After this conversation, at least on the surface, the relationship between Xie Xishu and Qi Wu returned to the same delicate balance as before.
One flu. It had turned the entire city of A’s population into monsters.
Only Xie Xishu, out of caution, luck, or perhaps misfortune, escaped infection.
In a zombie movie, he would be the lone survivor in the entire city.
When examined closely, their analysis still left many things unexplained. For example, why had all the others mutated into bloodthirsty, crazed monsters, while Qi Wu had retained his human rationality? Or why did licking Xie Xishu’s skin quickly calm Qi Wu down? How long would Qi Wu’s “normal” state last? Would there come a day when he could no longer suppress his monstrous nature and devour the uninfected Xie Xishu…
But about all this, an already exhausted Xie Xishu no longer had the energy to keep investigating.
Now, only one thing remained on his mind—
“Earlier, you said that just tasting me is enough to satisfy you.”
Taking advantage of the relatively peaceful atmosphere, Xie Xishu gathered his courage and, trying to appear calm, asked Qi Wu.
“You asked me to come with you, and that was for…? As long as you reach a certain level of satisfaction, you can regain your sanity and maintain a human state… What you need is just to absorb my…” At this point, Xie Xishu’s voice faltered, “my scent, that’s all.”
His nerves were tense, and he was exceedingly cautious in choosing his words.
“…So, what you need is just… just to lick, right?”
“…”
Hearing Xie Xishu’s slightly trembling and even confused question, Qi Wu suddenly lifted his eyes and stared at him for a long time. He stared until the calm façade on the boy’s face cracked piece by piece, revealing the deep-seated panic and unease beneath. Only then did Qi Wu suddenly grin, ambiguously asking in return,
“What do you think?”
*
Even when Xie Xishu wrapped himself in his clothes and fell asleep in the pharmacy that night, he still hadn’t received a clear answer from Qi Wu.
Qi Wu’s counter-question in that instant had drained all of his courage.
Xie Xishu didn’t dare, and didn’t want, to continue asking. By then, the sky outside had long since darkened. Qi Wu only pulled up the shutter and glanced outside before deciding to stay with Xie Xishu to wait for dawn.
For a long time after that, neither he nor Xie Xishu made another sound.
Xie Xishu thought he would be too nervous to sleep and would end up staring wide-eyed at Qi Wu until morning. However, perhaps due to the exhaustion of the day or the overwhelming fear, Xie Xishu, curled up in a corner, staring at Qi Wu’s back, was eventually overtaken by a deep drowsiness.
Yet, because of his extreme mental tension and the fright he had experienced, Xie Xishu’s dreams this time became even more chaotic and bewildering than usual.
The damp stench in his dream enveloped Xie Xishu’s muddled consciousness like a continuous rain, and perhaps because of this, he dreamt of a fish tank.
That had been a long time ago.
The dreaming Xie Xishu vaguely recalled.
At that time, his mother hadn’t yet gone abroad, and he hadn’t yet been completely abandoned by his parents because of his poor health. His mother, a researcher, was busy with work, and sometimes she had no choice but to bring the young Xie Xishu into the research lab, settling him in her office.
In that old office, which had long since been demolished in reality, Xie Xishu dreamt of his mother sitting at a large desk, focused on her work by the light of a computer screen glowing faintly blue.
Her figure in this dream was just a thin, pale gray shadow.
What remained clear and vivid in the dream, however, was the seawater tank.
Xie Xishu dreamt that he was quietly lying in front of the seawater tank, curiously and joyfully observing the creatures inside.
There were no tropical fish or aquatic plants in the tank, only clusters of jewel-like, mesmerizingly glowing… sea anemones.
…They must be sea anemones.
Xie Xishu thought.
Only sea anemones would have so many soft, sticky, and variously shaped tentacles.
At that moment, those tentacles were swaying slowly in the still artificial seawater.
Xie Xishu pressed his hand against the cold, smooth glass of the tank—at the next moment, the previously plump, soft “sea anemones” suddenly extended their tentacles, one after another, frantically attaching themselves to Xie Xishu’s palm through the glass.
Xie Xishu shuddered involuntarily.
He wanted to pull his hand back, but the “self” in the dream didn’t do so.
Instead, he leaned in closer, fascinated, to get a better look at those cute creatures. Perhaps out of affection for them, the dream version of him fed something into the tank.
To this day, the dreaming Xie Xishu could no longer recall exactly what he had put into the seawater tank.
Probably shrimp or fish meat, something like that.
