Blood Neon

Chapter 34

Chapter 34

Night Talk

More than a decade ago, maybe this house had once been home to a large family.

Considering the typical customs of the villagers here, this might have been a wedding house, renovated and prepared for a child’s marriage.

Though, really, it wasn’t such a formal matter. Most villagers would simply refurbish or add an extra floor to an old house, tidy up a room for the newlyweds, and that would be considered the wedding house.

Unless they moved to the city to specifically buy a new home, most villagers who only owned a small house would usually have their sons live together with their new brides and the parents after marriage—that was the most common arrangement.

Looking at the room now, filled with an apocalyptic atmosphere, Lin Ying felt a wave of emotion.

The once bright and glossy small tiles on the exterior walls had mostly fallen off. The plastered interior walls were cracked all over, with large patches where the coating had come off entirely, exposing the rough concrete beneath.

In the now deserted house, all that remained were old pieces of furniture—either too bulky to move, too broken down, or simply not worth the cost of transporting them.

There were also a few leftover items that hadn’t been taken away, like the teddy bear sitting in the corner against the wall.

Lin Ying had set up her little nest on a still fairly intact double wooden bed. After layering it with several pieces of cardboard she had scrounged up, even the hard wooden bedboards didn't feel so unbearably uncomfortable anymore.

Using the faint moonlight, the girl patiently untied a knotted plastic bag and took out several cans of drinks, lining them up neatly in a row by the bed.

She tore open a bag of potato chips along the serrated edge, then grabbed a can of cola with one hand, skillfully trying to pop it open with just her right hand…

Tried…

…Well, okay, maybe that move was still a bit too much for her current body.

With a helpless sigh, Lin Ying ended up using both hands together.

With a crisp “Tss~”, the cola can popped open with a pull of the tab, followed by the fizzy sound of bubbles erupting inside.

She took a small sip of the drink, relishing the icy burn as it slid down her throat, then reached into the wide-open chip bag in front of her and picked out a whole chip to eat.

Lying on the cardboard, her legs lifted and swaying back and forth behind her, the girl happily began to enjoy her midnight snack.

.

It felt just like being on a long-distance sleeper train, the kind where you’d booked a middle bunk all to yourself.

Outside the train, the scenery rushed past—strange, blurry, and gone in the blink of an eye.

Curled up in that cramped space, whether sitting or lying down, the longer the ride went on, the more your whole body started to feel stiff and uncomfortable.

And just your luck—your phone battery was dead / you had no data / or maybe you didn’t even have a phone.

The snacks you bought before boarding? They were starting to taste like cardboard.

That’s the magic of trains. Somehow, they had this bizarre ability to make your favorite drinks and snacks lose their flavor.

Like an evil sorcerer gradually draining the joy from everything you loved.

Every stop along the way was marked by a name that felt utterly unfamiliar.

And at each stop, through the narrow window, all one could see was one group of feet stepping off the train, and another group stepping on.

In the cramped space of barely two or three square meters per person, everyone looked like they were being transported—like slaves.

From one place, life pushed them onward to another.

.

Lin Ying leaned gently against the window, drifting into a daze as she stared at the moon, thoughts coming and going without much order.

Every so often, when she remembered, she’d reach into the bag of chips and take one out to eat.

This was the only intact chair left in the entire house. Though it wobbled back and forth when she sat on it, creaking loudly, it at least retained the most basic function of being a chair—which was better than having none at all.

Earlier, Lin Ying had taken the time to clean the room up a bit. Though the floor still looked rather dirty, at least it wasn't so dusty that every breath would send the PM10 count soaring past safety limits.

With all human presence gone, the ruins around her had naturally lost the warmth of light and life as well.

Looking out from the grimy glass window on the second floor, the distant city appeared veiled under a canopy of light, with a faint orange glow spreading overhead.

“Hilarion~”

Lin Ying rested her head on her arms and mumbled softly.

Come to think of it, the people who had lived in this area were actually quite lucky.

They called it demolition, but it wasn't total. Only about a third of the village had been torn down, with the total area amounting to just several tens of thousands of square meters.

In this age of rising land prices, having your inherited, near-worthless rural house demolished and turned into a hefty sum of money was an undeniable windfall.

Due to the early-century trend of people flooding into the cities, many villagers living near urban borders had sold off their homes or unused land for meager amounts of money, hoping to use that to settle in the city.

A house of just over a hundred square meters might’ve sold for merely a few tens of thousands back then—and even at that price, it would’ve been hard to find a buyer.

As for land without any buildings? Even cheaper.

Back then, who could have imagined that within just a few short years, the city would expand enough to swallow those villages whole—turning what was once a patch of worthless ruins into skyrocketing real estate?

Those with foresight, or ordinary folks who’d been tipped off by someone in the know, had likely realized that the best strategy was to do absolutely nothing—just hold onto the land and let it appreciate in value.

When the time was right, they’d remember to renovate the old house, maybe add a couple of floors to make it a neat little three-story home, and then just sit back and wait for the demolition notice to arrive. Of course, having some inside information certainly helped.

—And that group of people now held a few million in savings, living leisurely off the interest.

Buy a resettlement house? Out of the question.

They’d go straight into the city, find a second-hand apartment that was just right, cheap and convenient to live in, and toss the rest of the money in the bank.

—Though it was also entirely possible they’d lost it all in a game of mahjong.

.

The villagers living closest to this place, whose homes just barely hadn’t been marked for demolition, were probably going insane with frustration.

Lin Ying had once eavesdropped on a conversation between some nearby residents and heard that this area had been included in the demolition plan only because the railway bridge nearby was slated for reconstruction.

She didn’t really care about such irrelevant bits of information, but judging from what they were saying, plans to demolish this village had been in the works for five or six years.

But the delays just kept coming, and the bridge never got rebuilt.

Everyone kept saying that if construction didn’t start soon, it was only a matter of time before the bridge collapsed and caused a major safety incident.

Apparently, it was some petty internal squabbles among the city government officials that had caused the project to be endlessly postponed.

Well, houses were nothing more than tools for cashing out—those bigwigs up top would never understand that.

From what Lin Ying could tell, that was pretty much how all the villagers felt.

.

As the number of empty cans in front of her grew, the moon’s path across the sky grew longer and longer.

Lin Ying was starting to feel a bit bored.

Before she came back here, she’d thought she had long since adapted to living alone in this world, that she had come to terms with solitude.

Maybe it was because yesterday she’d still been eating with someone?

Now, sitting alone drinking flat cola, everything seemed to taste a little worse.

She swung her legs back and forth, raised the half-empty can of cola in one hand, and closed one eye. Her gaze followed along her arm and the can, aiming straight at the teddy bear in the corner.

Several tendrils reached out and dragged the bear into the moonlight by the window.

“Hey, Boss, why are you staying here all alone?”

She thoughtfully placed an empty can in front of the bear, then gave the can in her own hand a gentle shake as she asked.

“I heard them say you once sumo-wrestled a real bear… and won, is that true?”

The girl used a tendril to prop up its left arm, which was missing half.

“So… you lost your left hand back then?”

“……”

…

As sunlight returned to the earth, all the artificial lights were turned off.

A new day arrived as usual in Pingyang City.

Countless people, just coming off their Mid-Autumn break, groaned as they rejoined the steel tide of the morning commute.

Even more people hadn’t had a break at all—they simply looked at the sunlight and sighed, “Just another ordinary Wednesday.”

The light streamed into a dilapidated house, falling over the colorful litter of bottles, cans, and snack wrappers scattered across the floor, and landed on the body of a young girl.

The girl lay on a piece of cardboard, her back rising and falling in a steady rhythm.