The food Huang Qi distributed was not identical. Almost everyone got something different.
Some held eggs, some held sausages, and others had crunchy instant noodles.
In the apocalypse, equal distribution was impossible. They could only divide things up roughly evenly.
And even for that!
They still had to watch Huang Qi's mood.
Most people glanced toward Su Chen, looking as though it had nothing to do with them.
That was perfectly normal.
It was the apocalypse. Meddling would only bring trouble down on their heads.
The little girl, however, was watching him curiously.
Only after his gaze turned toward her did she hold the egg in her hand.
But she had not even torn off its wrapper.
She simply chewed at it bit by bit.
Beside her was an elderly person whose food was a rice cracker.
The elderly person had no teeth and slowly finished it by letting it soften in their mouth.
The child's way of eating the egg, on the other hand, looked rather comical.
Holding his mung bean cake, Su Chen went over to the little girl.
"You eat it!"
"I'm not hungry!"
Su Chen looked at the little girl and handed her the mung bean cake with its wrapper torn open.
The little girl cradled the mung bean cake and began eating it a little at a time.
The little girl wore a white dress and had long hair.
Her eyelashes were long.
One look told him she was very timid, and she ate in a shrinking, hesitant manner.
But,
as they ate, their eyelashes fluttered again and again.
It looked rather cute.
Su Chen also helped the little girl remove the egg's wrapper and handed the egg to her.
He gave her the food in his hands in exchange for a measure of goodwill.
Of course, food alone might be useless.
Food was a scarce resource for him and the others.
But the mirror could go without eating.
In fact, eating food was itself a form of disguise.
Su Chen knew that he wanted to awaken his Awakening Sequence, or even get out.
That did not seem to be enough.
In fact.
After the mirror finished eating, she remained as vacant as ever.
"Idiot."
Huang Qi naturally saw what Su Chen had done and could not help making a disparaging remark.
He knew about this little girl too.
She was just an idiot.
She would eat however much you gave her.
She would not even say thank you.
It was the apocalypse.
Children should not go on living.
Occasionally.
The little girl would also scribble and draw on the nearby walls.
Before the apocalypse, she would have been an obvious little brat.
So.
This act of kindness seemed very foolish.
They would have no food to eat until tomorrow morning.
Su Chen could only go hungry during that time.
After the little girl finished eating, she made no further movements.
She simply stood there blankly.
Su Chen began examining the mall before him.
To get the mirror to let him out, he needed to understand the "mirror's" experiences and her needs.
There might be clues in the mall.
Many shelves inside the mall had been shoved aside.
The survivors had done this to make more open space.
Yet there was actually a great deal of graffiti on the supermarket walls.
At first glance, it looked like a child's random play.
There seemed to be nothing to it.
Children were mischievous by nature and would scribble everywhere.
It was the apocalypse.
With no one supervising them at all, that was even more normal.
A child?
Su Chen, however, thought of the little girl before him.
Perhaps it was the little girl. Perhaps the graffiti came from her pen.
He began examining it closely.
Those drawings appeared to have no connection to one another.
There were parents taking a child shopping at the mall, going to an amusement park, and playing with toys.
There were even parents doing homework with the child.
It seemed.
They were merely a child's record of things, along with a little imagination.
As Su Chen examined those pictures, he noticed the little girl watching him.
Had he guessed right?
Su Chen continued looking at the graffiti.
The later drawings seemed to depict monsters, and black had actually been used.
The monsters descended.
There were also depictions of slaughter.
Were these things that happened during the apocalypse?
The graffiti abruptly ended there, with nothing more after it.
Su Chen did not quite understand what the graffiti represented and examined it repeatedly.
There was a saying.
The more you lacked something, the more you wanted it?
Why were there so many drawings of being with parents?
Did that mean,
this little girl had not had her parents' company before?
During his time at the orphanage, he had also seen orphans with similar longings.
Because of this, whenever volunteers visited the orphanage, those children would try to please them.
So how was he supposed to make up for what she had missed with her parents?
After making that guess, Su Chen was somewhat dumbfounded too.
Become a dad without any of the work?
As he pondered, he did not know that the little girl had been watching him all along.
After thinking for a while, Su Chen suddenly stood up and continued searching the supermarket.
Soon, he discovered something unusual.
This mall had no food or drink, yet it had quite a lot of clothes.
What significance did these clothes hold?
Su Chen thought of the graffiti on the walls. The parents' outfits in it barely changed.
Perhaps?
She wanted to experience having her own father.
Or even the feeling of being protected by her family?
Among the clothes, Su Chen looked for ones as similar to those in the graffiti as possible.
"Broke bastard!"
Just then, Huang Qi saw what Su Chen was doing and could not help cursing.
He thought Su Chen had merely spotted clothes in the mall and could not resist changing into them.
Before long.
Su Chen found a white suit.
It looked somewhat mature.
Su Chen had never imagined that he would wear such a flashy suit during the apocalypse.
There was still one thing left: the little girl's name.
The little girl should have a name.
Su Chen decided to find Xiao Zixia.
If his guess was right, Xiao Zixia had interacted with the girl and knew her name.
It was just that Xiao Zixia had not helped the little girl fulfill her wish.
"Did you find some kind of clue?"
Xiao Zixia had learned about Su Chen's actions from the others.
Now, seeing his appearance, she was still a little surprised.
Su Chen seemed like a different person.
"Do you know what that little girl's name is?"
Su Chen pointed at the little girl and asked.
"Mengqi!"
Xiao Zixia looked at the little girl before her, both familiar and unfamiliar, and spoke her name.
A memory resurfaced in her mind.
That day!
The apocalypse had begun.
She had fled frantically as she watched all kinds of monsters appear.
Yet someone had gone mad.
Before his death, a sleazy man had chosen one last bout of madness.
She had wanted to fight back with everything she had.
But.
How could a girl's strength match that of a grown man?
Just as Xiao Zixia felt she was about to shatter, a mirror smashed onto the floor.
Shattered glass scattered everywhere.
Among it, one fragment suddenly lit up, and a dark figure appeared.
A little girl appeared before her, her long hair covering her face and obscuring her features.
Before the sleazy man even realized it, a little hand slapped his body.
Then the man vanished.
"Who are you?"
"Mengqi!"
Xiao Zixia remembered only a name.
When she woke again?
She had appeared in this inexplicable space, utterly safe.
She had gained an ability.
When exactly had her memory gone wrong?
Only just coming back to herself, Xiao Zixia saw that Su Chen had already risen.
Su Chen found a cute fox mask in the clothing section and took it in his hand.
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