CHAPTER 10

At first, Li Haohao didn't really care whether it was oatmeal porridge or not.

Back then, I pushed open the first door of the outpost, followed by the second door. Li Haohao stood still in place, waiting for me to walk around inside before she took a step forward. She opened her mouth, revealing a forked, blood-soaked tongue, and then closed her mouth, silently surveying the area.

I was extremely exhausted at that time. I took off my protective suit and threw it on the ground, ran my fingers through my hair, and surveyed the entire outpost. I went to wash my hands and face—it's a normal habit for people to wash their hands when returning from outside. That moment brought me a moment of calmness.

Ding! I heard the crisp sound of bead string clinking against each other.

I heard her say she was hungry, but she didn't open her mouth.

At that moment, my long-idle stomach suddenly sent a signal that it was hungry. Out of habit, I walked into the kitchen. It hadn't been long since I had frozen the body in the cold storage room, and I didn't want Li Haohao to follow me. So I rummaged through the kitchen and found a tasteless pack of oatmeal.

Two stainless steel bowls—I placed them on a small table. Li Haohao sat down, picked up a spoon, and calmly filled her mouth with oatmeal porridge.

At that time, she was easily satisfied. Even after eating oatmeal porridge for three days straight, she didn't demand to eat meat. I sat across from her and ate together. I chewed slowly as usual, while Li Haohao ate faster and faster until she pushed the bowl in front of me.

"Hungry."

This time she said it with her mouth. I paid attention to her mouth, and her tongue had already healed. She rolled her tongue and spat out a translucent blade, which fell onto the table. She covered it with her palm.

I reached out my hand, and she showed it to me from between her fingers. It turned out to be a shard of glass, like a broken beer bottle. I looked down and wanted to pick up the fragments, but Li Haohao closed her fingers to prevent me from seeing.

Finally, that piece of glass was buried under the base of the outpost's outer wall, like a child burying their fallen milk tooth.

I opened my eyes, got up from bed, and felt sore in my shoulders. I had taken a shower yesterday, so theoretically, I should have felt refreshed—unless Li Haohao insisted on peeking.

When the power in the third-floor bathroom was turned on, the circulation system would overload. So I just filled a basin with hot water and another with cold water. I stripped naked and sat in a large bathtub, using a wet towel to wash myself—I felt the gaze from outside the door.

I lowered my head and glanced under the partition door, seeing two feet with several gold bead string on the ankles. I reached out and pulled them down, causing Li Haohao to scream, "Ah! He Ran!"

"Get out, I'm taking a shower."

"I'm curious."

"Curious about what? Don't I wash you?"

"That's the problem," Li Haohao dodged my hand like playing jump rope and knocked on the door seriously. "When I take a shower, you wash my back. When you take a shower, why can't I wash your back?"

"Get to the point." No one likes being questioned while naked, and I didn't beat around the bush either. I draped a towel over my shoulders.

"I want to go in."

"You can't."

"Why? I can even enter your room."

"You just admitted it."

Outside, Li Haohao hesitated for a moment. "No, you didn't hear correctly."

"Fine, you can't come in."

"Then I won't let you wash me next time."

"Okay." I agreed quickly, and Li Haohao immediately felt like it was a losing deal. She started jumping up and down. I could only tell from the constant movement of her feet under the partition door that she was dissatisfied.

She tried using a small card to pry open my lock through the gap in the door, forcefully reaching her hand in, pretending to have a mechanical problem, but none of her tricks worked. Finally, she said, "Then I won't leave, and I'll take your clothes with me."

"So you want to see me walk past you naked?"

"That's right."

"Then take them."

Li Haohao wanted to waste my time, but she was the one who had winded down yesterday and couldn't waste too much time with me.

When there was complete silence outside, I remained cautious and washed myself. After washing, I opened the door. As expected, Li Haohao was still facing away from me, bending over, and still holding my clothes.

I had a sudden thought and tugged on my clothes. "There's a story from before the war, where a man wanted to keep a fairy in the human world and marry her, so he stole her clothes..."

But I couldn't pull it off.

Li Haohao suddenly turned around. "Hah! You fell for it!"

Then I started struggling with Li Haohao, pulling for my clothes. She was very curious to see my body and what was different about it. Although I didn't mind showing it to her, her curiosity was so intense that I couldn't let her have her way. Plus, I needed to keep control of her lifeline—the wind-up key—and my clothes.

We wrestled for a while, and suddenly, Li Haohao pulled out my gun from my clothes, pointed it at me, and made a "pew" sound.

I gave up on the clothes and crossed my arms, looking at her.

Her gaze lingered on my body, looking me over from the front to the back, with the gun pressed against my head the entire time, completely disregarding the fact that I was starting to get angry.

Her curious gaze was like a cat's tongue. Even though she didn't touch me throughout, I felt a peculiar sensation as if I had been licked. Finally, in the moment when she smugly wanted to release my clothes, I swiftly grabbed the gun from her hand. Li Haohao suddenly exerted a strange force, and I knew it was just her instinctive resistance. But at that moment, everything went black before my eyes. When I regained consciousness, I found myself slammed against the wall, my right shoulder throbbing with pain. I clenched my back teeth tightly, suppressing any sound.