The white, delicate, and glistening piece of meat slowly sank through the tank, eventually landing right in the center of one of the “sea anemones’” round, gaping mouths—then, in an instant, the tentacles of the “sea anemone” contracted tightly, wrapping around the white meat. The tentacles closest to the meat began to twitch slightly, one after another, and soon the entire cluster of flesh-like creatures started convulsing rhythmically. The previously brightly colored surface of their bodies became covered in countless fine spots, which gathered, swirling in Xie Xishu’s vision into stripes and patterns that spun and danced. Their once brightly colored tentacles gradually turned into writhing masses of sticky, crimson flesh, their cute shapes stretching into countless tongues-like forms, with tiny, pulsing protrusions covering their surfaces.
The once nostalgic dream abruptly became grotesque. Xie Xishu watched in terror as the growing “sea anemones” swelled up, crowding out of the fish tank. He wanted to step back, to move out of reach of the tentacles… but found that he couldn’t.
Somehow, his mother’s office had transformed into a much larger “fish tank” that could contain him entirely.
Cold liquid engulfed Xie Xishu.
He began to sink slowly.
Falling…
Until he landed in a mass of endless, wriggling, elongated tentacles.
Slimy, stinking, and smooth flesh surged up, tightly wrapping around every inch of Xie Xishu’s skin. The repulsive things clung to him, writhing and crawling. The sea anemones’ tentacles secreted large amounts of digestive fluid, and those fluids gradually enveloped Xie Xishu in the water—his body, numbed by the anesthetic effects of the digestive juices, became increasingly soft and limp.
[Help—]
[Someone, please help me—]
[Save me—]
Xie Xishu screamed silently in his dream, but even as he teetered on the brink of collapse from fear, the only thing he could do was helplessly tremble weakly beneath the suffocating mass of “tongues.”
He was being digested.
Xie Xishu realized this clearly.
His head was wrapped in those appendages, with his nasal cavity, mouth, and even ear canals filled with writhing soft flesh. They were pulling at his head, gradually detaching it from his spine.
Then came his limbs, followed by his torso…
The digestive fluids numbed his nerves, and in the chaos of numbness, Xie Xishu could feel his entire body gradually dissolving, breaking apart.
Those tendrils squeezed into the hollow interior of his body, gently pressing against his fragmented, soft, and loosened form, extracting and absorbing his juices.
They were devouring him.
And he was merging with the monster.
…
*
“Help—”
The moment Xie Xishu awoke from the nightmare, a faint, desperate cry escaped from his throat.
However, that whimper was quickly stifled at the base of his tongue—Qi Wu’s cold hand was tightly covering his mouth.
*
Xie Xishu quickly realized that there was a reason he had such a disgusting and bizarre dream.
And that reason wasn’t just because he had been scared earlier in the day.
At that moment, countless hot, dripping “tongues” were tightly wrapped around his body. He was trapped in Qi Wu’s embrace, almost exactly mirroring the position he had been in during the dream, with Qi Wu now in his “sea anemone” form.
[Don’t move.]
A few thin tendril-like appendages slid directly into Xie Xishu’s ear canal, delivering a whisper that only he could hear.
[There’s something… something at the door.]
*
After waking up, Xie Xishu quickly understood why Qi Wu had to restrain him in such a way.
In fact, at this moment, he wasn’t even on the ground. He was purely suspended in midair, bound by Qi Wu’s tendrils. The two of them were tightly entwined, clinging to the corner of the pharmacy’s ceiling.
The candle that had been lit earlier for illumination had long since burned out, turning into a cold puddle of wax solidified on the glass countertop.
The surrounding area was completely dark.
On the wall, the clock’s hands glowed faintly with a green light, indicating that it was now 3 AM.
Even before the mutations occurred, this would have been a time of absolute quiet and stillness.
But at this moment, a clear voice could be heard from outside the pharmacy’s rolling shutter door.
“Is anyone there?”
“Is anyone inside?”
“Please, is anyone home? Please save me… please save me…”
The woman’s cries were particularly anguished, and just hearing them conjured images of the horrific circumstances under which she might be making such pleas, begging desperately for someone to come and save her.
Even though Xie Xishu knew rationally that a “person” suddenly appearing outside at this time was highly suspicious, he couldn’t help but feel his heart skip a beat upon hearing such a cry for help.
And then he noticed, at the same instant that the woman’s voice sounded, Qi Wu’s muscles tensed sharply. Even the tendrils wrapped around his body tightened, and the stench of Qi Wu’s saliva became more pungent than ever before.
This made Xie Xishu grow anxious, for Qi Wu was on guard.
And the only thing that could make a monster like Qi Wu feel threatened was…
“Clang—”
The rolling shutter door let out a loud noise.
Once, and then again.
The woman… or whatever it was outside the door, having received no response, began scratching at the metal shutter.
Xie Xishu’s heartbeat sped up dramatically.
