Chapter 3 High Fever

She knew that was a gunshot. She and her sister were both members of the Qingyang Shooting Club, and the two sisters often went there to play.

Looking at her sister, who remained in a coma due to a persistent high fever, Su Yanyue suddenly accepted her fate.

She knew what those men wanted, and she had no food.

In this room, the only things of value were her and her sister's bodies.

In her despair, she even hallucinated hearing Zhou Yan's call.

Soon, she realized that it didn't seem like a hallucination.

Su Yanyue hesitated for a long time before gathering the courage to secretly open the bedroom door.

The security door was on the verge of being pried open. Looking at the gap in the door, Su Yanyue felt infinite sorrow. How could the world have become like this?

Hearing that the hallway was quiet, Su Yanyue secretly pressed against the door and looked out.

"!" Su Yanyue clenched her small fists tightly to keep from crying out. She didn't even feel it when her nails dug into her flesh.

A corpse lay in the hallway. It was one of the men who had come to knock on the door earlier; Su Yanyue had seen him through the peephole.

Su Yanyue let out a long sigh of relief as she saw this, feeling a bit more relaxed.

At least, the person who was shot wasn't Zhou Yan.

Soon, Su Yanyue panicked again.

Who fired that shot? And who killed whom?

At that moment, Zhou Yan had just dragged the corpse from the fire door back, clutching its ankles and dragging it to the window.

He casually tucked his pistol into the back of his waistband and laboriously threw the body out the window.

There is a saying that goes, "Dead weight is heavy."

A corpse is heavy because the body is in a completely relaxed state, with all its joints exerting no effort.

Friends who kill often know that a corpse with severe rigor mortis is actually easier to move.

Su Yanyue lay on the floor, hiding away from the hole in the door, avoiding Zhou Yan's gaze as he walked past.

So, it was Zhou Yan who had fired the shot and killed someone?

Su Yanyue's face was pale. The indifferent and relaxed expression on Zhou Yan's face as he disposed of the body seemed to be etched into her heart.

Why did he have a gun? And how could he be so composed while disposing of a body?

"So... is this what you meant when you said we were not people from the same world?"

Su Yanyue muttered to herself. She seemed to understand a little why Zhou Yan had rejected her back then.

Returning to the bedroom, Su Yanyue looked at her sister, who was still burning with a high fever, and fell into a dilemma.

She wanted to go find Zhou Yan to borrow some medicine, but calling it borrowing was really just taking.

After all, no one could say when these days would end.

Last week, Su Yanyue had tried to find some women living alone to trade for medicine.

In the hallway, she ran into Mrs. Li, who used to always dress up carefully and attend the yoga classes at her studio regularly.

She had entered Fifth Uncle's room.

Fifth Uncle was a major piece of scum in this residential complex—a fifty-year-old bachelor with no children who had only been allocated an apartment here thanks to demolition compensation. His mouth full of yellow teeth made people lose their appetite just by looking at him.

He loved to whistle at other women in the complex and hadn't learned his lesson even after being beaten up a few times.

Su Yanyue covered her mouth, hiding by the fire door.

For a long, long time...

Mrs. Li finally came out of Fifth Uncle's house, clutching those few packs of biscuits. Her eyes were empty and numb, as if her soul had been sucked away.

She ran all the way to the window and kept retching. Even though she hadn't eaten anything for a long time and couldn't vomit anything up, she just kept retching.

She hadn't touched a single piece of the biscuits. Su Yanyue knew that Mrs. Li had a teenage daughter. That girl smiled sweetly and was very polite. When her mother was doing yoga, she would secretly learn on the side. Su Yanyue would just smile at her, and whenever she met the girl in the elevator on weekdays, she would tease her.

She often made the little girl blush.

At this moment, Mrs. Li's desperate and numb face seemed to appear right before her eyes.

"Is this the only path left?"

A voice inside Su Yanyue's heart kept questioning her.

The girl who used to wear a clean, floral dress, standing in the sunshine and shouting to her sister, "I'm going to open a shop, sister! From now on, I'll support you!"

Compared to her right now—gaunt, helpless in the face of her sister's illness, and planning to sell her body—they were like two completely different people.

If that person weren't Zhou Yan, she would have chosen to hug her sister and commit suicide.

But it just happened to be Zhou Yan!

He had given her many feelings and expectations that she shouldn't have.

She was very conflicted now. On one hand, she still hoped for Zhou Yan's affection and didn't want him to know she was this kind of person.

On the other hand, if that person were Zhou Yan, it seemed she wouldn't be at a disadvantage.

She even felt a bit embarrassed, like she was "getting the best of both worlds".

"Water... Yue'er... I'm so thirsty..."

On the bed, her sister Su Yanqiu reached out for water in a daze. Su Yanyue climbed onto the bed and carefully picked up the mineral water, feeding her sister a few sips.

The rainwater outside was toxic and couldn't be drunk.

A week after the rainstorm, someone drank the rainwater and turned into a monster. That time, the screams in this building echoed for a long, long time.

This little bit of water was "distilled" using a simple evaporation device she made with a few mineral water bottles. Because there was no electricity or fire, she could only rely on natural evaporation.

It took days to save up even this little bit.

Looking at the little water left in the bottle, the despair in Su Yanyue's heart continued to spread.

She simply fed it all to her sister.

After drinking the water, Su Yanqiu became much clearer-headed, and the hand gripping her sister's tightened slightly.

The sisters huddled together, and the younger sister recounted the scenes she had seen in the hallway.

Su Yanqiu struggled to say something, but as her lips opened and closed, she fell into a coma before she could say a single word.

With the high fever persisting and no water in the house... Su Yanyue didn't dare to use blankets to "sweat it out" for her sister. In this situation, with no medicine and no water, her sister was just waiting to die!

Su Yanyue fell silent. Looking at her unconscious sister, she made up her mind!

"You've taken care of me for ten years; now it's my turn to take care of you..."

Their parents died early, and the two sisters had depended on each other since they were eighteen. Her sister had always taken care of her with all her heart, even dropping out of school to work to earn the opportunity for her to go to university!

Silently, she changed into cleaner clothes.

She put on light makeup in front of the bedroom mirror.

She and Zhou Yan already had a certain "emotional foundation"; surely, he would agree, right?

She wiped her face clean with a wet wipe, then pressed the wipe against her lips to clear away the dead skin.

Only then did she get up and carefully look out through the hole.

"This home is no longer safe..." Su Yanyue looked at the damaged security door, feeling a heavy heart.

In this doomsday atmosphere, how could two girls survive?

After the rainstorm, ever since those monsters appeared in the building, Su Yanqiu and Su Yanyue hadn't dared to step out of the door even once!

The bodies being thrown down from the upper floors from time to time only made them more terrified.

Beauty and weakness would only invite disaster, not pity, in this world!

Su Yanyue's fingers rested lightly on the cold doorknob.

Taking a long breath, Su Yanyue opened her door, never expecting that Zhou Yan across the hall would also happen to open his door at that very moment...

Zhou Yan, holding a knife: "..."

Su Yanyue, who had just opened the door: "..."