V1C11

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In that moment, as the floor number jumped, Lin Jue felt his heart stop, and he stood up in panic, unsure of what to do.

How? he thought in disbelief. How could this library still have living people?

Who was it? Zombie, player or Judas?

“Hide!” Lin Jue instinctively wanted to run, but his words were stopped by Song Hanzhang.

“What are you so panicked about? Since the other person isn’t trying to sneak up on us through the stairs, there is a chance for us to communicate.” Song Hanzhang looked at the slowly increasing numbers, seemingly unsurprised. “Let’s stay here. No matter what it is, it’s something we will have to face eventually.

Second floor, third floor, fourth…

Ding——

The elevator stopped and beeped, the sound echoing through the room. Lin Jue was beyond tense, his back prickling like there was a snake crawling maliciously on it, silently opening its maw and hissing its bloody red tongue.

The elevator door opened slowly. Lin Jue held onto the pipe in his hands.

But then…

“It’s you?” Lin Jue asked, shocked.

The elevator doors opened to show Zhou Yuxiu, cowering from the cold. She held onto her scarf, revealing a pair of large eyes that stared diffidently at the two. “I… I…”

Lin Jue felt relieved, even a little grateful. They had after all been together for a while before, and since she was a girl, he had a fairly good impression of her. Song Hanzhang however thought differently.

“I told you before, don’t follow us.” His voice was cold without a hint of politeness.

“I won’t cause trouble for you.” Zhou Yuxiu walked out of the elevator and looked at him, perturbed, her legs still shaking. She wasn’t convincing in the slightest.

Lin Jue glanced at her miniskirt and ripped stockings and couldn’t help but sigh on the inside. The burdens of beauty…

“How did you know we were here?” Song Hanzhang didn’t let her go just because of her pitiful appearance and pressed on.

“I followed you guys from a distance and saw that you entered the library’s underground carpark, so I thought you were probably going to go to the library. Then I saw that there were lots of dead zombies in the main hall, and some outside the elevator room, so I thought you probably went upstairs,” Zhou Yuxiu lowered her head and whispered.

Song Hanzhang simply nodded and continued resting on the wall, raising his hand to look at the time after remembering something. 21:05. Zhou Yuxiu didn’t dare to say any more and silently sat in the corner farthest away from the zombie body, staring at it dumbly, resuming her previous soulless state.

Growl—— Lin Jue’s empty stomach protested loudly. He rubbed it and scratched his head in frustration.

“There’s a small shop and cafe on level three. If you’re hungry, you can go there to find some food,” Zhou Yuxiu murmured from her corner.

“Ah, it’s okay…”

Lin Jue was just about to refuse when Zhou Yuxiu turned around and looked at him expectantly. “Actually, I want to go to the bathroom as well, but… I’m scared of meeting any zombies.”

“Oh, then I’ll go with you.” Lin Jue realized that he answered too fast and added, “I’ll wait for you outside.”

“I’m coming as well,” Song Hanzhang suddenly said.

“It’s okay, I’ll be fine with Lin Jue.” Zhou Yuxiu still seemed to be afraid of Song Hanzhang and hurriedly rejected his suggestion.

“I also want to go to the bathroom,” Song Hanzhang said and straightened up, dagger in hand, looking at Zhou Yuxiu. “You don’t have any weapons either, so if you do get into any danger, Lin Jue might not be able to take care of you.”

Lin Jue agreed. “Yeah, it’s safer if we go together.”

That was weird… where is Zhou Yuxiu’s shovel? Song Hanzhang had already given it back before they left. Lin Jue was a little confused, but Zhou Yuxiu was already slowly standing up, leaning against the wall. “Ah… okay then, thank you…”

“Level three or four?” Lin Jue asked Song Hanzhang.

“Four,” Song Hanzhang replied without any pause.

“Ah, then I’ll have to stay hungry,” Lin Jue complained.

Song Hanzhang looked as if he wanted to smile but his face stayed stern. “Starve.”

Lin Jue sighed and turned to Zhou Yuxiu. “See? He’s a horrible person.”

Zhou Yuxiu forced out a smile, not daring to reply.

The door to the bathroom on level four was closed, but the light inside was still on. Zhou Yuxiu hesitated in front of the female bathroom and asked Lin Jue timidly, “I’m a little scared. Can you go inside and wait for me…”

Lin Jue looked haltingly at the symbol labeling the bathroom as female before finally nodding. “Okay.”

Zhou Yuxiu looked relieved and pushed open the door.

“Didn’t you also want to go to the bathroom?” Lin Jue asked Song Hanzhang, who was standing frozen next to him.

Song Hanzhang’s glasses reflected the overhead lights, glaringly bright and hiding his eyes. His gaze pierced through them, cold and terrifying.

“Are you really planning to go inside?” Song Hanzhang’s voice was just as cold as it had been before, and even icier.

“Emergencies.” Lin Jue didn’t want to enter a female bathroom either, but Zhou Yuxiu was practically begging him.

Song Hanzhang scoffed and looked at Zhou Yuxiu who was already halfway inside the bathroom. Her figure appeared even more frail and pitiful underneath its pale light, her gloved hand holding onto the door handle, her wrist obviously shaking.

