“I won’t leave,” Chai Yuening said in a low voice. “I’ll keep waiting.”
She remembered what Ge Heguang had once said to Chu Ci.
—Before humanity truly finds its freedom, we are all in a cage.
Living in a world like this, no one was truly free.
Before, she had only wanted to live a simple, good life, with no yearning for the light and freedom that so many people shouted about.
But now, she was beginning to yearn for those impractical things.
She thought, perhaps only when humanity was truly free could the girl who had voluntarily dedicated herself to human science return to the sunlight like an ordinary person.
Chai Yuening folded the page and put it away with the utmost care.
She told Ye Qing that she wanted to stay in the Floating City. She had extensive ground combat experience and was willing to undergo any capability assessment. If possible, she hoped to apply for eligibility to accompany Chu Ci on all her future missions.
“There aren’t many missions the military would send her on, and every one of them has a very high danger level…”
“I don’t care.” As long as she could still see Chu Ci, she didn’t care about anything.
Ye Qing was silent for a long time before finally letting out a deep sigh.
That day, Ye Qing took Chai Yuening to complete her identity registration, and she was assigned a small apartment in a remote corner of the main city.
She stayed in the Floating City as she had wished, though she found the unfamiliar environment somewhat difficult to adapt to.
She didn’t try to join any mercenary teams, nor did she venture out to the surface again.
For the first time, she began to feel afraid—afraid that if she went to the surface, she might never come back.
This was something her former self would never have even considered, but now she was scared. She was afraid that if she got infected, she would never again in this lifetime see the person who had made her weak.
She found a casual job looking after an elderly woman during the day.
The old woman was in her nineties. In a world where people could die at any moment, she was as old as an antique. Usually, she was either silent as a mute or, when she did speak, it was incomprehensible nonsense.
The old woman had been mad for over twenty years. She used to be a researcher herself, but after getting a scare while accompanying the military to the surface for sample collection, she had never been normal again.
Because she wasn’t quite right, her family didn’t like to deal with her, and the people they hired to look after her were all scared away, one after another. No one lasted long.
Chai Yuening, however, didn’t care about any of that. After all, no matter how frightening an old woman could be, she couldn’t compare to the strange creatures on the surface.
After that, she would look after the old woman during the day, and at night, she would read the daily paper she’d bought and listen to the rebroadcast of the base’s radio segments about the research institute.
Everything was just as Ye Qing had said: Chu Ci’s existence was unknown to all.
In all the publicly disclosed experimental content from the Base Research Institute, there was never a single word about Chu Ci.
But Chai Yuening knew that behind this news, a slender figure was surely hidden.
Separated by those unspeakable secrets, she traced that figure in her heart, again and again.
She gradually began to understand what it felt like to miss someone.
Sometimes she would wonder if someone else was bearing this feeling along with her.
It was better not to think about it. The moment she did, the sour ache in her heart would deepen.
In the blink of an eye, two months passed.
Chai Yuening gradually grew accustomed to this placid life.
She had spent one month getting used to one person’s companionship, and now she had spent two months getting used to missing and waiting in the quiet calm.
In just over three short months, most of the habits she had formed over her young life had been shattered and reassembled.
It was a strange thing to think about.
On an ordinary evening, Chai Yuening’s door was knocked on for the first time.
Familiar faces appeared before her. They were dragging luggage, and one after another, they began recounting the story of their journey.
The communicators from the Underground City Base couldn’t be used here.
They didn’t know Chai Yuening had moved, so the first thing they did upon arriving in the Floating City was go to Ye Qing’s residence.
But how could Ye Qing be home all the time?
When no one answered the door, they asked other residents in the building, only to find out that the owner of that apartment was named Ye, not Chu.
The apartment wasn’t Chu Ci’s, and they couldn’t contact Chai Yuening. Having traveled a thousand miles with all their belongings, everyone was suddenly at a loss.
Ren Dong suggested they go get their identities registered first, but they hit a solid wall at the registration office.
The outer city could take in outsiders freely, but the main city was different.
They had been sent here directly by the Underground City’s military. But just because the Underground City’s aircraft could land in the Floating City’s main city didn’t mean the people who disembarked were qualified to live there.
In other words, they couldn’t be assigned any housing in the main city, and once they left it, they wouldn’t be allowed to re-enter.
Faced with such an awkward situation, they returned to that area and asked around, trying to find out where Chai Yuening had gone, but to no avail.
Fortunately, Ye Qing didn’t come back too late. After her car was surrounded for several seconds by a group of people who looked vaguely familiar but not quite, she finally snapped out of her panic and confusion. She worked overtime late into the night, taking everyone to get registered, and they were all assigned housing near Chai Yuening’s place.
“Having connections really makes things easier,” Lao Xiang exclaimed loudly. “The only reason we could get a place in the main city is because we’re basking in Chu Ci’s glow.”
The moment the words left his mouth, Ren Dong, who was beside him, jabbed the back of his hand with her elbow.
The atmosphere suddenly froze.
Chai Yuening saw Lu Qi peek into the room a couple of times, as if looking for someone.
