"Jing Shu really does have this kind of strength. Stop looking down on her," a quiet voice murmured among the classmates, a note of reluctant awe in the observation.
As the guests walked and found their seats, Jing Shu quickly counted the layout. One long row had thirty place settings. Two rows facing each other made sixty guests in total. The composition of the two rows was starkly telling. The row facing the main door and screen looked like pre-apocalypse dignitaries, men and women neatly dressed in clothes that were clean, tailored, and dry, their hair styled, their bearing formal. The other row, where her classmates were seated, wore mismatched, often ill-fitting clothes and, almost without exception, sported shaved heads.
In the second year after the apocalypse, you could often judge a household's real resources and standards by the haircut. People with the means to maintain a clean, sealed, bug-free living environment and the water to bathe regularly did not have to shave their heads to combat red nematode infestation. Maintaining hair became a subtle status symbol.
So one row was bald, a mark of hardship. The other row had hair, styled, cared-for hair. The divide was a physical line drawn across the room.
At one o'clock sharp, most of the tables were filled. Su Mali, standing at her place at the head table, picked up her microphone. "Thank you all for accepting my invitation. I now declare my housewarming party and the First Su Mali Charity Auction officially open. Please, enjoy your meal while we begin the trading and auction proceedings."
The hall fell into a respectful quiet as the soft background music shifted to something more ceremonial.
Su Mali continued, her voice amplified and clear. "First, the rules. We are not doing a traditional, shout-bidding auction. Prices will be set according to the seller's own needs. You can set a minimum price in virtual coins, you can shout out a price you are willing to pay, or you can name a specific item you want to trade for.
Since the official virtual currency transfer system is still in limited testing and only a few designated government personnel can process exchanges, I have kindly invited an internal systems officer, my friend Ah Yu, to be here today to handle any virtual coin transactions on the spot." She gestured gracefully toward the man in the blue suit.
Ah Yu, the graceful gentleman Jing Shu had met earlier, stood and gave a slight, formal bow. "Miss Mali, are your introductory rules finished? If I may, I have a few words."
At her encouraging gesture, Ah Yu lifted a beautifully wrapped gift box from beside his chair.
"Today is, first and foremost, Miss Mali's housewarming. So I took the liberty of bringing a small present. I hope she likes it." He placed the box on the table before her. "I believe if anyone else has prepared a housewarming gift, now would be the perfect time to present it. Otherwise, it will not feel fresh once the business of trading begins."
Good-natured, knowing smiles circled the hall among the well-dressed row. In these times, what was most valuable to most? Bulk food, calories. But these established families had stockpiled richly for years before the apocalypse. What was precious and scarce to ordinary survivors was routine, even boring, to them.
So what was truly rare, a luxury even for the wealthy? Fresh fruit. Living plants or animals. Those outshone any sealed ration or preserved meat.
Ah Yu's gift, when Su Mali opened it with a delighted exclamation, was two perfect, fresh ginseng fruits, shaped like small golden gourds, artfully set on a bed of plump red grapes. It looked like a still-life painting, beautiful and shockingly fresh.
"I know you love strawberries," another well-dressed woman said, standing. "So I brought a bouquet of them." It was arranged like a floral spray, the bright red berries studded among green leaves, a frivolous, glorious waste of calories that was pure status.
Others from that row followed suit: candied hawthorn skewers gleaming with sugar, cherries laid out in intricate patterns, a basket of glossy persimmons. The scene quickly became a real everyone-shows-their-tricks moment. In one circuit around the room, they practically covered the whole catalogue of pre-apocalypse temperate-climate fruit.
What struck Jing Shu most about the class divide on display was that it was as if they had coordinated it all in advance to avoid duplication. Most impressively, no two gifts were the same. Before long, the long table in front of Su Mali was heaped with a cornucopia of fresh, colorful fruit. Someone even brought a darling little white goose in a decorative cage, which honked softly.
A little white goose was very valuable, even more so because it was identified as a potential egg-layer, a hen.
The classmates stared wide-eyed at the growing mountain of fresh, impossible food, swallowing hard. Look at that. One housewarming party and Su Mali harvested this much luxury. Envy burned like acid in their empty stomachs.
Wait.
A cold realization dawned. They had not brought gifts.
They had come with their mouths and their meager trade items, expecting only to eat and maybe barter.
When the opposite row finished their lavish presentations, no one explicitly said, Your turn, but the looks they cast across the aisle, polite, expectant, slightly amused, asked it plainly: are you giving or not? Do you have the means, or the manners?
Jing Shu sat calmly beside Su Mali at the head table. Her internal calculus was simple: if the other classmates gave something, then she would give. If no one did, she would not stick her head up and single herself out. Offending the whole class by highlighting their poverty while she played rich benefactor would be socially awkward later.
