That night, they stayed in an abandoned clinic.
Lu Yu found it. Beside the highway outside the town stood a two-story white building. Half the sign had fallen off, leaving only the characters for “benevolence” and “clinic.” The first floor was for seeing patients; the second was living quarters.
He spent ten minutes searching the entire building.
“Safe,” he said.
When Lin Wan walked in, she smelled disinfectant. It was faint, almost completely covered by that omnipresent cloying sweetness, but she still caught it.
It made her feel safe.
The smell of disinfectant belonged to the world before the apocalypse. A world of order, cleanliness, and people who took care of you.
There were still a few things left in the examination room on the first floor. The medicine cabinets had been ransacked, and most of the medication was gone, but a few unwanted items lay scattered in the corner—cotton balls, medical tape, and a bottle of expired saline.
Lu Yu put them in his pack.
Lin Wan stood in front of the medicine cabinet, staring at the empty shelves.
“What happened to the people here?” she asked.
“They left. Or they didn’t make it out.”
She knew what “didn’t make it out” meant.
She didn’t ask anything else.
They went upstairs.
The second floor had a simple layout: one bedroom, one bathroom, and a small living room. There was a double bed in the bedroom. The sheets were rumpled, and the pillow still bore the hollow left by someone’s head.
Someone had slept in this bed. Then they had left. Or been taken away.
Lin Wan sat on the edge of the bed, looking at the hollow in the pillow.
Lu Yu was sorting things in the living room. She heard him open and close his pack, heard cans clinking together, heard his footsteps moving around—the steps were a little heavier than usual today.
She noticed.
Since that afternoon, something had been off about his stride. He wasn’t slower; the rhythm had changed. Whenever his left foot touched the ground, he paused for a moment, as if using force to hold something down.
She walked out of the bedroom.
Lu Yu sat on the living room sofa, propping his forehead up with his right hand, his eyes closed.
He hadn’t heard her come out.
That was a first.
From the moment they met until now, she had never once managed to approach him without him noticing. His vigilance was like a radar that was always on; no sound or movement could escape him.
But now he hadn’t heard her.
Lin Wan stood in the doorway and looked at him.
His breathing was rougher than usual. A thin sheen of sweat covered his forehead. His left arm hung at his side, and that gray-black substance had seeped through the edge of the gauze again.
Her heart clenched.
“Lu Yu.”
His eyes opened.
His movement was half a beat slower than usual.
“Let me see your injury.”
“No—”
“Lu Yu.”
She walked over and crouched in front of him.
He looked at her. His eyes held exhaustion, resistance, and something she was becoming increasingly familiar with—the way he weighed how much he should let her know.
“Let me see it,” she said. For the third time.
He didn’t refuse again.
He extended his left arm.
Lin Wan undid the gauze.
One wrap. Two. Three.
Her hands were steady. She had done this many times.
When she peeled away the final layer, her hand stopped.
The wound had changed.
The bite marks were still there, but the gray around the edges had spread. The last time she changed the dressing, the gray had extended only about a centimeter around the wound. Now it had reached his wrist. The abnormal dark veins were more pronounced, spreading outward from the wound like black tree roots. Several had already crawled past his elbow.
Lin Wan’s fingertips went cold.
She looked up.
Lu Yu was watching her.
His expression was calm. Too calm. Calm enough for her to know he had seen it long ago, had known for a long time, and had simply never told her.
“When did it start spreading?” Her voice was steadier than she expected.
“Yesterday.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He didn’t answer.
Lin Wan lowered her head and began cleaning the wound again. She poured iodine antiseptic onto the gauze and wiped the gray skin. She noticed one detail—the moment the iodine touched those dark veins, his fingers twitched faintly.
He was in pain.
But he didn’t say a word.
She wrapped on fresh gauze. One layer at a time. Slowly and carefully.
When she reached the final wrap, she didn’t let go.
Her fingers pressed against his pulse.
It was beating fast. Faster than last time. Much faster than a normal person’s.
“You said you could handle it,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Do you still think that?”
Silence.
A long silence.
Then he said, “I’m trying to find a way.”
That was different from “I can handle it.”
Lin Wan heard the difference.
“I can handle it” was a conclusion. “I’m trying to find a way” was a process that still had no answer.
Her eyes suddenly grew hot.
She lowered her head, pretending to straighten the edge of the gauze.
“Go to sleep,” Lu Yu said. “I’ll stand watch.”
“You have a fever.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Your forehead is covered in sweat.”
He reached up and wiped his forehead.
“It’s not a fever. It’s hot.”
Lin Wan looked at him.
“You think I’m going to believe that?”
He said nothing.
“I’ll stand watch tonight.” She stood up. “You sleep. This isn’t up for discussion.”
Lu Yu looked at her.
After a few seconds, he leaned back against the sofa.
He didn’t argue.
That frightened Lin Wan even more.
