Seeing that her eldest uncle's family was still alive and well, sitting right there in her living room, and hadn't met the same tragic end as in her previous life, Jing Shu quietly let out a small breath she hadn't realized she was holding. Her impression of her eldest uncle, Su Yiyang, and his household was still largely tied to those warm, distant childhood memories. She used to visit his home often, where her aunt Wang Fang would always cook the sweet and sour pork ribs and braised fish she especially liked.
After her grandparents passed away, although everyone still lived in the same city, visits became rare, the family only gathering formally for the annual New Year's Eve dinners, the connections thinning with time and busy lives.
In the third year of the apocalypse, she remembered, massive global earthquakes had struck, one after another.
Wu City, being located in a basin, experienced constant, nerve-wracking tremors every three to four days, though most were under magnitude 6. It was nothing compared to Sichuan, where the ground shook daily and every month or two brought a truly devastating quake. The people of Sichuan joked bitterly that the restless earth itself had become their shaky bed that terrible year.
Even so, the Wu City authorities, trying to maintain order, required residents to sleep at night in public squares, designated refugee camps, or on any open ground, distributing meager supplies to help them endure the fear and the cold.
She remembered the night vividly: her aunt Wang Fang had complained, "It stinks sleeping out in the square. Snoring, farting, grinding teeth, everything you can imagine. We just had a small quake a couple of days ago, there won't be another so soon. Look at the Li family next door, they go home to sleep every night without any trouble. Besides, Su Long can't handle this cold damp weather. Let's just sleep at home tonight, for the boy's sake."
Su Long, Su Yiyang's son, was five years younger than Jing Shu, the family's beloved late-born treasure, always a little spoiled.
That very night, Su Yiyang's family had returned to their apartment—and a magnitude 6 quake struck, with the epicenter directly beneath their neighborhood. The building pancaked.
No rescue dogs ever came. No firefighters searched the rubble. No news reports ever aired about it. No one even bothered to count the dead.
Because that was the apocalypse. Every single day, countless people died in a thousand different ways. One more family was just a statistic.
More people just rushed in to scavenge for supplies in the wreckage. With no sunlight, crops had failed globally. No cotton meant no new clothes, no blankets, shortages of everything. Swarms of desperate people picked through the rubble. Sometimes corpses were uncovered, and the scavengers, without a second thought, would strip them for any usable clothing.
Her mother had cried for days and insisted on searching for them with her younger sister, Su Meimei. Too frightened to go into the destruction alone, Su Meimei had clung to her sister until Jing Shu's father finally relented and joined them. They eventually found the bodies. The scene was unbearable, a horror that haunted her mother's eyes for years.
Jing Shu always felt that her mother's later tendency to spoil Su Meimei, to give her anything she asked for even when it hurt their own family, was partly rooted in a deep, unshakeable guilt over Su Yiyang's family's tragic death.
But this time, she wouldn't allow her mother to have that excuse. Nor did she want her uncle and his family to die a second time. Their presence on the sofa was a gift, a chance.
Her aunt Su Meimei, her mother's younger sister, was vain, though not particularly beautiful. She had a daughter, Zhang Hanhan, who was about twenty years old now. Their mother-daughter relationship was famously strained, full of silent resentment.
Su Meimei's husband, Zhang Zhongyong, came from a fiercely patriarchal family. Because Su Meimei couldn't have a second child after Hanhan, their marriage soured early. Zhang Zhongyong took a mistress and had a son. Within just a few years of the apocalypse beginning, the mistress openly moved into their household, forcing Su Meimei to accept the humiliating arrangement of two women sharing one man.
Jing Shu had only learned right before her own death that Uncle Sun had long been entangled with Su Meimei as well. Uncle Sun was spineless, while Zhang Zhongyong flaunted his mistress in public, Uncle Sun only dared to sneak around in the shadows, a secret added shame.
With a father who didn't love her and a mother who was too wrapped up in her own miseries to care, Zhang Hanhan grew up selfish and combative, hostile toward everyone around her.
For someone like Su Meimei, who repaid kindness with betrayal and envy, her mother might pity her, but Jing Shu had no intention of doing the same. Instead, she planned to let her aunt teeter on the edge of the abyss, to extend a hand in false kindness when the time was right, and then to let her tumble down again on her own.
Gurgle… gurgle…
As she sank into the bitter memories of her past life, her stomach betrayed her with a loud, prolonged growl, echoing in the suddenly quiet living room at just the wrong moment.
"You little rascal, where have you been fooling around all day?" her mother charged out of the kitchen, a kitchen knife still in one hand, thrusting a blackened piece of fish at her with the other. "Here, eat this first. Then go properly greet your uncles and aunts."
…Terrifying.
Seeing the horrifying burnt fish, Su Meimei immediately stood up from the sofa. "I'd better go help my sister in the kitchen instead," she said, her voice tight.
She had endured a lifetime of her older sister's catastrophic cooking. As a child she used to think it was intentional sabotage, but later she realized Su Lanzhi was simply hopelessly, innately uncoordinated in the kitchen. Su Meimei used to secretly gloat that it meant her sister could never find a good husband. Who could have guessed how things would turn out?
