Apocalypse Star House Hoarding-Chapter 12

“Xixi!” Meng Lu hurried, running a few steps to catch up with her. “Yuxi! Wait for me!”
“What is it?” Yuxi stopped walking.
“I haven’t seen you these past few days. Are you still mad at me?”
Yuxi really didn’t like this roundabout way of speaking: “I’m asking you, what do you want?”
Meng Lu looked at her, momentarily speechless, her attention drawn to Yuxi’s clothes. The black down jacket just reached her thighs, looking light and soft, with a fur-lined hood that made it very warm.
L Island doesn’t have winter, so there were no such warm items as down jackets. The rescue team only distributed blankets and fleece clothing. Even wearing multiple layers and wrapping in blankets was still cold, let alone it was impossible for everyone to get several pieces of fleece clothing.
Most survivors who were at the Wanghaishan Hotel during the tsunami still had the warm clothes they brought from their home countries, and down jackets like this weren’t very valuable.
Meng Lu remembered she also had a similar lightweight down jacket in her suitcase. When they left the capital, it was winter, so when they arrived in Haiguo, she couldn’t wait to take off the bulky winter clothes and stuff them into the bottom of her suitcase. She had despised it then, but now she missed it dearly.
They had all come on this trip as part of the same tour group, so why was Yuxi so lucky? Suddenly, a strange and absurd thought popped into Meng Lu’s mind.
Meng Lu shivered and directly asked, “Did you know about the tsunami in advance?”
“What are you talking about?” Yuxi’s expression didn’t change at all.
Meng Lu looked at Yuxi, seeing confusion and puzzlement in her eyes but no guilt or panic.
Of course, how could that be possible?
She remembered why she had called Yuxi, suppressing the anger from Yuxi’s cold attitude and the absurd thought: “You saw what happened just now. Fang Zichen is just a jerk, and I don’t want to live with those two anymore. Are you staying on the north side of the mountain? I heard there are many guesthouses there. The conditions aren’t as good as here, but many rooms are empty. I want to move there with you.”
“That’s your business. You don’t need to discuss it with me.”
“Yuxi! How can you be like this…”
Her raised voice softened again, and her tone became more gentle, “Xixi, we’re friends. In times of disaster, we need to take care of each other. Staying at the guesthouse costs money, and you know all my belongings were lost in the tsunami. I just want to borrow some money from you or share a room with you. Also…”
She leaned in closer and lowered her voice, “I have a lot of food and drinks. I can bring everything…”
Meng Lu’s meaning was clear: she had no money but wanted to move to the guesthouse area, so she needed Yuxi’s help. But she wasn’t asking for help for free; she was willing to contribute supplies, planning to take all three people’s supplies.
Anyway, Fang Zichen was currently at the temporary hospital with Mang Mang, so the room was empty.
“If you have many supplies, moving to the guesthouse area is simple. Some places there are already accepting supplies as rent.”
In Yuxi’s opinion, Meng Lu didn’t need her help at all. “I have things to do, and you don’t have much time either. Let’s not waste each other’s time.”
With that, she bypassed Meng Lu and walked through the lobby towards the hotel’s annex.
Meng Lu then realized that the once easily appeased and obedient friend was long gone. The current Yuxi was cold and distant, not someone she could placate with a few words.
“Forget it!” she gritted her teeth and ran towards the main building’s emergency exit.
She didn’t have much time. That green tea bitch probably wasn’t seriously hurt and would come back soon. She needed to return to the room to pack up and leave as soon as possible.
Yuxi knew the floor and room number of Yuan Qi and the others from their registration cards.
The annex was much shorter than the main building. This building had few family suites and mostly single and double rooms, catering to backpackers who liked to travel alone.
Since the rooms were small, the survivors assigned here were mostly family units, without arranging strangers to share a room. This made the atmosphere and environment much better and more harmonious than in the main building.
However, there were occasional exceptions.
As Yuxi stepped into the fifth-floor corridor, she heard exclamations and saw a dark-skinned man running towards the stairs. Someone tried to stop him halfway, but he was scared off by the man’s knife. The man kicked him away and continued running with a large bag in his arms.
“Find a way to stop him!”
“Be careful! He has a knife!”
…
The man brandished the knife with a ferocious expression: “Get out of the way!”
Several voices sounded at once, mixed with a child’s crying.
Yuxi recognized a familiar voice among them. She sidestepped slightly, a thought crossing her mind, and a three-section baton slid out from her down jacket sleeve. With a flick of her wrist, the metal baton extended fully, and she swung it towards the man’s face with a blank expression.
With a heavy thud, the man, who had not expected her to strike, was caught off guard. The force of her blow, combined with his momentum, left a deep cut on his face. He cried out in pain, stumbling. Yuxi took advantage of his unsteady stance to strike his arm again with the baton.
