A Pitiful Person

The woman's eyes were vacant and full of fatigue. She showed no particular reaction when she saw them, but Huang Qian called out to her:

"Ms. Lin."

The little girl wore a pink down jacket, her face tucked into a cute panda scarf, leaving only a pair of large eyes visible.

Her eyes were beautiful, their whites and dark pupils clearly defined, but they were somewhat vacant and unfocused in a way that seemed out of place for her age. Looking a little incongruous, she hid timidly behind her mother.

The woman stopped at the stairwell and looked over, her voice hoarse and cold:

"Can I help you?"

Seeing how frightened the child was, Cheng Jing and the others stayed back, letting Huang Qian and the approachable Jiang Nian go over to question the mother and daughter.

Perhaps because they hadn't had a chance to clean themselves up in a long time, their clothes were filthy and gave off an unpleasant smell. The strong scent of perfume mixed strangely with the fishy, foul smell of medicine.

As Huang Qian spoke with the woman, Jiang Nian looked at the names in the resident register. The woman was Lin Qin, her husband was Shan Chengfei, and their daughter was Shan Ya.

After a quick glance to commit the names to memory, Jiang Nian pulled out a lollipop and offered it to the timid little girl.

"You're Xiao Ya, right? Don't be scared. Here's a lollipop for you."

Xiao Ya relaxed a little when she met Jiang Nian's gentle gaze. She stared at the lollipop and swallowed, but didn't take it. Instead, she tugged lightly on her mother's hand.

The woman, who was talking to Huang Qian, looked down and smiled.

"If big brother's giving it to you, go on and take it. Remember to thank him."

"Thank you, big brother..."

Xiao Ya's voice was a little wooden. After speaking, she took the lollipop and put it in her coat pocket, then stared blankly at Jiang Nian with her big eyes, studying the half of his face that was visible.

Jiang Nian took the opportunity to ask where they were going. Xiao Ya glanced at her mother again before answering quietly:

"To the command room to get medicine..."

Jiang Nian paused.

"Which of you is sick?"

That must have been where the smell of medicine came from.

Xiao Ya shook her head.

"Not me. Mommy..."

Just then, the woman answered:

"Ever since the apocalypse, I've been very anxious. I need to take some medicine every day to get to sleep. My husband found quite a lot of sedatives when he went out to collect supplies before, but ever since his accident... he went out and never came back, and we ran out of medicine..."

"I'm sorry for your loss..."

Jiang Nian sighed softly. He didn't know how to comfort the pitiful mother and daughter.

The woman shook her head and began to cry, but her tears turned to ice before they could fall. Her voice was choked and indistinct.

"I held out for a few days, but I really can't bear it anymore, so I wanted to get some medicine and ask about Xiao Ya's dad while I was there... Could you come into the apartment to check later?... I'm sorry, I really feel terrible right now... I can't control my emotions..."

"Please don't cry..."

Seeing the woman break down in tears as she spoke, her emotions in turmoil, Huang Qian stopped asking questions. She walked over to Cheng Jing and said quietly:

"Boss, let's check the other apartments first."

In weather like this, getting too emotional could make a person sick. They were already pitiful enough.

Seeing this, Cheng Jing nodded and said to the mother and daughter:

"It's too cold out. Come back early."

With that, he led the team upstairs to continue checking.

But when Jiang Nian stepped onto the stairs, Xiao Ya suddenly called out to him:

"Big brother... can you save Daddy?"

"Xiao Ya, don't..."

The grieving woman's expression changed. She hurriedly brushed the ice from beneath her eyes, pulled her daughter close, and held her in her arms.

"Be good. The big brothers are busy. They're not going outside..."

"..."

The others looked back, then continued upstairs. Cheng Jing frowned slightly.

Jiang Nian stopped and met her hopeful gaze. His heart went out to her, but reality was cruel. In the end, he shook his head.

"I'm sorry, Xiao Ya... I can't help you."

Faced with those vacant eyes pleading for help, he would have agreed if it had been anything else. But how could he save someone who had gone out and disappeared? They couldn't even find the body.

"..."

Xiao Ya stared at him for a moment, then looked at Cheng Jing, whose expression was somewhat serious. Finally, she bit her lip hard and lowered her head.

"All right... then don't come, big brother... I'm sorry..."

With that, she turned her head away.

"Xiao Ya, don't be rude."

The woman reproached her daughter sadly, her eyes red-rimmed, then gave Jiang Nian an apologetic look.

"I'm sorry... she's been through a lot..."

"It's all right. Take care of yourselves."

Jiang Nian turned and went upstairs after speaking. Cheng Jing was displeased, but said nothing more.

Only after they had rounded the bend in the stairs and gone up did the woman crouch down and hold her daughter tightly. Xiao Ya clutched her scarf and bit her lip. Tears poured from her eyes, turning into drops of ice that rolled onto the floor.

The mother and daughter wept in each other's arms, the little girl trembling all over.

Walking at the back with Cheng Jing, Jiang Nian heard them crying and felt a tightness in his chest. Tragedies like this were everywhere in the apocalypse, but facing one up close still hurt every time.

The main thing was that women and children had a harder time than many others in these chaotic times. He wasn't a saint, but that didn't mean he had a heart of stone.

Cheng Jing looked back, then patted him on the shoulder.

"Don't dwell on it. When things are beyond our control, there's nothing we can do."

"I know."

Jiang Nian drew a deep breath. The frigid air could cool a person's heart while keeping them clearheaded.

The checks went smoothly. Not every floor was fully occupied, so the workload wasn't too heavy.

At four in the afternoon, all the search teams wrapped up and returned to the command room. Each team left three people behind to take part in the operation debriefing.

Cheng Jing stayed behind with Jiang Nian and Zhao Lei.

In the entire residential complex, there were only a few households like Xiao Ya and her mother's, whose occupants happened to be downstairs and away from home, making it impossible to go in and check.

The teams compiled a list of the households they hadn't checked and planned to inspect them again after dinner, once everyone had returned home, according to the buildings assigned to each team.

They began reviewing the results of the checks, but found no useful leads.

Even the team that had gone down to the basement again found nothing else, though they did draw out quite a few zombies from the darkness and dealt with them along the way.

"..."

In the property management lobby, which had been converted into a meeting room, the others discussed the results of the search. As an ordinary member of the team, Jiang Nian didn't draw much attention, so he picked up the death reports from the Jiahe Court settlement and began reading.

People died in the settlement every day. The so-called investigations consisted of only a few lines of description: died of illness, froze to death, went out and never returned, left their room and disappeared, and so on.

Jiang Nian focused on the names of the ordinary people who had disappeared recently. Although they lived in different buildings and on different floors, and the intervals between their disappearances varied, they had two things in common:

First, they lived alone and had no relatives. Either they had been assigned to live alone, or the people they had originally lived with had died.

Second, they had vanished suddenly. The day before, they had come out and opened their doors to collect their supplies as usual, but the next day, the night patrol discovered they were gone, and the supplies they had collected were untouched.

So the investigators guessed they had disappeared on the night they received their supplies.

Because the doors hadn't been locked from the inside and the next-door neighbors hadn't heard anything unusual, the investigation reports ended with "presumed to have left of their own accord."

After all, the settlement did not restrict its residents' freedom. Anyone who left the shelter, day or night, was presumed to accept responsibility for their own life or death.