Jing Lai quietly took out a big bowl of rice from her insulated bag and began eating in a shadowed corner of the staff break area. She couldn't help but recall what Jing Shu had said to her that morning, her voice low and matter-of-fact: "Third Aunt, you haven't been eating well these days. Grandma made extra food for Mom, and she made some for you too. Mom can't finish hers, and it would spoil in this heat. So take this. Otherwise, it will just go to waste."
Jing Lai's eyes grew wet behind her glasses. Jing Shu was sharp and perceptive, but she had phrased it just so to spare her pride, to make it seem like an afterthought, not charity.
Otherwise, her sister-in-law Su Lanzhi got a proper lunchbox with four separate dishes every day, while Jing Lai's meals were always mixed together into a single, unremarkable bowl to avoid drawing attention or envy. This was clearly food prepared specially for her, with care. Jing Lai treasured this quiet kindness deeply. At the end of the world, it was blood relatives who truly looked out for each other.
"Jing Lai, your family gave you food again? You're really lucky. You get a staff meal here and still bring your own. Look at me, I save half my portion every day to bring home. My entire month's wages go to buying a little extra food for my child." A coworker's voice held a mix of admiration and resentment.
Jing Lai had hidden herself in a corner, but a few colleagues with sharp eyes still noticed her eating.
"It smells so good. I think I smell braised ribs. Let me see!" someone with a particularly sharp nose came closer, sniffing.
"No, look. It's just moldy brown rice, the same as everyone's." Jing Lai handed the bowl over generously, keeping her face calm. In the dim light of the break room, it just looked like a dark, unappetizing lump of coarse rice.
"I swear I smell potatoes too."
"You're hallucinating from hunger. At this point, even shit would smell good." Another cook chuckled bitterly.
Jing Lai quietly swallowed a piece of boneless pork rib and the soft braised potatoes she had hidden under a layer of sesame seeds mixed into the rice. She finished it all quickly, the familiar, rich flavors a stark contrast to the grim reality around her. "Come on, eat up fast. We have to get back out there and finish cooking those… maggots." She couldn't keep the slight hitch out of her voice.
Those working in the government canteen were considered lucky to occasionally get a small portion of plain white rice. The state was now tightly controlling all grain reserves. Ordinary citizens could only trade their hard-earned work points for the cheap "relief meals" that were about to be served.
…
That afternoon, Jing An drove to pick up Su Lanzhi after work and took the whole family to Ai Jia supermarket to collect their daily water quota. It was a non-negotiable routine.
The five tons of water they had traded for previously had been used for watering the vegetable plots and hydrating the poultry. After daily household use, only about three tons remained. In this extreme heat, Jing Shu's villa also needed constant ice production to cool the shaded courtyard and the fish pond.
Without the ice circulating, even with a canopy, the heat would have been suffocating, and the fish in the pond couldn't survive. No matter how meager the daily distributed water was, they had to collect it; every drop was part of the complex calculus of survival.
When they arrived, the area around Ai Jia was already packed with people, organized into S-shaped lines behind rope barriers. Their lips were cracked and peeling, but their eyes were bright with a desperate, hungry anticipation. Everyone knew the news: to "celebrate" the Dragon Boat Festival, there would be three days of all-you-can-eat buffet meals for a tiny fee. That promise had sent waves of frantic excitement through the starved city.
The line for water stretched long as well, but ten more temporary water taps had been opened, so people moved through quickly, got their half-liter, and then rushed to join the much longer, snaking food line.
Tall iron fences now permanently separated the water collection area from the "dining hall." Under the dim, generator-powered lights, the converted hall was a scene of surreal bustle.
The government had spared no effort this time, using up every last stockpiled spice and condiment they had collected. The entire hall was filled with a heavy, spicy aroma that almost, but not quite, masked other underlying odors.
From a distance, Jing Shu saw two long rows of steaming metal pots and woks neatly lined up on tables, each with a server in a stained apron calling out with forced enthusiasm:
"Try my Kung Pao maggots! Tasty and delicious, numbing and spicy!"
"Dry-fried maggots! Worth every bite, take as much as you want!"
"Cantonese-style deep-fried maggots! Come try, one scoop is not enough, here's another! Eat up, celebrate the holiday!"
The lunch ladies no longer skimmed off most of each scoop with a practiced shake of the ladle as they did with precious rice. Instead, they heaped generous servings into outstretched bowls with alarming enthusiasm.
