CHAPTER 9

When I came downstairs, Li Haohao was sitting upright, holding a book.

It's not that she willingly sat upright, it was the wind-up key that froze her in that moment of stretching her waist. She held the book, and as I walked behind her to wind-up the key, I glanced at it. The boy in the book awkwardly looked out the window, while the girl lectured him at length.

After the creaking sound of the wind-up key, Li Haohao relievedly put the book down and eagerly turned the page. Taking the book away from her was like taking food from a tiger's mouth. So, I allowed her to continue reading and went on to cook oatmeal porridge.

While eating, Li Haohao showed some characteristics of a pre-war teenager. She didn't let go of the book, her left hand stirred the unappetizing oatmeal porridge while ignoring its taste, and she stared at the comic without turning away. Although she didn't understand most of the words, it didn't stop her from crying uncontrollably when she closed the last page.

"Wuwuwuwu..." Li Haohao grabbed my sleeve to wipe her tears and runny nose.

"What happened in the story?"

"Wuwuwuwu, it's about wuwuwu, and then he, and she..." Li Haohao had no summarizing ability, her face covered in snot and tears as she rambled out the story incoherently, not much different from the actual events. it seems comics suited her well - she didn't need to read every word, just roughly guessing the gist from the expressions.

Since she finished reading, I tried to take the comic book back from her, but Li Haohao held onto it and refused to let go. I wasn't a good parent, so I snatched it away and held it against my chest, preventing her from retrieving things from my embrace. She could only stare at me angrily.

After a while, she remembered to negotiate: "You told me to go to the basement, but then you didn't let me go. It's not my fault that the wind-up key ran out."

Her way of expressing things was sometimes can be indirect but easy to understand. For example, she wanted to use my "going back on my word" to bargain for either the basement or the comic book.

"If I let you take the comic book out tomorrow, will you stay up late reading it?" I waved the comic book in my hand.

Li Haohao vigorously shook her head, but her sneaky face was always honest. I knew she wasn't telling the truth. In order to ensure that we could leave early the next morning, I firmly confiscated the comic book.

Early the next morning, I didn't see Li Haohao at the door. My first thought was that she had gone to sneakily read the book. However, as I reached the stairwell, this thought came to a halt as I remembered her wind-up key.

She didn't close the door when she slept. It's not that she wasn't concerned about privacy, it's more that she was afraid of not hearing any movements from me if the door was closed. When I entered the room, I saw a blanket draped over her legs. A wind-up key stood behind her like a small windmill, and she lay motionless like a patch of grass.

I approached and wound the key. Li Haohao lifted her fingertips and then drooped them back down. Her head tilted on the hard bed, squashing her face, and her mouth skewed. She struggled to speak, "I can't move."

I thought this might be another one of her tricks, trying to get a massage or something from me. But then I realized that even without a wind-up key, anyone lying motionless on a hard bed would experience numbness in their limbs.

I turned her over, shifting her from prone to lying on her left side, facing me. Then I took hold of her left hand and rubbed it. I turned her over again and did the same with her right hand. Finally, Li Haohao managed to prop herself up, exhaling heavily. "Can I still go out like this? There's protective gear outside, and if I can't move and encounter a monster, you'll have to carry me and run."

I'm glad she said that, "You stay in the car, I'll go down and collect the samples and come back."

"Then it wouldn't have been worth it for me to come out."

"Okay, then you stay here and wait for me to come back—" As soon as I stood up, Li Haohao changed her mind, "I'll stay in the car, I'll stay in the car. But it's too boring to stay in the car without moving. Can you teach me how to drive?"

That was not possible.

After thinking for a moment, I said, "Let's bring the comic book with us."

"Okay."

The deal is done.

I recalled that a famous writer once seemed to have said something about opening doors and windows, but I couldn't remember exactly. The general idea was that Li Haohao would make an excessive request, I would refuse, and then I would agree to other requests.

On the quiet and peaceful field without mist, wild grass grew recklessly on both sides of the road. Facing the wilderness with its back to the mountains, the caterpillar left shallow gray marks on the flat road, which dissipated with the wind. Occasionally, the caterpillar rolled over some wild grass that had encroached onto the road. When the wind blew, the grass leaves would rise with the wind and fall into the waist-high grass. In the quiet sound of the wind, there were faint, barely perceptible sounds. The splattered blood corroded patches of green, leaving behind blood-red and pitch-black spots that quickly disappeared into nothingness.

On the road, Li Haohao still restrained herself and chatted with me for a few moments.

On the wrinkled section of the road in the south, before I even got out of the car, she couldn't wait to take out the comic book from behind and started reading.

