CHAPTER 15

That morning, I asked her if anything else had grown overnight. After all, she appeared normal on the outside. She shook her head and covered her mouth without saying a word.

The water in the pot was simmering as the oatmeal cooked.

I rummaged through a box and found a hair tie to help her tidy up her messy hair. Then I scooped an extra spoonful of oatmeal into her stainless steel bowl.

Li Haohao seemed to have no appetite. I thought it was because the oatmeal porridge didn't taste good. As usual, she ignored me and gave me a cold shoulder.

The problem arose the next day.

I didn't want her to keep wearing a gloomy expression. She hadn't come to my door to peek at night, displaying an abnormal lethargy. So I considered it and brought up half a bag of frozen beef cubes from the fridge.

I also looked at the trash bin in the cold storage room. The bodies of Zhao Xinyan and Lin Buxiu were standing back to back, their faces covered in a chilling aura. I told them it wasn't good to do that and asked why they were behaving like this when they were friends. I moved the two bodies slightly so they faced each other, covered them, went upstairs, poured out half of the beef cubes to defrost, and brought the other half down. When I lifted the lid, they were back to being back to back.

Conflicts among friends are normal, so I didn't pay much attention. I went upstairs to stew curry beef.

Before the war, curry had many flavors, and the combination of spices produced a dominant aroma, comforting and warm. Li Haohao hadn't tasted it before, but she would surely like it.

I brewed another cup of vitamin pills, and Li Haohao's eyes sparkled with the fragrance. She stood by the pot, eagerly watching. But when I brought it over, she started shaking her head.

I was surprised. "Is it not tasty?"

She hadn't even taken a bite. Last time, when we had curry-flavored roasted chicken, Li Haohao practically ate all the bones. This time, she should at least open her mouth.

I picked up a piece and brought it close to her lips. "Give it a try?"

Li Haohao tried to open her mouth, but it was as if her lips were stuck together. She pursed her lips repeatedly, and finally covered her mouth, shaking her head.

I chewed on the piece myself, and it tasted delicious.

Li Haohao swallowed a mouthful of saliva, her brows and eyes drooping, not in a good mood.

I pushed my bowl towards her, and after much hesitation, Li Haohao picked up the chopsticks and gestured for a while. In the end, she pushed it back.

I had expected that the curry beef would bring a smile to Li Haohao's face, screams of delight, and unfamiliar praises. But I never imagined that she would refuse to even take a bite. She put down the chopsticks, shrank back, hesitated for a while, and then stuck a finger into her own mouth, pulling sideways. She created a gap in her mouth and showed it to me.

I held her chin to get a closer look, but before I could approach, something sharp shot out from her mouth and pricked my finger.

Li Haohao immediately closed her mouth and held onto my hand. My finger turned red, and I couldn't see what had pricked it.

"Li Haohao."

Even in a serious situation that warranted using her full name, Li Haohao still didn't speak. She held my hand and looked at it for a long time. Finally, with hesitation and a reluctant expression on her face, she picked up her stainless steel bowl and placed it upside down on top of my bowl.

I realized I had overreacted. Yesterday, she didn't speak, and I thought it was because she was in a bad mood and was being stubborn about eating the oatmeal porridge. But now, it seemed different.

I took the lid and held it in front of my eyes. "Open your mouth."

When Li Haohao opened her mouth wide, she could finally speak. "He Ran, my teeth hurt so much."

Because she was speaking with her mouth open, it was a bit difficult to hear clearly.

Did she grow a cavity this week?

But it seemed more than just cavities.

Her lower two front teeth had transformed into gate-like structures, opening horizontally and tightly shut now. They had very small patterns on them. Her canine teeth turned into arrow towers, and they were spraying out invisible bullets. The bullets were hitting my lid with a "pupupu" sound. The teeth beside them were closely connected, and there seemed to be something I couldn't see defending them. I faintly heard commands, but when I tried to listen carefully, I couldn't hear them anymore.

The upper teeth were the same, but the battlements faced downward, and the patterns seemed slightly different. They were also releasing weapons, some of which sprayed onto my lid, and others landed on the row of teeth below.

The lower row started to counterattack. When she opened her mouth, some translucent, sharp objects continuously sprayed out between her upper and lower teeth.

Li Haohao rolled her tongue, afraid to touch the space between the two rows of teeth.

I put down the lid and reached out to touch her teeth. Li Haohao danced around, trying to stop me, but I still touched one of her canine teeth, the "arrow tower" on the lower row. When I pressed on it, my fingertip felt many small, soft things. With a bang, they broke, as if I had crushed some sand that stuck to her teeth.

I withdrew my hand and raised my finger, signaling Li Haohao to stay still.

I ran upstairs and examined the sample on my finger under a microscope. I quickly averted my gaze, feeling that I had become even more polluted. I immediately closed my eyes and held my arm to suppress the instinctive trembling.

Under the microscope, the sticky substance on my fingertip appeared to be human tissue. I had crushed it and smeared it on a glass slide. Brain matter, blood, flesh, and organs were all mixed together.

I couldn't dwell on it. I turned my head down, wanting to open the faucet and rinse it off directly. But then I thought that flushing these invisible things into the plumbing system might affect its operation.

Using the same motion, I lowered my raised finger again. Li Haohao had already closed her mouth, placing her hands between her knees and hanging her head uncomfortably.

I held up that finger and couldn't think of what to say for a moment. Li Haohao opened her mouth again and explained incoherently, "The upper and lower teeth are fighting!"

