Chapter 29

China had done everything it possibly could. But at first, An Xinyi still hadn't understood: some things lay beyond even the miracles humanity could achieve.

Great River City wasn't a large city, but its proximity to a volcano made it a priority for evacuation. Yet the drastic changes within the earth meant that, when the monitoring bureau predicted the volcano would erupt in three hours, over three hundred thousand people remained in the danger zone.

Everyone had done everything they could. They had already achieved an incredible miracle. But that was how cruel the apocalypse was.

Later, An Xinyi would understand that cruel reality all too well. Sometimes, no matter how many people he gathered to help, how many braved sacrifice and death, pouring their resolve and their lives into the breach... in the end, all their efforts could still be like a castle built of sand, collapsing at the slightest push.

The world was cruel, and this world more so than any other, because it had harbored malice toward humanity from the very beginning.

But the An Xinyi of this moment still prayed for a miracle, even though reason told him there could be no ending in which everyone survived.

Ten minutes before the eruption, over twenty thousand people remained in the danger zone.

Everyone knew, including those people themselves, that there was no saving them.

"Waaah-Mom, Dad, I don't want to die..."

"Why? Why were we the only ones left behind..."

"It's no use. None of it matters. Everyone's going to die, hahahaha..."

Many of them had given up their chance to live so that people with limited mobility could evacuate first. Others were volunteers who had helped people evacuate, along with soldiers and police officers... even the man overseeing Great River City's evacuation had stayed until the end.

They might have faced it with remarkable composure before, but when death actually stood before them, many broke down.

"What do we do? We already did everything we could!"

"Wasn't it enough? But we did everything possible."

"Someone, please save them!"

The internet was filled with anguish as well. Compared with the chaos in other countries, where millions had yet to escape danger, China's having only these twenty-odd thousand people certain to die might have been the best possible proof of the value of acting first. But for those twenty thousand people, it was utter catastrophe.

"We weren't capable enough." An Xinyi couldn't help blaming himself. He had actually done more than enough, and Great River City wasn't even his responsibility. Yet faced with these twenty thousand people doomed to die, he still reproached himself. Perhaps, if he had done better, he could have freed up some resources. Perhaps more people could have been saved.

"Yiyi, you've done enough." By contrast, Osamu Dazai, who had always been more pessimistic, found it easier to accept. He was more rational than An Xinyi. There would be no fairy tale in which nobody had to be sacrificed. These twenty thousand people were merely the apocalypse's first casualties. "This isn't your fault."

An Xinyi hadn't slept or rested in over three days. If sheer willpower hadn't been holding him up, he would have collapsed long ago.

Liu Zhen, the chief coordinator for Great River City, climbed out of his vehicle, gripping his communicator tightly. He was only forty, but his temples had already turned gray. He looked utterly haggard, unable to hide how much he had aged.

"...For these last three hours, I haven't stopped thinking about how to save the hundred-odd thousand people in Great River City." Liu Zhen's lips moved. His voice still carried the measured cadence he habitually used in interviews, but now it was drained of strength. "But however much I thought about it, I couldn't do it. I truly couldn't."

As he said those words, his back stooped a little further. He bowed deeply toward the camera. "To everyone who placed their trust in me, I am truly sorry. I've failed you."

"No, this isn't your fault."

"You really did more than enough."

Comments flashed across the internet. Nobody could bring themselves to blame this pitiful man. He, too, had stayed until the end and now faced death.

"I can say that I've done everything within my power, and everyone else has done everything within theirs." Liu Zhen suddenly raised his voice. "But this is a war, an extraordinarily cruel war, and people die in wars!"

"Our enemy is powerful. Even though we've achieved an unprecedented miracle, there will still be casualties."

"In fact, we're merely the first to fall. Dying early is easy; dying later is hard. You may face a future more painful than ours."

"But comrades, as long as human history continues, our sacrifice and everything you do in the future will have meaning. Our courage and resolve will be passed down, until they become an immortal chapter inscribed upon these stars!"

"Fight, everyone. Remember, we will never surrender!"

In the years to come, Liu Zhen's words would be repeated again and again, a legacy of the first to fall.

Ten minutes later, the volcano erupted. More than twenty thousand people in Great River City, including Liu Zhen, perished. Not one survived.

Their deaths undoubtedly cast a pall over the struggle against the apocalypse. But there wasn't even time for everyone to grieve.

Soon, the Chinese government issued another statement.

"...Comrades, the loss of twenty-three thousand lives in Great River City fills us with grief. But we must remember their sacrifice and carry on their spirit..."

"...In the face of disaster, we must work together to weather this crisis. I believe there is no disaster we cannot overcome!"

"...We are now calling upon people across the nation and around the world. Anyone with some basic construction skills can join our factories and contribute to building the Sea City..."

To build enough Sea Cities, everyone would have to give their blood and sweat. That was reality.

Overnight, more than a dozen factories sprang up. Each would house tens of thousands, or even over a hundred thousand people.

