After discussing it for a while, we all felt that the streets weren't necessarily safe right now.
Even if we wanted to return the baby, putting aside Lili's situation, there was no guarantee we could find the child's parents in such a vast crowd.
Not to mention, we couldn't even be sure whether the parents had already been among those who were bitten and killed that day.
Since the baby could calm Lili's emotions, we decided to let things be.
Admittedly, we were a bit selfish in how we handled this.
That afternoon, after lunch, we all lounged on the sofas in the living room, dozing off.
The sun outside was bright, and perhaps because the greenery here was so well maintained, birdsong could often be heard, making the quiet surroundings feel even more peaceful.
Xiao Hu curled up in my arms, squabbling with Tingyun over Yiyi, who was lying on the sofa asleep.
Probably having lost the "battle," Xiao Hu turned away in a huff and ignored her.
Seeing this, Han Xue carried Yiyi outside onto the lawn.
Xiao Hu immediately followed, and within a minute, they had made up again.
I couldn't fight off the drowsiness any longer, so I said a quick goodbye to everyone and went upstairs to sleep.
In the end, what people truly seek in life is comfort.
No matter how many twists and turns they go through, what they really want deep down is a sense of ease.
Lying on the bed, I took a deep breath, hoping for a good dream.
.........
Time always passes quickly when life feels comfortable.
From that quiet afternoon when I fell into a deep sleep to now—half a year has passed—it feels like nothing more than the blink of an eye.
During this time, we never encountered anything terrifying again.
No walkers, no bloodshed, no rotting flesh, no omnipresent virus.
Aside from taking Xiao Hu out once a month for routine checkups, we rarely left the house.
It all felt like a collective dream we had once shared.
We lived peacefully in this villa, seldom leaving the compound.
We often took the children to visit other households in the area.
But more often than not, families who moved in didn't stay long before leaving again.
I once asked Suo Tian privately what was going on, and his answer weighed on my heart for a long time:
"There's no one left who can keep them qualified to stay here. If I die one day, you'll have to move out too."
Suo Tian had never said anything like that before—that was the only time.
I didn't sleep at all that night, holding him tightly until the next morning, when Lili came upstairs to say Team C had arrived.
Only then did I have to let go and watch him hurry off.
The villa district was undeniably beautiful.
There was no worry about food or clothing.
Apart from what people could collect on the streets, essential supplies were regularly delivered.
But all of this was earned by someone walking on the edge of danger, exchanging their life for the safety of those behind them.
It was nothing more than a splendid, fragile dream—no one knew when they might suddenly be dragged back into harsh reality.
In a house diagonally across from ours, a young pregnant woman once moved in.
She and her partner weren't married—he was one of the core members of Team B.
I grew close to her; perhaps because our situations were similar, we always had endless things to talk about, mostly about the men in our hearts.
Once, I asked her, "Aren't you worried?"
She just smiled. "Worrying won't help. Heaven is watching. For the sake of the child in my belly, I believe it won't let anything happen to him."
But in less than a week, one day as I was seeing Suo Tian off, I saw her again—completely lost, standing alone with her big belly, carrying a large bag on her back and holding a photo of a young man in her arms.
Step by step, she slowly walked out of the villa compound.
Watching her leave like that, my heart tightened painfully.
I grabbed Suo Tian, who was about to get into the car, and held onto him tightly, refusing to let go.
At first, Big Beard was joking around nearby, but after seeing my expression, he fell silent and quietly rolled up the car window.
In melodramatic love stories, there are always lines that make people cringe.
But when you're truly in such a story, you realize that no words are enough to express those feelings.
Once you truly care, you begin to fear losing.
Suo Tian didn't know what had happened. He simply asked softly, "What's wrong?"
I didn't answer.
Maybe he was in a hurry.
After waiting a moment and seeing that I still wouldn't let go, he tried to gently push me away.
Feeling that, I tightened my grip and said, "Don't, Don't push me away."
A bit helpless, he said, "What's gotten into you?"
…In the end, that time, Suo Tian couldn't persuade me.
For the first time, he took me along on a mission.
It was after that incident that I was suddenly jolted awake from the dreamlike happiness of the past six months.
We had been like ostriches, hiding ourselves away in that isolated villa district, convincing ourselves that the world was truly as peaceful and quiet as it appeared to us.
The headquarters covered an entire city—vast in scale.
Each side of the surrounding walls was assigned a team to defend it.
