Chapter 11: Goodnight
Chi Xiaoxian moved his bedding, water cup, and computer over from his dorm room, temporarily setting up camp in Fang Yue’s room—and earning an affectionate eye-roll from Zhang Wensheng in the process.
“Got a new friend and completely forgot your old one, huh?” Zhang Wensheng remarked.
“No way!” Chi Xiaoxian replied, practically beaming. “I’m just going over to cool off. Why don’t you come along?”
“Pass,” Zhang Wensheng said. “East or west, home is best. Or in this case, my modest little doghouse.”
“Well then, bye-bye,” Chi Xiaoxian said with a flair. “I’m off to sleep in luxury. It’s only for one night, so try not to miss me too much.”
Zhang Wensheng let out a sigh. “Once the kid grows up, there’s no keeping him home.”
Chi Xiaoxian: “…Get lost.”
The air conditioner in Fang Yue’s dorm room was a brand-new model installed just last semester, and its cooling power was top-notch. The moment Chi Xiaoxian stepped inside, he felt instantly refreshed, every pore across his body breathing easy as if he’d been transformed into a mint sprite.
He laid out his mattress, arranged his pillow, and promptly flopped down.
Absolute bliss.
Chi Xiaoxian hugged his blanket and rolled back and forth across the bed before burying his face right into the bedding. He usually washed his duvet cover every four or five days, so it always carried a faint, clean lemon scent from the detergent.
After sleeping on the print shop’s folding bed for two nights in a row, his bones had felt completely twisted. Now, he could finally stretch out and sleep without a single care in the world.
If there were only one hour left until the end of the world, Chi Xiaoxian would without a doubt choose to lie in bed with the AC blasting—preferably with an ice-cold Coke in hand.
He closed his eyes to nap for a bit, but didn’t feel very sleepy. Pulling out the spare phone Zhang Wensheng had lent him, he checked the time: it was only nine o’clock.
Zhang Wensheng was notoriously frugal with himself.
Even after his parents bought him a brand-new phone, he couldn’t bear to use it, insisting on sticking with his old phone whose screen was cracked like a spiderweb. Even though the screen visibly wobbled whenever he pressed down on it, he stubbornly hung on, determined to push it to its absolute last breath.
Chi Xiaoxian used to tease him for being a tough customer, yet this very same guy had willingly handed his brand-new phone over to Chi Xiaoxian.
Chi Xiaoxian played around on the new phone for a while before he couldn’t resist sending him a message: The OS on this phone is silky smooth. Opening Rome doesn’t lag at all.
Of course, Zhang Wensheng replied. My dad works at the factory that makes these phones. It’s running the latest OS.
By the way, do you know where the professors fled to?
Zhang Wensheng sent that out of the blue.
When the university was first built, land in the Highlands was extremely scarce, and the available space in the Core Region was tightly limited. As a result, dormitories were only built for the permanent campus staff. Professors commuted back and forth on shuttle buses, with no on-campus housing provided for them.
When the zombie outbreak struck, normal classes were in session. While students could flee back to their dorms and lock their doors, where could the professors go?
It was indeed a pressing question. But why had Zhang Wensheng suddenly brought it up?
A sudden realization crossed Chi Xiaoxian’s mind, and his heart instantly jumped into his throat.
He rubbed the glass screen of his phone for a moment, finally steeled his heart, and sent Zhang Wensheng a message.
Are you trying to ask about Liu Ling?
The other end fell quiet for a moment before replying with a single word: Yeah.
When I was trapped at the dorm gates by the zombies that day, I saw her, Chi Xiaoxian messaged back, gritting his teeth to lay it out.
She came to the student dorms?!
Though it pained him, Chi Xiaoxian decided to tell him the truth: She was infected. She was among that wave of zombies outside the dorm building.
After sending the message, Zhang Wensheng didn’t reply for a long time.
Are you okay? Chi Xiaoxian asked gently.
Only after a considerable pause did Zhang Wensheng send a message back: To be honest, I guessed as much, but I just didn’t dare confirm it.