Tens of millions of young people were mobilized to work on the construction sites. Even military manufacturing was being repurposed. China abandoned everything else to build more Sea Cities. Only that could keep large numbers of people alive.

The coming wave of volcanic eruptions would make the weather extremely unstable. Tsunamis, hurricanes, and earthquakes would follow one after another. Volcanic ash would shroud the entire earth, blotting out sunlight worldwide and ushering in an ice age. Everyone would have to shelter underground, carrying out production work inside.

But that didn't mean everyone would be safe. Underground shelters had limited space and could accommodate only some of the population, primarily workers performing critically important tasks. Most people could only live in converted aboveground shelters, and everyone remained under constant threat from disaster.

An Xinyi and Osamu Dazai were relatively fortunate. An Xinyi's work was highly important, and Osamu Dazai accompanied him into a comparatively safe factory.

But in the apocalypse, there was no such thing as good fortune.

"How could this happen?!" Nobara Kugisaki could barely keep herself from swearing. Couldn't they get something that wasn't so damn bleak? "Couldn't they save those people?!"

Even though she was already accustomed to the high mortality rate among jujutsu sorcerers, she still couldn't accept this reality.

They had worked so hard, hadn't they?

Megumi Fushiguro was far more rational, but even he couldn't help feeling downhearted. "There was nothing they could do. Like they said, the enemy was too terrifying."

Their enemy wasn't a person, but natural disasters humanity had never truly conquered!

"Even I, the strongest, couldn't do anything about it." Satoru Gojo had to admit that, aside from a rare few, the Superhumans who could be useful in such circumstances could be counted on one hand. Destruction was something Satoru Gojo could handle... saving people amid disasters like these wasn't his specialty.

Masamichi Yaga also let out a deep sigh. "Sometimes, the more you understand this world, the smaller humanity seems."

So what kept you going in a place this hopeless, An Xinyi?

Osamu Dazai lowered his eyelids, hiding the unreadable emotions in his russet eyes. No matter how many times he saw it, it still shook him. Experiencing such a sacrifice even once was agonizing, yet An Xinyi had to endure it a thousand times, ten thousand times... How did you not grow numb?

Without question, what shook Osamu Dazai most wasn't An Xinyi's strength, but the fact that he could still feel pain.

Only an An Xinyi like that was truly human.

"I'm starting to understand you, Ranpo." Osamu Dazai couldn't help saying it. Looking at himself on the screen, he actually felt a little envious. That Dazai had been very well cared for.

"Damn you, Dazai!" Ranpo wasn't pleased at all. Even if he had anticipated it, gaining another rival was nothing to celebrate.

"Sacrifice..." Ango Sakaguchi watched the images on the screen with a bitter smile. "They did everything they could, and it still came to this. What about us, then..." What about Japan, which hadn't done enough?

Yukichi Fukuzawa, Santoka Taneda, and the others remained silent. They could all guess how it would end.

Ayatsuji Yukito was surprisingly calm. "These are merely the first casualties. How could humanity survive the apocalypse without paying an enormous price, perhaps even facing extinction?... It's the apocalypse, after all." His voice faltered a little on the last sentence.

Everyone fell silent again. Fukuchi Ochi couldn't help saying, "We underestimated the apocalypse."

After all, the previous apocalypses had been presented so lightly that they had never realized just how terrifying the end of the world could be.

Human extinction was only to be expected. Even fighting back with everything they had might not lead to a good outcome.

Fyodor shook his head. "Humans really are contradictory."

They were so weak, so afraid, yet when faced with death, they sometimes displayed astonishing courage and resolve...

Perhaps I underestimated humanity. The thought flashed through the demon's mind.

Osamu Dazai felt deeply oppressed. He had always been an overly sensitive child, too quick to perceive what others were thinking and all too easily affected by their negative emotions.

Space inside the factory was scarce. Each person's allotted space had been reduced to the absolute minimum. Such cramped conditions were oppressive enough on their own, even without the grueling labor and an apocalypse that offered no glimpse of a future.

Even someone with An Xinyi's rare talents lived in conditions little better than those of the workers outside. The same went for Osamu Dazai. Being allowed to live in the factory was already a form of protection for him.

The factory was considered a safe place. Outside it, people died constantly because their shelters couldn't withstand hurricanes or fissures in the earth, because they went hungry, or because they had to venture outside.

"A few more shelter sites got wiped out today." At first, people had grieved and mourned. By now, they had learned to go numb.

When a hundred people died, or a thousand, you grieved and suffered. But when that many died every day, eventually all that remained was numbness.

Osamu Dazai knew they had already done more than enough.

Every worker labored desperately. None of them merely met their quotas; all exceeded them. Even with inadequate protective measures and unsafe conditions, they used their lives to make up the shortfall.

Compared with the world outside, where a hurricane or a fissure could kill someone at any moment, the factory wasn't absolutely safe either.

