Chapter 46.1: “I’m allergic to chocolate”
Xie Chongyi looked at Wu Heng for a while before lowering his eyes to the food in Wu Heng’s hand.
“I’m allergic to chocolate.”
Wu Heng blinked and gradually drew his hand back.
Xie Chongyi didn’t mind making things even more awkward. “I’m allergic to a lot of things.”
Wu Heng bit into the chocolate. The aroma of cocoa and hazelnut spread out richly. “Allergies are kind of a private matter. It’s normal that I don’t know, right?”
Xie Chongyi nodded, but said, “You’re allergic to grapes, tomatoes, and alcohol.”
Wu Heng felt like the situation had completely reversed. He was supposed to be the caretaker, yet he knew nothing about his own food—while his “food” knew everything about him.
“I’ve read all the profiles of everyone in the class and memorized most of them—your skills, preferences, family background, and so on.”
Xie Chongyi resumed rummaging through the pile of rubble for any food that could still be salvaged.
Wu Heng chewed his chocolate. “I don’t believe you.”
Xie Chongyi lifted his gaze. The corners of his peach-blossom eyes were elegant and long, and even with Wu Heng right beside him, he could still catch the look in the other’s eyes—clearly thinking about how to make something up.
After a pause, Xie Chongyi turned his head and spoke slowly:
“Your birthday is February 13th. You were born on the day of Lichun—the beginning of spring. You’re seventeen years old this year. Your favorite things to do are reading and sleeping. Your favorite author is Leo Tolstoy. Other than your unusually long sleeping hours, you don’t have any other notable talents. Your grades are average. Your best subject is Chinese; your worst is math. Your highest score in Chinese was 145, the lowest 138. Your highest score in math was 67, the lowest was 0.”
Wu Heng’s expression had already gone blank halfway through Xie Chongyi’s words.
When Xie Chongyi finished speaking, Wu Heng stood up.
He had originally thought Xie Chongyi was proud—perhaps even aristocratic—the kind of person too lofty to cast his gaze upon those beneath him.
But that wasn’t the case at all.
Xie Chongyi’s eyes took in everyone, sharply and completely, and that included him.
Wu Heng had never been truly seen by anyone before.
Even his parents didn’t know his hobbies or his grades.
His life, like himself, was a pool of stagnant water—motionless, lifeless.
So sooner or later, the sun would evaporate him, and when that happened, he’d turn into a wisp of vapor, disappearing into the vastness of the world.
Xie Chongyi’s words were like a piercing gust of wind, blowing away the layers of grime that had long settled over that dead surface.
Sunlight spilled through into the once-dark depths beneath, exposing everything—the mayfly-like aquatic creatures, the stones coated with thin yellow moss.
The water suddenly began to heat under the light.
The boy’s eyes were red. “That’s my private information.”
“These are just your basic records. As class monitor, it’s part of my duty to understand everyone’s general background.”
“The other class monitors don’t seem to…”
“That’s because they’re irresponsible.”
Xie Chongyi picked up a pack of instant noodles from the ground.
He grabbed his bag and stood, then looked back at Wu Heng, his gaze resting on the boy’s face for a few seconds.
“Why are your eyes red?”
Wu Heng wanted to kill him.
Whether being seen through or being understood—it all made him feel equally lost and exposed.
“I’m hungry,” he said. Since he’d already been seen through, he refused to let it go any deeper.
Knowing that Wu Heng tended to get hungry easily, Xie Chongyi didn’t doubt him.
He tightened the knot on the bag, switched it to his left hand, and with his right arm pulled Wu Heng into his embrace.
He held him for a moment before letting go. “Better?”
“…” Wu Heng, having lied, now had to follow through. He smoothed his bangs that had been mussed during the hug. “Much better.”
“Pretty easy to feed, aren’t you,” Xie Chongyi said lightly—
but before Wu Heng could react, his expression suddenly changed.
Click.
Something gave a sharp, snapping sound.
Boom—
When Wu Heng came back to his senses, Xie Chongyi was already holding him, leaping out of the convenience store.
He looked up—the half-collapsed store they’d just been in had completely caved in.
