Chapter 5: A Good Attitude
“Accident… accidental fire?” Zheng Yikai’s face turned somewhat pale.
“It’s possible.” Chi Xiaoxian recovered his composure. “The reporter didn’t show any symptoms of infection.”
“That’s pretty terrifying. Good thing I usually watch horror movies.”
Fang Yue didn’t speak, appearing lost in thought.
“When are they going to send people to rescue us?” Zheng Yikai complained offhandedly. “The school barely has any protective measures—just those few security guards, and who knows where they’ve run off to now. Shouldn’t students be the top priority for protection? We are the future of the Highlands!”
“The problem right now, however—” Fang Yue suddenly spoke up, “—is that the military itself might be infected.”
His words sent a wave of shock through everyone present.
“Th-That’s impossible!” Zheng Yikai denied it immediately. “Didn’t you see the soldiers lining the front of the Twin Towers in the news?”
“The infected inside the Administrative Center were wiped out. The military should be arriving at the school very soon, right? Today? Tomorrow? Maybe any minute now… My relative said the Highland Security Department is made up of elites, chosen one in tens of thousands. Taking down a few zombies is nothing to them.”
He spoke like a rapid-fire machine gun, his voice rising slightly—looking like he was trying to convince the others, but sounding more like he was trying to convince himself.
Fang Yue pulled out his phone, switched to Rome’s news channel, and located the recording of the earlier livestream. “Watch it again.”
“Is there something wrong with it?” Chi Xiaoxian asked him.
“Yeah.”
The video, less than twenty seconds long, was dragged back and replayed repeatedly. It was difficult to skip past the final gory scene. By the fourth playback, Chi Xiaoxian could even clearly see the mangled, raw flesh flaring outward at the edges of the wound. Unable to stomach it any longer, he bolted upright and rushed to the restroom.
Bending over the sink, he began dry-heaving. After a couple of retches, he threw up his entire breakfast into the basin.
Great. Breakfast wasted.
“Are you alright?” Zheng Yikai walked in.
Chi Xiaoxian shook his head. After throwing up, his stomach felt much better.
Just then, a hand rested on his back. Caught off guard, Chi Xiaoxian looked up to see Zheng Yikai’s concerned face in the mirror.
As the hand gently stroked his back, Chi Xiaoxian instinctively stiffened. Within seconds, goosebumps rose along his arms.
“Just helping you catch your breath,” Zheng Yikai explained. He suddenly switched from stroking to patting, giving him two firm thuds on the back in a display of good brotherhood.
When Chi Xiaoxian finished rinsing his mouth and stepped out, Fang Yue happened to turn his head to look at him.
“Found it.” A semi-transparent pause button was displayed on Fang Yue’s phone screen. Chi Xiaoxian and Zheng Yikai stepped forward to look.
“Looks normal to me?” Zheng Yikai asked, puzzled. “Isn’t this still the Twin Towers?”
Chi Xiaoxian didn’t notice anything at first either, until he realized the unique position where Fang Yue had paused the video: the camera tilted upward, capturing the brilliant glass windows of the Twin Towers gleaming in the sunlight, even reflecting the shapes of clouds.
“The time,” Fang Yue reminded them.
“It’s the sunlight,” Chi Xiaoxian said. “The Twin Towers are pentagonal, and this wall happens to be the glass on its northwest face. Having direct sunlight means it’s at least afternoon.”
“It’s only eight in the morning right now.” Fang Yue nodded. “Which means the footage aired was recorded yesterday at the earliest.”
“Isn’t this supposed to be a live broadcast?” Zheng Yikai asked in confusion. “Why would they play old footage?”
“Generally speaking, video footage of troops standing in full battle array can reassure the public and stabilize emotions. Since it was pre-recorded, it shows that the infection inside the Twin Towers was once brought under control by the military. But now, the situation may have deteriorated again, making a live broadcast impossible—so they had no choice but to play yesterday’s footage.”
Fang Yue paused for a moment. “However, if the goal was to reassure the public, the final scene where the reporter was accidentally struck by a military weapon shouldn’t have occurred. That only makes people question the military’s competence, sparking even greater chaos and panic.”