Osamu Dazai heard a tremendous crash. He knew what it was. Through gaps between the intervening structures, he saw an overloaded machine burst apart, spraying molten iron onto several workers who couldn't dodge in time. The others merely dragged the bodies away numbly, stepped over the bloodstained floor, gave the machine a cursory cooling, and resumed work.

They no longer had time to grieve. There had been too many such tragedies since the apocalypse began. All they could do was force themselves to work mechanically, because another day of work here might give one more person outside a chance to live.

Everyone forced themselves to appear a little more optimistic, but their numb eyes gave too much away.

Osamu Dazai felt as though he were suffocating.

Then he happened to see the news: everyone at several shelter sites in Great West City had been confirmed dead... Great West City...

Osamu Dazai's vision blurred. That was the city where the people he and An Xinyi had helped evacuate had gone. Those shelter sites... Osamu Dazai was too clever. He knew he would never again see that kindly woman from the neighborhood committee, that helpful young man, that cooperative middle-aged woman, or even her daughter, who wasn't yet six... they were all dead.

His head buzzed. A jumble of disjointed, incoherent things swam before his eyes. Osamu Dazai was utterly overwhelmed.

He was in pain because he felt everyone else's pain.

Unable to bear it, he fled back to his tiny room. It was pitifully cramped, crowded with just him and An Xinyi living in it. Yet by the factory's standards, these living conditions were already fairly good.

Where was Yiyi? He couldn't help thinking of An Xinyi. Without question, An Xinyi was the person who had led Osamu Dazai out of the abyss of his family, and the person closest and most important to him. He was his brother, his friend. Even now, An Xinyi remained the anchor for all of Osamu Dazai's emotions.

Yiyi, am I really about to fall apart? Osamu Dazai thought.

Yiyi, you have to hold on to me, Osamu Dazai pleaded.

It wasn't until three or four in the morning that the door opened. An Xinyi dragged himself into the room, instinctively feeling for the light switch. Then he remembered someone else was there and carefully made his way to the bedside.

Only when he drew close did he notice that Osamu Dazai wasn't asleep. He was wrapped in his blanket, watching him with russet eyes.

"What's wrong, Aji?" An Xinyi's voice was still gentle, but he couldn't hide his profound exhaustion. "Is something upsetting you?"

Osamu Dazai opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

He shouldn't trouble Yiyi.

Because Yiyi was already so tired.

Osamu Dazai was young, protected by An Xinyi, and currently had little work to do. An Xinyi, by contrast, was a rare talent with an enormous workload each day. Sometimes he got fewer than three hours of rest, constantly pushing himself beyond his limits.

Because every extra bit of work he did might give someone else a chance to survive.

Osamu Dazai desperately wanted to tell An Xinyi about his sorrow and pain. But he hesitated, because he didn't want An Xinyi to feel that same sorrow, that same pain.

Negative emotions were contagious, and An Xinyi was already nearing his limit.

"It's nothing, Yiyi." Osamu Dazai put on a smile. "I just wanted to see you. I haven't seen you in so long."

It was true. Even though they shared a room, An Xinyi was often so busy that he was nowhere to be seen.

"I'm sorry, Aji." An Xinyi reached out and stroked the soft hair on top of Osamu Dazai's head. "Give me a little more time. I'll make time to be with you more."

Osamu Dazai's heart ached. He knew An Xinyi loved him, but he also knew An Xinyi was truly exhausted. Otherwise, he would never have been too dulled to notice something was wrong.

"No, Yiyi, I'm fine." Osamu Dazai lied without batting an eye. "Just focus on your work, Yiyi. You can do it!"

"You're really... all right?" The excessive workload had indeed dulled An Xinyi's senses. His mind was almost blank. He stared dazedly at Dazai, no longer able to tell whether his expression was genuine.

"Yes, I'm fine."

The night passed in silence.

The next day, An Xinyi did something rare: instead of going straight to work, he stayed to check on Osamu Dazai. Dazai's performance was flawless, and he successfully persuaded An Xinyi, who still had a mountain of tasks waiting, to leave.

The moment An Xinyi left, Osamu Dazai's face went blank. He sat in the room for a long time, but the oppressive feeling only grew worse. Finally, unable to stand it, he ran outside.

When he heard the commotion, Osamu Dazai knew something had happened again.

"Someone's dead!"

"It's Old Wei. Ah, he'd always been so pessimistic..."

"Old Wei, why did you have to give up?"

The people nearby sighed, feeling a little sad-but only a little. Too many people had died these past days.

Osamu Dazai knew he shouldn't look, but he couldn't help himself. He pushed through the crowd and saw the dead man.

The man had killed himself. Even in death, the face etched with suffering hadn't escaped its deep anguish. His death had been wretched: with nothing but a short piece of rope, he had strangled himself against a railing. His body was curled up as though he were afraid of disturbing anyone else. Even his choice to die had been so meek.

He hadn't died because of pain, but because there was no hope.

Osamu Dazai felt something explode in his head. When he came back to his senses, he had already slit his wrist.