Li Haohao stood in front of me, stunned and uneasy, her gun and my clothes dropped on the floor. I reached out and grabbed the clothes, draping them over my shoulders. Luckily, my lab coat from before the war was similar enough to blend in indoors, loose and lightweight. I slowly stood up.

Suddenly, Li Haohao let out a piercing scream, covering her head.

"It's not my fault... I didn't mean to... I just... I just..."

She covered her head, although her gaze was directed at me, her eyes suddenly turned pitch black.

As Li Haohao's face turned towards me, I suddenly found myself hesitant to look directly at her face. It was as if those two pitch-black eyeballs were about to turn into whirlpools and swallow me whole.

"Li Haohao!" I called out, struggling to raise my left arm and placed it on her shoulder. Since I couldn't meet her gaze, I turned my face towards her ear.

"It's my fault..." she murmured.

It was the first time I heard her say "it's my fault" instead of blaming me with "it's your fault, not mine."

"It's not your fault." I told her.

Li Haohao tilted her head.

"Although I'm angry, it's not your fault because I didn't tell you in advance. I don't like people seeing my body, I feel... uncomfortable."

"But you've seen mine."

"Alright, I'm sorry. I thought of you as a child and felt responsible for taking care of you, so... I didn't seek your consent initially, and then I forgot about it. From now on, you can bathe by yourself, and I won't—"

"I don't like apologies!" Li Haohao's eyes returned to normal. She angrily hit my gun, making a loud sound. "I don't like it! I don't like bathing by myself!"

I didn't know how to explain that there was no contradiction between "she was willing to show me her body" and "I didn't want to show her mine." She lacked the sense of boundaries.

I rephrased the question, "So, even if you point the gun at me, you still want to see me?"

She seemed to realize that something wasn't right because I never pointed the gun at her.

"You're the one who left the gun out!" she immediately started arguing.

"Fine, it's my fault." I rubbed my sore shoulder, "I'll go back and rest."

"I didn't mean it to do that just now. I thought..." She pointed at the gun, seemingly dissatisfied with the unchanging process of apologizing first. Frowning and pondering for a while, she lacked the vocabulary to express herself and could only say, "I didn't mean it. It's not my fault."

"I don't blame you."

No broken bones, at most just bruises, which I didn't really mind. Li Haohao wasn't a precisely designed projectile, she landed just above me. She truly didn't mean it.

"I see," she suddenly figured it out. With a comic-like gesture, she raised a finger, as if a light bulb representing inspiration popped up beside her head with a 'ding' sound. "You can enter my room, but I can't enter yours. You can bathe me, but I can't bathe you. There's no other reason for it, it's just because you don't like it."

I nodded. "That's right."

She stood there, with that finger raised, contemplating the invisible light bulb.

Then, the light bulb appeared.

I opened the door, and her head lit up. A spherical light bulb hovered above the right side of her head. She kept her finger raised, pointing at the glowing bulb, as if unraveling a mystery like a little detective, a touch of cleverness on her face.

"Does your shoulder hurt?" she asked, tilting her head with concern. I moved my right shoulder, and she nodded, answering her own question, "That's good."

I closed the door. Was this normal? No, it wasn't normal. I couldn't find any excuse to describe the floating light bulb beside her head. I regretted giving her comic books to read.

After contemplating for a while, I thought, maybe the light bulb is connected to her clothes, and I can't see the wire.

Convincing myself, I opened the door again. Li Haohao had already toured the entire third floor, hugging her arms. When she saw me coming out, she thought and said, "He Ran, there are a total of nine rooms like yours on the third floor, but you haven't told me about the other eight rooms except for Zhao Xinyan. Can I know about them?"

"Aren't you more curious than usual today?"

"I don't know why, but I feel a bit smarter."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"This light, it can't move," she demonstrated, trying to move the light bulb with her left hand, but it remained motionless. It only swayed with Li Haohao's head movements, maintaining its position relative to her. "But I can turn it off."

She bent her right index finger, and the inspiration light bulb went out with a snap. Then she raised it again, and the bulb emitted a dazzling light. It brought about a strange sensation: bright enough to illuminate the entire corridor, yet it didn't bother Li Haohao or me. It seemed to release a circle of fine threads representing its shining effect.

"Good."

"Good?" Li Haohao couldn't believe my indifferent reaction. "I'm smarter now. Can you teach me some new words?"

"I'm thinking that there's a room on the fourth floor that seems to have a faulty connection in the pipeline. We haven't been able to get the circulation machine to work properly... If this light is on... maybe I can try to fix it."

Li Haohao blinked her eyes. "Are you using me as a light bulb?"

She was already a light bulb today, but she showed an expression as if I were exploiting child labor.

"That room was previously used for cultivating fresh vegetables. If we can get the circulation machine working..."

"Go brush your teeth and get upstairs now, hurry hurry!" Li Haohao pushed my back, and I took a sharp breath. She immediately let go, realizing that she had touched my injured area.

She seemed to remember accidentally slamming me against the wall yesterday. Feeling guilty and anxious, she wanted to urge me but didn't dare. She pursed her lips, her expression complex.

I deliberately walked a bit slower.

"You're so slow today." She still complained.

"It hurts a bit."

She fell silent and resignedly dragged her feet ahead of me.

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