Su Lanzhi, who couldn't cook or manage basic chores, had somehow married a genuinely good man who doted on her, handed her control of the household finances without a second thought, and cherished their only daughter like a treasure.
Meanwhile, Su Meimei, who could cook a full banquet and manage a household efficiently, married a domineering, controlling man who scrutinized every purchase and scorned her for not bearing a son, while her own daughter was treated like a financial burden.
Why! The injustice of it burned in her chest.
Su Meimei clenched her palms, her nails biting into her skin to smother the rising resentment. If they expected to borrow money from her tonight? They could keep dreaming!
Jing Shu quietly carried her case of bottled water into her crowded bedroom, where she found the medicine boxes she had bought earlier stacked on top of the spice-filled boxes, making the space even more cramped and chaotic. Fortunately, her aunts hadn't noticed the mountain of supplies yet, or they would surely be back at her door begging for medicine once the apocalypse struck and medicines vanished.
When she returned to the living room to make polite chat with her uncles, her father finally arrived home from work. Honest and socially reserved, he struggled visibly, wiping his hands on his pants, before opening his mouth to make small talk.
Dinner was ready surprisingly quickly, thanks to Su Meimei's intervention in the kitchen. Her cooking skills were undeniable, and the dishes earned sincere praise from everyone at the table. After a couple of glasses of beer, her father's nerves loosened, and he raised the real issue, his voice a little too loud.
"My daughter has always dreamed of becoming a star, or a streamer, something in the spotlight. Now that she has found something she truly loves, as her father I'm overjoyed. Of course I must support her fully! The opportunity's right here. A proper entertainment company has sent a contract. With a bit of an investment, we can launch her to fame, and she'll soon be earning her own living. I'm so proud of her! It's only 1.5 million. I'll help her gather it!"
He downed the rest of his glass in one go, while Su Yiyang and Zhang Zhongyong followed suit out of politeness. Wang Fang and Su Meimei stayed silent, focusing on picking at the food on their plates.
Jing Shu's eyes grew hot watching her father's earnest, flushed face. Was it wrong to deceive her trusting father into borrowing money like this?
No. This was not just deception. It was a necessary performance. A chance to test her aunt's loyalties. And to see how much she could truly rely on her uncle's family in the future, before the real crisis hit.
But you should never test human nature lightly. Human nature, she knew, often can't withstand the test.
Her reason for orchestrating this borrowing was twofold. First, to let her parents see clearly, right now, who would step up in times of hardship and who would turn away, so they would remember when the world changed.
Second, the money gathered now would be turned immediately into tangible supplies, true lifelines in the coming apocalypse. Later, when paper money lost all value, those supplies could be used to repay the debt in kind, helping those who had truly helped her to survive better. It was a brutal form of fairness.
Jing Shu would never forget a true kindness. She would repay it. That was her moral reason for borrowing. But if no one lent her a single cent, if they turned their backs, why should she feel obligated to feed a pack of ungrateful wolves after the world ended?
"The shop makes money, yes. But it's nothing compared to what Jing Shu will earn on her own once she's famous. So we'll sell it! I sold it today for 600,000. The money's already in the account.
The cars and the apartment too! Oh, and Lao Sun still owes me 100,000 and promised to repay it in a few days. But the contract requires an 800,000 deposit by tomorrow. The cars will take longer to sell. That's why I asked you all here tonight. Please, lend us some money to bridge the gap. Once the other sales go through, we will repay you immediately, with interest if you want."
For the sake of his daughter's future, even the normally reserved Jing Shu's father forced the clumsy, pleading words out. He looked around at his relatives with tense, hopeful eyes. He and Su Lanzhi believed with all their hearts that their closest kin would surely help in their hour of need, just as they themselves would never hesitate to help if the situation were reversed.
"Lao Sun will repay? Ha! So naïve," Su Meimei sneered inwardly. Wasn't there a crude saying, if you won't spend money on your own wife, someone else will? She had already gotten her hands on that money.
She cast a sidelong glance at Zhang Zhongyong, the cuckolded man sitting beside her, who calmly sipped his wine as if oblivious to the conversation. His silence was a deliberate shield, she knew, leaving her to play the inevitable villain and say no.
Su Meimei clenched her teeth and dug her nails deeper into her palm. They were forcing her hand, making her be the one to shut this down.
"What entertainment company is it? You have to be careful you're not being scammed. There are too many tricks and fake companies these days," Wang Fang interjected, her lawyer's instincts kicking in, her priorities naturally different from the others who were thinking about the money.
"It was introduced and personally guaranteed by the son of a colleague I've worked with and trusted for twenty years. Jing Shu," her father said, full of blustery confidence in Zhu Zhengqi, "bring out the contract so everyone can look it over."
Jing Shu's heart skipped a beat. With her aunt Wang Fang being a sharp, practicing lawyer, would she see through the fabricated contract?