Apocalyptic Hoarding Diary

Chapter 356 Fire

But she knew this wouldn't last long; once she finished the bottle of water, she would have to face the weather head-on.

She set a time limit for herself: just two hours. She would let the fan rest before turning it back on. Two hours was only one hundred and twenty minutes, seven thousand two hundred seconds. Before she knew it, the time had passed.

She held her wrist up to her eyes and glanced at her watch in the dim light coming through the crack in the door. The hands pointed to about 12:30.

In other words, at 2:30, she can press the switch again, watch the fan blades rotate from slow to fast, and feel the long-lost breeze brushing against her skin again.

With the house so well insulated and ice water and ice cubes in the refrigerator waiting for her, what can't she handle?

She made the insulation board herself, using cardboard and mulch film, stacking the two layers together and wrapping them tightly with tape. It's not much worse than those professional insulation materials available outside.

After the windows were sealed off, at least 60-70% of the heat outside was blocked, although the remaining heat was still uncomfortable.

But at least it won't feel like you're being slowly roasted like when you're standing directly under the sun.

To be honest, she's starting to regret not having more electric fans after she got the space.

When things got chaotic at Zhonglian Supermarket before, she wandered around the home appliance section and looked at the row of electric fans on the shelf, without even considering taking them away.

My thinking at the time was very simple: I felt that if things got chaotic, the water and electricity would likely be cut off, and having electrical appliances would be useless!

Back then, she always felt that eating was the most important thing. She would hoard as much rice, flour, cooking oil, canned goods, and dried goods as possible to fill her stomach.

Water comes second. Bottled and barrelled water goes without saying; it's moved into the space by the case, in all sizes.

She also bought a lot of water purifier tablets because she believes that water is the source of life and this cannot be taken lightly. And now, they've come in handy.

Everything else is secondary. Furniture, appliances, clothes, and daily necessities can be acquired slowly, and even if they can't be obtained, it's still manageable. But you can't get through hunger by just making do.

That's what she thought and did at the time, so she only brought the one electric fan from her home in Xuan County.

I figured one is enough. It's not like it's absolutely necessary. If it gets hot, I can just blow on it, and if it doesn't get hot, I can just turn it off. One is more than enough.

She even thought she was quite clever for not wasting precious space on things that were dispensable.

A fan isn't an air conditioner, so the air it blows out is just so-so.

If all else fails, wiping your body with a damp towel or fanning yourself with a cardboard fan will do the trick, so she left after standing in the appliance section of the supermarket for ten minutes.

Now, sitting in the increasingly hot room, she finally realizes that she may have been wrong in the first place.

It's not that the thinking was wrong—eating is of course the most important thing, that's never wrong—it's just that the preparation wasn't sufficient.

She was so confident that a typhoon fan would be enough, but life can hit you hard in the most unexpected places. She seriously underestimated how much heat takes to a person.

One typhoon fan is enough, but that's on normal days.

These are not normal days. If the machine she's using breaks down, she'll really have no choice but to tough it out.

If you don't use cardboard to fan yourself, your arm will probably get sore after a few tries, and the cardboard itself will soften and droop down after a while.

If you wipe your body with a wet towel, it will feel cool for a while right after you wipe, but the evaporation of water will take away the heat from the surface of your skin, making you feel comfortable only briefly.

But the time is too short, and then you'll have to wring out the towel, change the water, and repeat this endless process.

Otherwise, you'll have to rely on the cool air from the refrigerator to get by. Just open the refrigerator door and let the cold air rush out.

You stand in front of the refrigerator, feeling its coolness, but leaving it running like that all the time is also a kind of invisible wear and tear on the refrigerator.

She only has one refrigerator, and once it's no longer in use, she can't find a replacement.

This thing is different from a fan. If a fan breaks, you can use cardboard to fan yourself, but if a refrigerator breaks, you don't even have ice.

She might have to go back to the most primitive way of life, and she would have to go out to find palm-leaf fans, cooling mats, alleyways, and so on.

These methods aren't necessarily bad, but they can only make you less hot, not cool you down.

She picked up the half-empty bottle of water and took another sip. The water was no longer cold, just a little bit cooler than room temperature.

When you drink it, you can feel the slight temperature difference, but it no longer has that refreshing feeling of coolness from the tip of your tongue to your stomach that you had with the first sip.

She took small sips, letting the water linger in her mouth for a moment, feeling it moisten her tongue, glide between her teeth, and fill every dry corner, before slowly swallowing.

Xu Xiaoyan tightened the bottle cap and placed it on the bedside table. Leaning against the wall, she closed her eyes, trying to calm herself down and stop thinking about the heat and the fan that had been turned off.

The room was quiet, so quiet you could hear your own breathing. The refrigerator compressor would occasionally start, humming for a few minutes, and then fall silent again.