Those who had come in a fever of excitement, expecting the worst-case scenario to be some new mushroom dish, finally got a clear look into the pots. When they saw the masses of pale, writhing larvae, some still moving, clearly undercooked, they froze in horror. Other pots held minced bug paste, a greyish-brown slop that looked revolting. Most of the maggots were their natural dirty white or grey, with visible bits of debris clinging to them, with no sign of cleaning.
"This… this is not what I imagined."
"They call this a banquet? They're feeding us this garbage? Did they scoop this out of a latrine?"
"I'm going to throw up." A man turned away, gagging.
But some people had been truly starving for days. The smell of frying oil and spices was too tempting. They steeled themselves, picked out the least terrifying-looking dishes, the deeply fried, heavily seasoned ones, and began to eat, eyes squeezed shut.
Then the crackling loudspeakers mounted on poles blared to life with a recorded announcement:
"Attention, citizens. Take only what you can finish. Each person has thirty minutes to dine. If you report someone wasting food, you will earn two virtual coins. The waster will be fined five coins. Anyone with a negative balance of ten coins or more will be sent for mandatory labor reform.
To celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival, Ai Jia supermarket will host a Wugu Bug Banquet for three days. Each person pays only 0.5 virtual coins per day. Additionally, each day, the ten citizens who consume the most by weight will each receive a bonus of ten virtual coins.
In addition, Ai Jia supermarket has now set up a Wugu bug collection counter at the west entrance. We will pay 0.5 virtual coins per kilogram of live maggots delivered, with no upper limit. Citizens are encouraged to collect maggots from designated areas to exchange for coins, which can then be traded for water and white rice."
This was not like the early, naive days of the apocalypse, when people turned their noses up at muddy water or grew sick of plain white rice. Priorities had been brutally reset.
After one or two months of true hunger gnawing at their bellies, even though the idea of eating maggots was sickening, most people in line hesitated for only a few minutes before the sharper pangs of starvation decided for them. What choice did they have?
With hunger a constant, physical agony, every decision was a grim trade-off. If they spent two precious coins on a small portion of rice, they couldn't afford water. If they chose more water, they couldn't afford food. Every 0.5 coin was a monumental asset. Clothes and bedding had been traded away long ago, and even raided houses yielded nothing now. Starve or eat, it was not really a choice at all.
Survival was all that mattered. Dignity was a luxury that had expired.
One of the canteen ladies, seeing no one approaching her station of "steamed maggots with scallions," gritted her teeth, grabbed a small handful from the pot, and stuffed them into her own mouth, chewing with exaggerated vigor. "Look, it's delicious! Come try this one!" She had to eat them anyway if no one else did; the rules were clear.
With their hard-selling and enthusiastic, heaping scoops, most diners, driven by hunger and the ticking clock, began to choke the food down. But before many could even approach feeling full, the thirty-minute buzzer sounded.
The bald director surveyed the bustling, grim hall and the even longer lines of hopefuls waiting outside. He grabbed the microphone: "Time's up for this batch! Everyone out! Kitchen staff, reset the stations! Next group, prepare to enter!"
"This pepper-salt flavor is actually… not bad." A man mumbled with his mouth full, reaching for another scoop from Jing Lai's station.
Whether it was the superior quality of her stolen spices, the fragrant cumin, or her slightly more careful cooking, Jing Lai's pepper-salt maggots became an instant, morbid hit.
Her line stretched the longest. While other stations still had food left when the buzzer went, Jing Lai had emptied seven or eight large pots. Diners left her station reluctantly, some even trying to sneak an extra piece.
"There's no more for today! Come back tomorrow!" Jing Lai wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her wrist, a strange mix of disgust and professional satisfaction warring within her.
The bald director clapped her shoulder, beaming. "You did well, Jing Lai. From today, you're promoted to group leader. Double ration points. Keep it up!"
…
Watching the all-too-familiar scene unfold from the water collection side of the fence, Jing Shu saw in the people's hesitant, fearful, then resigned expressions a mirror of her own face from her past life. But now, she had changed that destiny through foresight, ruthlessness, and her secret advantage. She would never have to eat maggots again, not even a single one. The feeling was a cold, hard satisfaction. It felt good.
"Let's finish collecting our water and head home to wrap zongzi," Grandma Jing sighed, her old eyes sad as she watched a young mother force a spoonful of grey paste into her toddler's crying mouth. "Back during the great famine when I was a girl, we were like this too. We ate tree bark, clay, whatever we could find to fill our bellies. Some things… never really change." The weight of history hung in her words, a cycle of desperation repeating.