Apocalypse: I Can See Health Bars
Chapter 10: Alive

Chapter 10: Chapter 10: Alive

[24/100].

Su Qing took a heavy blow from the monster. She staggered sideways in a daze, hit the wall, and was knocked out cold...

’Another third of her life gone...’

Lin Fan looked at Su Qing sprawled on the floor and couldn’t help but feel a little touched and regretful.

He had to admit he’d judged her by her appearance before; Su Qing was far braver than he had imagined.

The room was safe now. Lin Fan lifted Su Qing from the floor and laid her on the backrest of the toppled sofa to make her more comfortable.

As for himself, he began to search the surroundings. ’The danger’s gone. Time to scavenge the apartment!’

Lin Fan had originally planned to throw the little monster’s corpse out the window; the thing was pretty sanity-draining to look at.

But then he remembered that the cause of the zombie mutation was still unknown. If he threw it out and another zombie ate it, possibly triggering another mutation, wouldn’t he just be making trouble for himself? He decided against it.

Besides, it wasn’t just the corpse; the entire bedroom was pretty sanity-draining to look at.

Lin Fan searched the bedroom but didn’t find any useful supplies. He returned to the living room and closed the bedroom door.

’Tomorrow I’ll tape this door shut to keep the smell from getting out. I’m not going back in there anyway.’

There were more supplies in 402 than he’d expected. Probably because a family of three had lived there, the entire refrigerator was stuffed with all kinds of food.

All sorts of vegetables, eggs, some fruit, and various sauces and pickles.

The freezer, packed to the brim with meat, made his eyes light up.

But when he moved aside a bag of frozen shrimp, he saw several boxes of ice cream stacked neatly in the very back. On top was a sticky note with crooked handwriting:

"Reward for getting a 100 on your final exam. Only one a day! —Mom"

Lin Fan’s outstretched hand froze in mid-air.

The image of the monster in the bedroom flashed through his mind.

He let out a long breath, silently removed the sticky note, placed it on the kitchen counter, and quickly shut the refrigerator door.

In the apocalypse, the heaviest burdens were often not the corpses, but these traces of lives once lived.

’Forget it,’ Lin Fan told himself, forcing his mind away from such thoughts.

Perhaps it was because this was the first time he had so brazenly rummaged through someone else’s home; a faint sense of guilt kept making him imagine what this family was like.

’I’ll just have to get used to it.’

Besides what was in the refrigerator, there was also a bag with over ten pounds of rice left in the cabinet, and about ten pounds of white flour.

There were various dried goods like mushrooms and soybeans, and Lin Fan even found a soy milk maker.

Compared to his own place, this apartment had such a strong, lived-in feel...

In addition to food, he also found many daily necessities, like soap, laundry detergent, cigarettes and alcohol, batteries, and so on.

Lin Fan temporarily piled these things in the living room. He would move them downstairs slowly tomorrow.

The food problem was temporarily solved. With so many supplies, even after sharing some with Su Qing, there was enough to last Lin Fan for half a month.

...

Su Qing was awakened by a delicious aroma.

A fragrance wafted into her nostrils—one that felt long-lost, even though it hadn’t been that much time at all.

’Hot pot...? Am I dreaming?’

Drowsily, she opened her eyes to the sight of a man’s back. He was fishing food out of an electric pot, sucking in sharp breaths from the heat. One bite of vegetables, then one of meat, an expression of pure bliss on his face.

And she herself was lying on an unfamiliar sofa, wearing her own T-shirt, with an IV drip in her left hand.

"Lin Fan..." Fragmented memories surfaced in her mind: the strange smell, the bloody room, and the back of the person who had stood in front of her...

Suddenly, her eyes lit up. Weak but excited, she called out to Lin Fan, "Kid... you... you won?!"

Lin Fan was happily fishing out some lamb when he suddenly heard a noise behind him.

’The lamb was also from 402. I brought it back with some slightly wilted vegetables. Perfect for a good meal tonight.’

Chewing on a tough piece of lamb gristle, he turned around and looked at Su Qing in confusion. "Won what?"

"The zombie, in 402’s bedroom..."

