Lin Wan woke to the light.
The rain had stopped. Sunlight streamed through the gap in the bus stop and fell warmly across the back of her hand.
She opened her eyes.
Her vision was blurry for a few seconds, then slowly came into focus.
She saw that she was leaning against Lu Yu's shoulder.
His jacket was draped over her. His head was tilted slightly to the other side, his eyes closed, his breathing shallow.
He was asleep.
Lin Wan didn't move.
She studied his profile. The line of his jaw was hard, but when he was asleep, the crease between his brows—that permanently furrowed line—had eased a little. His lashes cast short shadows in the sunlight.
He looked exhausted.
Not the kind of exhaustion that came from missing one night's sleep. This was the kind of exhaustion that came from being tired for a very, very long time—so long that he no longer remembered what it felt like not to be tired.
Lin Wan suddenly remembered what had happened last night.
He had called her name.
Twice.
The first time, he had told her not to fall asleep. The second time—
The second time, she had already been close to losing consciousness, but she remembered it. His voice had been so soft, as if it had drifted over from somewhere far away.
Her heartbeat started acting strange again.
Slowly and carefully, she lifted her head from his shoulder, moving as lightly as she could so she wouldn't wake him.
But the moment she sat up straight, Lu Yu opened his eyes.
Too quickly. As if he hadn't really been asleep at all.
“What time is it?” he asked. His voice was a little hoarse.
“I don't know. The sun's up.”
He turned to look at her. His gaze lingered on her face for a second.
“Your fever broke?”
Only then did Lin Wan remember that she'd had a fever last night. She touched her forehead. It wasn't hot anymore. Her fingers weren't cold, either.
“Looks like it.”
Lu Yu's brows shifted.
It was an almost imperceptible movement. Not the look of someone relieved. Something else—like he was thinking about something but couldn't figure it out.
“When did it break?” he asked.
“I don't know. I was asleep, so I wouldn't know.”
He looked at her without saying anything.
That look made Lin Wan uncomfortable. It wasn't scrutiny so much as an attempt to confirm something.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing.” He looked away and stood. “Can you walk?”
“Yes.”
She stood up. Her body really was much better. Her head wasn't dizzy anymore, and her legs no longer felt weak. Aside from being a little hungry, she could barely feel any trace of last night's fever.
Even she found that a little surprising.
Whenever she caught a cold and came down with a fever before, she needed at least two or three days in bed to recover. But this time—from the moment the fever started until now, only one night had probably passed.
When Lu Yu took back his jacket, she noticed his movements pause for a moment.
He lowered his head and looked at the collar.
There was a small damp patch there.
It was from the sweat on her forehead when she'd been leaning against his shoulder.
He said nothing. He folded the jacket and stuffed it into his backpack.
They left the bus stop.
The air after the rain was cleaner than usual. The cloying sweetness had faded considerably, replaced by the damp scent of earth. Puddles covered the road, reflecting the gray-white sky.
Lin Wan walked behind him, stepping along the edges of the puddles.
She realized she had been watching his back the whole time.
Not deliberately. Her eyes simply found him on their own.
His shoulders. His stride. The gauze wrapped around his left arm. The slight sway of the backpack straps against his shoulders as he walked.
She was memorizing these things.
As if she were afraid that one day she would forget.
After walking for about two hours, they passed a dried-up riverbed. The stones at the bottom had been bleached white by the sun, with a few clumps of dead grass growing here and there.
Lu Yu stopped and crouched beside the riverbed, using his hand to brush away the dirt beneath the stones.
“What are you doing?” Lin Wan walked over.
“Looking for water.”
He dug a shallow pit beside the riverbed. After a few minutes, water slowly began to seep up from the bottom. It was murky, the color of silt.
He took a piece of gauze from his backpack, stretched it over the mouth of a canteen, and slowly poured the muddy water through it to filter it.
Lin Wan crouched beside him and watched.
“How do you know how to do everything?” she asked.
Lu Yu didn't look up.
“I don't know how to do everything. If I didn't know how to do this, I'd be dead.”
He said it flatly, as if stating a fact that had nothing to do with him.
Lin Wan watched his profile.
“What did you do before…?”
His hand paused for a second.
Then he continued pouring the water.
“It's not important.”
It was always like this. Every time she tried to get closer to his past, he shut the door in the same way. Not with a harsh refusal, but by gently and quietly pushing the door back into place.
Lin Wan didn't ask again.
She had learned not to press. Not because she didn't want to know, but because she felt that—if he wanted to tell her, he would.
Just like when he'd called her name.
She hadn't asked him to. He had chosen to do it himself.
She was willing to wait.
The filtered water was still a little cloudy, but much better than before. Lu Yu handed her the canteen.
“Drink first.”
“What about you?”
“I'll wait for the next one.”
Lin Wan took the canteen and drank a few mouthfuls. The water tasted like dirt, but she didn't care anymore.
When she handed it back, her fingers touched his.
A brief contact.
She didn't pull away.
Neither did he.
It lasted perhaps a second.
Then he took the canteen and turned around to keep filtering the next one.
Lin Wan looked at her fingers.
The place where his fingertips had touched still held their warmth.
A little warmer than yesterday.
She thought that maybe his injury was getting better.
Maybe.
That afternoon, they rested inside an abandoned gas station.
The convenience store at the gas station had been cleared out long ago. The shelves lay overturned, and wrappers and broken glass littered the floor. But the employee break room in back was still mostly intact, with a narrow cot and a plastic chair.
Lu Yu told her to sit on the cot while he sat in the plastic chair and began checking the supplies.
Lin Wan watched him lay everything out on the floor one item at a time. Three cans of food remained. Half a pack of compressed rations. A little less than half a bottle of iodine antiseptic. Only two rolls of clean gauze. Four painkillers.
It wasn't much.
“How many days can we last?” she asked.
“Five days, if we conserve it.”
“And after five days?”
Lu Yu put everything back into his backpack.
“We'll find a supply point within five days.”
“How do you know?”
He didn't answer.
Lin Wan noticed it again. He knew too much. He knew where to find water, which roads were safe, the behavior patterns of those mutated entities, and that they would find a supply point within five days.
An ordinary person couldn't know all that.
She watched his back.
That question rose up again—Who are you, really?
But she didn't ask.
Because he was putting the last can of food into her backpack.
Not his. Hers.
Of the three cans, two were in her backpack and one was in his.
She opened her mouth.
“Don't.” He didn't turn around. “In case we get separated.”
That again.
Lin Wan stared at his back as that indescribable feeling in her chest began to churn again.
She suddenly stood.
“Lu Yu.”
He turned around.
“We won't get separated.”
Her voice was more earnest than she'd expected.
Lu Yu looked at her.
He was silent for several seconds.
His expression didn't change.
But something moved in his eyes.
It disappeared almost immediately.
“Mm,” he said.
Then he turned back and continued putting things away.
Lin Wan sat back down on the cot.
She lowered her head and looked at her hands.
Her heart was beating fast.
Not because she was afraid.
Not because of the fever.
Because she had meant it when she said those words.
She truly didn't want to be separated from him.
Not because she couldn't survive without him.
But because—
She didn't want a world without him in it.
Even if there was already nothing left in this world.
The sunlight outside slowly turned orange.
The gas station's shadow stretched across the deserted road.
Lin Wan leaned against the wall and watched the light retreat from the room bit by bit.
She remembered the feeling of Lu Yu's heartbeat coming through his jacket at the bus stop last night.
Steady.
A little faster than hers.
She thought that if one day he was willing to tell her who he was, where he'd come from, and why he knew so much—
She would listen.
Whatever the answer was.
She would listen.