"Don't wander off." I said.

"Mhmm." She perfunctorily replied, already burying her head in the comic book she had already read, savoring it carefully. I didn't know what scene she came across, but she grinned and laughed,  excitedly stomping her feet.

I jumped out of the car and carefully recalled the researcher's fieldwork process.

First, ensure that the weapons and protective suits are intact. I touched the slight weight on my waist, and then ensured the presence of a companion—Li Haohao was in the car. Lastly, I took out the storage backpack and checked the items.

We had a set of tools for safely collecting biological samples. I approached the raised part of the road. This pile of concrete blocks was higher than me. I stepped on the first stone and climbed up.

The last time I saw the internal organs was... I climbed up following my memory, but the internal organs had already been dragged away. However, the deep red soil emitted a different scent from the surroundings. I scooped up a handful and put it in the box, then threw it into the storage backpack.

I took three of them, but they weren't useful. Standing at a high point, I rested my hand on the awning and looked at the other end of the road through binoculars.

Fortunately, it seemed that only this section was damaged. As long as we crossed this area, the road was still mostly intact.

That meant there was something that had passed through from beneath the road.

With these thoughts in mind, it felt like there was something moving beneath my feet. I quickly jumped off the mound and back into the car.

Rumble --

I turned around, causing Li Haohao's book to shake and fall. She complained, "Why are you in such a hurry..."

Then she saw the slight tremor on the hill behind us, and a huge wriggling mouth emerged from it, biting towards us.

"Ah!" She screamed, and the caterpillar shook for a moment. We bumped around and then returned to calmness. Li Haohao pouted and looked in the rearview mirror, saying, "Why isn't it chasing us?"

That wriggling pale pink thing had just emerged from the mud and quickly retracted.

Li Haohao squinted her eyes and looked for a long time, as if she really didn't understand why it had retracted so quickly.

"What was that?"

"An earthworm."

"An earthworm..." Li Haohao repeated. I was afraid that she would keep repeating it until one day she woke up and unconsciously turned into an earthworm, so I immediately interrupted and said, "Before the war, we usually used earthworms to loosen the soil to help with farming, and then we would go fishing."

"Fishing?"

"Just hanging them on a fishing hook, putting them in the water. When fish see the earthworm, they come and bite it, and then they get hooked. I pull up the hook and eat the fish."

"Can we fish?" she asked.

"There's no river."

"There's one to the south, near Daomiao City."

"But it's far away and the road is not passable... It's dangerous to climb over, and the water's edge is dangerous too. I don't know if you'll be fishing or the fish will jump out and eat you."

"Fish are delicious." Li Haohao remembered something and started counting on her fingers. "There's a kind of fish that is red, with a little white pattern. You eat it raw, dipped in a green sauce."

I was surprised, "Salmon?"

"I think so."

I couldn't help but glance at her. Whether it was Daomiao City or the outpost, you wouldn't find the sea within a radius of three hundred kilometers.

But she had eaten raw salmon before.

In the post-war world!

I held onto the control lever and didn't know what to say. Li Haohao held up another finger, "There's a kind that is deep-fried, in a square shape."

"Fried fish?"

"And there's another one, it's round and has a fishy taste."

"Fish balls?"

She used to eat quite a variety, but she also used to wash other people's underwear.

Out of curiosity, I couldn't help but ask, "What else have you eaten?"

"What's the use of telling you? You only know how to give me oatmeal porridge to eat."

She pouted as if I was mistreating her every day. Being scolded like that, I calmed down a bit and didn't ask further.

But she decided to open up: "Are earthworms tasty?"

"We don't usually eat earthworms." We didn't eat them before the war, and after the war... I'm sure no one would eat a worm bigger than me.

"What about in special circumstances?"

"If someone falls ill, they dry the earthworms and grind them into powder to make medicine."

Li Haohao fell silent for a moment. "What about that worm over there? What if the supply officer comes to bring us roasted chicken and gets stuck on the road?"

"I'll flatten the worm later." I said.

"Then why didn't you do it just now? I wanted to go fishing." Li Haohao kept looking back.

"I'm 'fishing' right now."

"But there's no river, is there?" Li Haohao had a tone of catching me red-handed, waving her comic book at me and pouting to show her displeasure.

"'Fishing' means I'm being lazy on the job."

"What do you mean?"

"If I came here today in another car and flattened that worm directly, what would I do tomorrow?"

"But you're always busy every day..."

