Chapter 33.2: “Someday, no one will dare treat you with this kind of indifference”
The school grounds were so quiet that only the whisper of leaves skimming across the track could be heard, along with the occasional birdcall.
What was once a bustling, lively campus now lay gray and desolate. The very colors of the teaching buildings seemed muted. Black bloodstains marred the ground everywhere, and in the distance, the trash pit was piled high with zombie corpses, forming a mound that made one’s heart turn cold.
Their footsteps drew attention from those upstairs.
“Brother!!” Wu Zhi’s bright voice rang out. Spotting Wu Heng from a third-floor window, she poked her head out to confirm, then clutched her doll and dashed downstairs.
Ruan Silian chased her out of the classroom, calling after a few steps, “Slow down—” Her voice was soft and gentle, but it couldn’t rein in Wu Zhi. In the blink of an eye, the little girl’s figure had vanished.
Wu Zhi quickly ran up to Wu Heng, and Wu Heng stopped in his tracks.
She wanted to hug him but didn’t dare. After pacing in place for a moment, she went and hugged everyone except Wu Heng first, and only at the very end did she throw her arms tightly around him, tilting her head up, “Brother.”
Wu Heng pushed her away. “Go upstairs first.”
“Okay!” On the way, Wu Zhi deliberately chose to squeeze past Xie Chongyi, who was on Wu Heng’s right, rather than Lin Mengzhi on his left—since she knew Xie Chongyi the least.
“Brother, are you hungry? Have you eaten yet?”
“Brother, are you thirsty?”
“An older sister gave me grape-flavored biscuits. She’s really pretty, just like you—fair and fragrant.”
Lin Mengzhi was already used to Wu Zhi clinging to Wu Heng like this; it didn’t surprise him anymore. The other three, however, couldn’t help but cast curious looks at the siblings.
Xie Chongyi didn’t pay much attention to Wu Zhi. He already knew Wu Heng had a younger sister whose brain development had stopped, so instead, he glanced more often at Wu Heng himself.
The little girl spoke without any filter, and embellishments were out of the question. She just blurted out “fair and fragrant.” Xue Shen couldn’t help but laugh, while Xie Chongyi’s gaze lingered—tracing from Wu Heng’s face down to his neck, until the line of his collar swallowed the view, before he finally looked away.
Upstairs, the others had already been waiting a long time. Two or three people were standing in the corridor, and the moment they saw them return, they rushed forward.
“How was it? No problems, right?”
“You scared me to death, I thought you wouldn’t make it back,” Dou Lu patted her chest. “I said the energy fluctuations from the reptile house felt way too strong—turns out there was a huge nest of bugs in there!”
“Wu Heng, you came too, huh.” Li Shu leaned against the balcony. “Welcome, welcome.” His tone, however, was anything but welcoming.
In class, Wu Heng had always been like a transparent shadow. His classmates weren’t familiar with him, and the feeling was mutual. The difference was, while he had no clear impression of any of them, they all had a very specific impression of him.
Pale and frail, silent and taciturn, gloomy and listless—he gave off the feeling of an overcast sky weighed down by layers upon layers of dark clouds. Not the kind brimming with the imminent tension of a storm, but the dull, lifeless kind that only left people feeling bored.
He belonged to that type of person whose being overlooked seemed only natural.
Wu Heng didn’t even know the boy in front of him by name. He parted his lips and muttered a quiet “thanks.”
Lin Mengzhi followed up with a cold laugh: “He’s already in your class. What the hell are you welcoming him for?”
Wu Zhi clung to Lin Mengzhi’s arm. “Exactly, exactly.”
Li Shu had seen Lin Mengzhi use his ability yesterday, and knew he was fire-type—definitely not someone to provoke. He forced an awkward smile. “Fine then, welcome, alright?”
“Come on, come on, let’s get to the classroom. Class rep, tell us—how did you find the monitor and Wu Heng?” Dou Lu rubbed her hands together eagerly. “I’m dying to know!”
“Sister Ruan, give me a pack of sunflower seeds. I want to crack seeds while I listen!” Dou Lu turned to Ruan Silian.
Li Shu snapped irritably, “Don’t you have hands of your own?”
“None of your business. Sister Ruan doesn’t belong to you anyway.”
Xue Shen wasn’t in the mood for storytelling and simply wheeled Xue Qi off to a corner.
