Chapter 31
Chapter 31: Human Nature
"Shut up!"
Lu Shiyan's eyes sharpened.
"Have you forgotten what I said?"
"No shouting in here."
Lu Shiyan pointed toward the curtain of rain beyond the window, his tone icy.
"Otherwise, I don't mind throwing you outside right now and letting that person use you as a snack."
"I'm sorry…Mr. Lu, I know I was wrong."
At those words, the boy who had completely lost his composure instantly went cold and still.
He glared daggers at Hoshino, the hatred in his eyes undiminished, but fear made him choose obedience.
He bit down on his teeth and slowly retreated to the corner, burying his face in his knees.
The classroom sank back into a suffocating silence.
Hoshino stood frozen in place, at a complete loss.
She didn't understand.
Why?
Why would her own countrymen treat her as something more terrifying than the monsters?
"Go over there for now."
Yekaterina pointed toward the other side of the classroom, where several girls huddled together, trembling.
"Treat their injuries first. Don't let them die in here."
With that, Yekaterina walked to the window to keep watch, seemingly unwilling to say anything more.
Hoshino took a deep breath, forced a warm smile onto her face, and carefully approached.
"Um…I'm a healer…let me take a look at your wounds…"
However.
"Get away from me!!"
One of the girls swung her arm violently, slapping away Hoshino's outstretched hand.
Those eyes—eyes that should have been clear and bright—were now filled with nothing but terror and revulsion.
"Don't touch me!! You people are devils! Stay away from me!!"
"But…your leg is bleeding…" Hoshino panicked.
"I'd rather bleed out and die than accept your fake concern!!"
Another girl wrapped her arms around her companion and screamed at the top of her lungs, "Get out of here!!"
Someone even snatched up a book from the floor and hurled it at Hoshino.
Hoshino staggered back from the blow and, in the end, retreated to the edge of the podium in defeat.
She looked at Lu Shiyan, her eyes brimming with grievance and confusion.
Before she could even open her mouth to ask, Lu Shiyan—who had been leaning against the blackboard smoking—spoke first.
"Confused, aren't you?"
Hoshino nodded, her eyes red-rimmed. "Why do they hate me so much?"
"I've never even met them…I came here to save them."
Lu Shiyan exhaled a smoke ring, his gaze amused.
"It's not you they hate."
"It's the skin you're wearing."
"The skin?"
Hoshino looked down at her own yellow-green special operations uniform.
"That's right."
Lu Shiyan flicked off some ash and began to recount the truth of this school.
"It all starts from when we were transported here."
"Every child in this classroom is a student from your Sakura Nation's Rose High School—including all those piled-up skeletons out there."
"Honestly, it's quite a coincidence."
Lu Shiyan let out a cold laugh.
"Back on Blue Star, your Rose High School happened to be built on the exact same land where the original 'Rose Middle School' once stood before it vanished."
"It seems that this kind of time-space overlap dragged the entire school—students and teachers alike—straight into this place."
"As for me and Yekaterina, we were just unlucky passersby who happened to be near the school and ended up becoming 'outsiders' here by accident."
"On the first day, we were overrun by a massive wave of Wandering Corpses."
"Unlike zombies in movies, these things have intelligence—they can open doors, smash windows, and even coordinate their hunts."
"Students and teachers fell in droves. That so-called chairman was devoured on the spot by his own female secretary."
At this, a look of contempt crossed Lu Shiyan's eyes.
"Yekaterina and I worked together and barely managed to kill 3 of them."
"We endured until the second morning, awakened our abilities, and began clearing the Wandering Corpses from the school grounds to establish a Safe Zone."
Unable to hold back, Hoshino cut in. "Then…what about that monster outside?"
Just recalling how her squad leader, Sato, and Ikeda had died so inexplicably, she still felt ice spreading through her bones.
Lu Shiyan didn't answer directly. Instead, he blew a smoke ring straight at her face, sending her into a coughing fit.
"Patience, little girl."
"A story has to be told piece by piece before the lesson sinks in."
Lu Shiyan's voice dropped lower.
"Originally, under my and Yekaterina's protection, these students wouldn't have needed to die in such numbers."
"But ever since…yesterday morning, when a Sakura Nation special operations unit arrived here, everything changed."
"I still remember that leading bastard—something like…'Village Gate'…'Japan Big Tree'?"
