Dimensional Store: Welcome to the Apocalypse Apartment - Chapter 235

Chapter 235

The room was packed full of fresh flowers. Roses were piled layer upon layer in every corner, lush and dewy, their red so vivid it was almost blinding.

There were greeting cards tucked among the flowers as well.

On the cards were the words: I like you.

The fragrance was far too heavy, and Gu Huaiwei’s sense of smell was unusually sharp. The moment she stepped inside, she sneezed several times in a row, the overpowering scent making her head ache.

“Lin She-” Gu Huaiwei called toward the door.

He did not arrive that quickly.

Lin She had been designing recruitment posters these past two days. He liked to go up to the roof in search of inspiration.

Unlike He Xueyi, who loved life, Lin She liked this lifeless Dimension.

The sky was gray and sunken, like a sheet of steel sealing away every trace of sunlight.

There was no wind in the city, no people, no birdsong. Aside from the slaughter and screams inside the Instances, the roads connecting the outside world were nothing but dead silence.

On the rooftop, Lin She’s black hair hung down, stray strands veiling his dark green eyes. He seemed to blend into the gloom as he looked down over the city from above.

An environment like this let him work with greater peace of mind, allowing him to temporarily forget the humiliation the Half-finished Product had brought him.

His pale fingers gripped the mouse, sketching out design lines on the screen.

When he heard Gu Huaiwei’s voice, Lin She’s hand paused mid-design.

He Xueyi, who was tending to those Sunflowers in the first-floor garden, also heard Gu Huaiwei call Lin She’s name.

He lifted his head and met Lin She’s gaze on the rooftop.

He gave Lin She a faint smile.

Lin She did not return the friendly gesture. Expressionless, he turned and went downstairs.

He had no love for pretending everything was peaceful.

Smiling, He Xueyi pinched the flower in his hand. Then, with a little force, he ripped the Sunflower he had so carefully raised out by the roots.

His fingertips brushed over the delicate petals.

Then crushed them to pieces.

The lightly fragrant sap lingered on his fingertips before slowly fading away.

All that remained was the ruined flower, left on the ground to slowly rot.

Seeing that Lin She had come down from upstairs and was still holding a silver-white laptop, Gu Huaiwei realized he had just been working.

“Sorry. I interrupted your work.”

“You’ve been at the Sanatorium these past few days. Do you know who sent these flowers?”

“I’ll need to check the surveillance footage.”

Lin She happened to have his computer in hand. He pulled up the surveillance page, and Gu Huaiwei saw the Half-finished Product walk out from behind the black door, carrying bouquet after bouquet of roses. In the middle of the night, he picked the lock to her room, then arranged the flowers inside.

There were no flowers in this Dimension.

At the very least, Gray Mist Town did not have roses.

He had not put them there all at once.

Instead, over several consecutive nights, he had avoided everyone else in the Sanatorium and secretly made multiple trips to deliver them.

Watching his sneaky movements, Gu Huaiwei’s lips twitched. She only felt that this Half-finished Product, while wearing Zhou Chuanning’s face, was not quite right in the head.

Xia Wenxin leaned over to watch the surveillance video and, with her usual bluntness, said, “Shopkeeper Gu, is this one of your suitors?”

“Not exactly.”

The Half-finished Product had devoured countless lives, and his mind contained the consciousness of many other people. Aside from Zhou Chuanning, who had shown that sort of interest in Gu Huaiwei in the previous Dimension, the Half-finished Product himself had no such feelings for her.

“He must have wanted to give you a surprise and confess to you,” Xia Wenxin said. When she saw the card with writing on it, the soul of gossip within her blazed to life. “The flowers are pretty. It’s just that the behavior is a little stalkerish.”

“If you want them, they’re yours.” Gu Huaiwei had no interest in these things. She only found them troublesome.

Xia Wenxin waved her hands again and again.

Never mind that she already had someone in her heart. Even if she did not, she had neither the time nor the energy to deal with personal romantic matters like this.

The most important thing for her right now was to stay alive.

With Lin She’s help, they cleared all the flowers away.

The lock on the Childhood Dream Theme Room could not be replaced with an electronic lock.

So she added an extra lock to keep anyone from sneaking in again.

