Dimensional Store: Welcome to the Apocalypse Apartment - chapter 97

No-calling it the same kind of misery wasn’t right.

If anything, Xiao Youqi had it far worse than she did.

Running into each other like this… how were you even supposed to greet someone?

Say:

“Hey. Fancy seeing you again.”

Or:

“Hey. Still not dead, huh?”

It felt like bumping into an acquaintance on the street-someone you really didn’t want to acknowledge.

Gu Huaiwei stared at Xiao Youqi. Aside from his face, there was barely a single intact part left on his body. She hesitated for a moment, then turned her head away, pretending she hadn’t seen him.

After all, he had almost nothing covering him. It was undignified, and he probably didn’t want anyone looking.

And frankly, from Gu Huaiwei’s perspective, he was already half-rotted-there wasn’t anything worth seeing.

She felt a flicker of regret. She remembered Xiao Youqi’s firm, well-defined abs. Now that whole area was a mangled mess-blood and flesh smeared together, dark clots sticking in chunks to torn-open meat. She couldn’t even tell whether his intestines had spilled out.

“…Hh… you’re here too.” Xiao Youqi’s throat was probably damaged. His silver-gray eyes-like a lone wolf’s-were still set neatly in their sockets, and when he saw Gu Huaiwei, they shifted.

Since he’d spoken first, Gu Huaiwei could only turn back as if she’d just noticed him. She offered an extremely perfunctory greeting. “Hello. I didn’t want to come either.”

Gu Huaiwei had plenty of questions for Xiao Youqi, but his breathing was weak. Even speaking took effort-he could force out a couple of words at most before he started panting hard.

As if every extra breath bought him one more minute of life.

Gu Huaiwei knew Qian Duoduo was the one who’d driven him into this state. But she also knew he’d sold her information to the Black Spiral Research Institute. He was the same as Qian Duoduo-someone who survived by selling out other people.

Even if it had been “just business” between them, treating a first-time partner like that was still heartless.

Looking at him now, in this pitiful condition, Gu Huaiwei remembered what Professor Feng had said: “Those who betray others will eventually be betrayed by others.”

It served him right.

The moment you raise a blade against someone else, you should be prepared for the tip to turn back on you.

The glass-walled lab was quiet. After Professor Feng had the guards escort her here, he didn’t come to bother her again.

There were no cameras inside the room, but there were in the corridor outside.

Gu Huaiwei even had the spare mental bandwidth to wonder if they’d skipped installing cameras out of consideration for the test subject’s privacy. Then she laughed at herself-she was so bored in here that she was starting to think nonsense.

That night, when it was time to rest, Gu Huaiwei went to a corner and sat on the floor with her knees hugged to her chest. She leaned her cheek against her knees, her long black hair hanging down, and rested with her eyes closed.

But she didn’t sleep well.

Because she knew Xiao Youqi’s condition might be exactly what she’d be facing in the coming days.

And Gu Huaiwei thought of Tang Wushuang again.

She’d chopped off three of Tang Wushuang’s fingers-an interrogation tactic, plain and simple. She’d forced herself past the psychological barrier and did it. It wasn’t like she regretted it.

After all, if Tang Wushuang had caught Gu Huaiwei, she would have done something similar.

Gu Huaiwei just hadn’t expected karma to come so quickly-she’d once made someone else the fish on the chopping block, and now she was the one being carved up.

She might suffer something even worse than what she’d done to Tang Wushuang.

He Xueyi’s meeting on the second floor should have ended by now.

He would come to her.

And even if he didn’t, all Gu Huaiwei had to do was count the days and wait for the day of the plane shift.
Anyway, her sister’s safe was already in hand. It was tucked away inside the Jade Bracelet now-with food and water, guns, even a getaway car inside it…

If there was a chance to run, the best option was to get out.

If there wasn’t, then she’d stay here and drag it out until time ran out.

Gu Huaiwei’s sleeping position was uncomfortable, and Xiao Youqi kept letting out tiny groans in the night whenever the pain hit.

He was already in such a wretched state that he didn’t care about saving face. A few of the pus-filled blisters swelling on his body had burst, green fluid running out. When that happened, he groaned louder-and woke Gu Huaiwei.

“Can you be quiet?” Gu Huaiwei needed to conserve her energy for the bleak, predictable stretch of lab life ahead.

“If you turned into me… you… wouldn’t be able to stay quiet either…” He had to take several ragged breaths after every few words.

“If you feel that awful, you can choose to kill yourself.” Gu Huaiwei’s voice was very light. “Once you die, all suffering ends.”

Gu Huaiwei had once been a believer. Back when she’d been sick, if the pain got bad enough, she’d thought about ending it all.

And because she’d had faith, she’d been willing to believe in a world after death. Death itself hadn’t seemed that frightening.

But after she got better, all of that faith was gone. She felt she was a very practical person-once she realized she was healthy and could live well, she started to love being alive.

“I don’t plan to… If you want to die, could you… cough, cough… die a little closer to me?”

Xiao Youqi had claimed the room’s only lab bed. He inched his body over with difficulty.

He wanted to change into a position that hurt a little less, but his wounds were too severe. No matter how he moved, the pain sprawled across every bone in his body, creaking and grinding.

“That way, if I drink your blood, I can live a little longer… cough, cough…” He’d talked too much and started coughing. The coughing tugged at his wounds and made them bleed again. His internal organs were probably injured too, because blood bubbled out of his mouth and nose.

Gu Huaiwei had noticed that Wanderers all had a fierce fixation on staying alive. Maybe it was because their childhoods had been too hard-because they’d grown up in heaps of corpses-so they craved life that much more.

“Then you’ll be disappointed. I don’t plan to, either.” Gu Huaiwei withdrew her gaze and stopped looking at the wounds on Xiao Youqi’s body.

A rabbit dies and the fox mourns; kindred things pity one another.

Trapped in the same situation as Xiao Youqi, Gu Huaiwei couldn’t help projecting herself onto his injuries.

It was irritating.

Before the plane jump, she absolutely could not let herself end up that badly injured.

Professor Feng had brought her here for a reason. He definitely wanted something from her.

Gu Huaiwei needed to cooperate with Professor Feng. She had to give him a little hope-but she couldn’t lay everything out. She had to keep him on the hook, feeding him just enough, slowly drawing it out until her time in this plane was up.

It was technical work-testing emotional intelligence and talking skills.

Gu Huaiwei was glad her job involved dealing with people. It made her confident she could handle a situation like this.

It was the middle of the night. After Xiao Youqi woke her up, she couldn’t fall back asleep. And even when Xiao Youqi “slept,” it was only because the pain knocked him unconscious. Right now he was fairly lucid, so Gu Huaiwei started talking to him.

“Xiao Youqi-were you the one who mailed that cassette tape and the letter?”