Chapter 15: Power Outage

“It just looks huge,” Tong Xiangyu explained. “It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing a girl would use.”

Song Ge froze for a moment, then went back to sharpening the knife without missing a beat. “Mm.”

She clearly didn’t want to talk about it.

Tong Xiangyu could tell. But the two of them were stuck in the same room with nothing to do. At least Song Ge had a knife to sharpen. Was Tong Xiangyu supposed to sit there hugging her knees? She’d turn into a vegetable.

So Tong Xiangyu pretended not to notice. “Then whose is it?”

“What’s it to you?”

“It isn’t.” Tong Xiangyu knew Song Ge always sounded blunt, but that was just how she was. She didn’t take it personally. “I’m just trying to chat. Otherwise, it’s so boring.”

“I don’t want to chat.”

“Why not?”

“I’m tired.”

Tong Xiangyu had no answer.

“Fine,” she said. “If you won’t talk to me, I’ll just recite my lessons. ‘The truly brave dare to face a bleak life and look unflinchingly upon blood spilled in torrents!’” She peeked at Song Ge, saw no change in her expression, and continued with feeling. “‘What kind of people are they, who grieve and yet find joy? And yet Heaven often makes its plans for the mediocre: as time passes, it washes away old traces, leaving only a pale stain of blood and a faint trace of sorrow.’”

Tong Xiangyu continued, “‘Amid that pale stain of blood and faint trace of sorrow, people find a brief reprieve, and this half-human world carries on. I don’t know when such a world will come to an end…’”

Then she stopped.

Tong Xiangyu looked at Song Ge. “Song Ge. Aren’t you going to ask why I stopped?”

“Were you not done?”

Tong Xiangyu had no response.

“There’s another line,” she said.

“Oh. I didn’t know.”

Tong Xiangyu didn’t look down on Song Ge for being a poor student. She patiently explained, “The last line is, ‘I don’t know when such a world will come to an end.’ Song Ge, with these monsters around, do you think the world we live in is coming to an end?”

“I don’t know if the world’s coming to an end,” Song Ge said. “But I do know that if the rescue team doesn’t come within half a month, the world will end for us.”

“It won’t.” Tong Xiangyu spoke with easy confidence. “The internet must be going crazy right now. Kecheng is enormous!” Then she suddenly cried, “Wait. Song Ge, what if it’s only our area that’s been overrun? If the monsters have taken over all of Kecheng, what about everyone on the trains and planes? They’d all be doomed. It’d be a disaster on a massive scale.”

“When we left school, didn’t you see what happened to the buses?” Song Ge said. The other forms of transport were probably in the same shape. Unless none of the passengers had been infected, they wouldn’t have escaped either.

And if they were headed for Kecheng, where the entire city had fallen, it wouldn’t be long before they became monsters, too.

“Stop scaring yourself,” Song Ge said. “Finish your lesson and go to sleep.”

“I haven’t finished. There’s still a lot more.”

“Then keep going.”

The next three days passed without incident.

Every day, while Tong Xiangyu slept, Song Ge peeled back the newspaper covering the window to check outside. The situation varied from day to day, but the monsters kept wandering nearby. They showed no sign of leaving.

The summer heat brought swarms of huge, shiny black flies to the severed limbs near the window.

It was disgusting.

Song Ge covered the window again and added the third stroke to the tally in her notebook.

On the fourth day, Tong Xiangyu began training with her.

After working up a sweat, she took another shower. Maybe the first cold shower without getting sick had given her confidence. This time she stayed under the water a little longer—and came down with a fever that night.

Around midnight, Song Ge heard a faint, confused moan from the bed and opened her eyes. She turned on her phone and went to the wall to switch on the light.

The switch clicked, but the basement stayed dark.

Song Ge tried again. Nothing. She went to the bathroom and tried that light, too. It didn’t come on.

A chill settled in her stomach. She hurried to the table and peeled back a corner of the newspaper over the window.

Unlike the other nights, there wasn’t a single light outside. The streetlights were dark, and the neon signs in the shops that usually stayed lit had gone out, too. The city was an unfamiliar sea of darkness.

The power was out.

Tong Xiangyu woke feeling both hot and cold, drenched in sweat. She shifted and winced at her aching back.

“Song Ge…” Her voice came out hoarse and dry. She pushed herself upright and reached for the light switch on the wall.

“Awake?”

Song Ge’s voice came from the corner.

Tong Xiangyu relaxed. She cleared her throat and clicked the switch. “Yeah. Why aren’t the lights on?”

The basement remained dark.

Confused, Tong Xiangyu clicked the switch twice more.

A soft click came from the corner where Song Ge sat. A small flame appeared, then moved to another spot.

Seeing Song Ge light a candle, Tong Xiangyu asked, “Did the power go out?”

“Mm.” Song Ge sounded calm. “No idea when it’ll come back, so we’ll use candles for now. How are you feeling?”

“Heavy. Achy. I’m sweating a lot.”

“You had a fever last night. I don’t have any medicine, so I just put another blanket over you.”

Tong Xiangyu felt the bedding and found the second, heavy blanket. “No wonder. I felt like I couldn’t turn over in my sleep. It was so heavy.”

“You feel heavy because you’re sick.” Song Ge lit two candles and set them on either end of the table, brightening the whole basement. Then she folded the extra blanket, tied it up, and put it back in the cabinet.

“Shouldn’t we air that blanket out before putting it away?”

“Want to take it outside and air it out now?”

Tong Xiangyu felt guilty. “Song Ge, thank you. I’m sorry I keep causing you trouble. You must have taken care of me all night.”

“I didn’t. I just put another blanket over you.”

Tong Xiangyu had nothing to say.

She didn’t want to keep talking about it. “Now that the power’s out, what do we do? Weren’t you going to boil water and cook noodles?”

“We don’t need to for now,” Song Ge said. “We’ll eat biscuits and jerky.”

“Wow. Was that why you stocked up on those? Does the power go out a lot down here?”

“No.”

Song Ge put the blanket away and looked back at the innocent young miss. “This is the first time the power’s gone out in the five years I’ve lived here.”

Tong Xiangyu took a moment to process that. “Could the monsters have caused it?”

“Something probably happened at the power bureau or the electric company. It’s fine. Once the rescue team gets here, fixing things like that will be a priority.”