"The upper teeth and lower teeth are at war?"

"Yeah."

"Do they fight when you close your mouth?"

"They fight either way."

I studied it for a moment. When she closed her mouth, the upper and lower teeth were in conflict, but I couldn't see it. When she opened her mouth, her canine teeth could launch long-range attacks like flying arrows.

However, the arrow tower on her lower right teeth seemed to have suffered heavy casualties because I pressed it with my finger. It was currently unable to deliver effective blows to the opposing side. Li Haohao pointed at that tooth and said to me, "It hurts."

I raised my index finger, cleared my mind, and pressed down on the canine tooth in front of her upper teeth with my middle finger. I trembled at the thought that pressing down with this finger would kill countless "people."

Now I was holding up two fingers, unsure whether to wash them off or wipe them off. If I wiped them off, we didn't have tissues, and there were no spare towels. Using clothes was out of the question.

As a result, I didn't know how to start today's work. I sat facing Li Haohao for a while. Li Haohao couldn't contain herself and drooled as saliva flowed down her mouth. I reached out and wiped it with my palm this time, and she closed her mouth. Now my entire right hand was not very clean.

I didn't know what to do with this hand, so I just held it up. It was a bit sore, but I endured it. Li Haohao pursed her lips and looked at me, unable to hold back her scolding. She opened her mouth and mumbled, "It's your fault for touching it."

"Can you blame me for touching it? It attacked me."

"It's your fault."

She was blaming me. I felt that holding up my hand was too strange of a posture, so I decided to put it down and rest it on the edge of the table.

"It's all because you don't brush your teeth properly. Now you have cavities, right?" I said.

Li Haohao widened her eyes, ready to defend herself, but as soon as she stuck out her tongue, her teeth attacked it. She immediately withdrew it and spoke incoherently again. She couldn't control her saliva, so she irritably covered her mouth.

I lost my appetite. I asked Li Haohao to clean up the dishes and cutlery. I wanted to take the curry beef stew down and freeze it. I looked at the plastic bag that had contained the beef stew and picked it up to put some water in it. I put my hand inside and rinsed it, rubbing my fingertips and the gaps between my nails. It felt visibly refreshing. Then I carefully took it out. However, to avoid getting it on other things, I found a strip of cloth torn from a mop and wrapped it around my finger. I carried the curry beef stew downstairs.

In the cold storage room, the large bin containing the corpses had fallen over. I crouched down, but Zhao Xinyan and Lin Buxiu were not there.

At this moment, I didn't have much interest in dealing with them. I searched around and found a disposable toothbrush that no one cared about before the war. The bristles had fallen off quite a bit, but it would do for now.

I lifted Li Haohao's chin and examined her teeth. To prevent her cavities from attacking me, I put on a pair of plain glasses and used the handle of a small toothbrush to probe deep into her mouth. Li Haohao wore a pained expression, constantly furrowing her brow, trying to avoid it.

"Rinse your mouth." I handed her a cup of water and let her spit into a plastic bag. Later, I would throw these things away in the wilderness.

Li Haohao followed my instructions, and I probed with the toothbrush handle again. The things that had been attacking were indeed much fewer now, but the rest wasn't clear to the naked eye.

I dragged her to the bathroom, squeezed toothpaste onto the toothbrush, and had her open her mouth wide, allowing me to scrape her teeth with this worn-out toothbrush. I exerted force, and Li Haohao tilted her head like a doll without a neck. Finally, she foamed at the mouth and sat on the side weakly, saying, "I want to eat meat."

"I'll go get some."

"Mm."

Her teeth still hurt when she ate, tears streaming down as she ate. I put on protective clothing and went outside, emptying the plastic bag by the roadside outside the sentry post.

It wasn't environmentally friendly to throw away plastic bags before the war, but nobody would come to criticize me for it in the post-war era. However, maintaining normalcy was important. Most of the time, I maintained the post-war routine, but sometimes I resorted to pre-war rules. I kneaded some soil inside the bag, emptied it again, and threw the plastic bag back into the trash bin in the cold storage room to avoid polluting other things.

Those large bin were neatly arranged, except for one that had fallen over. I remembered that I hadn't paid attention to those two bodies. I went over and helped them up, searching in the cold storage room until I found both of them.

Zhao Xinyan was following behind Lin Buxiu, who was trying to leave.

I turned Lin Buxiu's body around to face Zhao Xinyan.

"Aren't you friends?" I advised, hoping they could get along peacefully as they did in their lives. They could be friends while I liked to facilitate that.

Lin Buxiu's body had its eyes open, and the eyeballs turned towards me. This time, I put her upside down and stuffed her into the trash bin, connecting her head to Zhao Xinyan's body.

Li Haohao shouted my name from upstairs. I went out, and she was sitting in the bathroom, throwing a tantrum, covering her mouth and complaining of pain.

As she opened her mouth, the attacks increased again. It seemed that her teeth could never be completely cleaned. They nurtured countless "people" once she consumed some nutrients. Li Haohao shrank her tongue, shed tears, wiped them off with the back of her hand, and continued to shed golden teardrops. I stared at her for a while, trying to come up with a reasonable explanation.

"You have cavities. If children don't brush their teeth properly, bacteria will eat away at your teeth, make a home inside, hollow them out, and cause pain. Eventually, your teeth will rot."

After thinking for a moment, I found a piece of foil in a cigarette box, tore off the paper, folded it into a small square, and had her bite on it, hoping it would prevent the war between her upper and lower teeth.

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