Chi Xiaoxian typed out words, deleted them, typed again, and deleted them once more before finally settling on: We’re the lucky few.
I just feel so much regret. I should have told her sooner.
Ever since Zhang Wensheng first laid eyes on Liu Ling in that elective class, he had told Chi Xiaoxian she was his ideal type.
Before every class, he would meticulously fix his hair and put on that expensive wristwatch—the one his father had given him for his coming-of-age ceremony. He had even campaigned to become the class representative just so he could help her set up equipment before class and wipe the podium spotlessly clean…
“Don’t worry, I’m okay,” Zhang Wensheng turned around to comfort Chi Xiaoxian instead. Then he asked, “Do you think… in a way, zombies count as being immortal?”
“At least there’s no illness or aging anymore.”
Chi Xiaoxian turned off the screen and let out a silent sigh. Crawling up from his bed and poking his head out, he noticed that Fang Yue, who had been reading research papers at the desk a moment ago, was no longer there.
Chi Xiaoxian got up to take a shower. By the time he returned to the dorm room, a pile of items had appeared on Fang Yue’s desk, and Fang Yue was sitting there fiddling with a phone.
“Whose is that?” Chi Xiaoxian couldn’t help asking.
“Li Tong’s phone. I made another trip to his room to look for things to analyze.”
The moment Fang Yue turned his head, he saw Chi Xiaoxian drying his damp hair. He was wearing a loose white t-shirt, his freshly washed skin glowing with translucent clarity, his collarbones flushed with a faint pink hue, carrying a warm vapor infused with the lemon scent of body wash. The fragrance was reminiscent of butterflies flitting beneath the sunlight—light, bright, and airy.
Chi Xiaoxian leaned over to reach for the phone, completely unaware that a stray droplet of water from the tips of his hair landed right on the back of Fang Yue’s hand.
That tiny, ice-cold drop caused Fang Yue to daze for a split second.
Chi Xiaoxian swiped at the phone twice. “There’s a passcode.”
“Try his birthday.”
Fang Yue picked up Li Tong’s stack of printed materials. The watermark contained his student ID, which embedded his birthdate.
Chi Xiaoxian tried two combinations of the year and month, successfully unlocking the phone, and tapped into Rome to check his chat logs. At the very top was a group chat labeled “Student Council Family,” followed by a contact labeled “Dad.”
Chi Xiaoxian tapped into the second one and scrolled through the chat history.
The message exchanges between Li Tong and his father were sparse, mostly consisting of call logs lasting around one to two minutes. In the most recent message, his father urged Li Tong to stock up on food, placing heavy emphasis on one detail—Do not leave the school grounds.
After that, it became entirely one-sided. Li Tong had sent messages to his father, but his father never replied again, appearing to have lost contact.
“Do not leave the school?” Chi Xiaoxian said in confusion. “Does he mean it’s even worse outside?”
“Although our school is located in the Core Region, except for a small number of day students and daily commuting faculty, it’s usually relatively self-contained. Entry and exit require card swipes, making it comparatively safer.”
“Still, his father is a high-ranking government official. If he had advance warning, he should have found a way to get him to a safer place. After all, the school doesn’t have police protection.”
“True,” Chi Xiaoxian said. “Plenty of faculty and students have been infected too. The campus isn’t safe either.”
“Unless the government departments fell first, including the Security Department. His father never replied to his messages, which most likely means the outside world is already unable to care for itself.” Fang Yue paused briefly. “Of course, there’s another possibility.”
“I have a theory too,” Chi Xiaoxian interjected.
“Let’s hear it.”
“It’s a pretty bold theory. If I remember correctly, this plot of land for the school was originally allocated to a subordinate unit of the Air Force. Later, somehow, the Ministry of Education managed to secure it.”
A flash of surprise flickered in Fang Yue’s eyes.
“I might mute course group chats, but I never mute the ones for gossiping and weird stories.”
“You really are something…” Fang Yue said helplessly. “Though, your thoughts align with mine. Have you ever been to the lab building?”