Teams B and C served as the main forces, working alongside other units to guard all four directions.
Suo Tian had originally planned to have me wait in the car, but perhaps realizing he wouldn't have time to return all day, he brought me into their office building instead.
Calling it an office building was generous—it was really just a massive hall filled with hundreds, even thousands, of surveillance screens showing the conditions along the walls.
The moment I saw what was displayed on those monitors, I froze completely, as if turned to stone.
Nearly every screen showed the same thing—dense masses of walkers crowding outside the walls.
There were too many to count.
Hundreds of thousands? Two hundred thousand? Five hundred thousand?
My ability to even estimate numbers broke down in the face of that overwhelming sight.
Inside the hall, groups of people sat at desks, working in an orderly manner.
They seemed completely accustomed to the scenes on the screens.
After following Suo Tian into a separate room furnished only with sofas, Big Beard warned me not to speak carelessly.
Before I could fully understand what he meant, the young officer from Team B—Captain Gao—walked in.
He was accompanied by a young woman with short, sharp hair, dressed in a military uniform.
After the two of them sat down across from us and gave me a brief glance, they began discussing matters directly with Suo Tian.
After listening for a while, I finally understood the situation.
Several large groups of wandering walkers had recently gathered outside the city, completely surrounding the headquarters.
Their numbers were far beyond what could be eliminated by human effort alone.
The plan from headquarters was to clear a path from the northern side—where walker density was relatively lower—and set up a corridor with barbed wire to connect to the outside world.
Most of the discussion was led by that sharp, capable young woman and the middle-aged man.
Captain Gao and Suo Tian spent most of the time listening in silence.
Then came the detailed action plan.
At this point, Big Beard stepped out briefly and returned with over a dozen people carrying thick documents.
They didn't sit down—after greeting everyone politely, they began discussing technical calculations related to construction and infrastructure.
I couldn't understand any of it.
Instead, my attention was fixed on someone standing at the edge of the group…
Wang Jun.
I had never known before that Wang Jun was an architect—and judging by the discussion, he seemed highly skilled.
After one of them mentioned material specifications, they even turned to him to confirm the details.
In essence, the task was simple: they needed Suo Tian and Captain Gao's teams to clear the walkers outside the northern side of the city so that the construction team could quickly build the barbed-wire barrier.
After Wang Jun and the others finalized the general plan with Suo Tian and Big Beard and left, Captain Gao spoke a few more words with Suo Tian, and then we all went our separate ways.
Big Beard and the middle-aged man stayed behind, while Suo Tian drove me back.
On the way back, I asked Suo Tian about Wang Jun.
He told me that Wang Jun had already joined this line of work a few months ago.
Zhang Qicong, Liu Rumiao, Lao Si, and several others had also joined the defense team.
They would all be moving into the villa district soon.
Thinking about it, it was only fair.
The headquarters handled things justly—if you contributed, your living conditions improved.
If you didn't want to face danger, then you couldn't expect a good life either.
After returning, I didn't tell the others about what I had seen on the surveillance screens.
I only said that I got bored and insisted on dragging Suo Tian out for a walk.
Looking at Meijing, who was sitting with Bruno and playing with the baby, I hesitated, unsure whether I should tell her that Wang Jun would be moving here.
Over the past six months, she and Bruno had gotten along surprisingly well.
At first, when Bruno didn't have work assigned, he came almost every day to help take care of the child.
Later, even after he got a job, he still came by often.
Anyone with eyes could see what Bruno meant.
Only Lili pretended not to notice whenever we brought it up—or she would simply carry the baby upstairs and ignore us.
It wasn't until after dinner, when I could no longer hold it in, that I left Suo Tian alone in the room and dragged Han Xue and Xu Shu up to the rooftop.
Avoiding the topic of the walkers, I told them about Wang Jun and the others moving in.
Both Xu Shu and Han Xue froze for a moment, as if they had almost forgotten those people after so much time.
It took them a while to process it.
The three of us chatted for a bit but came up with no real solution.
In the end, we decided to take things one step at a time.
At worst, we'd just have to spend more effort talking things through with Lili.
After Han Xue and Xu Shu went back downstairs, I stayed on the rooftop a while longer.
Staring at the brightly lit distance, before I knew it, it was time for the power to be cut again.
The lights in the distance began going out one by one, spreading rapidly, like darkness sweeping in from afar.
When the villa district finally sank completely into darkness, I let out a long sigh.
Everything… was far from over.
— The end of the Chapter–