This time, his hand shook, and the bag fell to the ground. He instinctively reached to pick it up, but Yuxi twisted his arm and forcefully stepped on his wrist.
Yuxi then saw Yuan Ning, who was on the verge of collapsing from chasing the thief and aggravating her wound. Yuxi hurriedly reached out and steadied her as she arrived and almost fell.
“Thank you,” Yuan Ning said with pale lips, giving her a helpless smile, “I owe you again.”
A moment later, in Yuan Qi’s room, Lin Wu, who had been notified, finished treating Yuan Ning’s abdominal wound. He packed away the gauze and tools into the medical kit. “It’s only been three days; the wound can’t heal this quickly. If you keep pushing yourself, find someone else to treat you next time.”
“Thank you.” Yuan Ning pulled her clothes back into place and nodded at him. “Okay, I understand. I’ll find another doctor then.”
Lin Wu chuckled in exasperation and turned to Yuxi. “Thanks to you today. The rescue team said he’s a repeat offender. After the tsunami, the situation became chaotic, and several criminals escaped from the local police stations. Since some people’s identities were unclear, they didn’t register with the data center. There have been a few thefts in hotels and guesthouses in the past three days. You just caught one of them.”
The large number of people on the mountain, the complexity of the situation, and the power cuts had halted the surveillance. The rooms’ electronic locks were no longer functional, so survivors had resorted to various makeshift locks or simply left their rooms unlocked, creating opportunities for miscreants.
In the hotel’s annex, families, women, and children were more common, while men were fewer. When two adults went to collect supplies, one child was often left in the room. Some people had taken advantage of this.
Lin Wu stayed in the room for a while, naturally exchanging information with Yuxi. He first discussed the situation in the hotel area and then asked about the situation in the guesthouse area.
While Yuxi spoke, she noticed Lin Wu and Yuan Ning’s thoughtful expressions, giving her a hunch about their intentions.
Sure enough, after Lin Wu left, Yuan Ning immediately proposed relocating their accommodation.
“We have money and supplies,” Yuan Ning said, looking at Yuan Qi. “My sister is conservative and brought a lot of cash with her. She didn’t leave it behind when organizing her backpack. There are more people here, and with the disconnection from the outside world and sudden drop in temperature, things will get chaotic sooner or later. The rescue team consists of surviving police officers and government personnel from the island. They are few in number and lack proper weapons, yet they oversee all the supplies on the island. Once things get chaotic, it will be hard to control the situation.”
Yuan Qi was also frightened by today’s events. She had gone downstairs to collect supplies, and Yuan Ning had gone to check on a strange noise in the next room. She found a fifteen or sixteen-year-old boy gagged and tied up in a corner while a stranger rummaged through their supplies.
The people in that room were the ones who came with them from Coral island. They usually helped each other with minor matters, but this incident was unexpected.
Yuan Ning’s wound hadn’t healed, and with the boy being threatened, she was in a passive position, allowing the thief to escape. Luckily, Yuxi appeared.
The boy’s arm had a deep cut and bled a lot, but he was otherwise okay, and nothing was stolen. Yuan Qi, seeing the boy, thought of her own three-and-a-half-year-old son. What if he encountered such a situation?
Although the guesthouse area wasn’t necessarily safer, there were fewer people. If Yuan Ning could rest and heal, they wouldn’t be as vulnerable in the future.
Finally, Yuxi led Yuan Qi and her companions back to the guesthouse area.
As they left, a woman from the neighboring family of three peeked out and asked where they were going, then retreated without a word of thanks, as if blaming Yuan Ning for not protecting her son from the injury.
Yuan Ning sneered, and Yuan Qi sighed, patting her sister’s shoulder. She picked up her luggage and followed Yuxi out of the annex.
Yuan Ning and her group negotiated the rental of a family suite at the guesthouse, adding a five-kilogram bag of rice, a bag of ham sausages, five packets of instant noodles, and ten potatoes to the original room rate.
When Yuxi accompanied them to act as a translator, the guesthouse owner and his wife were huddled over an old radio, trying to tune in to a station. She overheard that the situation outside was still bad; the surrounding island nations and even the distant mainland had been hit by the tsunami.
The boss and the landlady listened with worried expressions, so in addition to money, they also required food. The original room rate, plus some food, would allow them to stay in the suite indefinitely.
Yuan Ning thought this was a fair deal. She took out her phone to record the terms of their agreement on the room rate and then moved in.
The room was just below Yuan Ning’s, but it faced south, not north, and didn’t have a balcony, but it had two windows.
Looking north, you could still see a sea of floating debris and corpses. Yuan Qi didn’t have the mental fortitude to handle that, and with Yuan Yuan, a south-facing room was better.