Before, he would argue. He would say, “You take the first half of the night,” or, “Wake me in three hours.” He treated standing watch as a task that needed to be divided, because he didn’t trust her with the entire night.
But today, he didn’t argue.
Because he knew he couldn’t make it through the whole night.
Lin Wan sat at the other end of the sofa and listened as his breathing gradually deepened.
He fell asleep.
Faster than ever before.
She looked at his face.
The sweat had dried, but his complexion was wrong. It wasn’t a normal skin tone; it carried a layer of gray, as if covered by a thin mist.
She wanted to reach out and touch his forehead, but she was afraid of waking him.
She pulled her hand back and hugged her knees.
The night was very quiet.
Every so often, wind squeezed in through the cracks around the window, carrying that cloying sweetness. Something cried out in the distance—not an animal’s cry, but a low, broken whimper, like metal bending.
Listening to the sound, Lin Wan dug her nails into her palm.
About two hours later, Lu Yu turned over.
His pack slid off the edge of the sofa and hit the floor.
The zipper hadn’t been closed properly, and its contents spilled out.
Lin Wan quickly crouched down to gather them.
Compressed rations. A canteen. Iodine antiseptic. Gauze. A folding knife.
And one more thing.
Something she had never seen before.
It was a small metal box, about the size of her palm, silver-gray, with badly worn edges. There were no markings on it, only a tiny button and a short antenna.
It looked like a radio.
But it wasn’t an ordinary radio.
When Lin Wan picked it up, she noticed a line of text engraved on the bottom of the box.
It was tiny. She had to bring it close to see it.
A string of numbers and letters.
Four letters followed by six numbers.
She couldn’t understand it.
But she recognized the format.
She had seen it in the news before. Military equipment serial numbers used this format.
Her hands began to tremble.
She turned the box over.
There was a small worn patch on the back, as if something had been scraped away. She lightly picked at the edge with her fingernail and felt uneven marks beneath it.
The words had been deliberately ground off.
Someone hadn’t wanted anyone else to see what was written there.
Lin Wan put the box back in the pack.
Her hands were shaking.
She stuffed the other things inside as well, zipped the pack shut, and set it beside the sofa.
Then she sat back down in her place.
She hugged her knees.
Her heart was beating fast.
She remembered what the man in the town had said—a shelter to the south, one set up by the military.
She remembered Lu Yu’s reaction when he heard that—a sharpness, not surprise. As if he had heard something he already knew.
She remembered his silence when he asked, “What are you going to trade her for?”
She remembered the guilt on his face when he heard the sound of the engine.
She remembered how much he had known from the very first day.
Those fragments.
They had always been scattered through her memory.
She had never dared to put them together.
But now, that metal box had placed the final piece in her hand.
She didn’t want to put it together.
But she had already seen the shape of the puzzle.
He hadn’t appeared by her side by chance.
He carried military communications equipment. He knew where the shelter was. He knew everything about the mutated entities. From the beginning, he had been carrying out some kind of mission.
And that mission—
had something to do with her.
Lin Wan buried her face in her knees.
She didn’t cry.
The tears circled once in her eyes before she forced them back.
She raised her head and looked at Lu Yu at the other end of the sofa.
He was asleep. His breathing was rougher than usual, his brow faintly furrowed, as if he were enduring something even in his dreams.
His left arm hung over the edge of the sofa, the gauze looking like a white rope in the darkness.
She looked at that strip of gauze.
She remembered the warmth of his skin beneath her fingertips as she wrapped it around and around.
She remembered how softly he had said her name, as if speaking it only to himself.
She remembered how gently he had draped his jacket over her, as if afraid of breaking something.
Had those things been real?
If he had come with a mission from the very beginning—
Had that tenderness been part of the mission?
The thought was like a knife cleaving straight down the center of her chest.
It didn’t hurt much.
It was the kind of pain that was so intense it made her unable to feel pain at all.
She closed her eyes.
The wind outside grew stronger. That low whimper sounded again, closer than before.
She opened her eyes and looked into the darkness beyond the window.
Then she lowered her head and looked at her hands.
These hands had bandaged his wounds. Cooked terrible chickpeas for him. Rested against his shoulder. Stepped on his shadow.
She slowly clenched her fists.
She didn’t know what the truth was.
She didn’t know who he was.
She didn’t know what that metal box meant.
But she knew one thing.
She wouldn’t leave while he was asleep.
No matter what mission he had come with.
No matter whether that tenderness had been real.
She wouldn’t leave.
At least—
At least not until he woke up.
Until he told her himself.
She would look into his eyes and listen to him speak.
Then she would decide.
The wind outside knocked something over, producing a dull thud.
Lu Yu shifted in his sleep.
His right hand reached unconsciously toward the side.
As if searching for something.
Lin Wan watched that hand.
She didn’t take it.
But she didn’t move away, either.
She simply sat there.
Within reach of his outstretched hand.
On the last night before the truth arrived.