A strange feeling suddenly rose up from within Lin Jue. There was something wrong with Zhou Yuxiu.

“Enough. I’ve had enough of your subpar performance. Do you still refuse to speak the truth, even now?” Song Hanzhang asked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Zhou Yuxiu’s face was covered in shadow, hiding her expression, but the weakness in her voice and the despair coating her entire body was unable to be hidden.

“I warned you before I left, but it seems you didn’t understand what I meant. What a shame.”

Zhou Yuxiu tripped, slamming into the door with a bang, and she stumbled forwards a few steps before barely regaining her balance, grabbing onto a sink with both hands. She immediately cried out in pain, her right hand clutching her left tightly.

Underneath the bright light, half of her face was covered by her scarf, showing only her eyes and her forehead. Her skin was pale, her eyes turbid and unfocused.

This kind of paleness and these kind of strange trances unlike a living person; it was just like… just like…

Lin Jue suddenly realized something and stared at Zhou Yuxiu in disbelief, his eyes moving from her deathly pale face to her gloved hands.

At this moment, it was clear to him that Zhou Yuxiu was close to transforming!

“When did you find out?” Zhou Yuxiu asked weakly, her voice hoarse and depressed, as if she was on the verge of death.

“At first, it was just a suspicion, but it was clear after a few tests. When we met you, you were barefoot with scratches on your knees and ripped stockings. Obviously, you had tripped whilst trying to get away from a zombie, and had taken off your high heels. I didn’t quite believe that your mental state was stable enough for you to win without any harm to yourself on your first face-off with one. You may have had to pay a little ‘price’. As for whether it was your neck, covered by your scarf, or your hands, covered by your gloves, I wasn’t certain.”

Zhou Yuxiu leaned against the basin, struggling to think, but her quickly depleting life force made her slow. She took a long time before realizing, “Was that why you gave me a pair of shoes at the plaza?”

“And after leaving the dormitory gates, I was pulling on your right hand. There was nothing unusual there, but your left hand, which was holding onto the knife, looked very weak, weak enough for there to be no strength behind your throw. Connecting that to you giving me your shovel, it was probably because using only your right hand on a heavy two-handed tool would appear suspicious.” Song Hanzhang looked at her left hand and frowned.

Seeing that there were no objections from Zhou Yuxiu, Song Hanzhang became even more firm in his judgement. “When you received your prize from the plaza, you didn’t receive any weapon but you looked excited. Connecting that to the fact that you were able to arrive here safely, it was probably some kind of method to make zombies ignore you. However, it should have a time limit on it, or you simply didn’t want us to know that you had such an ability- you chose not to use it in the gym area. It was also at that time that your symptoms got worse: pale face, groggy mind, reduced stamina… One of the reasons why I left the team was because of you. Now tell me, who was it that told you Lin Jue had the antibody? Liu Shan? Zhao Liangsheng? Gao Yifei?”

Lin Jue thought back to when they were in the gym. It was true that Zhou Yuxiu had started to appear weaker and slower. He had merely thought that she was terrified from witnessing a person being eaten by zombies, but now, it was clear that it was due to the transformation reaction after being bitten for over half an hour.

Zhou Yuxiu stared dumbly at Song Hanzhang, as if unable to understand what he was saying.

“When a human realizes that they will die but has a strong survival instinct, they might do some horrifying actions… After all, humans are selfish creatures.” Song Hanzhang pushed up his glasses and stared hostilely at Zhou Yuxiu.

“No! It’s not!” Zhou Yuxiu screamed, tears suddenly rushing out of her eyes as she cried out. “I gave you the shovel only because I thought that you would need it more than me!”

Lin Jue was stunned. Even Song Hanzhang was obviously astonished. “I apologize. I thought too much.”

With tears staining her face, Zhou Yuxiu sobbed as she walked towards Lin Jue, leaning against the wall for support, each step seeming like it would be her last. “Give me your antibody, I know you have it; save me, please save me, I don’t want to… I really don’t want to become a monster like that! Please give it to me! Hurry!”

Zhou Yuxiu screamed hysterically, shakily reaching out her hand towards Lin Jue, her eyes, filled with a desire to live, already mixing together with her transforming face, strange and hideous.

Lin Jue took a few steps back and looked at her with a mixture of pity and sorrow. Too late… it was too late.

“Too late.” Song Hanzhang looked at his watch, and he gave out the harsh verdict. “We met you at 20:20 and it is now 21:08. Even if you had been bitten at exactly 20:20, it’s been over 45 minutes now. The directions on the antibody clearly stated that the virus was irreversible after 45 minutes. Regrettably, it is too late for you.”

Zhou Yuxiu stood frozen next to the door, the hopeful gleam in her eyes gone. She started muttering under her breath, “No… that’s not possible… it was just a single bite, I’m a human, I’m not a zombie! I won’t become a man-eating monster! It’s not too late, it’s not too late…”

More tears poured out from her eyes as she bit her gloves, murmuring nervously as if to comfort herself, but also as a dying struggle.