Dust filled the air, and several exposed steel bars jutted straight up toward the sky.
“Situations like this are common after quakes,” Xie Chongyi said without wasting a glance back. “We’ll move to the next place.”
Wu Heng obediently followed behind him.
The figures of the few people still standing or crouching at the starting point gradually shrank into the distance. The other scavenging teams had all headed off in different directions.
Wu Heng wasn’t hungry, nor did he feel any sense of duty—but the work of killing zombies was mostly his.
Beneath the rubble underfoot, many of the undead were still buried alive.
As he passed over the mounds of cement covering their heads, the scent of living flesh provoked them into frenzied, hoarse screams.
Wu Heng pried away the stones and crawled in, killing every last one cleanly.
The collapsed building had shattered into fragments.
With one hand gripping a bloodstained knife and the other resting on a bent steel bar, Wu Heng bent down, peering into the pitch-black cavity beneath the rubble.
A pair of bright, gleaming eyes stared back at him.
“Big brother…”
A round-faced little boy was trapped beneath a solid wooden table, reaching a trembling hand toward him. “Help me.”
Wu Heng took a step down, loosening his fingers from the steel bar—but before he could crawl inside, the zombie behind the boy, gnawing relentlessly at his flesh, raised its blood-red head.
Clutching a lump of meat in its hands, it began to crawl toward where Wu Heng stood.
Wu Heng held his stance, perfectly still, until the zombie reached his feet.
He drove the blade straight through the back of the zombie’s skull—the tip sank deep into the ground beneath it.
When he pulled it out, there was a sharp crack—the tip of the knife had bent.
The air was thick with the stench of fresh blood, mingled with the boy’s faint, whimpering cries.
Wu Heng crawled along the narrow passageway until he reached the boy.
He looked at the child’s lower body—what little was left of it after being eaten—and after a moment’s thought, decided not to move the table pressing down on him.
He set down the knife and pulled a piece of chocolate from his pocket.
“Are you allergic to chocolate?”
The boy, starving after a whole night, quickly shook his head.
Wu Heng tore open the wrapper and fed the chocolate into the boy’s mouth. “It has hazelnuts.”
The boy chewed with soft crunch, crunch sounds. “I can taste it! It’s so sweet!”
His eyes were large, framed with long lashes, and his irises were round and glossy like two plump grapes.
Tears shimmered on his face. His lips had gone pale from pain.
After swallowing the chocolate, a ragged wheeze rasped out of his throat, and the brilliance in his eyes dulled into a lifeless gray-white.
After Wu Heng ended his suffering, he turned to leave—and saw that beneath the rubble lay many who had not turned into zombies, but were already dead.
Most of the bodies were crushed, mangled beyond recognition, broken into pieces.
It reminded him of when he was a child—how a few boys in kindergarten would gather around an anthill.
They used boiling water to imitate rainstorms, stones to imitate falling rocks, and kicks to imitate earthquakes.
He could still clearly see it: the black tide of ants washed out of their nest by the flood, their tiny bodies crushed flat one after another.
He crawled out of the “anthill.”
Xie Chongyi was sitting at the narrow exit above him, the snakeskin bag in his hand now bulging nearly twice as much as before.
Wu Heng didn’t notice—his palm nearly pressed against the other’s crotch, and his upper body ended up wedged squarely between Xie Chongyi’s legs.
“Do you know how unsafe it is under earthquake ruins?” Xie Chongyi asked, half-smiling.
Wu Heng nodded, ready to climb out.
Xie Chongyi pressed his legs together.
“…”
“Be more careful next time.”
Loosening his hold, Xie Chongyi grabbed the boy’s arm and hauled him up out of the hole.
The town’s roads weren’t completely destroyed.
At the intersection, the traffic lights had fallen sideways; several buses had crashed together, their fronts completely wrecked—but the seats inside were empty.
Beside the crossroads stood what must’ve been the town’s department store.
The stone tiles of the plaza in front were still there, engraved with the four characters “Favorable Weather (and) Good Harvests.”
The mall behind the plaza had split into several huge sections, cracks running deep through it, but it hadn’t yet collapsed.