“To present a positive front to cover up the truth, yet revealing a negative outcome at the very last second—that is the contradiction.” Fang Yue paused. “Any thoughts?”
“Damn, why’d things get so complicated?” Zheng Yikai muttered.
A flash of insight crossed Chi Xiaoxian’s mind.
“If, as you hypothesized, they pre-recorded the video,” Chi Xiaoxian looked toward Fang Yue, “then there are two possibilities. One is an error—that final accident was mistakenly uploaded. But this hypothesis is less likely; after all, news on Rome is broadcast to the entire Highlands and undergoes strict review.”
Fang Yue nodded slightly, signaling him to continue.
“The second guess is a bit more of a ‘conspiracy theory.’ Someone deliberately uploaded that segment—possibly even the censor themselves—specifically to sabotage the military’s effort to reassure the public.”
Fang Yue pondered for a moment before saying, “Interesting.”
“Someone wants to cover up the facts, but someone else wants to expose something, wrapping the truth inside a lie.” Fang Yue tapped his finger against the desk. “Either way, a safe dawn won’t arrive anytime soon. We’ll have to rely on ourselves.”
Zheng Yikai slouched back onto the sofa with a sigh and tossed his phone aside. “I can’t get through to that relative of mine. If I knew it’d turn out like this, I would’ve asked yesterday.”
The atmosphere turned somewhat heavy for a moment.
“There’s another thing worth noting,” Fang Yue suddenly spoke up again. “Yesterday’s campus riots occurred around five in the afternoon, while the angle of the sun in the video shows it was roughly three o’clock. That indicates the campus zombie riot happened after the Twin Towers incident. Yet yesterday, there was virtually no news coverage about the riots.”
“Right, I specifically checked the news yesterday too,” Chi Xiaoxian said.
“If you ask me, the news media’s mouths haven’t belonged to them for a long time,” Zheng Yikai snorted coldly. “Especially after the United Highlands were established. To prevent racial conflicts among people from different countries within the Highlands, the news always glosses over major issues and skirts around minor ones, never daring to broadcast anything that might rattle people’s nerves—scared out of their minds. Rome used to have a forum section, but they took that down too.”
“There are pros and cons. Although some freedom was sacrificed, the Highlands are, after all, a post-disaster refuge that humanity strove tirelessly to build at all costs. It cannot be destroyed by internal strife among humans,” Fang Yue evaluated objectively.
He explained further, “In the first year after the Southern Highlands were established, someone organized the first rebel army through Rome’s forum to boycott the unified structure of the Highlands, attempting to restore the original nations and nationalities. Though the personnel were a makeshift group, many were elites, some even holding positions in government departments. The Twin Towers were nearly bombed that year; fortunately, personnel from the Security Department disarmed the bomb in time.”
“That’s basic history knowledge; you don’t need to recite it for me here.” Zheng Yikai inexplicably grew annoyed, his voice carrying a spark of irritation.
Fang Yue gave him a cool, brief glance and stopped talking, showing no sign of anger whatsoever.
He was accustomed to stating his viewpoints, but he didn’t care about others’ attitudes toward him.
“Hey, where’s the owner?” Chi Xiaoxian said suddenly. The owner’s phone was resting on the desk playing the video, but the man was nowhere to be seen.
Just as he spoke, Old Chen appeared.
Dragging a bamboo folding lounge chair he had unearthed from somewhere, he said to Fang Yue, “You can make do with sleeping on this tonight. Though it’s an antique, it’ll manage. If it doesn’t work out, you can squeeze into my bed tonight.”
“This will do.” Fang Yue looked at it, not being picky at all.
The lounge chair was indeed an antique; when unfolded, it produced creaking noises as if it were groaning. Fang Yue pressed down on it with his hands and found the joints somewhat loose, so he asked Old Chen for a toolbox.
Curious, Chi Xiaoxian leaned in to act as his assistant.
Adjusting the position of a nut, Fang Yue turned to Chi Xiaoxian and said, “Hand me a screwdriver.”
Chi Xiaoxian rummaged around for a moment and passed one over. “Here.”
“Not this one.”
“How about this one?”
“Not this one either.” Fang Yue raised an eyebrow. “Are you picking them out at random for me?”