“Nope.”
“The elevator in the lab building only shows two underground floors, but I heard from the professors that there were originally six underground floors in total.”
Chi Xiaoxian was surprised. “That many?”
“Supposedly, it used to be a site where the military kept electromagnetic cannons. After the weapons were moved out, some large, classified equipment was inconvenient to transport, so it was sealed in place. Those floors were locked down as well, with no public entrance leading down. There’s some credibility to this story, as many students have reported that data from physical experiments consistently deviates from theoretical values without any clear explanation.”
“We wouldn’t happen to have tunnels or air-raid shelters down there, would we?” Chi Xiaoxian let his imagination run wild. “If we could hide in there, it’d be way safer than staying above ground.”
“It’s not impossible,” Fang Yue said. “However, that information is likely classified, so there’s no way to know for sure right now.”
New messages were still popping up in Li Tong’s Rome account. Chi Xiaoxian tapped into one of the group chats. It contained students from various other departments, and the tone was fairly informal—a typical vent group.
Chi Xiaoxian scrolled for a bit until he spotted a conversation from two days ago.
A student mentioned that after his roommate escaped back to the dorm, he discovered an open wound on himself, asking the group for advice.
Li Tong had replied to him: Open the window right now and push him down. Whatever you do, don’t keep him in the room.
The student mentioned he was on the sixth floor.
Yet Li Tong remained steadfast in his opinion: He’s going to die anyway.
Their exchange ended there, followed by a long block of unrelated chat topics.
Chi Xiaoxian searched meticulously through the subsequent messages, finally spotting that student’s final reply amidst the sea of text—
Pushed him down. I had no other choice.
A chill ran down Chi Xiaoxian’s spine. So the person who fell from Building B had actually been pushed off by someone else, and Li Tong was the instigator.
He shivered, feeling that he might really need a good rest. Far too much had happened over the past two days, completely exceeding the scope of his past life experiences.
Just as Chi Xiaoxian was about to climb onto his bed, he noticed Fang Yue flipping through the Apocalypse Survival Guide that Li Tong had printed.
He pulled the other copy out of his backpack and handed it over to Fang Yue. “I found a copy he printed at the print shop too. The watermark ID is identical.”
“He printed two copies?”
“At first, I thought he uploaded it online for the owner to print, but didn’t pick it up in time, so it got left behind. I do that all the time—print in advance, pick it up the next day to save time.”
Chi Xiaoxian paused, a bit perplexed. “I just didn’t expect him to print two copies—one brought back, and one left at the shop.”
Fang Yue nodded. “It is strange.”
“You should sleep first,” Fang Yue said, seeing Chi Xiaoxian let out two consecutive yawns. “We’ll look into this tomorrow.”
“Alright then, goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
It was the first time Fang Yue had ever heard someone say goodnight to him, and it was also the first time he had ever replied with one.
He switched off the main ceiling light, sitting back down at the desk to continue working on his computer, leaving only a desk lamp on.
Everything settled into silence, broken only by the hum of the air conditioner and the sound of Fang Yue turning pages—the former sounding like wind softly sweeping over blades of grass in an open field, the latter as faint as rustling sand.
Chi Xiaoxian fell asleep in no time.
—
Half an hour later, Fang Yue prepared to turn in as well. Standing up, he turned his head and immediately caught sight of Chi Xiaoxian fast asleep.
The guy looked sweet and docile enough, but his sleeping posture was far from restrained.
Their bed setup featured a bunk bed over a desk. One of Chi Xiaoxian’s slender, fair arms hung right over the guardrail, his hand dangling loosely as if reaching out to play a prank on someone.
Fang Yue turned around, picking up his cup and toothbrush to wash up.
When he finished washing up and returned to the edge of the bed rail, he couldn’t help but knit his brows slightly, standing there to watch for a moment.
In the end, he still reached out, tucking Chi Xiaoxian’s arm back beneath the towel blanket.
Then, with a slight nod of satisfaction, he turned around and headed back to his own bed.