He watched in terror as the metal door creaked and warped under the piercing sound of the scratching.
Then, suddenly, a long tear appeared in the gray sheet of iron.
The first thing to poke through the tear was a few gray-green fingers—woman’s fingers—except there were far too many of them for a normal hand, maybe twenty, or even thirty? Xie Xishu didn’t have the time to count them all.
But he could clearly see that the metal door, under the grasp of those fingers, didn’t last any longer than a soft cardboard box. In less than a breath’s time, the rolling shutter was torn in two, creating a massive opening.
A strong stench of rot rushed in.
The dim moonlight slanted through the opening, casting a glow over the terrifying silhouette of the intruder.
“Is anyone there-there-there-there-there—”
The woman’s voice was now sharper and clearer than before.
Then, she staggered through the opening into the pharmacy.
She had no head.
Unlike the traditional tales of horror or movies depicting headless ghosts, this was not a typical decapitated female ghost.
Where her shoulders should have been, her upper body was smooth, with gray skin that appeared semi-transparent. Beneath the skin, one could faintly see a network of roots-like veins crisscrossing in all directions.
The woman wore a very ordinary floral dress, her arms hanging limply down to her sides, her long fingers extending all the way from her armpits to her palms.
And at this moment, the woman was clutching two matted clumps of hair. Beneath the hair were two severed heads.
As the woman walked, the two heads dangled slightly, much like how a housewife might carry two watermelons on her way home, gently swaying back and forth.
Drops of black blood continuously dripped from the severed necks of the heads, and the rotten stench Xie Xishu had smelled earlier emanated from them.
In fact, those two heads were clearly showing signs of gigantism. They were swollen and bloated, with one head’s eyeballs protruding from its sockets, the decaying brain matter pushing them out until they hung on either side of the nose, rolling around aimlessly.
However, those two heads were alive.
“Is anyone there? Can you save me?”
The voice, filled with fear, kept emerging from the mouth of the rotting gray-purple head.
The unnaturally lively tone of the voice stood in grotesque contrast to the stiff, ashen face of the head.
At the same time, the other head in the woman’s hand had a large gash across most of its cheek, revealing a few sharp yellow teeth scattered across its decayed jaw.
The eyeballs of each head, whether they were still in their sockets or had the dull gray-yellow hue of a corpse, were now moving rapidly, darting in every direction.
They were observing their surroundings.
Xie Xishu couldn’t help but feel grateful that Qi Wu had bound him so tightly.
Otherwise, he wasn’t sure he would have been able to stop himself from screaming upon seeing this creature.
The woman’s steps were slow and dragging, her head swinging in her hand as she wandered back and forth among the cluttered shelves, carefully scanning from the bottom shelf to the very top.
Finally, she stopped in front of the glass counter where Xie Xishu and Qi Wu had spent the most time, turning her back to them.
The head in her hand moved close to the candle, now long extinguished, and began to breathe heavily.
“Someone—”
“Someone here, here, here, someone here—”
The voice from deep within the head, which had been continuously moaning in distress, suddenly let out a series of frenzied cries.
“So delicious, so delicious, hiss, so delicious!”
“It’s something good to eat!”
“It’s a tasty person!”
It was at that moment that Xie Xishu suddenly realized how foolish his earlier question to Qi Wu had been.
He had once asked Qi Wu how he could tell which monsters were “undeveloped” and which were “developed.”
The answer was now right in front of him, and the difference between the two was so obvious that there was no way to get it wrong.
Even though Xie Xishu hadn’t been infected or mutated, he could clearly feel the distinction.
Teacher Li had already been quite grotesque and terrifying, and the shadows that had cornered him before were all equally vicious and mad, but the sense of oppression they brought together couldn’t compare to the presence of this “woman” now, wandering crazily around the shop, searching for traces of their presence.
Fortunately, Qi Wu and Xie Xishu had been hiding on the ceiling—this position was indeed a blind spot for the “woman.”
However, at that moment, there was a sudden rustling sound from above.
Xie Xishu widened his eyes in disbelief.
Following the direction of the sound, he saw that a piece of the mimicry body left behind by the monster shop clerk was still stuck on the ceiling.
What remained was just a small, shriveled, intestine-like organ, and whether it sensed the woman’s terrifying presence or was merely undergoing some reflexive nerve response, it was slithering around on the ceiling like a tiny snake.
The “woman” immediately turned around, raising her arms.
Her thin, long arms stretched out abruptly, reaching up to the ceiling.
At the same time, the head in her hand opened wide, revealing a crimson, fang-lined maw inside the skull—
“Found you, found you, found you, I’ve found you!”
The decayed head let out a shrill cry of joy.