When the compressor was running, she could feel the refrigerator vibrating slightly. After a while, the compressor stopped, and the house returned to quiet.

She counted down silently in her mind: "One hour and twenty minutes until the fan can be turned on."

Three days passed in the blink of an eye.

During those three days, Xu Xiaoyan lived a life that could be described as luxurious.

I sleep until I naturally wake up every day, and sometimes I can even stay in bed until 1 p.m.

Anyway, the windows were sealed tightly, so the sun couldn't shine in, and the room was always kept in a comfortable dimness, making it hard to tell whether it was morning or afternoon.

I eat as soon as I wake up. I eat the braised pork, rice crust, and boiled vegetables that I have stored in my space in rotation. Although it is not a feast, it is reassuring.

Every bite tasted familiar, every bite reminded her of her days in Xuan County, of her home where, though not wealthy, at least she had food to eat.

After you've eaten your fill, lie back down and listen to the humming of the refrigerator and fan, or simply do nothing and just let your mind wander.

She hadn't left the house for three whole days. She didn't know what the outside world had become, nor did she want to know. It had nothing to do with her.

Her world was only this room, containing a bed, a refrigerator, a typhoon fan, and a space for food and water.

For her, these things were enough for her to live comfortably.

After living like this for a long time, she even developed a kind of illusion, as if this was how it was supposed to be: quiet, peaceful, and isolated from the world.

On the fourth night, Xu Xiaoyan was having a dream when the knocking sounded at the door.

In her dream, she returned to her home in Xuan County. Her adoptive parents were stewing pork ribs in the kitchen, and steam was billowing out from under the pot lid, filling the whole house with that rich, mouthwatering aroma.

There was some kind of variety show playing on TV, the host was speaking very loudly, and the guests were laughing in waves.

She sat on the sofa, holding a slice of watermelon in her hand. The watermelon had just been taken out of the basin of water; it was ice-cold, and water droplets still clung to its rind.

Just as she was about to put it in her mouth, there was a loud knocking on the door. The watermelon was gone, the TV was gone, and the aroma of stewed pork ribs was gone too.

The sound seemed to be coming from a very far place.

She suddenly opened her eyes, but couldn't see anything in the darkness. The curtains were still drawn, the insulation panels were still closed, and the room was still that familiar dimness.

But the sound was still there; it wasn't a dream, someone was knocking on her door.

It wasn't a polite, restrained knock, but a loud, urgent banging on the door, which made the whole door vibrate and the frame creak.

The two bedside tables behind the door, which served as a barrier, creaked slightly as their legs scraped against the floor.

Xu Xiaoyan's body reacted before her mind.

She sat up in bed, her feet barely making a sound when they landed.

She immediately got into the zone, her hand already on the bedside fan switch, which she turned off with a snap, her ears perked up, catching every subtle sound.

"Who is it?" Her voice was low, and she didn't approach the door.

Instead, stand in the living room, turn sideways, and position yourself so that you can see the door but can quickly move to the bedroom.

Her right hand had already grasped the watermelon knife she had taken from her spatial storage, and the cool metal handle gave her a reassuring and comforting feeling.

The sounds outside the door paused for a second, probably to confirm that someone inside had responded.

Then a voice rang out, a middle-aged man's loud voice, almost a shout of urgency: "Get up! There's a fire across the street! If you don't run now, it'll be too late!"

Fire! These two words made the hairs on Xu Xiaoyan's body stand on end.

She didn't have time to think much or confirm the identity of the person outside the door. She responded with "I know," her voice echoing in the empty living room.

The person outside didn't linger; the footsteps quickly moved to the side, and then there was a knock on the door next door.

Thump, thump, thump—the same force, the same rhythm, the same loud voice shouting, "Get up! There's a fire over there! Run now or it'll be too late!"

At this moment, Xu Xiaoyan turned around and rushed to the window. She ripped open the curtains and grabbed the edge of the bed with her fingers.

The light shone in from the window, casting a long shadow of her on the wall behind her, which flickered and swayed in rhythm with the firelight.

Her hand froze in mid-air, and it actually caught fire.

The building in front was completely engulfed in flames, which shot into the sky and turned half the sky a dark red.

Flames leaped out of the window, licking the tiles on the exterior wall, climbing upwards, the cracking sounds audible from dozens of meters away.

Thick smoke billowed upwards, was dispersed by the night wind, and then gathered again. She could see the flames reflecting red light onto the clouds.

A thought flashed through Xu Xiaoyan's mind: How long has this been burning? Judging from the intensity of the fire, it definitely didn't start recently.

The entire side of the building was burned through. From the first floor to the top floor, no floor was intact. Some windows were burned away, leaving only dark holes.

Flames spewed out of the holes, and she could even feel the heat rushing towards her from dozens of meters away, making her face burn.

How could it have burned like this? Why didn't anyone notice? These questions raced through her mind.

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