"A few days ago they finally arrived. I heard they spent more than a month on the road, switching through several trains and hitchhiking before they got here. The one who came is your father's older male cousin, so you should call him Second Uncle. How come you never mentioned that you had such a relative back home?" Jing An hesitated, wiping his hands on a rag, then continued, his voice dropping:
"They were supposed to stay at your elder brother's place in the countryside, but somehow they ended up at Su Meimei's apartment in the city instead. It seems they came specifically for Su Meimei, asking for her by name at the train station."
The moment Su Meimei's name was mentioned, the atmosphere in the living room turned cold, as if the temperature had dropped several degrees. Grandma and Grandpa had already gone back to their attached house for the night. Only Jing An, who was busy planting garlic shoots in trays by the window, Su Lanzhi, who was tending to mushroom bags in the humid corner, and Jing Shu, who was deftly tying intricate slipknots onto thin cords for the frogs, were left.
Jing Shu squinted her eyes unconsciously, her fingers pausing on the cord. She remembered very clearly that in her previous life, there hadn't been such a relative suddenly showing up from the distant ancestral home, much less her maternal grandfather's cousin coming all this way specifically for Su Meimei. What butterfly effect, what tiny change in her actions, had caused this ripple? Was it her early repayment of the debt, her family's visible stability, something else?
Su Lanzhi put down her spray bottle, her expression distant. "Oh, years ago my father and his cousin both came here as educated youth sent down to the countryside. They stayed for a few years in the same village. His family had connections back in the city, so he was called back early. My father wasn't so lucky and remained here, married my mother, and put down roots. At that time I was only a child and don't remember much about that cousin. I only heard my mother talk about him later, that he'd done well for himself. After my parents passed away one after the other, we lost all contact with the old home. There was no reason to keep it up."
Jing Shu frowned deeply, the cord twisting in her hands. "Grandfather passed away many years ago, and all this time there was no letter, no phone call. Why suddenly travel such a long, dangerous distance now? Is there some hidden secret, some obligation or debt behind this?"
Jing An nodded, his face serious. "Even your elder brother on the phone didn't sound happy about it. His tone was off. There might be something else going on, some trouble they're bringing. Since it doesn't directly involve us, let's not get involved. Keep our distance."
"But an elder came all this way, through all this chaos. As family, we still need to pay a visit, show basic respect. Besides," Su Lanzhi sighed, a weary sound, "people of my parents' generation are almost all gone now… sigh." The sigh held the weight of vanished connections.
In the end, after a quiet discussion, the whole family agreed to only send them off with some provisions when the elder was about to leave, not to host or get entangled. The main reason was Su Lanzhi's own deep reluctance. "I really don't want to step foot in her house again. I've completely seen through her character."
It wasn't just because of a stranger's arrival. The real, lingering pain came from a lifetime of context: growing up together with Su Meimei, sharing clothes and food, giving her the best of everything, treating her with utter sincerity as a younger sister. Yet when Su Lanzhi was at her lowest, drowning in debt and despair, Su Meimei not only refused to throw a rope, she even schemed to take advantage, to grab the car from under her. That betrayal had completely broken Su Lanzhi's heart, severed a bond she thought was unbreakable.
Jing Shu thought, her mind racing, "Yes, we should at least take a look, from a distance." She was determined to figure out what variable had shifted, what butterfly effect had led to an event that hadn't happened in her previous timeline. She would not underestimate Su Meimei's capacity for manipulation or her knack for attaching herself to useful people.
Her hands moved faster, the muscle memory from another life guiding her fingers. Soon she had finished tying over a hundred of the clever frog cords. This was a technique she had learned from old frog breeders in the market in her previous life, during the later years. The cord was essentially a slipknot made of soft, durable twine, similar in function to a dog leash but much finer. It could be adjusted to fit snugly around a frog's neck and front limbs without harming it, keeping it from hopping away into some unreachable crack.
In the apocalypse where bugs ran rampant and most native frogs had died off due to sustained high temperatures and habitat loss, keeping a live frog was incredibly valuable, a luxury of pest control. Not everyone could afford the care or obtain one. The biggest advantage of raising frogs was that they were self feeding on the pest plague, but owners had to provide clean water daily and maintain a somewhat suitable temperature, a challenge in itself.
To prepare, Jing Shu had even gone to an abandoned glass factory weeks ago to quietly take many large glass jars and terrariums perfect for raising frogs. Most of the time the frogs stayed inside their transparent containers, easy to observe. Every few hours she would take them out on their cords to 'hunt,' letting them eat the bugs that seemed to appear out of nowhere in the house.
Well kept horned frogs, she knew, could live for over ten years in captivity and would diligently eat every bug nearby. They were far more useful and reliable than chemical mosquito repellents, which had long been out of production everywhere. Unfortunately, in the harsh, resource starved conditions of the apocalypse, few households could manage the consistent care they required.
Within just a few days, thanks to the ideal conditions, the horned frogs in her Cube Space had already laid several clutches of eggs, which had hatched into wriggling tadpoles in the separate water tub. Meanwhile, the three frogs kept outside by the villa's pond had shown no sign of reproducing, remaining lethargic. She knew that frog reproduction was biologically difficult, often limited to one specific season a year requiring precise triggers. That was why skilled frog breeders had become rare and precious figures in the later apocalypse, their knowledge a form of wealth.
