Chapter 1
A black BMW with sleek, flowing lines pulled up in front of the gates of Warm Sun Home Welfare Institute.
“In the little, little garden, digging and digging and digging.”
“Planting tiny little seeds, blooming tiny little flowers…”
From the old, low three-story building inside the yard, where the paint on the walls had long since peeled away, came the innocent, childish singing of little children.
The driver got out from the front seat and jogged around to open the rear right door. A plump little foot in Ultraman beach sandals cautiously stretched out and tapped at empty air. Seeing this, the driver hurriedly scooped the chubby child out of the car, the little boy huffing and puffing as if he were “backing into a parking space.”
He was a pink, soft little curly-haired baby, with cheeks as plump as two pieces of snowy peach flesh.
After wobbling a bit and managing to stand steady, the child lifted his little head. His big eyes were bright and dewy, and he flashed a neat row of baby teeth obediently.
“Thank you, mister.”
The driver smiled, then helped put the little yellow duck backpack from the back seat onto him.
“No need to thank me.”
Looking at the child’s innocent, carefree smile, he felt a pang of reluctance in his heart. This child was only three years old. Not long ago, he had personally helped his employer complete the paperwork to take him back to the Qiao family, and now, less than a month later, he was personally sending him back to this shabby, desolate welfare institute.
While adjusting the straps of the child’s backpack, he said gently, “Be good at the welfare home, okay? When Uncle has time, I’ll come visit you.”
The little one nodded hard, his tiny chin layered with soft rolls of baby fat. Then he raised both hands as if gripping a steering wheel and made a childish imitation of a car horn.
“Beep beep beep, Uncle has to drive the little car carefully!”
“Uncle will drive carefully.”
The driver lowered his eyes and felt around in his pocket. While the little boy was running toward the gate of the welfare home, he hurriedly stuffed a red envelope containing one thousand yuan into the smallest pocket at the bottom of the yellow duck backpack.
The gates of the welfare home were tightly shut. The child squeezed his face between the iron bars and rattled the padlock with loud clangs.
“Teacher Xiaomei! Grandpa Director! Open the door, it’s Guanguan!”
At that moment, a hunched old man with his hands clasped behind his back came out of the old building.
The driver quickly picked Guanguan up and moved him away from the iron gate.
With a clattering sound, the gate swung open, and Guanguan darted over to the old man like an excited little puppy, circling around him.
“Grandpa Director! Grandpa Director! Guanguan is back!”
But the old man paid no attention to Guanguan’s enthusiastic cries. He merely gave him a careful look with a dark expression, then turned coldly toward the driver.
“The paperwork is all in order, and the child has been returned. If there’s nothing else, you can leave.”
The driver felt bad too, but he still relayed the words his employer had instructed him to say.
“Director Wang, please rest assured. President Qiao’s secretary has already transferred a considerable charitable donation into the welfare home’s public account. President Qiao will also continue funding the welfare home in the future. If the welfare home lacks anything, please feel free to call me.”
As expected, the moment the topic turned to funding, the old man’s expression softened somewhat. His wrinkled face even forced out a smile.
“Then on behalf of the children here, I thank President Qiao for his kindness. Would you like to come in and sit for a while?”
The driver politely declined. Before leaving, he gave Guanguan’s little curls one more rub.
Seeing Uncle Driver drive away by himself, Guanguan did not cry or make a fuss. Instead, he bounced up and down, waving hard at the beautiful car disappearing into the distance.
“Uncle, Uncle, bye-bye!”
“That’s enough. They’re already gone.”
Director Wang yanked the child, who had nearly run into the middle of the road, back by the arm. His gaze fell on the bulging backpack.
“What’s inside?”
Guanguan was a child who understood sharing. Sticking his round little bottom out, he shook the backpack.
“Apple-flavored jelly, little bear biscuits, and red, red strawbabies! Uncle Driver bought them!”
Director Wang pulled open the zipper of the little backpack and rummaged through it. Sure enough, inside were nothing but ordinary snacks and fruit.
He cursed the Qiao family in dialect, then smacked Guanguan on the head.
“Hand the snacks and fruit over to the teacher and let her divide them up for you and the other children to eat together. Once these things come into the welfare home, they’re not yours anymore!”
Guanguan rubbed his little head where it hurt from the smack, yet he still grinned with his little mouth wide open.
“Okay! Okay!”
With his little backpack on, he was just about to dash into the old building when Director Wang grabbed the strap of the bag.
“You are not allowed to mention in front of the other children what you ate or what you played with during this past month. Do you understand?”
Guanguan blinked, then shook his head.
“But the food-food wasn’t tasty, and Guanguan didn’t play with anything.”
Director Wang frowned, then waved his hand.
“Go on back.”
The closer he got to the second-floor classroom, the clearer the familiar nursery rhyme became. Guanguan’s eyes lit up, and his short little legs moved even faster. He even sang along loudly:
“Plant tiny little seeds, bloom tiny little flowahs!”
The music came to an abrupt stop, and several children came tumbling out of the classroom, shoving and fooling around.
“Hey, hey, come look—who’s this?”
“Your new daddy and mommy didn’t want you anymore, huh?”
“Hahahaha, was it because you secretly wet the bed that they sent you back?”
Guanguan clenched the straps of his backpack tightly with both little hands, his snowy white face lowered.
“Guanguan… Guanguan didn’t wet the bed at Uncle and Auntie’s house…”
“What’s in your backpack?”
“Guanguan!”
The moment he heard that voice, Guanguan immediately looked up.
“Xiaotiao!”