"It's Muraguchi Kazusu, Mr…Mr. Lu."
Hoshino corrected him on reflex.
But the next instant, her mind erupted into a roar.
Muraguchi Kazusu?!
Wasn't he their supreme commander?
Why had Muraguchi-san already been here yesterday?
Why had the squad leader and Kujo-sis seemed to know absolutely nothing about it?
"Oh, right, something like that—getting on in years, memory's not what it was. Either way, close enough."
Lu Shiyan shrugged.
"That Muraguchi brought a fully armed squad and said he was looking for some 'Terminal Signal Tower.'"
"But he didn't want to send his elites in as cannon fodder to scout the way."
"So…"
Lu Shiyan pointed at the students huddled in the corners.
"He held these students at gunpoint and drove them out in batches, using a human-wave tactic to trip the mines and find the path."
"And the result…"
"You can probably guess."
"The Signal Tower was never found. What they did manage to do was successfully release the monster that had been sleeping beneath the ground."
"Those students…were all used as bait and food."
Lu Shiyan leaned close to Hoshino's ear, his voice dropping to something like a devil's whisper.
"Now think about how exactly it was that you lot ended up fleeing here."
"Then think about why your commander Muraguchi clearly came here before and said nothing to you about there being a monster."
"And instead sent your squad to come again a second time."
Boom!
Hoshino felt the world spin around her.
Even she, slow as she might be, understood now.
Finding the Signal Tower…
Establishing a stronghold…
All lies.
They had been nothing but pawns the entire time.
Pawns sent to test whether the monster was still there.
Whether it had already eaten its fill.
Disposable pieces, sacrificed without a second thought.
"Ugh…"
Hoshino crouched down in despair, wrapping her trembling arms tightly around herself.
The despair of being betrayed by her own countrymen and superiors was more shattering than death itself.
Just then, Lu Shiyan spoke again, driving in the final blade.
"Right—didn't you ask what that monster outside is?"
"I can tell you now."
"In the beginning, it didn't have that freakish ability to Teleport Between Raindrops."
"It only evolved that ability after it devoured one of the Extraordinary Ones from yesterday's squad!"
"And what's more, I've already given it a fitting name—"
"Starving Wraith!"
"Ahhhhh!! Stop talking!! Stop!!"
Hoshino clapped her hands over her ears and let out a screaming breakdown.
……
"Ahhhhh!! Stop talking!! Stop!!"
Out on the wasteland, Yu Shishi pressed both hands over her own ears, surrounded by the group's collective glares, and released an identical shriek of collapse.
"I really can cook! I'm not lying to you all!!"
But it was painfully obvious that not a single person present believed a word of it.
Wang Meng stood there stone-faced, pointing at the large black pot in front of him.
Inside, a brownish-black, indefinably foul mass was bubbling away, reeking of something raw and scorched all at once.
"Shishi, sis…"
Wang Meng's cheek twitched. "You're calling this…food?"
"Ugh!"
Liu Yuqing clapped a hand over her mouth, barely fighting back the urge to vomit as she staggered to the side.
"This smell…it's even more powerful than the corpse stench in that cellar yesterday! It's making me think of my great-grandma!"
Even the ever-composed Chen Tong, though her expression remained relatively easy—having already somewhat adjusted to the odor—still couldn't help asking.
"Shishi…what exactly did you do?"
Yu Shishi answered with complete confidence.
"I learned from the old generation's method—it's called 'chaotic stew'! I wanted everyone to rediscover the charm of tradition!"
"So I put all the ingredients in together and let them stew! There was even a fish and 5 packs of Compressed Crackers in there! Nutritionally, it's absolutely sufficient!"
"The thing is…"
Guo Shuai raised his hand, staring at the fish that floated in the brownish mush with eyes wide open in perpetual horror, and posed a question of the soul.
"Can I just ask…this fish…did you wash it? Or, say…gut it and remove the innards?"
The moment the words landed, every pair of eyes in the group turned on Yu Shishi like blades.
Especially the pair belonging to Jiang Nan, who stood at the vehicle door with a face as black as the bottom of the very pot in question.
Yu Shishi blinked, planted both hands on her hips, and answered with full confidence.
"Of course not!"
"I preserved its full natural flavor!"
"That way you all can appreciate eating genuinely wild, free-range fish!"
