frenzy over them.
Once they reached their resting spot, Lin Daiyu finally couldn’t hold it in any longer and quietly burst into tears.
Shen Tangtang felt thoroughly bewildered. Who on earth had bullied her?
“Daiyu-jie, what’s wrong?”
“Tangtang, sob… is Jun-ge angry with me? He didn’t even give me a single look after getting off the bus and stormed off looking furious. Did I do something wrong?”
Lifting her reddened eyes, Lin Daiyu looked at Shen Tangtang with tear-filled gazes that made Shen Tangtang instinctively take a step back.
Come on, girl. You’re Lin Daiyu, not the tragic heroine from classic literature—there’s no need to bawl your eyes out over a man!
He hadn’t even done anything to you yet; if you actually ended up together, you’d probably cry yourself blind.
“Daiyu-jie, since you refused to help carry his food today, do you regret it?”
Hearing that, Lin Daiyu paused to think, then shook her head. She didn’t regret saying no to Jun-ge. Even though she was terrified he might be mad, she still had her little sister to look after, and getting her provisions docked hurt just as much.
“There you go then! Look, you saved yourself five catties of leaves yesterday—that’s enough to feed you and Qiqi for two whole days, right? Plus…”
Launching into a thorough, logical breakdown, Shen Tangtang finally managed to calm Lin Daiyu down. With tear tracks still clinging to her cheeks, the girl nodded in agreement.
Shen Tangtang let out a silent breath. It seemed the white moonlight supporting actress wasn’t entirely a lost cause yet—at least for now, Qiqi held a much higher place in her heart than the male lead did.
Not every scavenger was as fortunate as Lin Daiyu, pulling in massive piles of edible food day after day. For the vast majority of scavengers, the primary goal was simply avoiding the two-credit bus fare penalty; their bags and baskets were typically stuffed with dry twigs and vines meant for burning fuel or weaving rudimentary crafts.
Pulling in just a single leaf—or coming home completely empty-handed—was the absolute norm.
Bai Yanjun had spent quite a long time observing before deciding to target Lin Daiyu and milk her for all she was worth.
As for Shen Tangtang back before she secured her registration tag, going hungry for days on end was just a regular Tuesday. If not for that, her little steamed buns wouldn’t have stayed stunted from severe malnutrition; any minor growth spurt she managed was purely a testament to her body’s sheer stubborn will to survive.
Back at the orphanage, Shen Tangtang turned over forty-four catties of food, trading the remaining forty-five catties for forty-five credits.
As they stepped away from the exchange window, Shen Tangtang turned to Lin Daiyu and said, “Daiyu-jie, I want to check out the trading lobby tomorrow, so I’m going to skip scavenging.”
Lowering her gaze to check her accumulated credits, Lin Daiyu let out a reflex-driven oh, then replied, “Alright then. Tomorrow I think I’ll tag along with the group heading to a southern wasteland sector. I just heard some workers talking about how someone dug up an energy stone over there and traded it for a mountain of credits—the whole family managed to move out of the shanty town and into the slums.”
Excitement painted Lin Daiyu’s face as she pictured the scene of striking it rich with an energy stone and moving Qiqi and Tangtang into a proper home in the slums.
“Got it. Just make sure you stay safe out there.”
Offering a couple of parting reminders, Shen Tangtang headed toward the dormitory, completely unperturbed by the mention of energy stones.
Please. She still had two high-grade energy stones tucked away safely in her spatial storage; pulling those out in public would cause mass heart attacks.
She needed to hit the trading lobby and buy a proper dagger. Cutting leaves with a makeshift stone knife worked fine since she was used to it, but after the close calls yesterday and today, she realized going weaponless felt terrifyingly unsafe. While she knew a few basic martial arts forms, running into a real mutant beast would leave her with only one option: turning tail and fleeing for her life.