Li Haohao pressed on, and I didn't know how to tell her that I wanted to maintain a sense of normalcy. Normal meant that when faced with such a huge worm, a normal person would run back immediately and report to others to deal with it. But as a veteran soldier, it was also normal to face an alienated worm and just use a tank to blast it away and fix the road.

I was just following that part of myself as a human, procrastinating, being lazy to work, and not liking to meddle in other people's affairs.

Moreover, the sense of danger I felt in the fog that day couldn't be compared to this giant worm today.

Normal people wouldn't want to face such danger. I only had a puny weapon in my hand, with insufficient firepower. I promised not to use Li Haohao as a first resort. She had been a wind-up toy for a while, and if she got wound up just as she got off the car, I would be walking into a death trap.

Furthermore, I wasn't mentally prepared to face the terror brought by her other unknown form. I already felt horrified just being separated by a door.

Ah, my thoughts a moment ago were very normal for a person.

I felt a little happy and started humming while gripping the control lever. Li Haohao stared at me and said, "Deception."

"What?"

"You lied to me about being busy, but you went upstairs fishing. You didn't even give me any fish to eat."

I explained, "When I'm fishing, there's actually no real fish involved. It's just a metaphor."

Li Haohao held it in for a while, then said, "Wind me up!"

"We'll do it when we get back."

"I'm about to become immobilized!"

I pretended not to hear and explained my own situation to myself: "When I say 'fishing,' it's just in relation to the truly important and meaningful work that I do. The things I do that don't have much impact on the entire outpost are necessary tasks for me, and it's not like I intentionally sit on the second floor doing nothing."

"And besides—" I ignored Li Haohao's request to wind her up again and raised my voice, "Repairing the road, dealing with the aberrant beasts, those are not the responsibilities of outpost researchers. If the patrol team passes by here, they will find a way to handle it."

"What's the patrol team?"

"It's like the former Daomiao Base and the current Changhe Base. They send out soldiers specialized in outdoor work to clean up the aberrant beasts and obstacles on the roads. That's why this long road can still stay in good condition because there are people cleaning and repairing it, because people still need this road."

Li Haohao's wind-up key reached its limit, and from her goggles, I could only see her puffed-up face.

Before returning to the outpost, I needed to calm her down. "Based on the information we transmit back from our outpost, specialized analysts determine which areas will have aberrant beast activity, and the patrol team acts accordingly... In the past, the outposts could transmit communications in real-time, but the cost of maintaining the communication network became too high, so it switched to manual transmission by supply officer, which is slower in relaying messages, and the patrol team's actions are slower too. As for the worm just now... If you want to go south, I'll find a day when you're not wound up and come to flatten it. Is that okay?"

Li Haohao's eyes moved up and down, indicating her agreement.

I knew she was easy to negotiate with, but I still went along and explained a lot about the outpost's work, dispelling the misunderstanding of "fishing," and trying my best to make her understand that I was just making a joke.

I'm not good at telling jokes. In her pupils, my face reflected a calmness without any ripples. Compared to Li Haohao, who showed surprise, anger, sadness, and joy on her face, I looked like a plastic model in a shopping mall. I naturally had a face that wasn't easily communicative, and I wasn't good at telling jokes. Over time, it ended up just being me alone, while they all gathered together, leaving only me.

I was always alone.

At first, there were nine of us, then three.

And in the end, just me.

I stopped the car and sat in place, taking deep breaths.

I couldn't dwell on those things. I started having hallucinations again, and the control lever turned into two hands.

It crawled out of the car tightly and grabbed onto me, refusing to let go.

Four lights turned on simultaneously, and a figure emerged in front of the car. I urgently stopped the car, and the control lever returned to being a control lever, but none of the lights lit up.

The figure in front disappeared.

I glanced at Li Haohao, who wanted to speak but couldn't because her wind-up key had not turned.

I wouldn't go out again until she returned to her normal state. Fortunately, we had already arrived outside the outpost. I jumped out of the car, opened the door, and my legs went weak, causing me to fall to the ground.

Phew... I got up, supporting my knees, and opened the door.

After I carried Li Haohao back to the outpost, took off her protective suit, and wound her up, she finally shouted, "I told you to wind me up! It's fine to take off the suit for a while in the car!"

I waved my hand, brushing away the layer of exhaustion that covered my vision, and ran my fingers through my hair as I walked towards the kitchen.

"Let's eat oatmeal porridge." I said.

Immediately, Li Haohao's anger shifted from being upset that I didn't wind her up to being furious at me for abusing teenager and for constantly eating oatmeal porridge. Her words became more intense, "Again! Always eating oatmeal porridge! I might as well eat myself to death! Eating this kind of stuff every day, I'd go crazy even if I weren't already!"

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