The silence in the group chat was broken by Wang Qiqi's message. It popped up on the screen with an air of officious importance. "@Everyone, I got news. If the water still doesn't come tomorrow, the community water truck will arrive at 2 p.m. to deliver water. Reminder to everyone: when water comes, be sure to fill as much as you can! Also, if anyone has extra water, please lend some to Zhang Bingbing."
His words hung there, a prompt that was part announcement, part public shaming. Almost immediately, a voice message from Wang Cuihua in Building 4 blared through if you played it, her tone sharp and dripping with sarcasm. "This girl really talks unpleasantly. Sure, when I rode in your car today, I did say if anyone was in trouble, they could shout in the group. But who still has bottled water at home now? My house is using muddy water, letting it settle again and again. If you don't mind, I'll bring you a basin of muddy water that hasn't been filtered yet."
It was a verbal slap, a reminder that in these times, even offers of help came with strings and bitterness.
Li Wei from Building 21 immediately said: "Auntie, can you bring me a basin too?"
The response was swift and brutally dismissive. Wang Cuihua sent another voice message: "I only bring water for my grandson."
After that, Li Wei went quiet. The chat went silent again, the digital space holding the awkwardness of the rejected request. Zhang Bingbing personally went to fetch the basin of water. One could imagine the stiff posture, the avoided glances. Sometimes, the fighting spirit of these old aunties was no joke.
In the end, Zhang Bingbing's issue was resolved, but in the most graceless way possible. Watching the exchange unfold on her phone, the whole Jing family found it amusing to watch. It was a dark, cynical amusement. Where there are people, there is strife and disputes. In these early days of the apocalypse, people still had some conscience, but human nature was already being revealed. The facade of civilized cooperation was cracking under the heat and thirst.
Just like Jing Shu. Even with an entire pool of water, she wouldn't share. That water was stored with her own ability, why should she give it to others? Her logic was cold, clear, and born of a certainty about what was to come.
For these days, Jing Shu had kept her own storage pool filled. The work was constant. After multiple rounds of filtering, the muddy water was as clean as purified water and could be used normally. The real difficulty was facing the looming problem of a water outage lasting up to a year. That thought was a weight in the back of her mind during every task.
Sitting with her parents, she watched her mother's expression shift from observational to disapproving. "I don't like this Wang Qiqi boy. He's too slick and calculating," Su Lanzhi commented, her nose wrinkling as if she'd smelled something off.
Her father's response was deadpan and immediate. "If you liked him, that would be a real problem," Jing An replied with a stern face. Then, as sometimes happened between her parents, the topic somehow shifted off course, and the two ended up back in their bedroom together.
Jing Shu: "???"
She stared at the empty living room, momentarily baffled. "Weren't we talking about the water problem?" She shrugged to herself. "Fine, whatever makes you two happy."
That night, after inspecting the Cube Space, a ritual that always grounded her, Jing Shu ate two plates of spicy rabbit meat, three steaks, and a bowl of shaved ice yogurt for her midnight snack. The indulgence was a quiet rebellion against the scarcity tightening its grip outside.
Then, she turned to her training. She practiced the 6x6 Rubik's Cube. Compared to the 5x5, the difficulty wasn't just one step higher, it was many. Her fingers moved, sometimes fast, often slow with frustration. After practicing for half a month, Jing Shu could only complete it slowly, still a long way off from being fast.
Jing Shu wanted to upgrade the Cube Space before relocating from the villa. The goal was clear and urgent. At least a 6x6 Rubik's Cube with 216 cubic meters or a 7x7 Rubik's Cube with 343 cubic meters would be enough to carry all the villa's supplies. Her plans were meticulous. Even the beds had to come along. Whether they could be used or not didn't matter. What mattered was that she didn't want to wake up the next morning bitten all over by bugs and crawling corpse fragments. The vividness of that fear drove her practice.
…
The next morning, the news offered no comfort. Morning news reported: despite earlier policies of fishing out freshwater fish in advance to prevent mass die offs, twenty days of high heat and soil dust had caused riverbeds to rise. In the end, large numbers of freshwater fish still died en masse. The report showed grim footage. High temperatures caused the dead fish to float, rot, and contaminate huge areas of water sources. Governments everywhere were working around the clock to fish out the corpses and mitigate water pollution.
The numbers were staggering. Seventy percent of Earth's water was undrinkable. With freshwater resources already scarce, now the rivers were polluted as well. The only drinkable water left in China came from deep lakes and reservoirs, but with the heat and continued soil dust, those resources would gradually shrink too.
The conclusion was inescapable. There would only be less and less water!
It was clear now: in the coming year, water supply would be cut off.
A temporary, shaky normalcy held in their community. Electricity returned to Jing Shu's community, but still no water. People had stopped fussing about bottled water. Instead, they quietly began settling muddy water for their use. The fight had gone from demanding clean water to hoarding the murky.