"Tomorrow, bring your precious frogs to my unit to eat some bugs. Our pesticide supplies are far too tight lately, and the procurement officer is clearly favoring the other side," Su Lanzhi said, frustration evident in her tone.
Jing Shu nodded, her attention divided while also keeping one eye on the phone screen where the community group chat's chatter scrolled by.
[Wang Qiqi, No. 13]: "@Luxury Car Dealer No. 5, @Feng No. 3, @Wang Dazhao No. 1, @Zhu Fan No. 7, all four of them had every last bit of their stored food eaten or contaminated by carrion scavengers. Does anyone still have extra food to trade with them or sell some? They're already lined up outside the supermarket, but it might take them days to actually get anything with the new quotas."
The chat immediately filled with noise, a cacophony of distress. Many people complained that their own rice or flour had been ruined as well, showing photos of crawling bags. Some said they didn't even have instant noodles left, only coarse cornmeal and a little rice, and not enough to last the week.
[Young Madam With a Baby, No. 13]: "I can trade 2.5 kg of my dried sweet potato slices with @Wang Dazhao for all his baby supplies. The formula, the diapers."
Everyone in the chat knew by now that Wang Dazhao's pregnant wife had died after eating tainted vegetables sold by scalpers. Her body, like all casualties now, had been forcibly collected and burned by the sanitation corps the same day to prevent disease.
[Wang Dazhao, No. 1]: "Deal. I'll give you ten tins of the uncontaminated baby formula for your child. Take them all."
[Young Madam With a Baby, No. 13]:"Thank you so much. I'll also add 5 kg of my rice ration to the trade. Baby formula is out of stock everywhere. You can't buy it at any price now."
The moment people saw someone still had dried sweet potatoes, a durable calorie source, everyone got excited. Many offered half a kilo of their precious rice in exchange for just a few slices. But the other three families, Luxury Car Dealer, the injured Feng, and Zhu Fan, had nothing left of value to trade, their former assets now meaningless. Even with Wang Qiqi trying to mediate, no deals were made for them.
In the end, after much pleading in the chat, Wang Xuemei from No. 2 reluctantly promised to spend 300 of her remaining yuan for each of the three destitute families and deliver a single bowl of plain rice to them at the supermarket queue the next day, all because of Wang Qiqi's persistent appeal to neighborly duty.
Not long ago, scalpers had been brazenly selling wilted vegetables at astronomical prices, but now they had all disappeared, either arrested or having fled with their profits. Even cabbage couldn't be bought for 1000 yuan now; there simply was none. Even leaders' families with access to government supplied greenhouse vegetables had very little left, let alone grain for ordinary people.
All commercial food factories had stopped production months ago, their raw materials diverted. Supermarkets were out of stock on everything except the daily ration of rice and flour, sold in tiny, weighed amounts. Everyone wanted to stockpile more, but the system was designed to prevent it.
The sun had been gone for nearly half a year. With sustained high temperatures and critical water shortages, even the state was pouring resources into the artificial sun projects. It was clear no large scale crops had yet been successfully grown to replace pre apocalypse stores. Everyone was now viscerally realizing the seriousness of the problem. Though there was still some food in the system, supplies were visibly dwindling. A frantic, quiet hoarding mentality was taking hold.
Many who had thought they hoarded too much half a year ago now bitterly regretted not hoarding even more, not buying every bag of rice they saw. Under these conditions, no one with any foresight was willing to sell grain for paper money or trivialities.
The next day, Jing Shu brought five horned frogs, each on its carefully tied cord, in a ventilated basket to Su Lanzhi's workplace. Only then, walking through the compound, did she realize that Yu Caini's section still had a stockpile of commercial pesticides, their sharp chemical smell in the air, so they were not short on anything. Only Su Lanzhi's converted warehouse was pitifully lacking, expected to make do with 'natural methods.'
Still, against the odds, Su Lanzhi's garlic shoots stood tall and green, her spinach leaves were broad and lush, and the oyster mushrooms on the logs were fruiting in thick clusters, incredibly pleasing to the eye compared to the yellowing specimens elsewhere.
Jing Shu released the horned frogs from the basket onto the floor. The two from the Cube Space, vibrant and alert, immediately grew lively, their tongues flashing out to snatch tiny gnats from the air, while the three raised in the villa's pond remained sluggish, sitting passively.
"Mom, why are there so many carrion scavenger aggregations here?" Jing Shu asked, pointing her toe at several dark, shimmering piles of nearly pupated carrion scavenger clusters in the shadowed corner near a drain. In just a couple of days, these would hatch into tens of thousands of flying adults.
"They bully the weak and avoid the strong. They don't dare go where heavy pesticides are used next door. The bugs are all getting pushed over here," Su Lanzhi replied, her mouth a tight line.
Just then, brisk, confident footsteps approached from the hallway, accompanied by the click of dress shoes on concrete. A man in a neat, if slightly outdated, suit appeared in the doorway, followed by a junior researcher with a clipboard.
"Director Su," the man said, his voice smooth, ignoring Jing Shu completely. "The experimental crops on the standard pesticide side are probably all being eaten by bugs now, a real setback. But look at how exceptionally well your crops are growing here without them. Based on the contrasting results from different pesticide application tests, our team has developed several new, highly effective organic solutions. We'd like to incorporate your plots into the next phase of trials." He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes.