Chapter 76: firefly
Wang Xin and his group had attracted unwelcome attention.
Today, their belongings had diminished again.
They had lessened yesterday, and the day before that as well.
They didn’t know who it was.
Was it the shifty-eyed woman next door, or the man who had been leering at Xiao Cao, or perhaps…
They just didn’t know.
...
All they understood was that they had become targets.
“Brother Wang Xin, it’s all my fault. I was too careless that day, and that’s how they found us,” Ah Qian said, guilt-ridden after realizing their items had gone missing again.
When Wang Xin and his group first arrived at the cave, there were fewer people, and they managed to scrape by for a while.
The rain kept pouring, and many people fell ill.
Fortunately, none of them got sick; they all survived.
Wang Xin had the foresight from the start; when the base distributed food, he advised the group not to eat all of what they were given at once.
If the rain persisted, the base wouldn’t keep providing them with food.
In the heavy rain, as they were just kids, the base wouldn’t assign them any tasks.
Their food supply was minimal; if the base stopped distributing food, they would go hungry.
Everyone listened to Wang Xin; despite their hunger, they didn’t consume all the food they received. Instead, they ate only a third and saved the remaining two-thirds.
Their savings grew after a while.
So, when the base later stopped handing out food, they didn’t suffer too severely.
While others cried out in hunger, they could still nibble on the saved up bread in secret.
They were still very hungry, but they were better off than others, maybe they wouldn’t starve to death.
Later on, they too ran out of their stashed food and joined the others in hunger.
Bounding his nerves, Wang Xin stealthily bartered his sausages for more food with those who still had plenty.
He had initially hoped to trade them for Contribution Value, but now he had no choice.
He was clever; he didn’t offer all five sausages at once. Instead, he traded them one by one, exchanging another when the food from the last one was eaten.
And he traded with different people each time, taking advantage of the darkness at night, speaking in hushed tones to ensure he wouldn’t be recognized.
Thanks to his caution, he had managed to avoid becoming a target.
In the end, after he had bartered away all five sausages, they pulled through the torrential rains.
They had thought that once the rain stopped, they could return to the base. With the disaster over, the base desperately needed hands, and with a little hard work, they could scrape by.
But who would have thought that such a scorcher would follow the rain?
You’d lose a layer of skin just by stepping outside.
They had also heard that the buildings inside the base were even hotter than outside. People would faint after a few hours inside and then be gone.
They had no choice but to hunker down again in the cave.
The cave was hot, unbearably so.
But they could endure it; they were used to all kinds of disasters.
However, the hunger.
So, so hungry.
Wang Xin felt a cold sweat breaking out when he saw Gou Dan lick the mud off the ground.
You can’t eat dirt.
Eating dirt can fill the stomach, but death follows quickly.
They… they weren’t that desperate yet.
Wang Xin remembered the box of instant noodles they had buried underground.
Right.
They still had a box of instant noodles, they wouldn’t die.
They would surely make it through this year.
So, during the time when the base suggested everyone adjust their biological clocks, to rest during the day and go out at night, Wang Xin took Ah Qian and Gou Dan, and secretly returned to their dilapidated house.
The broken house had been flooded for so long, it had collapsed early on, and the bricks and dirt that fell had been washed away by the water flow.
The firewood they had found with great difficulty had also been washed away. But some hadn’t been swept far, and they found a bit of it nearby.
The firewood had been soaked in water for so long it was thoroughly wet. But after being baked by the vicious sun for a few days, it had not a bit of moisture left.
They gathered some firewood and confirmed the location, then started digging with sticks.
It took half the day to unearth it.
Wang Xin and the others were delighted to see the box of instant noodles emerge. Fortunately, it was still there.
The cardboard of the noodle box had rotted, but luckily, the noodles inside were unharmed.
Gou Dan, clutching the noodles, couldn’t stop swallowing his saliva. He was so hungry he had thought about eating dirt, and now that he saw the noodles, he didn’t know how hard it was to hold back.
“Just bear with it a little longer, we can’t eat the noodles directly. We’ll trade them for other things, which will get us more to eat,” said Wang Xin, also starving, but clearly more rational than Gou Dan.
Gou Dan nodded his head and continued to swallow his saliva fiercely.
Wang Xin and the others didn’t take all of the instant noodles; they only took three packets. The rest were buried back in the ground.
This was their final safety net.
Even though it was night and hard to see clearly, Wang Xin and the others dared not take it lightly. They wrapped the noodles in clothes securely and covered them with some firewood as camouflage.
They ran back, through the pitch-black night, the heat kicking up under their feet, the hunger gnawing at their stomachs; Wang Hui and the others ran till they felt dazed.
“Brother Wang Xin, why are there no fireflies?” As Ah Qian ran, he thought of his mother.
He couldn’t clearly remember what his mother looked like anymore. As a child, surviving in the apocalypse was too difficult. Every day, he was busy scrounging for food until he was so exhausted he’d just fall asleep.
There was hardly any time to think about anything else.
Hardly any time to think about his mother.
He hadn’t cried when his mother died. There was no time to cry. Why was there no time? It seemed it was because he had taken on a job, and after completing it, he’d have food for three days.
But when he had finished the job and was so happy to have the food, he had forgotten that his mother had died.
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However, while running tonight, he remembered.
His mother was a very gentle person, many people bullied them, but she never cursed anyone.
Even when others cursed her, she never talked back.
She would say it wasn’t important.
What was important was how to ensure our Ah Qian grew up.
Now Ah Qian had grown up, but she was no longer here.
His mother had grown up in the countryside, she knew how to harvest rice, would lie on the heaps of rice stalk-made mountains looking up at the blue sky, catch dragonflies, sneakily eat the oranges their neighbors grew, and at night, catch fireflies and put them into transparent glass bottles, making a little firefly lamp.
His mother said she missed those times and hoped that if possible, Ah Qian could also have such experiences.
His mother had many stories.
Whenever Ah Qian couldn’t sleep because of hunger, his mother would hold him and tell him one of her stories from the past.
After his mother was gone, Ah Qian never heard a story again.
“Fireflies? They probably mutated,” Wang Xin offered the most plausible explanation.
When they returned to the cave, everyone who had slept during the day was either chatting, borrowing food, or looting.
They protected the instant noodles in their arms, using the firewood as cover, and made it back to their spot.
But Ah Qian was too nervous and accidentally made noise rustling the plastic bag of noodles.
Someone nearby heard it.
The person found it odd, asking if they had something good to eat.
The voice sounded like the rustle of a plastic bag. Wang Xin and the few poor little kids, having nothing of the sort.
He suspected they had stolen from someone else.