Wang Qiqi forwarded the news into the group, reminding everyone to store water. With the nation's water resources now polluted, usage would be strictly limited. The situation was grave.
At 2 p.m., the water truck arrived. It was a hulking, dusty tanker, a beacon of strained relief. Each household was given only three barrels of cloudy water. The amount was pathetic, but perspective was everything. But this was already considered very good, as it had been filtered several times. Compared to a few months later when each person would only get 500 ml a day, this was like heaven compared to hell.
Jing Shu didn't expect that even collecting water would stir up trouble.
Wang Qiqi announced: "@Everyone, if you haven't collected your water yet, hurry up! Once the people in line finish, the truck will leave. From now on, the water truck will only come once every two days, until the supply returns!"
Panic, previously simmering, now boiled over. Hearing that no one knew when water would return, and that the truck only came once every two days, everyone panicked.
Then, a spotlight was shone on her household. Security guard Xiao Wang said: "@The Jing Villa household hasn't registered yet."
Her father happened to be out today, buying extra cigarettes and liquor. Her mother had mentioned that her colleagues had already started secretly hoarding food. The government's documents stated that due to massive losses from the heat, even after the Earth's Dark Days ended, crops wouldn't grow properly. The country planned to halt production of all by products, including cigarettes, alcohol, and snacks, for the next two years.
The government had also issued a new policy, reducing the daily grain purchase cap from 500 yuan down to 200 yuan. Each person's total spending at supermarkets couldn't exceed 500 yuan per day, which meant that even those who had forewarning couldn't buy much.
Of course, scalper run private supermarkets weren't included in that rule. So as a smoker and drinker, Jing An had gone out to buy those today. Fortunately, cigarettes and alcohol weren't yet rationed.
Jing Shu originally had no intention of collecting water, but since she was publicly called out, she didn't want the community to suspect her family lacked for nothing. So she answered in the group and carried three buckets to collect water.
The world outside was changing by the hour. By now, Wu City had already begun water restrictions. It was reported that the city's largest freshwater lake had also been polluted.
The water truck was parked at the community gate. Jing Shu geared up, a soldier for a mundane war. Wearing a mask, windbreaker, and rain boots, Jing Shu jogged three minutes to get there. The streetlights in the community had all been shut off, leaving only the gate lights. The pool of illumination was a stage for desperation. Under the light, countless black flying bugs the size of red dates buzzed and dived onto people, making the women in line scream. She swatted them away, her skin crawling.
Jing Shu knew it wouldn't be long before these flying bugs swarmed uncontrollably, spreading disease. By then, another batch of people would die.
The scene at the gate was a study in tense need. Families came together to fetch water. After registering, Jing Shu glanced at the people in line. One by one, they looked haggard, faces covered in grime, lips cracked, showing clearly that they didn't have much water left at home.
A woman, her floral blouse straining, was the first to speak. A plump aunt in a floral blouse said, "Girl, you'll have trouble carrying even one bucket alone. Why don't you share the rest with me? My family has more people, and it's not enough." Her tone pretended to be helpful, but her eyes were on the buckets.
A man next to her quickly added, "Beauty, give me your extra water, I'll pay you fifty yuan." The offer was laughable, the currency already losing its meaning.
Others chimed in, "How about splitting it among us? You can't carry them all alone anyway."
Then came a more transactional proposal. "You people are shameless. Don't want to put in effort but still want water. Miss, I'll push a cart for you, but you give me two buckets, how about it? You can't take it all home alone anyway." A fat man pushing a trolley smirked, confident in his logic.
With the truck only coming once every two days, everyone felt the water was far too little. Bottled water was nowhere to be found in stores, and even muddy water had suddenly become precious.
Jing Shu rolled her eyes. Her patience was thin. "If I can't carry them, why don't you help me carry them home? When it comes to taking water, you're all so eager."
"That's right, that's right," the fat man echoed, sensing an opportunity, misunderstanding her sarcasm for negotiation.
"Why don't you just carry all of it home for me then?" Jing Shu asked, playing along for a second.
"Who would want to deliver for free in this heat? You give me a hundred yuan, I'll deliver for you," the fat man said, revealing his true price.
But Jing Shu had no intention of playing this game or sharing a drop. People in line waited to see how the young girl would handle it. Then, their jaws dropped.
Jing Shu picked up two buckets in one hand and one in the other, effortlessly walking away. The heavy plastic containers, each holding over ten liters, seemed weightless in her grip. Those who had hoped to score some water stared blankly at their own buckets. Were they not collecting from the same truck? The disparity between her strength and theirs was a physical shock.
She walked away from the lit gate, into the darkened community, the voices fading behind her. Indifference, coldness, watching from the sidelines, this was Jing Shu's judgment on human nature in the apocalypse. And now, it was slowly starting to show.