Chapter 3: You don’t look bad. Let’s switch to somewhere else to talk.
Lin Mengzhi stood frozen, staring at Wu Heng’s face. It wasn’t exactly innocent, but there wasn’t a trace of menace in it either. His mind went completely blank.
“A’Heng… you’re not just bullshitting me, are you?”
It didn’t sound like he was asking Wu Heng—more like he was asking himself.
Wu Heng slowly shook his head.
“Haven’t you noticed? My uniform’s a size too big—because it’s not mine, it’s my classmate’s.”
“My pants and shoes are darker than usual too. They’re stained with blood. I rinsed them off at school, but they haven’t dried yet.”
Lin Mengzhi took such a deep breath he nearly knocked himself out. He turned to the delivery driver, still waiting for an answer. “Let’s go. We’ll follow the truck.”
There wasn’t room in the cab, so Wu Heng and Lin Mengzhi climbed into the back, settling in among crates of cabbage and potatoes, sitting across from each other.
The truck moved smoothly, but the ride in the back felt jarring and uneven.
Wu Heng sat cross-legged on a box of salt, swaying with the bumps, all while carefully checking the list of things they still needed to buy and counting his remaining funds.
The glow of his phone occasionally flickered across his face, casting shadows over eyes as dark and deep as the night.
He could feel Lin Mengzhi sneaking glances at him ever since they’d gotten on.
“Mengzhi, are you scared?” Wu Heng asked softly.
Lin Mengzhi jolted. “Scared of what?”
“Me.” Wu Heng paused his calculations to glance at him, then returned to his notes.
Lin Mengzhi laughed like he’d just heard the funniest joke. “Scared of you? Me? Scared of you? Come on.”
He’d been the one protecting Wu Heng since they were kids!
“How much money do you have left?” Wu Heng frowned. “We still have a lot to buy.”
Lin Mengzhi did a quick count on his fingers, then plopped down beside Wu Heng. Pulling out his phone, he opened the calculator app.
“I’ve got just under 50,000 yuan in Yu’e Bao, and 3,678.20 in my WeChat wallet. But I still owe 2,216 on Huabei.”
Wu Heng calmly added all of Lin Mengzhi’s savings to his running total.
“Don’t worry about paying off Huabei.”
“What if the apocalypse doesn’t happen? What if it screws up my credit? I still want to get married someday, you know,” Lin Mengzhi muttered, rubbing his hands nervously.
Wu Heng subtracted the 2,216.
“So once you pay that off, the rest can go toward supplies?”
Lin Mengzhi hesitated, anxiety bubbling beneath the surface. Then, those two photos on Wu Heng’s phone flashed through his mind. He ran a hand through his recently dyed purple hair and said, with a tone of reckless commitment, “Whatever’s left—use it however you want.”
“Mengzhi, thank you for trusting me,” Wu Heng said quietly.
“Come on,” Lin Mengzhi waved him off. “How long have we known each other? We’re brothers. If I don’t trust you, who the hell would I trust?”
Wu Heng gave him a small smile, and some of the shadow in his eyes lifted.
They lived in the same building of an old apartment complex—Wu Heng on the second floor, Lin Mengzhi on the first.
The neighborhood was aging, the buildings low and worn down. No elevators, and most of the shared facilities were in various states of disrepair. As the small truck rolled in, its roof nearly snagged on a drooping power line.
It came to a stop just outside Lin Mengzhi’s courtyard. His grandma happened to be sitting out front, shelling peanuts. Wu Heng jumped out of the back of the truck and greeted her.
“A’Heng, back from school already?”
Grandma Lin was blind. She peered in the general direction of his voice, then held out a handful of peanuts in the opposite direction.
“Here, A’Heng—have some peanuts.”
Wu Heng turned to look at Lin Mengzhi.
“Granny!” Lin Mengzhi called as he pushed open the gate to the yard.
Wu Heng turned to the delivery man and said, “Just drop everything in the yard.”
Granny Lin heard a rough male voice grunt in response, followed by the heavy thump-thump-thump of dozens of bags hitting the ground. Her expression turned anxious.
“What on earth did you boys buy?”
Wu Heng, never much for talking, quietly started hauling the supplies into the house, leaving Lin Mengzhi behind to do the explaining.
Popping a few peanuts into his mouth, Lin Mengzhi thought for a second before saying, “The supermarket was running a big sale. A’Heng and I saw a bunch of half-off deals, so we stocked up. Gotta save where you can.”
Granny Lin reached around until she found her cane, gave it a swing across the ground, and tapped something not far off—a mound of something heavy. She cautiously stepped forward, bent down, and ran her fingers over it.
“Potatoes?”
She shifted slightly and touched another spot. “Still potatoes?”
And another. “Even more potatoes?”
She might’ve been blind, but age had sharpened her instincts. After a bit of feeling around, she had a clear idea of what was going on. She raised her cane and waved it in Lin Mengzhi’s direction.