The antibody in Lin Jue’s pants burned from his body heat, hot enough to feel like it would scorch him as well. Lin Jue closed his eyes, pained, but also feeling a little bit of thankfulness.

If it really wasn’t too late, would he have saved her?

If he didn’t, then Zhou Yuxiu would become a shadow on his life forever, constantly reminding him that he had watched someone walk towards their death because of his own selfishness.

But if he had saved her but ended up dying, then he would die with a deep sense of hatred.

His morals and desire to live interrogated him; if he was willing to save an innocent person, and most likely receive unkind retribution for his kind act.

Thankfully, the choice had already been made for him by time.

Realizing his feelings, Lin Jue knew that he had already lost, lost to his selfishness.

If it was still possible to save Zhou Yuxiu, then it was likely that he would give the antibody to her due to the pressure from his morals, and gain from it a little bit of moral joy, but what he would feel more would be a fear of the future, and a resentment towards her that he could not show.

Why? It was something he had gotten, yet he had to give it to somebody else. Such a key, life-saving prop; he also needed it so why did he have to voluntarily give it away? If he was bitten later, who would be able to save him? If he died due to a bite, then what a laughable ending would that be?

Why force him to make such a painful choice? If you got bitten, then wouldn’t it be better to leave the team silently by yourself? You knew that you would turn into a zombie, so why stay with the team and cause them more danger and trouble? If you left by yourself, no-one would be forced to make these choices, and no one would be in pain. How good would that be?

Lin Jue bit down hard on the tip of his tongue, the pain waking him up from the darkening spiral of his thoughts. He didn’t understand why he would have such terrifying contemplations; he shouldn’t think like this, he couldn’t think like this!

“Please… Please…” Zhou Yuxiu pleaded through her tears. She lay slumped on the ground, her entire body convulsing, the voice being forced out of her throat staggered and hoarse, mixed with sounds of retching. “Please, give me your antibody, I don’t want to die, I really don’t want to die! It’s not too late, I won’t become a monster, it will work! Why can’t you let me try? Let me try!”

Song Hanzhang looked down at her. “Apologies. As compared to some illusory thing like a miracle, I would prefer to believe in medical directions.”

Such a cruel and straightfoward yet reasonable sentence merciless pierced through the last of Zhou Yuxiu’s hope.

Zhou Yuxiu slowly raised her head.

The lower half of her face peeked out from the scarf. Fangs had already pierced through her lip, red blood slowly seeping out. Her dazed eyes shone with spiteful malice as she coldly questioned Song Hanzhang, “You just don’t want to give the antibody to me, right? Even though you knew a long time ago that I was bitten, even though you could have saved me, you lied and said it was a stamina potion! Even though I was still clear-headed, even though I hadn’t turned into a zombie yet… You selfish scum, you bastard. I hate you, I’ll never let you go, even if I die!”

Song Hanzhang looked at her expressionlessly. “You’re not wrong in saying that. I am indeed not a good person, but on the matter of selfishness, we are the same, Miss Zhou. If you had revealed that you were bitten, Lin Jue would have saved you out of his own righteousness. If you had revealed the power you received, I would also have considered your usefulness and saved you. You had many chances to live, but it’s too late to say anything now…

“Compared to a human, you look closer to a zombie now,” Song Hanzhang said.

Lin Jue pulled on Song Hanzhang’s arm and shook his head, asking him to stop adding more onto Zhou Yuxiu. Even though everything he had said was true, it was too cruel for a girl who was about to turn into a zombie.

“Hehehe… hahaha…” Zhou Yuxiu laughed hysterically, bitter despair coming from her throat, so unlike a human yet so similar to the growl of a zombie. She used her pale, trembling hands to touch her face. From the bulging eyes to the slowly changing teeth, she could tell what she looked like now without having to look at herself…

“Am I becoming a monster?” Zhou Yuxiu whispered, her voice hoarse like a rejuvenated corpse, her empty eyes staring at the other two, filled with despair and resentment like a demon from hell.

She was scared. Scared that she would become those monsters which only knew how to eat humans, chasing senselessly after the meat of living people in the dark, ripping open flesh, fighting after insides, eating until her mouth was filled with the stink of blood. That she would listen to the screams of humans and eat and eat with relish until she swallowed her own tongue.

Fresh and tender human meat… so tasty… Eating until she didn’t want to stop…

Her saliva started secreting like crazy, dripping down the corners of her mouth along with her blood. The desire for human meat filled her with power. The two people in front of her were less than three meters away and she felt like she could already smell that mouthwatering scent.

Zhou Yuxiu’s gaze turned from resentment to emptiness, then from emptiness into greed, naked hunger written on her face. She suddenly snapped out of her trance. What was she thinking about? She was thinking about eating humans!

Breaking down, Zhou Yuxiu let out a miserable wail before hysterically screaming, “AHHHHHH—— Kill you, I’m going to kill you! Instead of becoming a monster, let’s go to hell together—!!!”

***

Vera’s Notes:

English… is such a horrible language for screaming in. Writing in all caps… is horrible. And yet, I have no alternative.

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