Watching the blood-covered corpse draw closer and closer to An Zi Yan, Mai Ding’s heart clenched. He pounded hard on the glass. “An Zi Yan! Behind you! Behind you! Run!” No matter how loudly he shouted, only a faint voice reached An Zi Yan through the glass door. The fact that An Zi Yan looked as though he couldn’t hear clearly made Mai Ding even more anxious.
The corpse was right behind An Zi Yan. Its mouth opened, and every tooth inside began to change. It was a zombie. It lunged. Mai Ding froze, despairing at his own helplessness, but in the next second, he couldn’t understand what had happened. The corpse hadn’t lunged at An Zi Yan. It had lunged at him. Through the glass, Mai Ding could see every tooth clearly. The corpse stared straight at him and licked the glass. “Want to come out and play?” Mai Ding no longer had time to be afraid. Why? Why was An Zi Yan clearly standing right beside it, yet the corpse behaved as though it couldn’t see him? Was An Zi Yan a ghost? Impossible. Impossible. How could ghosts possibly exist in this world?
The corpse pounded hard on the glass. “I smelled you earlier. Your flesh smells delicious. Be careful. Once I set my sights on prey, it doesn’t escape.”
“Hey. You’re disturbing me.” An Zi Yan pulled a hand from his pants pocket, grabbed the corpse by the hair, and yanked its head backward. After dragging it some distance from the glass, he slammed its head straight into it. Following the impact, blood sprayed across the glass in a bizarre picture. At extremely close range, Mai Ding watched the corpse’s face compress, deform, and then split apart. An Zi Yan released his fingers, gave the dumbstruck Mai Ding inside a small wave, and left.
It took Mai Ding a full five minutes to recover. He paced back and forth with his hands behind his back. “What was that? How did An Zi Yan kill a corpse that easily? Could it be—could he be a DS too? His rank must be really high. And he looks pretty rich, so he must’ve bought tons of high-tech equipment. That’s why the corpse couldn’t attack him.” The more Mai Ding thought about it, the more excited he became.
The darkness passed and daylight arrived. The moment An Zi Yan reached his apartment door, two hands grabbed him. Mai Ding’s eyes were covered in red veins. “You’re finally back!” An Zi Yan frowned slightly at Mai Ding’s appearance. “I did allow you to go inside and sleep.”
“I don’t think it’s right to enter someone else’s home without permission. Here’s your key.” Mai Ding handed the key over. An Zi Yan opened the door, and Mai Ding followed him inside.
“Nobody invited you in.”
“It’s fine, it’s fine. You don’t need to invite me,” Mai Ding said politely. An Zi Yan didn’t respond. He took off his coat and threw it onto the floor. Mai Ding picked it up behind him. “Don’t throw things around.”
“This is my home.” An Zi Yan walked into the bathroom. More than ten minutes later, when he came back out, he discovered Mai Ding cleaning the apartment for him. “You still haven’t left?” Mai Ding bowed deeply to An Zi Yan. “I sincerely, sincerely hope you can teach me how to become an outstanding DS. If you—” By the time he raised his head, An Zi Yan had already entered the bedroom and collapsed onto the bed. Mai Ding angrily followed him inside. “An Zi Yan, at least listen until I finish talking.” An Zi Yan covered his head with a pillow and replied lazily, “So noisy.” Mai Ding pouted and fell silent. He could always talk after An Zi Yan woke up. Yawning, he sat on the edge of the bed and unknowingly fell asleep too.