“You two bought hundreds of pounds of potatoes! How long do you think you’re going to eat just that?”
“Potatoes keep,” Lin Mengzhi said, dodging out of cane-range. “Old lady, all you gotta do is eat. Why are you so worried about the rest?”
Just then, Wu Heng came back outside and caught the tail end of that.
“Mengzhi, don’t talk to Grandma like that,” he reminded him.
“Alright, alright, I won’t,” Mengzhi said quickly. “I’ll help you carry the rest in.”
Granny Lin couldn’t help with the heavy lifting, but she shuffled around the yard, slowly but surely feeling her way through the mountain of supplies. In addition to the hundreds of pounds of potatoes, she also discovered massive bags of cabbage and carrots. There were only two people living in her house—just her and Lin Mengzhi. Even if you added Wu Heng’s entire family of four, that was only six mouths to feed. How long would it take for six people to get through all of this?
“Aiyo~ heavens above~ what a waste! Two good-for-nothing spendthrifts!”
It took the two boys over half an hour to get everything sorted and stacked neatly in the kitchen and one corner of the living room. Wu Heng poured two large glasses of water, one for each of them. They gulped it down in silence. Lin Mengzhi stopped halfway through his, while Wu Heng drained his glass and still felt parched—he went back and poured himself another full one.
As Lin Mengzhi came out of the room holding a drawer full of spare change they usually didn’t touch, Wu Heng was still chugging water.
“What are you, a human water tank?” Lin Mengzhi complained, plopping down on the couch to count the money.
Wu Heng didn’t stop drinking until he felt his stomach bloated and tight. He licked the water from the corner of his lips.
“How much do you have there?”
“Let me count.”
Lin Mengzhi started with the paper bills, then moved on to the coins.
“Over 800.”
Just as he finished, he suddenly froze. He looked toward the bedroom where his grandmother slept.
“I think my grandma’s passbook still has… tens of thousands in it?”
Wu Heng shifted half a step to block his line of sight.
“We can’t touch that money.”
“Alright, alright,” Lin Mengzhi muttered. “Anyone listening would think you’re her real grandson.”
He stuffed all the cash into Wu Heng’s backpack but paused halfway through, then pulled it all back out.
“I’ll give it to you tomorrow when we go out shopping—just in case your dad finds out and starts grilling you about where it came from. We don’t want you getting another beating by accident.”
Wu Heng gave a soft “mm” in response. “Give me the bag. I’m heading back.”
Lin Mengzhi zipped up the backpack and tossed it over to him.
The moment Wu Heng caught it, he caught a faint whiff of that same scent he’d noticed back at school—the one he still couldn’t quite place.
A few steps up the stairs, and Wu Heng was back home. He slipped off his shoes at the door, picked up a cushion from the floor, and tossed it back onto the sofa with practiced ease. After gathering up scattered plush toys and setting an overturned vase and chair upright, he made his way into his room.
Inside, his little sister Wu Zhi was sprawled out on his bed, limbs everywhere, playing with her Barbie dolls.
“Get up,” Wu Heng said flatly, tossing his backpack onto the desk.
“Nooo, big brother~ I like being in your room,” Wu Zhi giggled, hugging her Barbie as she rolled back and forth across the bed. After a few spins, she settled down and kept playing, ignoring him.
Wu Heng slowly started tidying up the messy desk, stacking the disordered books back into place. His fingers brushed against a half-finished cup of milk that Wu Zhi had left behind. Without hesitation, he picked it up.
He walked over to the bed in silence. Then, without warning, he tipped the entire cup of milk over Wu Zhi’s face.
Choking and spluttering, Wu Zhi scrambled upright. “B-big brother…”
Wu Heng calmly placed the empty glass back on the desk.
“Clean up the bed.”
“O-okay! Right away, big brother!” Wu Zhi wiped her face with the edge of her Barbie’s dress, then jumped off the bed and ran out of the room. In no time, she was back, arms full of a clean bedsheet set.
She gave Wu Heng a nervous smile. “I’ll change it, I’ll change it.”
“…But it’s kind of hard to do by myself,” she muttered, struggling to line up the corners. She tugged at the fitted sheet, trying to smooth it out, then stared at the duvet cover as if it were a puzzle with no solution.
Wu Heng leaned against the desk, arms crossed, watching her without emotion. He didn’t say a word, but his gaze alone made Wu Zhi break into a sweat. The more he stared, the more flustered she became, fumbling through the task.
“Do you have any money?” Wu Heng suddenly asked.
Wu Zhi jumped in surprise. “Y-yeah, a little.”
“Give it to me.”
She gratefully abandoned the struggle with the bedding and bolted to her room. A moment later, she came back carrying a giant piggy bank. At nearly fourteen, Wu Zhi stood about 1.68 meters tall, and the piggy bank reached her knees. She set it down carefully by Wu Heng’s feet.