This guesthouse’s location was not ideal. So far, its only guests were Yuxi in the north-facing room on the fifth floor, four young women from the capital in the south-facing family suite on the second floor, and Yuan Qi’s family on the fourth floor.
However, Yuan Ning was satisfied. The conditions met all her requirements, and Yuan Qi was even happier because the guesthouse had a communal kitchen on the first floor, equipped with cooking utensils, dishes, and a stove for burning wood.
She had grown up in the countryside, so what was difficult for others was a piece of cake for her.
So that afternoon, while Yuxi pondered what to have for lunch from the variety of dishes in her Star House storage, wrapped-up Yuan Yuan knocked on her door.
“Sister Xixi, Mom and Auntie want to invite you to have lunch with us!” He was holding a toy dinosaur and wore a hooded long down jacket, his face red from warmth.
Yuan Qi was a very meticulous person. Even though they were on a tropical island, she had packed several pieces of warm clothing in their large backpack.
She probably thought they could wear them once they were rescued and returned home, but it turned out to be a lucky coincidence that helped them deal with the sudden cold snap.
Yuan Yuan forgot his lines midway and turned to the other end of the corridor to seek help from his aunt, finally managing to complete the invitation.
Yuan Ning walked over slowly and patted Yuan Yuan’s head: “I owe you a few favors and don’t know how to thank you. The best I could think of was to invite you for a warm meal. My sister has made some food, nothing fancy, just something to warm your stomach.”
Yu Xi, who never ate dry rations and had gained three pounds from eating warm meals every day, only hesitated for two seconds before agreeing: “Okay, I’ll just lock the balcony and come right down.”
“Yuan Yuan, wait for your sister downstairs!” Yuan Yuan was evidently happier than Yuan Ning. Although he was young, he could sense the tension in the air these past few days, especially after witnessing his aunt fighting with someone today.
Having Yuxi join them for lunch was a happy event for him.
After Yuan Ning and Yuan Yuan went downstairs, Yuxi locked the balcony door and took out two self-heating tomato beef hot pots from her Star House storage, putting them in her backpack.
The suite downstairs was large, with a bedroom, a living room, and a long table that could seat six.
At this moment, the table was set with four bowls of rice, a dish of fried carrots and luncheon meat, a dish of shredded carrots and potatoes, egg-coated fried bread slices, stir-fried cabbage, and a seaweed and egg soup.
It seemed like a simple meal, but it was not easy to prepare. Rice, cooking oil, carrots, and potatoes were easy to come by, but eggs and cabbage were not.
Due to their perishability, there was limited stock, and survivors had only received one or two fresh leaves in the past three days. The vegetable soup was made with dehydrated vegetables, and egg supply had stopped since yesterday.
Yuxi quickly realized who had gotten these ingredients: likely Lin Wu. She suspected some sort of private agreement or cooperation had started between him and Yuan Ning when they went to the supermarket for supplies. Of course, this was just a guess and couldn’t be confirmed, as it was their private matter, and everyone had secrets.
Just like she did now when taking out the food: two self-heating hot pots, three boxes of coconut drinks, a large bag of pork jerky, and two apples, placing them on the side table as gifts. Yuan Ning was probably suspecting the same thing—after all, Yuxi had initially left the dock with just a large backpack.
Yuxi’s self-heating hot pots were clearly not from L Island. While they fit in her backpack, most people would prioritize dry goods when fleeing, and hot pots took up a lot of space and weren’t considered dry goods.
But she needed help for her plan to leave the island, and executing it would inevitably reveal some secrets. She was testing the waters with this gesture.
“You’re just coming over for a casual meal; why did you bring gifts?” Yuan Qi didn’t think much of it, assuming the hot pots were brought from home by Yuxi.
In normal times, these wouldn’t be a big deal, but in the current situation, they were very precious. She wanted to refuse, but Yuxi insisted, so she accepted, silently resolving to save some food for Yuxi when she cooked porridge or rice.
After lunch, Yuan Qi planned to take the dishes to the kitchen downstairs. She would wash them between 7 and 8 p.m. when the water and power came on. She had used purified water to cook lunch, measuring it carefully to avoid waste.
Yuxi helped Yuan Qi tidy up, with Yuan Yuan seriously wiping the table with tissues.
Then, Yuan Qi took her son into the bedroom for a nap, and Yuxi offered to have a chat with Yuan Ning.
“You want to leave on your own?” Yuan Ning was surprised, having expected a discussion about supplies.
Yuxi nodded: “The extent of the tsunami’s impact is beyond our imagination. Instead of waiting here, it’s better to save ourselves.”
The plan to leave the island had three challenges: first, a reliable boat; second, enough fuel to reach the nearest mainland; third, someone who could navigate the sea and find their way.