When Gu Huaiwei returned to the shop, the Half-finished Product always hid in his room and refused to come out. He seemed not to need food or water, and no one knew what he was tinkering with in there all day.
One day, in the early hours before dawn, Gu Huaiwei got up a little earlier than usual to put in some overtime and review the shop’s cash flow. Then the Half-finished Product came shuffling out of his room like some muttering spirit and clumsily set a folded paper crane on Gu Huaiwei’s desk.

“Let’s enter Bonding.”

“I’ll take you back-to our previous world. I bought a small asteroid. I wanted to give it to you.”

“I… It’s dangerous outside. There are so many things I haven’t had the chance to tell you yet.”

He spoke in Zhou Chuanning’s tone. Then the muscles in his face twitched, and his features began to change again. His voice shifted from male to female.

Then, unstable once more, he reverted to the Half-finished Product.

Whenever he became the Half-finished Product, the yearning light in his eyes when he looked at Gu Huaiwei would vanish.

He said with perfect courtesy, “Miss Gu, my apologies. Those incoherent thoughts are filling my mind, and I have not yet managed to fully assimilate them for my own use. Please do not respond to those people. I will resolve my personal issues as soon as possible.”

The Half-finished Product was worried that Gu Huaiwei might still feel attached to the people he had absorbed, and would help their consciousnesses awaken again.

Zhou Chuanning was already dead. The consciousness remaining inside the Half-finished Product was nothing more than a wisp of obsession. Gu Huaiwei would not respond to it in any way.

Gu Huaiwei tossed the paper crane into the trash.

“Then you’d better deal with it quickly. Otherwise, when we enter Paradise and I’m waiting for you to discuss a battle plan, Officer Zhou might pop out and tell me to go back with him to hatch little Aliens.”

The Half-finished Product’s expression darkened. “I will not allow these matters to interfere with our great undertaking.”

Gu Huaiwei continued with her overtime work. “That would be ideal.”

Once Lin She finished designing the recruitment posters, Gu Huaiwei took Bai Miemie with her and pasted them at the entrances of the various Instances around the town.

The Anomalies inside the Instances would tear down those little ads.

So Gu Huaiwei pasted them right along the boundary between the Instances and the outside world.

Exactly on that one line.

The Anomalies could not leave the Instances, so they could not tear them down.

Not only that, Gu Huaiwei also secretly stuck the little ads onto vehicles that had driven over from outside Instances, using those vehicles to spread the advertisements to the outside world.

Beyond Gray Mist Town, rumors began to fly.

Legend had it that there was a viral Instance called Oasis Sanatorium that would force its presence into other Instances and frantically tempt Trial-takers into going there.

There was another rumor as well: this Oasis Sanatorium was very likely the ultimate Instance of this world. Supposedly, many people who went to that Sanatorium never managed to come back out.

Xia Wenxin stayed with Gu Huaiwei for three days. On the first night, she was so nervous she could not sleep, so she lay awake in the middle of the night, secretly watching Gu Huaiwei.

She saw what looked like a faint halo around Gu Huaiwei.

But when she rubbed her eyes and looked again, it seemed to have been her imagination.

It made her imagination run wild for the entire night.

By the second night, she finally managed to fall asleep, but she kept having nightmares. She dreamed that she was surrounded by wild beasts and torn apart. She woke in terror in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat.

On the third night, Xia Wenxin simply stopped trying to sleep. She felt that this room did not get along with her at all, so she hid under the covers and played on her phone all night.

Three days passed quickly, and at that point, Fang Zhao and Bai Yuzhen returned from their Instance as well.

Fang Zhao was badly injured, with wooden sticks splinting his left leg. He had lost too much blood and fallen unconscious.

Gu Huaiwei looked at the room-booking status on the computer and asked, “Right now, the only vacancies left in the Sanatorium are Intermediate Recovery Rooms. The price is higher than a Standard Recovery Room. Do you want to wait until a Standard Recovery Room opens up before checking in?”

“No.” Xia Wenxin shook her head repeatedly. She yawned. If it were not for the burns on her face, the bags under her eyes would have been hanging all the way down to her chin. “I’ll just book a normal room.”

Free things really were the most expensive.

If she kept staying in that room with Gu Huaiwei, she would either be scared to death by nightmares or die from lack of sleep.