Wu Heng sat down in another corner of the classroom—the same seat he used to take before.
As soon as Wu Heng sat down, it felt as though his state of mind had slipped back to the days before the apocalypse. The desks were still neatly arranged, the blackboard still carried half-erased notes from class, and on the wiped half someone had written an activity notice, the names of the students on duty, and the homework collection deadlines set by the class rep.
Inside the classroom, a few students lay slumped over their desks asleep. Others came and went to fetch water or use the restroom. The same group of kids who always played tag after class dashed past his desk one after another, dragging the wind with them. The corner of someone’s clothes knocked his book to the floor, but no one picked it up. They only tossed back a casual, “Sorry, Wu Heng, pick it up yourself, okay?”
Wu Heng had never thought of this as deliberate b*llying. His classmates bore him no malice—he simply didn’t matter, and so he was overlooked.
Not that Wu Heng ever wanted their attention anyway. To him, it would have been nothing but trouble, nothing but a burden. Compared to carrying the weight of expectation and hope, stooping down to pick up a book was far easier.
So, ever since stepping into the classroom, the only ones at his side were Wu Zhi, staring up at him with wide, eager eyes; Lin Mengzhi, munching on a bag of chips; and the bird that had already started dozing off atop Lin Mengzhi’s head.
“A’Heng,” Lin Mengzhi suddenly spoke up.
Wu Heng looked over, waiting for what he had to say.
Lin Mengzhi smacked his lips. “Let’s just go to Jingzhou ourselves. I don’t like these people.”
Wu Zhi immediately chimed in: “Then let’s bring Sister Ruan Silian with us! I like her.”
“…You think she’s your ugly little monkey or something?” Lin Mengzhi was speechless. “You can’t just say ‘take her’ and expect it to happen.”
After finishing with Wu Zhi, Lin Mengzhi bumped shoulders with Wu Heng. “Well? What do you think? I think we could manage it ourselves. Sure, two guys dragging along Wu Zhi would be a bit of a hassle, but who knows—maybe we’ll run into a kindhearted auntie or something along the way.”
Wu Heng breathed lightly, his gaze blankly falling in the direction of where Xie Chongyi sat.
The other boy was slumped across his desk, one arm draped lazily behind his head, face turned toward the window, resting.
His desk was just as quiet and empty of people as Wu Heng’s—but certainly not for the same reason.
In his own case, it was because no one wanted him around.
Wu Heng stared silently at Xie Chongyi for a long while before finally shifting his gaze to the others.
Xue Shen, Xue Qi, Dou Lu, Ruan Silian, He Siyu, Li Shu, Du Yaoyuan… all of them edible, all of them considered food reserves—emergency rations, if it came to that.
“…Better we stick together,” Wu Heng finally withdrew his gaze and looked at Lin Mengzhi, speaking slowly. “It’s easier to look out for one another with more people.”
“Yeah, that’s true in theory, but… I just don’t get why they’re all so cold toward you.” Lin Mengzhi was baffled. He could tell most people weren’t exactly hostile to his childhood friend. It was something else—an attitude that was even more uncomfortable.
It wasn’t dislike so much as complete indifference.
But that was even harder for Lin Mengzhi to stomach! Forget about him—he was ordinary, nothing special, there were thousands like him. But his childhood friend? Wu Heng had a presence, a charisma. How could they manage to treat him like he didn’t exist? That was insane!
Wu Heng: “I don’t care.”
Food doesn’t care whether it’s cared for or not.
Lin Mengzhi assumed Wu Heng was simply swallowing his grievances in silence. He let out a long breath.
Outside, the sky was darkening. Lin Mengzhi spent a long while working through his thoughts, talking himself around. At last, he fixed his gaze firmly on Wu Heng and declared with certainty:
“A’Heng, one day, there’ll be countless people who recognize you, who admire you, who see following you as the ultimate goal of their lives.”
“Someday, no one will dare treat you with this kind of indifference. Even if you’re sitting on a latrine, they’ll still line up to light your cigarette and toast you.” Lin Mengzhi said it with heartfelt conviction.
Wu Heng had been listening with some interest, but at that last bit, his calm expression faded.
“The last part won’t be necessary.”
Night settled in. From outside the classroom came the occasional gust of wind; from beyond the school walls, the faint, muffled growls of monsters drifted in.