Hearing this, Lin Fan finally understood. It was something he’d overlooked—her memory was still stuck at that moment. He replied,

"Oh, right, right, you’re talking about that. Yeah, we won."

"How are you feeling? You hit your head back there. Still dizzy?"

After he spoke, Lin Fan realized Su Qing wasn’t listening to him at all. Her eyes, like a wolf’s, were locked onto... the meat in his bowl!

Not only was she staring, but her pupils were dilated, her breathing grew heavy, and her hands unconsciously clutched the thin blanket over her...

Lin Fan knew this look all too well!

Back at the zoo, a tiger that hadn’t been fed for a day would have the exact same expression when it saw a zookeeper approaching with a chicken!

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on!"

Lin Fan held up his palm in front of Su Qing’s nose, blocking her view.

"It’s not that I’m being stingy. It’s that you can’t eat this stuff right now..."

As he spoke, he got up, walked to the kitchen, and brought over a small bowl of congee for Su Qing. Two peeled, hard-boiled eggs were soaking in it.

"You eat this for now. If you want hot pot, we can have it tomorrow..."

’She’s been starving for two days under extreme stress, plus she’s injured and weak,’ Lin Fan thought. ’

’If she eats greasy food now, she’ll definitely be puking her guts out in a minute. What a waste...’

But as Su Qing watched Lin Fan bring over the prepared congee with "concern," a warm feeling swelled in her heart.

"There’s a lot of food in 402. Even a third of it would be enough to last you for half a month if you eat sparingly."

Lin Fan said to Su Qing as he ate, "I can’t be bothered to move it all myself. We’ll go get it together tomorrow."

Su Qing, holding the congee, seemed lost in some kind of emotion. When she suddenly heard Lin Fan talking business, it took her a moment to register it.

"Huh? Oh, oh, okay..."

Seeing her dazed expression, Lin Fan thought, ’Don’t tell me she got brain damage from that hit...’

’No MRI machine. Otherwise, I’d give her a proper workup.’

But Su Qing’s mind was on something completely different. She looked at the IV needle in her left hand and asked doubtfully, "Kid... aren’t you a veterinarian?"

"I learned it all..."

Lin Fan seemed to have anticipated her question and replied nonchalantly,

"Animals are much harder to treat than people. At least people can talk..."

"Then if you’re so capable and know how to do everything, why are you here...?"

Su Qing said, her eyes glancing out the window.

Before this, she had seen Lin Fan almost every day, dealing with those penny-pinching old ladies in his little clinic.

But she had never been as curious about his past as she was now.

She felt that someone like him shouldn’t be trapped in a place like this, just like her.

He should have a more respectable job and a bigger world to roam.

"You’re asking why I opened a small clinic in this shithole of a place?"

Lin Fan stared into Su Qing’s large, clear eyes. He didn’t see any mockery or ridicule, but rather an unreadable, indescribable emotion.

"Because my luck isn’t so great."

After this encounter, Lin Fan no longer looked down on Su Qing as he had at the beginning. The cruel apocalypse had unknowingly bound the two of them together.

"Some asshole manager at the zoo had a relative who needed a spot, so the two wolves I’d been taking care of for years were poisoned."

"I couldn’t take it, so I beat the old bastard up. After that, I had a criminal record and had to go into business for myself."

Lin Fan recounted this while eating his hot pot, as if he were talking about someone else.

Although he put on an air of complete indifference, Su Qing could still see the bitterness in his eyes.

"You seem to be adapting well to this kind of life..."

"That’s a cruel thing to say," Lin Fan said, not continuing the conversation and focusing on his meat.

’But it’s the truth...’ Su Qing thought to herself as she drank her congee.

She suddenly felt a little envious of Lin Fan. Not of his strength, but of his mindset.

A few hours ago, she had hated this world, this world that had stolen her future. But now, just a few hours later, she felt a little grateful for this cruel hell.

She held the warm bowl of congee, looking through the swirling steam at the man across from her, who was devouring his meat.

Outside the window, the downpour continued unabated. In the distance, the roars of zombies and the screams of survivors could be faintly heard.

A single window separated two different worlds.

Listening to the bubbling sound of the hot pot, she felt a sense of security greater than any she had ever known.