Chapter 305: Someone Had Come
By the time we returned home, I had already decided that one of the empty rooms upstairs was going to become my hobby room.
I hadn’t chosen which room I was going to take over yet, and I still wasn’t sure whether cross-stitching would hold my attention for more than a few hours, but neither of those things mattered.
I had taken enough supplies from the craft store to try every hobby humanity had invented before the end of the world, and it seemed pointless to leave them sitting in my space until I forgot they existed.
The plants parted as Chenghai drove toward the gate, pulling their vines away from the road and lowering several oversized flowers so the SUV could pass beneath them. The moment we were safely inside, the greenery closed behind us again, hiding the road and everything beyond it from view.
I leaned toward the window and looked over the mansion as Chenghai followed the driveway toward the front steps.
For the first time in weeks, it looked like a home again and not something that I was desperate to escape from.
The broken windows had been replaced, the damaged sections of the exterior had been repaired, and the constant drilling that had been echoing through the house had finally stopped. A few workers were still finishing minor jobs around the property, but no one was carrying chunks of my walls through the front yard or shouting about pipes that had stopped working decades before they should have.
The repairs were close enough to finished that I was declaring them all done.
If something small broke after this, the men could fix it themselves.
Zhou Chenghai parked near the entrance, and everyone began unloading the supplies we had visibly carried out of the store. Most of what I had taken was already hidden inside my space, but there were enough baskets and bags in the SUV to make it look as though we had accomplished something.
Yuche carried the embroidery thread and fabric, while Xu Zhenlan took the patterns and wooden hoops. Zhou Chenghai gathered the storage containers, leaving Lingyun with the bag that held the purple glitter.
I reached for it immediately. "Give me that. I don’t trust you with that."
Lingyun held the bag closer to his chest. "I can carry one jar of glitter without opening it."
"That isn’t the point."
"Then what is the point?"
"The point is that you’re smiling."
"I smile all the time."
"Not while holding something capable of ruining every room it enters."
He looked toward the others for support, but no one was willing to risk defending him. After several seconds, he handed the bag over with the wounded expression of a man whose family honor had been questioned.
I carried it inside myself.
The mansion was quiet when we entered, which only strengthened my belief that the repair work was officially over.
With a bright smile on my face because my home was officially mine again, I stopped near the stairs and considered the empty rooms upstairs.
There were several I could choose from, including two guest rooms that no one had used since the first round of survivors. One had larger windows and looked over the front garden, while the other had more space and an entire wall of built-in shelves.
The shelves made the decision for me.
"This one," I announced several minutes later as I stepped into the larger room.
Yuche leaned against the doorframe and looked around. "What are you planning to do with it?"
"It’s going to be my hobby room."
Lingyun appeared behind him carrying several bundles of fabric. "Hobby room? As in more than one hobby?"
"I don’t know what I’m going to like yet, so I’m keeping my options open."
The room had been empty for months, but it was large enough to hold everything I had taken and still leave room for more. The shelves could store thread, yarn, paint, beads, and whatever else I had grabbed without bothering to identify. A long table sat beneath the windows, and the cabinet near the closet looked like a safe place to keep the glitter where Lingyun couldn’t reach it.
Chenghai entered with two storage containers stacked in his arms and waited for me to tell him where to put them.
"Anywhere on the shelves is fine for now," I said. "I’ll organize everything later."
Zhenlan looked at the containers already filling the room. "Do you know what’s inside them?"
"No."
"Do you plan to find out?"
"Eventually."
He accepted that answer without asking anything else, which proved that at least one of them was capable of learning.
The four men helped arrange the room without trying to decide what belonged where. Chenghai moved the chair closer to the table, Zhenlan stacked the patterns where I could see them, and Yuche began sorting the embroidery thread after I complained that Lingyun had mixed the purples with the blues.
Lingyun claimed they were almost the same color.
I threatened to take away his glitter privileges which ended the argument before it could ever start.
By the time we finished, the room no longer looked empty. The shelves were partially filled, the table had been cleared, and the black fabric I had chosen was stretched inside one of the wooden hoops.
I sat in front of it with the darkest purple thread and tried to understand the instructions printed on the back of the package.
The process looked simple enough. Thread the needle, push it through the fabric, bring it back up in the correct place, and repeat until something recognizable appeared.
It was basically stabbing with a few extra steps. Maybe if I got good at this, I could start stitching up wounds using the same idea.
The first stitch went through easily. Unfortunately, I brought the needle back up in the wrong place and created a crooked line that looked nothing like the neat example in the instructions.
Lingyun leaned over my shoulder to inspect it. "It looks... threatening."
"It looks wrong."
He nodded his head like that was the answer I wanted to hear. "And that is what makes it more threatening."
I turned my head slowly. "You’re breathing on me."
He moved back, although not far enough to count as leaving.
Yuche sat on the edge of the table while Zhou Chenghai and Xu Zhenlan remained near the door. None of them appeared willing to go anywhere until they knew whether I would enjoy the hobby or throw everything away after five minutes.
I made another stitch. It was still crooked, but slightly less crooked than the first one.
Humming in happiness, I counted that as improvement. But by the third stitch, I was already glaring at the fabric. "This is going to take forever," I muttered. I mean, I knew I couldn’t just snap my fingers and have it be perfect, but... I wasn’t the world’s most patient person.
"That was the point," Zhou Chenghai reminded me like he had every right to do so. "You wanted something that would keep you busy."
"I wanted a hobby. I didn’t agree to unpaid labor."
Xu Zhenlan glanced at the flower pattern beside my elbow. "You could start with something simpler."
"I’m not making a flower."
"You bought twelve flower patterns."
"They’re for the border."
"The border around what?"
I looked down at the black fabric and imagined the completed warning surrounded by neat purple flowers.
"Proof that I have the patience to stab something a thousand times."
Lingyun nodded thoughtfully. "I like it."
I had completed six uneven stitches when one of the vines tapped against the window.
The sound was quiet, but everyone heard it. A thin vine had climbed along the outside wall and curled against the glass. When it noticed me looking, one of its leaves pointed toward the front of the property before opening into a small mouth and snapping at the air.
Someone had arrived, and the plants didn’t like them.
