Surviving the Apocalypse with the Young Miss - Chapter 23

Chapter 23: Tenants

When Tong Xiangyu said she was fine, Song Ge stopped looking at her and walked over to the window.

Back in the basement, it was always dark; now that they were in a large courtyard, she lost all sense of the passage of time. The clock hanging on the wall showed 6:20 PM, but the sunlight outside was still intense.

Perhaps because of the distance, Song Ge couldn’t hear the movements of the monsters outside. This gave her the dangerous illusion that nothing had happened, which could dull her alertness. If this situation were to be resolved quickly, it wouldn’t matter but if not, she didn’t think this complacency was a good thing.

In contrast to the silence in their room, the atmosphere on the rooftop was quite different.

Because there were many people, the dishes were wiped clean shortly after Song Ge left. Once finished, everyone tacitly remained on the rooftop. Two little girls ran back and forth. There wasn’t much rice left in the pressure cooker; Jiang Zhuang scooped out the cold rice, intending to make egg-fried rice for his daughters the next day. Mrs. Jiang was busy tidying up the bowls and chopsticks.

The man in glasses, Xiao Wu, was leaning over the rooftop railing with the beautiful woman, looking down. The streets and alleys were empty, with only an occasional zombie monster wandering by. Because of the high temperatures, the people who died in the streets had turned from corpses to rotting flesh to foul liquid in less than half a month.

Fortunately, Granny Tian’s detached building was quite tall; three and a half stories here were equivalent to a fifth floor elsewhere. At this height, the stench of death from below didn’t reach them.

The high school students were also gathered together, chatting. Fan Mingyuan spoke rarely, mostly leaning against the railing listening to the others. There was another boy in their group, a chubby kid under 1.7 meters tall with a face full of acne; the girls’ interest in him was zero. Naturally, they preferred the tall and handsome Fan Mingyuan.

Second High wasn’t a key school like Kecheng High; it was an arts-focused school. Consequently, the girls focused heavily on their appearance and less on their studies. Seeing a handsome guy like Fan Mingyuan, they swarmed him like butterflies, flirting both openly and subtly.

But Fan Mingyuan had seen countless beauties since he was a child. These girls with their dyed hair, tattoos, and “delinquent girl” behavior held no appeal for him. He saw through their little schemes and was completely uninterested. He only occasionally chatted with the freshman girl from the same school.

He had spoken up earlier specifically to defend her. Her name was Zhu Lulu, a girl with a round face and eyes who looked honest and likable. Her grades were good, and she said she had always looked up to Tong Xiangyu from the senior class as her role model. Since a girl as beautiful as Senior Tong studied so hard, what excuse did she have not to work? She hoped that one day she could rank first in her grade just like her senior.

Fan Mingyuan smiled at that, but thinking about how he had been separated from Tong Xiangyu on the day of the outbreak made him feel frustrated. He wondered if it was even possible for her to still be alive.

Despite the high temperatures and strong sun, darkness fell quickly. Because of the power outage, everyone left the rooftop as the sun began to set.

The Jiang family of four lay in bed early. The parents slept at one end, and the two daughters at the other.

The younger sister asked, “The sky has no stars again today. Mom, why doesn’t it rain? Why are there no stars?”

Mrs. Jiang replied, “The stars will come back once the firemen uncles arrive.”

Although the sister was only seven, she raised a reasonable doubt: “Do the firemen uncles even look after the stars in the sky?”

Mr. Jiang cut in, “Why ask so many questions? Your mother is always right.”

Mrs. Jiang nudged him with her elbow. Jiang Zhuang laughed, his scruffy face leaning in to kiss and touch her, but she pushed him away. “Don’t talk nonsense and corrupt the kids,” she said.

The sister asked again, “When will the firemen come?”

The older sister said, “Maybe tomorrow! Yingying, let’s go to sleep. When we wake up, the firemen will be here!”

“Okay, sister. I’m already asleep!”

Granny Tian’s building had two units per floor. The second and third floors were rented out. The rooftop was originally just a storage room for junk, but because the Jiangs were short on money and desperate to rent, Granny Tian cleared it out. She provided them with a large bed, had a window installed, and added a shed roof on the side for their kitchen and stove.

The couple and their two daughters had lived on this rooftop for four years, from the time the younger daughter was in kindergarten until now in primary school.

Aside from the rooftop, the second and third floors were well-decorated suites: a north-facing three-bedroom and a south-facing two-bedroom. The apartments were all rented out, but since the other tenants hadn’t returned after the outbreak, Granny Tian used them to house the rescued students.

