Chapter Twenty-Six: Liu Ling, Want to Work?

After eating and drinking their fill, Jiang Xi rubbed his stomach and squinted his eyes in contentment. Then, he started to clean up the leftovers, sorting everything immediately into what needed to be washed and what should be thrown away.

Jiang Huan gathered the trash into a bag and stored it in her space, leaving the dishes for her brother to wash. Meanwhile, she began planning how to organize the upstairs and downstairs.

The upper floor could be used to store supplies that were best kept out of sight. She could use soundproofing to create a small space for the generator, and another room upstairs could serve as a place to practice with the crossbow. The apartment opposite could be made into a kitchen and hot water room.

The fifteenth floor could be used to store supplies that didn’t need to be hidden, and in the future, when she hired workers, it could serve as a barrier to keep people from suddenly showing up at her door. The sixteenth floor would be used as staff quarters, while there were no plans yet for the seventeenth and eighteenth floors. As for the nineteenth floor, she wanted to keep it empty—it would provide a buffer from noise below and above.

With this arrangement, the apartment she and her brother lived in would become much more spacious.

But whom should she hire as staff?

The answer was obvious. For now, only Liu Ling and her husband were suitable, and perhaps Old Chen’s family as well. The young men from the property management team would make good movers and drivers.

Still, it was best not to move too quickly. She decided to start small, so she picked up a basket and went to Liu Ling and Wang Ping’s apartment.

Inside, the couple were shivering. During the day, they tried to tough it out, but at night the temperature would drop by nearly ten degrees. During the day, they managed with layers of clothing and bedding. Wang Ping would dart around the room to warm himself, then crawl under the covers to share his warmth with his wife.

It was a miserable time for his wife to have her period, and this was all he could do for her.

Both of them were starving but had to ration their food for maximum efficiency with minimal intake. They’d already had one meal today; the next would have to wait another four hours.

A polite, restrained knock came at the door.

At first, Liu Ling thought she’d imagined it.

Then Wang Ping called out, “Who is it?”

Liu Ling got up as well, curious. “Who would be wandering our floor in this freezing weather?”

From outside, they heard, “It’s me, Jiang Huan.”

“Oh, I’ll open up right away.” Wang Ping turned to his wife. “It’s the girl from the twentieth floor.”

Liu Ling stared curiously at the door. When it opened, Jiang Huan stepped in, bundled up warmly and carrying a basket like she was coming for a visit.

“Come in, come in—there’s a draft outside.” Jiang Huan was welcomed inside, but immediately, an odd smell hit her—the faint scent of blood mixed with the musty odor of poorly ventilated firewood. She sneezed several times.

She didn’t intend to stay long, nor was she here to visit. She got straight to the point. “Sister Liu Ling, are you interested in working for me?”

Liu Ling was taken aback. “Working? In this icy wasteland, where would I even find work?”

Jiang Huan set the basket on the table and explained, “The community will soon be organizing teams to go out and scavenge for supplies. I can’t take my brother with me every time, nor can I supervise everyone going upstairs. I need someone on the fifteenth floor to help sort goods and watch the corridor. I trust your character. If you’re willing, I’ll provide firewood and three meals a day during work, plus ten pounds of meat and ten pounds of rice or flour per month as payment. What do you think?”

Before the apocalypse, such an offer would have been laughable. Ten pounds of rice might cost twenty yuan, ten pounds of meat less than a hundred. Paying someone a little over a hundred yuan a month for work would have been an insult.

But now, it was different. Forget ten pounds of rice and meat—just the promise of three meals a day and enough firewood would have people fighting for the job!

Liu Ling nodded vigorously. “I’ll do it! I can handle it!”

Jiang Huan smiled. “If your husband doesn’t mind, he can help out sometimes too. Meals will be provided during work.”

After all, as a man, Wang Ping might be required to join scavenging teams, and someone needed to liaise with the community.

Wang Ping’s face lit up with delight. If Jiang Huan weren’t standing there, he would have loved to shake hands with this generous employer.

Three meals a day! And she’d provide the fuel! What could be more generous than that?

After agreeing they would start work at eight the next morning, Jiang Huan said she needed to go upstairs to practice and left in a hurry.

Once the door closed, a scream erupted behind Wang Ping. “Ahhh! Oh my god!”

Startled, Wang Ping rushed over. “What’s wrong, honey?”

Liu Ling pointed at the basket. “Jiang Huan is too generous.”

The cloth covering had been lifted, revealing six frozen pears, a packet of brown sugar, and two boxes of self-heating meals.

The pictures of shredded pork with green peppers and steaming white rice on the packages made both of them swallow hungrily. “Why don’t… why don’t we eat now instead of waiting four hours? After all, starting tomorrow, we’ll have a place to eat.”

It was as if Liu Ling had been waiting for her husband to say it. They melted some ice for water, and soon the self-heating meals were steaming hot. The industrial taste they’d once scoffed at now seemed a rare delicacy; not a single grain of rice was wasted.

Upstairs, Jiang Huan practiced archery for half an hour at a time, pausing to stretch, and after three hours, she finally came downstairs.

Dinner was kept simple to avoid indigestion—a pork knuckle set meal, easily finished.

The next morning at seven, Jiang Huan got up, drank some water, added another layer of clothing, and checked her communicator. There were several friend requests. After accepting them, she joined the Xingcheng Neighborhood Management group chat.

She woke her brother, and once they’d washed up, they ate a Chinese breakfast of rice porridge, pickles, buns, and fried dough sticks. Wu Gang’s message arrived: “We’re organizing a scavenging team at nine and will return around three in the afternoon. Miss Jiang, do you want to come along?”

“No, I have things to sort out. Maybe next time,” she replied.

He sent back a simple “Alright,” and nothing more.

“Xiao Xi, after breakfast, come with me to the fifteenth floor. I’ve hired Sister Liu Ling to help us unpack deliveries. You can come and say hello, or stay home if you prefer.”

“I want to help unpack too. I’ll go.”

“You mean you want to help unpack, and you want to go downstairs to work?”

“Yes, I’ll unpack and give it to you.”

A warm feeling welled up in Jiang Huan’s heart as she patted his head. Her little brother’s hair stuck up, and he was so innocent in both thought and action.

But it was fine—she was there for him.

When they were younger, they’d had both parents and grandparents. The elders in the family never thought that being an older sister meant she had to sacrifice for her brother. During the two years they’d briefly lived in the countryside, some relatives would make snide remarks about how Jiang Huan’s thick brows and big eyes would make her a beauty one day, fetching a good price for a new wife for her brother.

She hadn’t understood, so she’d gone home and said she didn’t want to be swapped. Her parents scolded the relatives and soon moved them to a new environment. She and her brother had always been close. Whenever classmates bullied her brother, she was always the first to stand up for him.

When her brother turned ten, out of the five people who had protected his innocence, she was the only one left. She ignored advice to abandon him to an orphanage and took him with her everywhere. They finally managed to earn some money and gain a reputation in their field, only to fall for a boyfriend who falsely promised to treat her brother as his own child after marriage.

In the end, she and her brother both died tragically in the apocalypse. Though she’d cut off the scumbag and the woman he was cheating with right away, she still sometimes regretted, “If only I could go back a little sooner…”

But life was never that simple. Having this second chance was already a gift from the heavens.

Jiang Huan stood up. “Let’s go downstairs.”