When those bigger kids saw Wang Xiaotiao approaching—the somewhat slow-witted but rather bold child—they shoved each other around and left.
“You’re back! Did your mom and dad come too?”
Wang Xiaotiao was three years older than Guanguan, six years old this year. He was a little dark and chubby, with a very round head and thick black eyebrows. He looked just like the little peasant character from Fight the Landlord, only without the headscarf.
The moment the two little friends met, they hugged each other and spun around in circles.
Guanguan got a little dizzy from the spinning.
“Uncle and Auntie don’t want to raise Guanguan anymore.”
Wang Xiaotiao patted his chest.
“It’s okay, our home is good too!”
“Our home really is very good!”
Guanguan tilted his head again.
“Where’s Mingming?”
“Mingming got sick and went to get a shot!”
“Then where’s Guanguan’s little cloud wiggle car?”
“Teacher Xiaomei took it back to the dorm!”
Last year, a kind-hearted donor had given every child at the welfare home either a wiggle car or a little bicycle. Only Guanguan had received a wiggle car that looked like it had changed hands eight times already. Because of that, several of the children had laughed at him for a long time.
But Guanguan had not been upset at all. He loved that little wiggle car very much.
Hehe. His little car was shabby and broken-down, so those naughty older children never bothered trying to steal it.
“Then where’s Guanguan’s little flower quilt?”
Wang Xiaotiao pressed his thick lips together, looking a little timid.
“Your quilt…”
“Guanguan is back?”
“Teacher Xiaomei!”
Guanguan turned his head and saw that beside Teacher Xiaomei stood an unfamiliar older boy.
Wang Xiaotiao whispered into Guanguan’s ear, “It’s this fierce-looking big kid. He slept in your little bed and used your quilt!”
“Mmm, okay then.” Guanguan scratched his cheek, not daring to look at the unfamiliar older boy. In a tiny sneaky puppy-like whisper, he said, “Big brother is white-white, thin-thin, and looks fragrant.”
“He really does smell nice!” Wang Xiaotiao said excitedly.
The two children thought they were whispering very quietly, but in fact every word had been heard by both Teacher Xiaomei and Wei Cheng.
Wei Cheng clenched his fists tightly, his eyes gradually turning red, his gaze fixed stubbornly on that snow-white, chubby little child.
After ten years of endless darkness, he had finally seen his little brother once again.
Wei Cheng had been reborn from the apocalypse.
Just like in his previous life, eight-year-old Wei Cheng had been dumped at the welfare home by his maternal uncle’s cousin. On his third day there, he still met the returned Guanguan.
Since childhood, Wei Cheng had been different from ordinary children. He was taciturn, clever, and cold-hearted. After the grandmother who had depended on him and whom he had depended on died, he had shut himself away even further, rejecting anyone who came near him.
The children at the welfare home both disliked and feared him. They never paid him any attention. Only Guanguan, like a little milk puppy, would always carefully curl up by his leg and doze.
Life at the welfare home was poor and simple, but because Guanguan was there, the door to Wei Cheng’s heart slowly melted open like ice and snow.
Just when he had finally resolved to live well and someday take Guanguan away to a better life—the apocalypse arrived in silence.
Everything began with a torrential rainstorm. What followed was scorching heat, a dense fog that never dissipated and corroded flesh, and finally zombies that devoured people and gnawed their bones. Extreme weather came in endless cycles.
The world fell into chaos, and order collapsed.
People around him died one after another. More terrifying than the walking dead was the complexity of human nature.
Gritting his teeth, Wei Cheng brought Guanguan through one danger after another. But he never imagined that during one zombie tide, he and Guanguan would be separated.
At that time, Guanguan was only four years old, still just a baby who stumbled even while walking.
Ignoring the danger to his own life, Wei Cheng returned to the base where the zombie tide had erupted. Corpses lay everywhere, severed limbs piled like mountains, and from the distance came the howls of zombie hordes from time to time.
He searched from night until the next morning.
All he found was one Ultraman little shoe covered in blood.
After the apocalypse, Guanguan had loved this pair of shoes even more. He would always lift his thin, sallow little face and ask him, “Big brother, when will Ultraman come save us?”
Wei Cheng would pat the child’s little head and force out a bitter smile.
“Soon.”
Even though Big Brother always said “soon,” Ultraman never really came “soon.” But Guanguan was still so happy, because he believed his brother’s words. Even when he went to sleep hungry at night, he would never cry.
Wei Cheng carefully wiped the blood from the shoe bit by bit, then placed it solemnly and reverently into his backpack.
Without hesitation, he set out on a journey to find his little brother.
That search lasted a full ten years, and the cruelty of the apocalypse forged him into a famous bounty hunter.
But he still never found the grown-up Guanguan.
During one mission, as he looked at the zombie horde surging forward like a plague of locusts, he seemed to lose the strength to keep struggling on.
He had lost his little brother. Perhaps he should have long ago—
The moment he closed his eyes, he did not hear the excited howls of the zombies. What he heard instead was the familiar yet unfamiliar alarm of a heart monitor.
He had been reborn back to the day his grandmother died.
By the push and favor of fate, he had actually been allowed to see Guanguan once again.
“Big brother.”
Wei Cheng heard someone calling him.
“Big brother, why is it raining from your eyes?”
Guanguan’s little face was flushed red. He hurriedly waved his hands.
“Guanguan didn’t—didn’t ask you for the little bed and quilt.”
“Mm.” Wei Cheng wiped his tears. “Thank you.”
Thank you for letting me come back to your side again.
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