“When did you open that suicide note?” he asked softly.
“Several years later,” Sinan said, “I don’t remember the exact day. Only after seeing the letter did I know the vaccine research had made critical progress. But when I asked Luo Mu’er, he said the project was frozen…”
“So I thought, since the Pandora virus originally started with my mother, I also have a responsibility to pass on the vaccine.”
He finished speaking and smiled.
It was just a very slight and weary smile, almost imperceptible if not looked at carefully.
But from that smile, Zhou Rong saw the figure who had jumped from 30,000 feet, awakened by being torn apart by zombies at the cliff’s edge, and who had staggered out of the valley, struggling with his last breath to call for help when critically wounded.
Zhou Rong sat holding Sinan’s hand, their palms interlocked. He held Sinan tightly between his strong thighs and asked softly, “When you contacted Director Guo, how could you trust 118 so easily?”
Sinan tilted his head back. The night sky over the island was deep. After a long moment, he smiled and said, “Although you had already forgotten me then, who else could I trust besides you?
Zhou Rong reached out and pressed down on Si Nan’s nape, gently turning his face towards himself, and planted a long, lingering kiss on his cool, soft lips.
After a while, Zhou Rong picked up Si Nan horizontally, letting his arms hook around his neck, and walked towards the dormitory on the other side of the island.
“What are you laughing at?” Si Nan asked softly.
Zhou Rong said: “I was thinking about what Romulus said about you in the cafeteria…”
“Stabbing everyone to death with a spoon?”
Zhou Rong lowered his head, with Si Nan’s face pressed against his neck; from his angle, he could only see Si Nan’s raised corner of the mouth: “It’s true.”
“But that doesn’t seem like your character.”
Si Nan countered: “Do you even know what kind of person I am?”
Zhou Rong pondered for a moment, smiling: “Being able to stop on a street surrounded by zombies and actively rescue a group of strangers trapped in a parking lot, that’s probably enough to tell what kind of person you are!”
