Chapter 29: A Difficult Choice Part 1

The next morning, everyone got up early and headed to the rooftop again.

The two little girls had gotten to know Tong Xiangyu the day before, so the moment they saw her, they eagerly pulled her into their morning exercises. They told her she needed to work out more if she wanted to stay healthy.

Song Ge glanced at the monsters wandering sluggishly through the streets, aimless without a “target,” then at Tong Xiangyu happily playing with the children. A trace of hesitation crept back in. Maybe an adventure wasn’t right for this young lady. Perhaps she should stay here and wait for rescue.

That thought reached its peak after Fan Mingyuan failed to get anywhere with her.

Song Ge noticed that Fan Mingyuan greeted Tong Xiangyu warmly, but showed no surprise at seeing her. Clearly, the chubby boy had already told him she’d be coming to the rooftop to eat with everyone.

Fan Mingyuan was good at putting on an act. He seemed completely unbothered by the fact that he’d spent the previous day “confessing his love to thin air.”

But when he tried to strike up a “conversation” with Tong Xiangyu, things changed.

Everyone had seen how Tong Xiangyu had rebuffed Fan Mingyuan over the past couple of days. This time, Song Ge wasn’t the only one at her side. There was Zhu Lulu, several girls from No. 2 High School, two little girls under ten, the Jiangs, Liu Qian—and, for good measure, Wu Senjun.

Everyone was on Tong Xiangyu’s side.

Fan Mingyuan, despite having joined the group earlier, had become the one who was “isolated.”

Looking at it that way, even if Tong Xiangyu stayed, Fan Mingyuan wouldn’t get what he wanted. The bespectacled guy wouldn’t have much luck either. Liu Qian might have been the other woman, but she wasn’t meek; if anything, she was rather forceful. She could keep him in line.

So that evening, Song Ge asked Tong Xiangyu whether she still wanted to leave. They had food, drink, clothes, and a place to stay here. There were doctors and medicine if anyone got sick, and plenty of friends besides.

Tong Xiangyu answered without a moment’s hesitation. “Of course I do!”

“Why?”

“Because you’re leaving. I want to go with you. And I’m counting on you to help me find my parents.”

“You could wait here for rescue. Once the rescue teams arrive, they’ll find a way to deal with the monsters and the virus. Society will get back to normal, the power and internet will come back, and you’ll be able to find your parents soon enough.”

“But where are the rescue teams?” Tong Xiangyu said. “We already talked about this. The virus probably has an incubation period. Something this terrible is unlikely to be happening only in Kecheng.”

“That’s just a guess.”

Tong Xiangyu looked at her seriously. “But it’s the most likely explanation, isn’t it? If the problem were only here, help would’ve poured in from all over the country. Rescue teams would’ve arrived ages ago. But it’s been almost a month, and I haven’t even heard a helicopter.”

At the mention of helicopters, Song Ge paused. “Were there a lot of planes that day?”

“What?”

“The day the monsters appeared, I heard a lot of fighter jets flying over our school. Didn’t you?”

“Now that you mention it…” Tong Xiangyu thought back carefully. “I think there were.”

Song Ge’s heart sank.

Tong Xiangyu saw her expression and immediately asked, “What does that mean?”

“It could mean the Monster Virus first broke out here in Kecheng. The Kecheng Municipal Government tried to contain it on its own, then realized the situation was out of control and had to evacuate early, abandoning the residents. Those military jets were probably a signal that the region had been given up and was calling on the central government for help.”

“Then things should still be all right in the other cities, shouldn’t they?”

“No.” Song Ge said, “There’s another possibility: the virus had already spread across the country and was impossible to control. The government was afraid of causing panic and making things worse, so it kept everything quiet until the outbreak was too widespread to hide. Then it cut its losses like a lizard shedding its tail, evacuating important people from each city ahead of everyone else.”

Tong Xiangyu’s eyes widened.

Song Ge looked at her. “The second possibility is more likely.”

A hint of panic crept into Tong Xiangyu’s voice. “Then what do we do? If there’s no rescue in the other cities either, does that mean we’re just going to die here?”

“You have arms and legs. Why wait to die?” Song Ge looked away. “I’ve told you before: don’t rely on other people. The only person who can really save you is yourself.”

She continued, “Besides, so far, the only thing that makes these monsters dangerous is that they attack people. They don’t seem particularly interested in destroying buildings.”

Tong Xiangyu frowned as if facing a formidable enemy. “Isn’t attacking people dangerous enough? If we run into them, our lives are at risk. And they can’t be killed. That’s the worst part.”

“It’s not that they can’t be killed. We just don’t know how yet. They have terrible balance, so we can use that against them.” Song Ge paused. “No matter how scary they are, they’re still just a virus inhabiting flesh and blood. If we destroy the body completely, they should die.”

“How do we destroy the body completely?”

“Burn it, for example.”