When Mai Ding woke, he momentarily had no idea where he was. After slowly remembering, he wiped the drool from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand and looked up at An Zi Yan, who was still sleeping. He tugged at the blanket. “Hey, An Zi Yan. Get up. How long are you planning to sleep?” The blackout curtains were drawn, leaving the room dim, and Mai Ding didn’t know where the light switch was, so he turned on the light built into his watch. “Did you hear me? An. Zi. Yan.” He shone it over. An Zi Yan frowned deeply, then opened his eyes. Mai Ding recoiled in terror until his back hit the wall. “Your—your eyes. W-Why…” Everything he had memorized so thoroughly flashed through his mind. Under the special light, a corpse’s eyeballs would turn red—that blood-red shade he had seen in photographs. And that was exactly the color of An Zi Yan’s eyes now. “Y-You’re…”
An Zi Yan pushed himself upright with one hand. “You found out? So what are you planning to do?” A corpse infiltrating a human residential area was a serious incident. But national surveillance was supposedly extremely strict. How had he managed it? Mai Ding’s thoughts were in chaos, and he had no idea what he should do. So the corpse last night hadn’t failed to see An Zi Yan. It had known he was one of its own. Mai Ding patted himself all over. His crossbow was in the living room. “Don’t come any closer. If you do, don’t blame me for being ruthless!” An Zi Yan reached out and switched on the room light. Mai Ding had no idea where his courage came from, but he shouted and charged forward, climbed onto the bed, and pinned An Zi Yan’s legs down. “Don’t underestimate me. I’m calling the police! You corpses aren’t the only ones who know how to bite people.” Mai Ding sank his teeth into the blanket. Completely unconcerned, An Zi Yan removed a contact lens with his fingers. “Sleeping in these really is uncomfortable.” Mai Ding stared at the red contact lens on the bedside table and froze. In an instant, he was overwhelmed with embarrassment. He switched off his watch light. “You deliberately didn’t tell me from the beginning? Is messing with me really that fun?!!”
“It is pretty fun.”
“Haha.” Mai Ding laughed dryly. “I was only pretending to fall for it. You’re the one I fooled.” Thinking about it now, he really had been rather stupid. He had clearly seen An Zi Yan out on the street in broad daylight. Corpses absolutely couldn’t appear during the day; they couldn’t tolerate sunlight. Mai Ding relaxed. “What’s the point of wearing those? So you can blend in among corpses? Where did you buy them? Are they expensive?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“Because we’re really close,” Mai Ding said shamelessly.
“Weren’t you just trying to kill me?”
“Haha, I was joking. Look at how useless I am. How could I kill anyone? I was only trying to scare you. Wasn’t I afraid you might eat me?”
An Zi Yan took Mai Ding by the wrist, making Mai Ding’s heart start beating strangely again. He asked slowly, “You’re not afraid now?” Mai Ding shook his head repeatedly. “No. Even if you really were one, I still wouldn’t…” An Zi Yan’s index finger pushed up the switch on the watch. The beam landed on his beautiful pupils. Mai Ding looked back at the contact lens An Zi Yan had just removed, then back at An Zi Yan’s eyes. “H-How many layers of contacts are you wearing? Stop playing pranks!” He was only lying to himself. At this distance, he could clearly see that there was no contact lens covering An Zi Yan’s blood-red pupils. Mai Ding jumped up and yanked the curtains open, letting sunlight flood in. An Zi Yan sat on the bed with both hands braced behind himself and showed absolutely no reaction. Mai Ding closed the curtains again and shone the watch light at him. Sure enough, his eyes turned red. He opened the curtains again, then closed them again, checking over and over. So what exactly was An Zi Yan? A genetic mutation? Mixed blood? But Mai Ding had never heard of anything like this.
“Finished playing?”
“What exactly are you…?”
“Guess.”
“This isn’t the time for riddles. Are you going to eat me?”
“I’m considering it.”
“Don’t consider it!” Mai Ding rushed over and hugged An Zi Yan. “As long as you don’t eat me, I’ll do anything.”
“Anything?”
“Mm.”
“Then you wouldn’t mind if I ate you a different way, would you?” An Zi Yan pulled the blanket over both of them. Mai Ding’s voice escaped from underneath every now and then. “Hey, An Zi Yan, why are you taking off my clothes? An Zi Yan!”]
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