Ruan Silian shut the windows, then pulled a lighter from her coat pocket. Taking out a few candles, she lit them one by one and whispered to the others, “Time for dinner.”
“Yay!”
For the past while, they’d been surviving by killing zombies in exchange for food and water from the class monitor. Risking their lives by day, returning at night to choke down coarse biscuits with water, their spirits battered by the despair of the apocalypse, their bodies driven past the limit by hunger and overwork—everyone had been living miserably.
This trip to the shopping mall had nearly cost them their lives, but the haul had been worth it. On the way back to school that morning, they’d lugged back bags and bags of supplies.
Tonight’s dinner was therefore absurdly plentiful.
Most of the classroom desks had been shoved out into the corridor, leaving only a few inside. In the cleared center space, He Siyu spread some blank exercise book pages across the floor, then began setting out the evening meal piece by piece. From the looks of it, there was enough for everyone to have a share.
“Come eat!” Dou Lu called, adding a fistful of chocolates from her own pocket to the spread.
Ruan Silian walked over to the corner, where three of them were sitting in a row. Smiling kindly, she said, “You should come eat too.”
She glanced at them again, hesitated, and looked a little guilty.
“Usually we just eat something simple at night—everyone’s too tired—but every morning we’ll have hot food. For tonight, please make do like this. Tomorrow morning, I’ll ask the class monitor for a few eggs. Since you’ve just arrived, I’ll slip them into your bowls, all right?”
Wu Zhi looked at Wu Heng. She wanted to say something, but in the end said nothing. She only shook her head gently at Ruan Silian.
“I’m not hungry.”
Lin Mengzhi, on the other hand, stood straight up.
“I’ll eat.”
“How can you eat?!” Wu Zhi also shot to her feet, face full of shock—she squeezed her doll so hard its face was caved in.
“Mind your own business.”
Wu Heng nudged Wu Zhi gently and said in a soft voice, “Go eat with Mengzhi.”
“And what about you, brother?” Wu Zhi asked cautiously.
The boy said, “I’m not hungry.”
“Impossible.” Wu Zhi blurted back almost instantly.
“…”
Wu Heng really wasn’t hungry. Even before all this, he hadn’t been fond of snacks; he’d preferred fruits and vegetables.
But now, after the mutation, snacks no longer even counted as food in his eyes. Ordinary fruits and vegetables didn’t stir his appetite either—eating them was no different from not eating at all. Since he couldn’t be bothered to waste the effort of chewing, he planned to wait until everyone was asleep, then leave the school to find something to eat.
“Wu Zhi.” Wu Heng called her name, his tone flat and indifferent.
“…Okay. Then I’ll go eat. See you later, brother.” She went off, taking hesitant steps and looking back at every one of them.
Ruan Silian led Wu Zhi to sit down among the others.
Dou Lu, seeing her, immediately dropped a handful of cookies into her hands.
“These are really good.”
Wu Heng watched the whole scene with a blank expression.
Wu Zhi was the kind of person everyone easily took a liking to, even though she was unarmed and had no powers.
But Wu Heng knew that was only because none of them had yet been pushed to true desperation. Once it came to that, “ornaments” like Wu Zhi were usually the first to be abandoned.
When Xie Chongyi came back from the bathroom, everyone greeted him warmly, inviting him to eat. Some even carried food over to offer him.
“You guys eat.” The boy waved lazily, striding past them without a glance.
But just after refusing, he suddenly retraced his steps, his long legs cutting right into the space between Lin Mengzhi and Xue Shen.
The two instinctively shifted aside as Xie Chongyi bent down, fishing a still-crispy bag of cookies from the pile of food on the floor.
With that in hand, he kept browsing, picking and choosing as if no one else existed.
Nobody dared say a word.
Only after he grabbed a can of juice did Xie Chongyi straighten up, finally satisfied. “Carry on.”
And with that, he headed toward Wu Heng, who was dozing in the corner.
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**Author’s Notes:
Xie Chongyi: Cookies?
Wu Heng: Don’t want it.
Xie Chongyi: Bread?
Wu Heng: Don’t want it.
Xie Chongyi: Chips?
Wu Heng: Don’t want it.
Xie Chongyi: Then what do you want?
Wu Heng: …People.