“They all look pretty much the same…”
Chi Xiaoxian had virtually never repaired anything with his own hands growing up. Whenever something broke at home in the past, his grandmother would directly take it to a hardware shop near their house to get fixed.
An old woman and a young guy—one with failing eyesight, the other with completely clumsy hands.
Rummaging through the cluttered toolbox, Fang Yue found a flathead screwdriver and showed it to Chi Xiaoxian. “This is the one.”
“Why is it called a screwdriver in Chinese, though?” Chi Xiaoxian asked in genuine earnestness. “It looks nothing like a knife. You can’t slice or cut with it. It should be called a screw rod, or a screw stick.”
“…”
For a moment, Fang Yue couldn’t think of how to refute him.
Chi Xiaoxian smiled. “Don’t worry, next time you ask me to grab it, I’ll get the right one.”
After repairing the lounge chair, Fang Yue found a rag and wiped the bamboo chair until it gleamed as good as new, looking as though it had just been polished.
He went to wash his hands and returned to ask Old Chen how much food was left.
Old Chen went to take inventory and said, “Half a box of instant noodles, a small bag of rice, two bags of dried vegetables, plus some eggs and frozen potatoes.”
“We need to establish a consumption plan, control the rationing, and stretch our supply period as long as possible,” Fang Yue said.
Swish, swish—he swiftly listed the total amounts on paper, estimated a five-day timeline, and drew a table outlining the rationing for three meals a day.
Zheng Yikai took a look and immediately scowled. “This is way too little.”
Fang Yue didn’t bother arguing with him. “Then we’ll reduce the timeframe to four days. Preserving physical energy is also important, and I don’t eat much.”
“What do we do after four days, then?” Chi Xiaoxian couldn’t help asking.
Fang Yue fell silent for a short while before replying calmly, “We might not necessarily be able to stay here for four full days. The situation may change, so we’ll adjust as we go.”
Alright then—since the big boss has spoken, the salted fish can lie back down.
With Fang Yue around, Chi Xiaoxian felt oddly reassured. Although this guy wasn’t very easy to get close to, he felt incredibly reliable.
“Can I sit on your lounge chair for a bit?”
Chi Xiaoxian pointed at Fang Yue’s “bed.” Fang Yue was currently sitting in front of the printing desk, typing away furiously on his laptop.
“Suit yourself.”
Chi Xiaoxian lay down on it and plugged the charging cable into the antique phone. Although the phone could connect to the network, its memory was tiny. After scrolling through Rome for a bit, Chi Xiaoxian found it lagging horribly, so he had no choice but to tap into the phone’s built-in Snake game.
A classic game truly lived up to its name. The simple, plain pixel art seemed completely unimpressive at first, but ten minutes later, Chi Xiaoxian was hopelessly hooked, his eyes glued to the screen.
The snake’s tail grew longer and longer. He tapped the screen, cleverly steering clear of his own body. He finally managed to eat a piece of fruit, only to turn around and crash unexpectedly into the tip of his own tail emerging from the other side of the screen.
“Holy shit!” He couldn’t help uttering out loud.
Busy at work, Fang Yue raised his head to look at him.
“My bad,” Chi Xiaoxian said awkwardly. “I was playing a game just now…”
Having said that, he quietly lowered his crossed, swinging leg and slowly sat up from the lounge chair.
Fang Yue continued typing, then suddenly said, “I’ve noticed you have a strong suit.”
“Huh?” Chi Xiaoxian froze for a second. “What is it?”
“You have a very good attitude.”
Chi Xiaoxian wasn’t sure for a moment whether the other guy was praising him or dissing him. Although Fang Yue liked to mix praise with criticism when he spoke, his voice was cool and calm, making everything he said sound completely deadpan.
“So—” Chi Xiaoxian said hesitantly, “—that’s a good thing?”
“Under a crisis, it’s a good thing for the strong, and a bad thing for the weak.”
Alright, got it now—he’s calling me weak in a roundabout way.
Yet Chi Xiaoxian remained completely unfazed. There was no way a salted fish would crawl up and flip itself over just because someone called it weak.
Hilarious. Couldn’t flip over even if he tried.
