A Wonderful Life Awaits Us

Lin Fan closed the glass door and quietly waited for the zombies to arrive. But suddenly, their roars came to an abrupt stop. A disturbance elsewhere had drawn the horde away.

Maybe some survivor had been discovered.

"What a mess."

The company was in chaos, with blueprints scattered all over the floor.

"Sigh, the cleaning lady isn't here either. Though it's probably better that way."

The cleaning lady was over forty and quite attractive, still full of charm.

The boss's second uncle had always had his eye on her, sometimes deliberately taking advantage of her. He was a sleazy, perverted man.

Lin Fan bent down, gathered the blueprints from the floor, and neatly placed them on the desk.

To others, they might have been nothing more than wastepaper.

But to the people who drew them, they were the fruits of their labor.

On rainy days, if they had an umbrella, it was not used to shield people from the wind and rain, but specifically to protect the blueprints.

"Where is everyone in the company?"

After tidying everything up, he looked around but did not find a single person.

Then he noticed that the floor-to-ceiling window had been shattered, as if someone had crashed through it and jumped from above.

He stood at the edge and glanced down.

Sure enough.

Many bodies lay on the second-floor balcony.

The zombies must have chased the employees until they smashed through the window, hoping to leap through the air. But with gravity bearing down on them, they had fallen straight to their deaths.

"Sigh..."

He sighed, grief surging through him like a river.

His coworkers had all been good people, the kind of young people with drive and ambition.

Whether it was their work or their character, they had both been solid.

They earned cabbage money while carrying the worries of drug dealers.

They designed luxury homes worth millions, even tens of millions, yet their paychecks were pitifully small.

Even so, they never complained.

Everything was for the sake of surviving in Huang City.

Suddenly, a low growl came from the office.

"The boss should be... all right, shouldn't he?" Lin Fan looked at the broken wooden door, his expression growing serious.

He wanted to have a proper talk with the boss.

Inside the office, the boss staggered about, his body stiff. His eyes had long since turned gray and cloudy, his pupils impossible to make out, while disgusting fluid dripped from the corners of his mouth.

But a boss was still a boss. There were rules in the company that had to be followed.

Though the door was broken, whether there was a door or not was not important to Lin Fan.

He raised his hand and knocked on the wall.

Knock, knock, knock!

Unhurried and calm, the sound was light.

"Boss, I'm coming in."

However, what greeted him was not the coaxing smile from before. The smile that had always hung on the boss's face was gone, replaced by the savage look of someone seeing food.

The boss let out a ferocious roar and greedily lunged at Lin Fan.

After turning into a zombie, his strength and speed had both increased. He felt no pain and was a terrifying existence.

A foul stench wafted from the boss.

It was like the revolting odor of pork left outside for days until it had spoiled.

Lin Fan did not find it disgusting. He knew the boss worked very hard and must have stayed up late working overtime at the company again, leaving him no time to bathe.

The moment the boss attacked, Lin Fan swung his blade.

Splurt!

Black blood sprayed out.

The boss's head flew into the air, separating from his body before landing on the ground with a thud.

[Zombie killed]

[Points gained +1]

"Boss, I really was watching a movie yesterday. I wasn't lying to you."

"I originally wanted to come to work, but the company definitely can't keep running now. There isn't even a single coworker left. There really isn't."

"Thank you for teaching me so much during this time. I learned a lot of useful things too."

"I'd like to settle this month's wages. Let me calculate them for you."

He fetched paper and a pen.

Then he carefully did the math.

"Boss, my fixed salary is 2,500. I get a 500-yuan commission for every set of drawings, and I worked overtime this month, completing five sets in total. Every set was approved. That comes to 5,000 yuan altogether."

Lin Fan spoke to himself, occasionally glancing at the boss whose head he had cut off.

He had not calculated too much, nor had he calculated too little.

Everything was done according to the rules.

What was mine was mine. What was not mine, I could not take.

Even if the world ended and the heavens collapsed, as long as the rules remained, there was still hope for everything.

"Boss, this is all money I earned through hard work. I didn't include the cost of those little things. You said a person should think big and not always get caught up in trivial details. I understand. Consider that wind chime my gift to the company," Lin Fan said neither humbly nor arrogantly.

This was what he deserved, so he would not use a negotiating tone when speaking to the boss.

When one had a clear conscience, one had to be justified, stand tall, and hold one's head high.

"It seems you have no objections, Boss."

At that moment, he saw a stack of cash on the desk, with a contract pressed beneath it.

It seemed that before the apocalypse, someone had come to the company to sign a contract with the boss and had paid a deposit at the same time.

By a rough estimate, that stack of cash might have contained tens of thousands.

"Boss, I'll count it myself. Trust my character—I won't take one bill too many, nor one bill too few."

He counted the banknotes.

He took fifty bills, then returned the rest to their original place without touching a single one more.

"Goodbye, Boss."

He waved, walked to the company entrance, and looked back at the company that had once brought him joy and hope.

Sadly, it was all gone now.

His coworkers were gone.

The boss was gone.

The clients were gone too.

The people were still the same people, and the place was still the same place.

He liked this place not because of its environment, but because of the coworkers who had worked alongside him.

As for the boss... he was someone who liked feeding them poisonous motivational speeches.

Slogan: Loyal to clients, serve clients.

But behind the scenes, it was: Be loyal to the boss, serve the boss. The boss's interests came first. Clients were as numerous as cattle, so after scamming one batch, they would scam another.

The wind chime swayed slightly.

It gave off faint little sounds.

He pressed the elevator button.

Roar!

Sound was the root of all evil.

Several employees from the neighboring company heard the noise and charged over in a frenzy.

They were fast, determined to bite Lin Fan to death.

Splurt!

The sound was slightly dull.

He did not look any further or say anything else. He stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the first floor.

When the elevator doors closed, several bodies lay quietly outside.

Everything that needed to be done had been done.

The moment he collected his wages and walked out of the company, he no longer had anything to do with it.

He was unemployed now.

No job, no source of income.

He had to find something to do.

He left the building.

Riding a shared yellow bike.

Waiting for the green light.

"It's so empty and quiet. I'm not quite used to it." When the light turned green, he rode the shared yellow bike swiftly through the streets.

"Going home."

Pedaling the shared yellow bike, with the backpack holding his wages on his back, he felt its slight weight. It was reassuring and wonderful.

Life should not only be about what lay before one's eyes.

There was also the future.

That unknown future was what people looked forward to most.