The two of them entered the department store one after the other.
It was empty inside, except for the occasional clatter of falling debris.
Wu Heng and Xie Chongyi changed out of their soaked, filthy clothes, taking along several extra sets in mismatched sizes as well.
The supermarket was on the basement level—but the basement was no longer accessible.
The escalator had caved in at the center, and the entire lower floor had sunk several meters down, swallowing everything in it.
As a result, the structures above ground had all fractured and shifted apart.
Fortunately, there was still a restaurant on the first floor.
Wu Heng also joined in the food scavenging.
There were seven or eight restaurants on the first floor. Since the world had fallen apart over half a month ago, there was little food left. Fresh vegetables and meat were out of the question—the most common things now were condiments and dried goods, along with small amounts of rice and cooking oil.
In one chain restaurant, Xie Chongyi even dug two bundles of sweet potato noodles and two or three jin of dried bamboo shoots out of a cabinet.
He also took the large iron pot sitting on the stove.
—
When they returned to the starting point, the group waiting there had already finished off a whole box of dry instant noodles.
Scattered across the ground were empty noodle wrappers, chip containers, and soda cans.
Dou Lu was sprawled out on a big slab of broken concrete, limbs splayed wide.
“Even if I die, I refuse to die hungry.”
Wu Heng set down the supplies he’d gathered, then glanced toward Wu Zhi, who was still seriously gnawing on a piece of dry ramen.
“Has Mengzhi not come back yet?”
“He came back, he came back!” Wu Zhi immediately answered between bites, afraid her reply might be too slow. “All this food is from Brother Mengzhi—he already came back twice! He said he found a fat sheep!!!”
Wu Heng didn’t take her words seriously.
He crouched down and rummaged through his bag, pulling out a set of women’s clothes.
“Get up. I’ll go with you to change.”
Wu Zhi didn’t ask any questions. She immediately got up from the ground, followed after Wu Heng, and walked quietly beside him.
Not far away stood a small hotel, half-collapsed with only two rooms on the first floor still intact.
Wu Heng lifted Wu Zhi through the window, then, standing outside, tossed the clothes in after her.
“Three minutes.”
“Mm-hm!” Wu Zhi quickly swallowed the rest of her ramen and reached up to pull at the zipper of her collar.
“Hhh—”
A hoarse, guttural growl came from the left.
Wu Zhi froze, turning her head toward the small bed beside her.
It was a woman dressed in a hotel staff uniform.
Her wavy hair was tangled into thick knots, matted with dried clumps of blood.
She had a smooth, well-defined face and large eyes—one could tell that, when she was still human, she must have been a beautiful young lady.
The woman staggered to her feet, twisting her body as she lurched toward Wu Zhi.
Wu Zhi opened her mouth, wanting to call for her brother—
but then she realized that, lately, calling “big brother” was all she ever did.
She hadn’t done anything useful at all.
That rotting face pressed right up against hers.
Wu Zhi swallowed hard, then drove the box cutter in her hand upward through the zombie’s jaw.
The blade tip burst out through its eye socket.
The stench of blood and rot exploded in her face.
Wu Zhi squeezed her eyes shut, yanked the blade free, and raised it again—stabbing down into the zombie’s face over and over, dozens of times in a frenzy.
By the time she stopped, the zombie’s face was nothing but a gaping, bloody hole.
Her chest was stained black with gore, the filthy blood running down the blade and into her palm.
The knife, slick with blood, was now difficult to hold.
Wu Zhi looked down at the corpse at her feet, her body trembling all over.
She murmured under her breath, “So easy.”
She quickly changed clothes and climbed back out through the window.
The heavy stench of blood rushed out, filling Wu Heng’s nose.
“You killed someone.”
“It was a zombie!” Wu Zhi blurted out at once.
Then she picked up a broken half of a wooden comb from the ground and held it out to him.
“Big brother, help me braid my hair.”
Wu Heng glanced at her messy, filthy hair. “No need.”
The boy walked ahead, while Wu Zhi stumbled after him, whining softly, “Big brother, big brother…”