Seeing the stalemate and the growing discomfort in the second row, Ah Yu smoothed things over with practiced ease. "Looks like that is all from this side. Shall we move to the next part of the agenda? The trading?"
Su Mali's lips, however, pouted slightly. From childhood she had been steeped in certain social niceties: when visiting someone's home, especially for a housewarming, you bring a small gift. A handkerchief, a nice pen, a book, it did not have to be expensive. It was about thoughtfulness and courtesy. The absence of gifts from people she had personally invited felt like a slight to these ingrained rules, a breach of etiquette she could not simply ignore.
Watching her expression, Jing Shu could not help a small, internal smile. Young Lady Su Mali truly did not eat the bitterness of common life. She did not grasp how survival had stripped such habits from her high school classmates' minds. The housewarming-gift custom had long since been pushed out by the daily struggle for calories and safety.
The classmates were stunned into a guilty silence. Now that others had presented extravagant gifts, how could they possibly refuse to give anything? But what could they possibly give that would not be laughable in comparison?
Still, a few had come prepared with something, however modest.
Xie Zihao stood up, his face slightly red, and offered a large, sealed box of assorted nuts and dried fruit. "It is storage food. Not fresh, but it keeps. I hope it is okay." It was practical, valuable in the apocalypse for its calories and longevity, but it paled beside the fresh strawberries.
Su Mali accepted it with a gracious nod and a standard "Thank you."
Yao Zixin brought forward a compact bundle. "It is a PVC folding rain-shelter hut. It opens and closes at will, sets up in minutes. Handy for well, for anything outside." It was a genuinely useful item for the current conditions. Su Mali's eyes lit up with genuine pleasure. "I love practical gifts! Thank you, this is wonderful!" She finally smiled a real, unforced smile.
Mu Xiaoxuan presented a small, elegant gift box. Inside, nestled on velvet, was a single, large peach seed. "With all this rain and if we get some sun," she said quietly, "it should sprout next year. To actually eat peaches from it, it may take three years. It is a gift for the future."
"Thank you," Su Mali said, touched. "We will plant it in the villa yard. I like it very much. It is hopeful." She cared about the thought, the symbolism. She might be naive about hardship, but she liked to see effort and optimism repaid with appreciation.
Jing Shu eyed Mu Xiaoxuan with new interest. Was Mu Xiaoxuan from a family involved in horticulture or fruit farming, with access to all kinds of seeds? Jing Shu made a mental note to ask her later about rarer fruit or nut seeds. Back when she was bulk-buying, she had focused on staple crops and Chinese medicinal herbs. She had not thought to buy seeds for ornamental plants or less common fruits. Thinking about it now, many such plants could play big roles in the apocalypse for medicine, dye, fiber, or morale.
Others, in twos and threes, shamefacedly produced whatever they had planned to trade as a makeshift gift. A ceramic vase, cracked but clean. A small bit of gold jewelry. A jade hairpin. Some of it was laughable in this context, perhaps, but it was still an offering, an acknowledgment of the social contract.
Jing Shu noticed the looks from the opposite row were already a little strange, a mix of pity, disdain, and anthropological curiosity.
And those who had come with nothing but a hungry mouth and their own persons kept their heads bowed, studying the tablecloth, and said nothing.
So the awkward gift-giving circle went round the second row until, inevitably, all eyes turned to the final person in the sequence who had not yet presented anything: Jing Shu, sitting conspicuously at the front.
The two potted medicinal herb plants she had brought were out of the question as a gift. They were for trade, specific in purpose. Without regular Spirit Spring water to nourish them, if Jing Shu gave them away, Su Mali would likely never be able to keep them alive in the current conditions. That would be a waste of precious resources.
Jing Shu frowned, a real headache brewing. What to give? Fresh fruit had been thoroughly exhausted by the opposite row. Food with long shelf life, those wealthy families had in bulk, probably more than she did. Poultry, she had, but presenting a chicken or duck now would be absurdly showy and logistically messy. Bigger livestock could not be produced from thin air, and she could not very well say, "Wait here, my house is right next door, I will go fetch a goose." That would be even more socially awkward, highlighting her own privileged proximity.
It had to be something small enough to present gracefully, but unique and worthy of her position next to the host.
Jing Shu's mind raced. She mentally rifled through the organized shelves of her Rubik's Cube Space, turning over categories. Food? Too common. Tools? Too utilitarian. Medicine? Possibly, but needed context. Then her mental inventory landed on a section she had nearly forgotten: personal items, luxuries from the old world, kept for sentimental value or potential future trade.
Suddenly her eyes lit up. She knew exactly what to give. It was small, priceless in current sentiment, utterly unique, and required no explanation of how she had it. It was perfect.