“Big brother, it’s all yours.”
Wu Heng walked over and quietly shut the door, then smashed open the piggy bank.
He squatted down and began counting the bills one by one. At first, he moved slowly, his eyes carrying a faint hint of mockery. But as he got further in, he began stacking the notes by denomination into neat piles, his long fingers flipping through them with swift, practiced ease.
He was just a few hundred yuan short of one hundred thousand.
“Big brother?” Wu Zhi crept closer when she noticed her brother staring silently at the money. “Is it not enough? I still have a few red envelopes I didn’t put in.”
Wu Heng finally moved when he heard that. “Mm. Not enough. Go get the red envelopes too.”
The girl jumped up from the floor immediately, treating his words like a royal decree.
When she came back with a handful of heavy red envelopes, Wu Heng actually gave her a rare smile—just the barest tug at the corner of his mouth.
“Big brother, did I do well?” Seeing her brother smile at her for once, Wu Zhi was so thrilled she nearly took off into the air. If she could, she’d have twirled three hundred times around him on the spot.
Wu Heng gave her head a perfunctory pat. “You did well. But don’t tell Mom and Dad.”
“Okay! Big brother, I love you!” Wu Zhi chirped excitedly.
‘Idiot,’ Wu Heng thought as he pocketed all her money without a trace of emotion.
…
After kicking Wu Zhi out of the room, Wu Heng sat down at his desk and tallied up all the money he had. With Lin Mengzhi and Wu Zhi’s contributions, he now had enough to buy significantly more supplies.
Once he’d packed up the cash and broken piggy bank, Wu Heng opened his computer. It was an old machine, handed down from Wu Zhi two years ago. But Wu Zhi had always been hopeless with tech—never quite figured out how to use it—so to him, it still felt practically new.
He logged onto the country’s most popular forum and navigated to a weather analysis post he had bookmarked a while ago.
The original post was simply a well-meaning heads-up: the rainy season might be coming to an end. But deep in the comments, a level-17 veteran user had posted something more ominous:
“Yes, the rainy season should be ending soon—but what comes next may be far worse than we can handle.”
The replies beneath were filled with insults.
Wu Heng, however, clicked into the user’s profile and opened a private message window.
“Hello. Half a month ago you said something worse than the rainy season was coming. What exactly did you mean?”
He didn’t expect a response, let alone an instant one.
“What, you think I’m a fortune-teller?”
It had a bite to it.
Wu Heng quickly typed back:
“No.”
“Sorry.”
“Forget I asked.”
The user, whose handle was Xiao Xie Doesn’t Eat Cilantro, replied almost immediately:
“Trying to provoke me?”
The cold glow of the monitor cast a ghostly pallor on Wu Heng’s face, making him look even more lifeless than usual. His expression was flat, eyes dark. He dragged his mouse cursor toward the user’s profile picture, ready to block him.
But just as he hovered over it, a new message popped up in the chat window:
“Video call. Accept.”
Wu Heng didn’t even have time to react before a video request came through. He hated video calls—and voice chats, too—so he declined without hesitation.
Xiao Xie Doesn’t Eat Cilantro: “I’m a face person. Just want to make sure you’re not some crusty dude scratching his feet.”
Wu Heng: “I’m not.”
Xiao Xie: “Prove it.”
Wu Heng frowned.
“And if I am some crusty dude?” he asked.
“Then I’ll leave you on read. Message again and you’re blocked.”
Wu Heng lowered his eyes and thought for a moment. Then, with a resigned sigh, he moved the mouse and sent a video request of his own.
The video connected, and two faces of similar age appeared—one close to the camera, the other farther back. His class monitor, Xie Chongyi, was dressed casually at home, relaxed and carefree, a complete contrast to the cold, distant demeanor he wore at school.
Across the screen, Wu Heng felt quite shaken. After a moment of silence, he uncertainly said, “Xiao Xie? The one who doesn’t eat cilantro?”
Xie Chongyi paused for half a second, then smiled as usual.
As if to make sure he wasn’t imagining things, Xie Chongyi shifted from leaning back in his chair to propping his chin on his hand, a teasing smile playing at his lips as he studied Wu Heng’s strangely captivating face on the screen.
Wu Heng’s palms grew sweaty under Xie Chongyi’s intense gaze, and his heart pounded fiercely.
At school, Xie Chongyi often gave half-smirks to troublemakers, but this look now was different—there was no annoyance, only a keen, amused curiosity.
Nervous, Wu Heng involuntarily let go of the mouse and touched his overheated ear.
Following the line of his wrist down to his slender, pale neck, which looked fragile and vulnerable against the dim background.
Seeing this, Xie Chongyi seemed to lose interest in teasing the earnest boy. He relaxed his gaze and said, “You don’t look bad Let’s switch to somewhere else to talk. Do you have my WeChat?”