"……"
Faced with the group's collective expressions—ones that very much wanted to commit a crime—Yu Shishi finally couldn't hold the act together.
Thud!
She dropped straight to her knees, the motion remarkably smooth.
"I'm sorry! I was wrong!!"
"The truth is I can't cook at all! The things I just said—even I can't believe them myself!"
"Waaah!!"
Yu Shishi burst into tears outright, throwing her arms around Jiang Nan's leg.
"Please, Boss, don't abandon me! I really know I was wrong! I'll never try to show off again, wuuu wuuu wuuu!"
Watching her grovel with such genuine remorse, the residual irritation in everyone's hearts dissipated by more than half.
They were companions, after all. Nobody was actually going to throw someone out over one meal.
Liu Yuqing let out a sigh and voluntarily stepped up to take the blame.
"Boss, it's my fault. I was the one who told her to cook, and I didn't supervise."
She looked at the pot of culinary catastrophe, steeled herself, and declared with the air of someone walking to their death.
"I…I'll eat all of this. Not a single grain wasted."
"Me too! Me too!"
Wang Meng seemed to realize something, and suddenly broke into a lopsided grin, jumping in eagerly to demonstrate his loyalty.
Guo Shuai didn't quite understand what was happening, but he knew that whenever Wang-bro made a move this sharp, following along was the right call—so he shouted along too.
"Honestly, it's not completely inedible! In a certain sense, this is basically a high-protein energy paste! The nutrition is actually quite solid!"
But Jiang Nan's face remained dark, not a word spoken.
Seeing this, Chen Tong trembled as she rose to her feet.
Not from fear—but because a certain part of her body was still aching faintly.
Liu Yuqing quickly moved to steady her.
Chen Tong smiled and spoke, her voice gentle.
"Actually, it was supposed to be my turn to cook from the start anyway. Shishi should have just been assisting me. This fault is really mine."
"Let me be the one to eat it."
With that, she reached out toward the ladle.
However.
The very instant her hand was about to make contact, a large hand caught her wrist firmly.
Jiang Nan.
The next moment.
Clang!
Jiang Nan lifted one foot and sent the large black pot sailing through the air with a single kick!
The full pot of scalding brownish mush traced a perfect parabola across the sky.
Caw?!
Splat!
Not far away, a Mutated Crow perched in a dead tree had been watching the whole spectacle with great interest and didn't even have time to react.
The indefinable mass scored a direct hit, plastering it into a lump that looked disturbingly like a pile of droppings.
Only a pair of terrified little eyes were left peeking out from within.
Caw…
The crow convulsed twice and dropped straight down, stiff as a board.
No one could tell whether it had been scalded to death or poisoned.
"…"
Everyone was startled, convinced Jiang Nan was truly furious, and were just about to rush into another round of apologies—
When they saw that Jiang Nan had already pulled out his Notepad, scrawled several lines with swift strokes, tore the sheet free, and slapped it down in front of them all.
【Enduring hardship to sharpen one's resolve is something King Goujian did. Suffering needlessly for the sake of it is something only a doormat does!】
【This swill that not even a pig would eat—it's no loss to throw it out!】
【From today onward, Chen Tong and Yu Shishi will take turns cooking! Liu Yuqing is in charge of supervision! If this happens again, you're out!】
【I have no use for useless people here!】
【Now—move out immediately to the Terminal Signal Tower! Eat Compressed Crackers to get by for now!】
Reading those lines, the whole group let out a collective breath of relief.
"Yes! Boss! Moving out immediately!"
Wang Meng and Guo Shuai, reprieved like men escaping execution, promptly returned to the driver's cab and observation post.
Yu Shishi wiped her tears and broke into a grin of someone who had just survived a near-death experience—at least she hadn't been the one getting kicked out!
Liu Yuqing patted her shoulder with a knowing look.
‘This silly girl still hasn't caught on~’
‘If she can't cook properly, she's the one who's going to get 'eaten'’
And Chen Tong, looking at that torn sheet of paper, let a smile of genuine happiness bloom across her face.
For some reason, her leg didn't seem to ache quite so much anymore.
She slipped her arm through Jiang Nan's and followed him up into the vehicle.
'I figured I was already impressive enough for someone my age—yet here Jiang Nan is, running laps around me without even breaking a sweat…'
'Now that someone's sharing the cooking duties, maybe they'll get to share…that, too…'
'How wonderful~'