The elevator rose to the seventeenth floor. Lu Qi very naturally skipped over Chai Yuening, distributing the four key cards in his hand to everyone except Chu Ci.
Having spent more than ten hours dozing on and off on the plane, everyone, though not particularly sleepy, was still in high spirits. They wished each other good night and went to their respective rooms, key cards in hand.
Watching the four doors close one after another, with seemingly no one concerned about where she, the captain, would be staying, Chai Yuening couldn’t help but wonder if she had become invisible.
“Hey, are you guys just going to ignore me like that?”
Amused and annoyed, Chai Yuening knocked on Lu Qi’s door.
“Chu Ci is the host. Is there any way you wouldn’t have a place to sleep, Captain?”
Lu Qi’s voice came from inside the room.
He had a point, but they could have at least asked. What if there really were only these four rooms and they needed to discuss how to divvy them up?
Chai Yuening opened her mouth, about to say something, when she saw Chu Ci gently tugging at her sleeve.
“My room is over there,” Chu Ci said, pointing to a room at the end of the hallway.
“Oh!” Chai Yuening replied, following behind her with a slight sense of constraint.
The residences in the Floating City’s main city were clearly a bit larger than those in the Underground City’s. Although both were one-bedroom, one-living-room, one-kitchen, and one-bathroom layouts, the size and quality of the decor were markedly different.
After swiping the card to enter, her eyes were met with a large living room. In it was a rather space-consuming sofa and coffee table set. On the wall opposite the sofa hung a dark, square, thin panel that could be used as a blurry mirror.
This thing was called a television in the Old World, used for displaying images. She had seen it in books, and the adults had mentioned it.
She’d heard that the Underground City Base had also produced quite a few televisions in its early days, but later, the base’s experts unanimously deemed them useless, energy-consuming objects. As the base ceased production and the existing television signals were cut, they all became nothing more than pieces of scrap metal.
“This thing went out of production more than ten years before I was born. I can’t believe you still have them here.”
Chai Yuening remarked with a sigh, turning to walk into the adjacent bedroom.
This bedroom, besides the bed, had a separate wardrobe and a writing desk with a small bookshelf.
The ceiling lamp was flower-shaped, and to the side, floor-length, light purple curtains concealed a small, curved balcony enclosed by a railing beyond the glass doors.
Chai Yuening pushed the glass doors open and took a few steps forward, resting her hands on the wooden railing as she looked up at the night sky, studded with a multitude of stars.
Perhaps the stars and moon were too close, so close they seemed within reach. She felt that here, even the air itself was free.
Chu Ci slowly walked up beside Chai Yuening, gazing at the sky with her.
Chai Yuening: “This is considered a very nice residence in the Floating City, isn’t it?”
Chu Ci: “Mm-hmm.”
Chai Yuening: “Do you usually live here?”
Chu Ci: “Mm-hmm.”
Chai Yuening: “If the base needs you, someone comes to take you to the research institute?”
Chu Ci: “Mm-hmm.”
Chai Yuening: “Does someone take care of what you eat every day?”
Chu Ci: “Yes, but I told the Doctor they don’t need to come recently.”
Chai Yuening: “Then you…”
“How many days are you staying here?” Chu Ci suddenly interrupted Chai Yuening’s questioning.
“Two or three days, I guess…” Chai Yuening answered casually.
Before, it was always her taking Chu Ci everywhere; now, for the next few days, she would suddenly be the one tagging along with Chu Ci for room and board.
The thought alone felt quite strange, and rather embarrassing.
She turned to look at Chu Ci, who happened to be turning away from the night sky to look at her.
Their eyes met. She thought she saw a fleeting trace of disappointment in Chu Ci’s eyes.
“Four or five days is fine too,” Chai Yuening amended. “Actually, it’s quite nice here. I could stay for ten days or half a month. If there’s a chance in the future, I’ll come find you again…”
“Let’s make it five days, then.” Chu Ci’s eyes curved into a smile, and she turned her head to look at the sky again. “The Doctor wants me to show you all around, but I don’t know where I can take you.”
“Don’t trouble yourself. I’m not here for fun anyway. I’m just here to…” Chai Yuening’s words trailed off. She paused for a moment, then gave a nonchalant laugh. “Just let them go play by themselves. I don’t like running around all over the place either, you know that…”
“Mm-hmm,” Chu Ci nodded.
She looked up at the starry sky, the warm yellow light from the bedroom casting from behind her, shining through the wisps of hair stirred by the wind at her temples, illuminating the fair skin of her cheek.
Chai Yuening saw that the corners of her mouth were slightly raised, her eyes seeming to reflect the stars of the night sky.
Chu Ci seemed quite happy.
Chai Yuening thought, if she wasn’t mistaken, Chu Ci must be happy at this moment.
After enjoying the breeze on the balcony for a while, Chai Yuening still didn’t feel the slightest bit sleepy.
She returned inside and, with Chu Ci’s help, turned on the television in the living room.
It was still broad daylight on the TV. In the picture, a female reporter with a shoulder-length bob was walking briskly through a large-scale farm, constantly talking about the recent breeding status of various species, and what great progress had been made in the production of things like wool, milk, and meat.
As she spoke, she randomly pulled over a plainly dressed farmhand for an interview.
The reporter smiled brilliantly, the farmhand smiled honestly, and their back-and-forth conversation was filled with: “Life is getting better, and tomorrow will be even better.”
“Your base pulls this kind of stuff too?” Chai Yuening couldn’t help but laugh.
“But isn’t it all true?” Chu Ci looked at Chai Yuening, a hint of confusion in her eyes.