Tong Xiangyu let out a soft “Wow” and looked at Song Ge, waiting for her to say more.

But Song Ge didn’t elaborate. Instead, she looked up and asked, “Are you going with me because you think rescue might never come?”

“Of course not. I just want to go with you. You said I got along with everyone here, but all of them together still couldn’t compare to you.”

Song Ge stared at her in silence.

Tong Xiangyu realized what she’d just said could be taken the wrong way. Her ears turned red in an instant, and she hurried to explain, “No, no, that’s not what I meant! I mean, I get along with them now because things aren’t desperate yet. We have plenty of food, and the monsters haven’t attacked us. Once real problems start piling up, these shallow relationships that formed so easily could fall apart just as easily. You’re different. You don’t seem afraid of the monsters at all. You’re calm. You make people feel like you can handle anything.”

Song Ge watched her grow more flustered and redder by the second. “Why are you panicking? You could’ve just said I’m better in a fight than all of them.”

Tong Xiangyu: “…”

Tong Xiangyu had worried that Song Ge would take her words the wrong way and think she had “those kinds” of feelings for her. She hadn’t expected Song Ge to misunderstand her—but in a completely different way.

Tong Xiangyu could only go along with it. “Well, that’s true, too.”

“See? You’re not so dumb after all.”

“What do you mean, not so dumb?” Tong Xiangyu looked at her in disbelief. “Do you think I could’ve ranked first in my year if I were dumb?”

“Do I need to tell you you’re smart?”

“No. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. I wasn’t going to.”

“…”

The conversation seemed about to end there, so Tong Xiangyu rolled over on the big bed to face Song Ge. “Song Ge, before you said all that tonight, I was thinking I might ask Zhu Lulu and the others to come with us, too.”

“Don’t. The electric scooter can’t carry that many people.”

“Besides, you’re enough trouble on your own.”

Tong Xiangyu felt a little put out when Song Ge said she only needed her, but on second thought, she didn’t actually feel insulted. She murmured, “I’m not that much trouble, am I? I even drew you a map.”

Song Ge was silent for a moment. “Aren’t you going to sleep? We have to get up early tomorrow.”

Tong Xiangyu saw that Song Ge refused to give her any credit and pouted. “I want a chicken drumstick!”

“It’s in the bag. Get it yourself.”

“My eyes still haven’t completely healed. I can’t see. Get it for me.”

“And you say you’re not a bother?”

Tong Xiangyu said earnestly, “I’ve already been making things easier for you. I’ve eaten vegetables for days so I wouldn’t get diarrhea and cause trouble. Now I can’t even have a little chicken drumstick to satisfy my craving?”

“…” Song Ge said, “Weren’t you trying to lose weight?”

“But you said girls don’t need to be too thin.”

Song Ge fell silent.

Tong Xiangyu’s voice turned plaintive. “Song Ge…”

With a sigh, Song Ge sat up, muttering under her breath, “Such a handful.”

By the light of the moon and the candle, she fetched her backpack and let the young lady choose whether she wanted chicken drumsticks or duck neck.

Tong Xiangyu looked at the three little packets, then suddenly seemed reluctant to touch them. “Are there only two left?”

“Three.”

“But if I eat one tonight, there’ll only be two.”

Song Ge heard the sadness in her voice and thought that if the monster outbreak hadn’t happened, this young lady would have gotten whatever she wanted, wherever she was. She wouldn’t have had to put up with this. “Once we get out, if things aren’t too dangerous, we can look for more in a store.”

Tong Xiangyu looked up at Song Ge with big, pleading eyes.

Song Ge was speechless. “I know. You’re about to say taking things without permission is stealing.”

“No, no.” Tong Xiangyu smiled, her lovely almond-shaped eyes curving into crescents. “I don’t know why, Song Ge, but suddenly I’m kind of excited. I’m looking forward to it!”

Song Ge poured cold water on her enthusiasm. “You’d better not be.”

Tong Xiangyu: “…”

The moon shone bright in a star-sparse sky.

Up on the rooftop, the two sisters had fallen asleep early after enjoying themselves so much with Tong Xiangyu that day.

Mother Jiang, however, tossed and turned, unable to sleep.

Father Jiang whispered, “Don’t worry so much. What’s going to happen will happen. If we have to, we’ll all go out and look for supplies. There’s a supermarket just downstairs.”

Mother Jiang was weighed down by worry. She sighed again.

Father Jiang reminded her, “Don’t tell everyone about this yet. It’ll only give them one more thing to worry about, and make a perfectly good situation feel tense.”

“Jiang Zhuang, do you really think rescue is coming?”

“Of course it is,” Jiang Zhuang said. “Nothing matters more than human life. Didn’t you see the news? Our country’s rescue efforts are the most reliable in the world.”

“But it’s been so long, and no one’s come.”

“There’s no water, power, or internet, and there are all those monsters. It can’t be easy to get an operation going.”