After Bystander A Bound to JJ Literature City – CH15

Chapter 15 – Is it Contaminated?

The system clearly had some issues.

Yu Zhi, his face impassive, pressed on. [I’m asking you, why do the contaminants think I smell good?]

[Please figure it out yourself! Focus on completing the tasks!] the system replied after a moment of silence.

Yu Zhi considered this, then decided to let it go. He didn’t want to provoke the system into assigning him another hidden task. Besides, the reason for his apparent attractiveness to the contaminants wasn’t a priority right now. Knowing they wanted to devour him was enough.

He turned his attention back to Zhu Boxue’s diary. It was filled with melodramatic nonsense and offered no useful information. He moved on to the coffee table, a cluttered mess of takeout containers, coffee cups, and crumpled bags. He opened a drawer and found two lighters and a pack of cigarettes, which he pocketed.

Suddenly, the familiar rumbling of pipes broke the silence.

“Buzz buzz hiss hiss—”

Yu Zhi whipped around to see Zhuang Ding frozen in the kitchen doorway, his hand still on the doorknob. The rumbling continued, growing louder.

Zhuang Ding’s face paled, his lips trembling.

“It’s okay,” Yu Zhi said calmly. “Keep searching.”

“In-in the pipes…” Zhuang Ding stammered.

“There’s an exit on the first floor,” Yu Zhi reassured him. “The pipes won’t burst for a while.”

His calm tone soothed Zhuang Ding’s frayed nerves. “Okay,” he breathed, turning back to the kitchen.

He paused, noticing Tang Yong’s vacant expression. “Brother Tang, are you alright?” he asked.

Tang Yong scratched his head, snapping out of his daze. “I’m fine,” he mumbled.

Yu Zhi entered the bathroom, where the rumbling was even louder. Being on the second floor, the sounds of movement within the pipes were more distinct—a constant rustling that sounded like countless tiny footsteps. Yu Zhi’s skin crawled. He grabbed a bottle of perfume and hairspray from the sink.

“I found two items,” he announced, exiting the bathroom.

“I found a bottle of medical alcohol and a lighter,” Lu Liming reported.

Yu Zhi nodded and, noticing Zhuang Ding’s empty hands, gave him half of his findings.

“Thank you, Officer Yu,” Zhuang Ding said, embarrassed.

Yu Zhi acknowledged him and glanced at Tang Yong, expecting him to ask for supplies. Instead, Tang Yong just scratched his head and asked, “Can we leave now?”

“Let’s go,” Yu Zhi agreed.

As they passed the twitching body of the cockroach-man, Lu Liming hesitated. “Brother Yu,” he said, “shouldn’t we deal with this contaminant? It doesn’t look completely dead.”

“No time,” Yu Zhi replied, adding regretfully, “Otherwise, we could have dismembered it and taken some parts.”

Zhuang Ding and Tang Yong stared at him, horrified.

Sensing their judgment, Yu Zhi explained, “These contaminants will kill each other. If we encounter others upstairs, we can use it as a distraction.”

Tang Yong shuddered. This Officer Yu is scarier than the contaminants, he thought. Not only does he kill them, he wants to take them apart! He slowed his pace, putting as much distance between himself and Yu Zhi as possible.

As they left room 205, Yu Zhi noticed the sounds from downstairs had changed. A new sound joined the squirming—a faint squeaking, like a door straining under pressure or wood being gnawed.

A sense of dread washed over him. He quickened his pace. Just as they reached the stairwell, a loud crack echoed from below.

“Crack—Bang—”

The management office door had given way.

A flood of white cockroaches poured out, a wave of writhing bodies surging across the hallway. The sheer number of them was overwhelming, their rustling movement sending chills down Yu Zhi’s spine.

His expression hardened. How the fuck are they breeding so fast?

“Quickly, upstairs!” he urged.

As they hurried up to the third floor, they heard a door open on the fourth. Yu Zhi paused, gripping his watermelon knife, and looked up. Two figures emerged from the stairwell.

“What’s that sound?” one asked.

“I don’t know,” the other replied. “Sounds like it’s coming from the first floor.”

The normalcy of the conversation sent a chill down Yu Zhi’s spine. He didn’t believe for a second that any ordinary humans remained in this building.

He crept upwards, his footsteps light. On the fourth floor landing, three cockroach-men stood in the hallway. Their forms varied, but all were grotesque fusions of human and insect. They chatted amongst themselves, but their bulging black eyes remained fixed on the stairwell, as if anticipating his arrival.

As Yu Zhi ascended, their gazes locked onto him. They didn’t react, simply continued their conversation as if he were an ordinary resident.

“Did the glass doors on the first floor break?” one asked.

“Maybe it was a window,” another replied. “Didn’t some kids break one a few days ago? The noise woke me up right away…”

Yu Zhi took a deep breath, signaled to the others to stay close, and continued upwards. Lu Liming followed nervously, while Zhuang Ding trembled so violently he nearly stumbled. Tang Yong, thankfully, seemed to have emptied his stomach, but he scratched at his scalp incessantly.

“Did you hear something?” a cockroach-man on the fourth floor asked.

“Huh? Let me listen,” another replied.

Their voices faded, replaced by the amplified rustling of countless tiny cockroaches.

“Hiss hiss—”

“Hiss hiss hiss—”

The friction and squirming sounded like gurgling water, or the building itself groaning under some unseen pressure. Yu Zhi could vividly imagine the scene below.

They reached the fifth floor. At the end of the hallway, another cockroach-man, its upper body insectoid and its lower half human, carried a pink garbage bag with its antennae.

“What’s that noise?” it muttered. “What’s the manager doing? Why is it getting louder?”

Humans can’t voluntarily block out sounds. As the cockroach-men continuously mentioned the noise, Yu Zhi felt his attention drawn to it, growing louder and more insistent in his ears.

“Hiss hiss hiss hiss—”

He couldn’t help but glance down. The white cockroaches on the first floor had multiplied, forming a roiling river. Many were climbing the stairwell walls, like a creeping infestation slowly engulfing the building.

The combined assault on his senses chipped away at his sanity, his nerves stretched taut. He felt a phantom itch on his scalp, as if a tiny cockroach were crawling there. He scratched at it, but found nothing. The sensation intensified, spreading across his scalp.

The itching grew unbearable. Scratching offered no relief. It felt as if something were trying to burrow out of his brain.

Wait. What am I doing?

He blinked, his awareness returning with a jolt. He looked down. The tiny cockroaches had overrun the first floor. In the blink of an eye…

His head still itched unbearably.

No, I washed my hair yesterday.

He realized with a start that his hand was still scratching at his scalp, uncontrollably. He grabbed a handful of hair and yanked hard. The pain brought a moment of clarity.

He glanced at Lu Liming’s watch. 2:35 PM. He’d been standing there, in a daze, for five minutes.

“You guys—” he began, his voice catching in his throat.

Lu Liming was scratching his head, his eyes unfocused. Zhuang Ding was doing the same.

Tang Yong was the worst. His nose bled, unnoticed, as he clawed at his scalp with frantic intensity. His fingers raked through his hair, drawing blood. With each violent scratch, clumps of hair fell away, and the flesh of his cheeks twitched upwards in a grotesque parody of a smile.

Yu Zhi noticed that Tang Yong’s skull had become triangular.

Like… a cockroach’s head.

Had he been contaminated? But he wasn’t parasitized.

A chilling realization dawned on him. Mental contamination.