“Yes, it is the truth,” Chai Yuening said, leaning back on the sofa with a soft sigh. “But this is the truth the base wants everyone to hear. Anything they don’t want people to hear will almost never be given a chance to surface.”
She knew that humanity needed hope.
The more hopeless the days, the more humanity needed hope.
She still remembered the day she first entered the Underground City’s main city, the interrupted interview with that old doctor from the base’s research institute.
She still remembered the days when the main city decided to blow up the outer city, how the base’s broadcasts were practically overflowing with humanity’s visions of a beautiful future.
But what was the reality?
Whether it was the main city’s military at the time or the researchers at the institute, they were all driven to the brink of collapse by the despair brought on by the disaster.
The Floating City probably wasn’t much better off, was it?
Chai Yuening couldn’t help but think so.
That driver named Ye Qing, and that Dr. Yi Shuyun—when they mentioned the surface ecology, there was a subtle helplessness and anxiety in their tone, one could even call it panic.
Chai Yuening didn’t quite understand all the talk about infection, mutation, and fusion, but from the mouths of those researchers, she could faintly perceive a truth that the human bases were still unwilling to mention a single word of to the public.
For humanity, this world might really be slowly collapsing.
Or rather, it used to be slow.
Now, that collapse had begun to accelerate.
“Do you think this is wrong?”
A soft question pulled Chai Yuening back from her deep thoughts.
She thought for a moment, raised her arms high for a big stretch, then let them fall to cradle the back of her head. “I’m just an ordinary person, living one day at a time. What right do I have to judge this or that?”
Those who were qualified to “judge” and make certain choices for humanity surely had corresponding ideas, as well as responsibilities they had to bear.
“Me, I just hope that I and the people around me can live a little longer… Whatever the higher-ups want to say, let them say it. If I’m bored, I’ll listen, just to pass the time.”
Chu Ci pressed her lips together, giving Chai Yuening a deep, somewhat scrutinizing look.
She said, “I thought that someone like you would be very concerned about the future of humanity.”
Chai Yuening: “Why would you think that?”
Chu Ci: “You were unhappy when the outer city fell.”
Chai Yuening: “Anyone who saw a scene like that wouldn’t be happy.”
Chu Ci: “You’re different.”
Chai Yuening sat up straight, a little bewildered.
“Why?” she asked, looking at Chu Ci curiously. “How am I different?”
She couldn’t quite understand why Chu Ci always thought she was out of the ordinary.
She was just a perfectly ordinary person. When faced with danger, she could only flee to safety, unable to even save the people she wanted to save in her heart.
“From start to finish, I was always running, always hiding. Even when I wanted to help, it seems I didn’t help much. In the end, it was all thanks to you…” Chai Yuening said.
She didn’t understand. There were thousands upon thousands of admirable, great people in this world. She was just a mercenary who sold her life for money, with more surface experience than the average person. She couldn’t even touch the hem of those people’s clothes.
Why did Chu Ci always see her as so special?
“Why are you saying all this?” Chu Ci asked. “What I think is my business. Why are you telling me this? Are you trying to change my mind?”
“I…” Chai Yuening opened her mouth, but found she couldn’t answer.
“You’re so weird,” Chu Ci muttered under her breath, turning her head away.
For a moment, Chai Yuening didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
This was the first time someone had called her weird, and it was coming from a person who had been weird from the very first day she appeared.
Just like that, the conversation between Chai Yuening and Chu Ci came to a dead end.
She was stunned for a good while before realizing that she seemed to have killed the conversation again.
For a split second, she felt quite wronged. This difficult conversation was definitely not her fault alone.
She thought she needed to find a new topic, to turn the page.
And so, a hand, not knowing what else to do, subconsciously pressed a button on the remote control lying crookedly on the sofa.
The image on the television suddenly brightened considerably.
On the screen, two white-haired elders, a man and a woman, stood embracing and kissing before a cloud-viewing platform in the Floating City.
Many young and middle-aged people, acting like children, were scattering flower petals, cheering, and childishly blowing white bubbles with soapy water.
“Teacher Zhang, whose students are all over the world, turns seventy-eight today, and his wife is seventy-five.”
“When the Old World was destroyed, their wedding was interrupted by the evacuation alarm. Not being able to give his beloved a beautiful wedding has been Teacher Zhang’s greatest regret in life.”
“Today, with the help of their students, this old couple has finally put on their wedding attire once more, making up for a regret that has lasted more than fifty years.”
“They met and fell in love at university, journeying from the Old World to the present day, from the first blush of love to growing old together, composing the most beautiful of love poems…”
“How wonderful,” Chai Yuening couldn’t help but sigh.
So many people were unable to live out their lives so healthily and peacefully with the one they loved.
Chu Ci: “Is that kissing?”
Chai Yuening: “Mm-hmm.”
Chu Ci: “Isn’t doing that disgusting?”
Chai Yuening: “Uh…”
“I don’t know. I feel like if it’s someone you like, it probably… wouldn’t be?” Chai Yuening replied, uncertain.
“Have you tried it?” Chu Ci pressed.
“I…” Chai Yuening said, “Wh-where would I get the chance to try?”
God knows how many years she’d been single. In this life, she’d never met a… person… she clicked with?
For some reason, for a split second, her mind went blank.
After a brief daze, Chai Yuening’s gaze unconsciously drifted to Chu Ci.
As it happened, Chu Ci was also gazing at her quietly, her eyes like torches, as if she were scrutinizing something.
That gaze made Chai Yuening feel a little flustered, and for a moment, she didn’t know where to look.
After a good while, she finally turned her head back toward the television.
And let out a soft “Oh.”
The corner of Chai Yuening’s eye couldn’t help but twitch.
How bizarre.
She thought to herself.
Author’s Notes:
Wife’s Gaze.jpg
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