After a moment of silence, Chai Yuening raised an eyebrow and smiled. “She doesn’t live here.”
Everyone fell silent, not daring to speak.
Some things, even if you didn’t know the truth, you could guess the general outline.
“There will be other chances to meet,” Chai Yuening said. “I’ll just wait here for a notification from Dr. Yi’s side.”
Her tone was very calm; she had clearly grown accustomed to waiting.
With everyone having come all the way from the Underground City, her days became much livelier.
During a private chat, Ren Dong told Chai Yuening that after the Underground City Base learned the truth about the Sixth District’s ventilation system, they not only issued a five-figure bonus but also granted the girl from the Ninth District, Jing Mu, and her entire family permission to move into the main city. They even broadcast the story in the base’s daily paper and on the district radio.
The base believed that if the Sixth District’s ventilation system hadn’t been manually cut off at the time, the beast swarm would have likely already climbed into the main city through the ventilation ducts by the time the main city reacted.
Once the main city fell, the base would never have been able to hold out until the Floating City’s rescue arrived.
Ren Dong said, “That young girl didn’t take the bonus. She said you were the one who gave her her life, and she was already overjoyed that she could move into the main city with her family because of that incident. She couldn’t accept any more rewards.”
Hearing such words from a young girl she had only met by chance made Chai Yuening feel a little guilty.
Back then, knowing the outer city would be abandoned, she hadn’t chosen to take the girl with her, yet the girl had kept her in her heart all this time…
“You’ve casually saved too many people, so of course you don’t keep every one of them in your heart. But Captain… some people only meet one savior in their entire lives. Who else would they remember?” Ren Dong said with a small smile. “Otherwise, why do you think Du Xia and I have followed you so devotedly for all these years?”
Chai Yuening smiled and said no more, simply leaning back on the sofa and closing her eyes to listen to the base broadcast.
“Captain.”
“Hm?”
“Chu Ci… did she go to the research institute?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to wait forever?”
“Yes.”
“Will it be a long wait?”
“I don’t know.”
Chai Yuening answered in a low voice, and when she opened her eyes again, they were as vacant as if she’d lost her soul.
“I miss her,” she said softly.
The afterglow of the setting sun spilled into the simply furnished living room, carrying a trace of early summer warmth, but it couldn’t warm a single person.
She missed her so much, every day and every night.
She didn’t know if the other woman knew she had returned.
She didn’t know how many days and nights she would have to wait before she could stand before her again.
She didn’t know what the person she longed for was experiencing every day in a place she couldn’t see.
It was as if a thorn was suspended somewhere in her heart; a gentle touch was all it took to make it ache.
She regretted it so much—that she had been a step too late in recognizing her own heart, that she had missed the day of the final farewell.
But no matter how much she regretted it, she didn’t know what else she could do besides wait.
When it came to anything about Chu Ci, she never knew a thing.
Of all the things she didn’t know, what she hated most was not knowing that the wind in the early hours of that morning could truly blow someone out of her world.
Ren Dong looked at Chai Yuening, her heart filled with pity, and a trace of guilt welled up inside her.
She wanted to say something, but found that words of comfort were so pale and powerless at this moment.
It seemed the only thing she could do was offer her silent companionship.
Late June, the summer solstice.
The research at the institute didn’t seem to be going smoothly; there had been no progress for some days.
In the living room, the radio played very soothing classical music.
Chai Yuening was scrubbing the pajamas the old woman had just changed out of.
A series of heavy coughs made her quickly wash her hands and hurry to the bedroom door to take a look.
The white-haired old woman was sitting up in bed, her wrinkled eyes gazing quietly out the window, just as they always did.
Chai Yuening tiptoed into the room, picked up the thermos next to the radio, and shook it. The cup was already empty.
She went to the kitchen, filled a cup with warm water, and placed it back on the bedside table.
Over this period, Chai Yuening had long grown used to this caretaking routine that involved no communication. Just as she put down the cup and was about to leave, the old woman on the bed suddenly called out to her.
“Listen.”
“What?” Chai Yuening turned back, somewhat surprised.
The old woman reached out and turned off the radio on the bedside table. “Listen…”
It was as if she had heard something.
Chai Yuening quieted her mind and listened carefully, but she couldn’t hear anything besides the sounds of a few children playing downstairs.
“Grandma, what did you hear?” she asked softly and with great patience.
“Whoosh… whoosh…”
“The wind?”
“It’s coming…” The old woman slowly turned her head, her vacant eyes looking at Chai Yuening. Her aged voice was filled with an incomprehensible yearning. “I have waited for… Its call…”
As her voice fell, a strange curve formed on the withered face of the old woman.
Chai Yuening couldn’t help but hold her breath. The room fell silent.
After a brief silence, following a crazed laugh from the old woman, a piercing alarm blared across the sun-drenched azure sky.
She smelled a faint fragrance.
She saw nearly withered flesh and blood transform into black vines.
Towards the space under the bed, towards the window, towards every place they could climb, they spread and grew with an eerie, visible speed.
Author’s Notes:
祂 (Tā), a third-person pronoun generally referring to a deity. (Quietly sharing some trivia.)
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