Xiao Wu and the woman lived on the third floor. Granny Tian put the students, who might be noisier, on the second floor. The north-facing suite had three bedrooms; an extra single bed was moved into the living room for the four girls. The south-facing one was for the two boys. It was a perfect fit.

Wu Senjun walked into his room and immediately took off his glasses. In an instant, his refined exterior vanished. “That damn old hag!” he cursed.

The beautiful woman took off her shoes and said nothing.

“She doesn’t have many days left to live herself, yet she’s out here helping everyone. It’s just going to bring disaster on us!” Wu Senjun cursed as he walked into the bedroom. “We don’t know when rescue is coming, and there’s hardly any food left. Do you think I didn’t hear what Auntie Jiang said? There’s only half a bag of rice left!”

The woman said, “Getting angry won’t help.”

“I know it won’t.” Wu Senjun’s anger cooled slightly. He ran a hand through his hair and sat on the large bed. Watching the woman take off her sun-protection jacket to reveal a sexy camisole underneath, he reached out and said, “Come here.”

The woman snuggled coquettishly into his arms. Wu Senjun stroked her waist, moving upward, and began kissing her neck as he pressed her onto the bed. “At least this way,” he mumbled between kisses, “we can have a few more days of fun…”

The woman tilted her neck, her breathing growing heavy. “I was thinking… if your wife is dead, does that mean you don’t have to worry about the divorce anymore?”

“But then I wouldn’t get the money,” Wu Senjun laughed wickedly. “Would you still stay with me without the money?”

“Stop it~~”

Fan Mingyuan was brushing his teeth with some water. When there was a knock at the door, he assumed it was the fat kid he shared the room with and told him to come in. He paused when he saw a flash of a red skirt in the mirror, then finished rinsing his mouth.

He walked out of the bathroom as the sun set to find a girl with dyed yellow hair sitting on the edge of the bed.

“What is it?” Fan Mingyuan asked.

The girl stood up and ran to him, her hand lightly touching his chest. “Hey, handsome. Want to hang out?”

“Not interested.” Fan Mingyuan moved her hand away.

The girl looked at his tall back. “Do you have a girlfriend? Even if you do, she’s not here. You don’t have to be responsible. In a place like this, loneliness is unbearable. You know it, I know it let’s just play a little to pass the time.”

“Go find the guy next door to pass the time.”

The girl’s expression shifted, but she bit back her anger and ran in front of him again.

Fan Mingyuan scoffed. Looking at her, he said, “I’m really not interested in your type.”

The girl had plenty of pursuers at school; being repeatedly rejected made her feel humiliated. “Then what type are you interested in?”

“The ones who study hard,” Fan Mingyuan said. “Pretty and cute, with soft voices, who blush easily but are very kind.”

The girl was speechless he was clearly describing a specific person. Realizing she was wasting her time, she turned and left.

And that girl the one who studied hard, was pretty and cute, spoke softly, blushed easily, and was very kind was currently holding her empty dinner bowl, gazing expectantly at Song Ge by the window.

Tong Xiangyu couldn’t see clearly; she could only see a vague silhouette standing before the large window. She wondered: Is Song Ge looking at something? Or is she just spacing out?

Song Ge had been lost in thought for quite a while. When she moved her leg, a slight numbness prickled through it. She turned around to see Tong Xiangyu’s large, innocent eyes staring toward her. Song Ge was taken aback for a second, then remembered that the wider this Young Mistress opened her eyes, the less she could actually see.

Song Ge’s gaze moved to the bowl in Tong Xiangyu’s hands. She walked over, put the empty bowl on the table, and pulled a sofa over.

Hearing the movement, Tong Xiangyu squinted. “What are you doing?”

“Moving the sofa to the window so I can hear what’s happening outside.”

Tong Xiangyu gasped. “You’re not going to sleep on the sofa again, are you?!”

“What else?”

“This bed is huge! Why won’t you sleep on the bed?”

“You have bad sleeping habits.”

Tong Xiangyu was momentarily choked for words. She stubbornly insisted, “Nonsense. No one has ever told me I have bad sleeping habits.”

“Well, now someone has.”

“?” Tong Xiangyu said, “Song Ge, don’t go too far!”

Song Ge: “How is it ‘too far’? Is refusing to sleep with you going too far?”

Tong Xiangyu froze, her words caught in her throat.

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