During winter, would you feel scared when you had to put on a sweater?
The short moment when you put that thick sweater over your head and before you could push your head out of the collar, you would see nothing except the dark outlines of the sweater. That would mean that you wouldn't notice if someone was standing beside you.
Lin Sanjiu never imagined that she would feel so scared when she was putting on the sweater. Twenty minutes earlier, she had just alighted from the train...
From the public square where the train station was situated, Lin Sanjiu could see a mountain some distance away. As it was behind a white mist, Lin Sanjiu could make out the greenish outline of that mountain. The station was quite some distance away from Bamboo Grove Mountains. This tourist attraction supported many small businesses. Outside the station, there were many haphazardly parked motorbikes. Some of the convenience stores and kiosks with half-opened doors had been ransacked. There weren't many items left behind. A few conspicuous new hotels were built right beside some old, short residential buildings. This appeared to be a very ordinary neighborhood in the small city.
The spooky incident at Mausoleum Elementary School left an extremely deep impression on her. She walked around the public square cautiously and finally heaved a sigh of relief after checking that no one was around. After she relaxed a little, she became more aware of the cold. It was so cold that her skin was starting to hurt.
"I need to look for some clothes as soon as possible, I can't even think straight in this cold." Lin Sanjiu grumbled to herself softly. She rubbed her arms non-stop. The orange-red vests were made of a poor-quality material, being thin and permeable. It was a sort of material that would feel cold in winter and warm in summer. While she thought about this, she chose a random building and ran into it.
That was an old red brick building and there was even a large metal door. However, to a posthuman, that metal door was no different from a plastic one. After Lin Sanjiu activated her [Mosaic Censorship] a few times and blasted through a few doors, she found herself in someone's home.
The floor tiles had turned yellow with age; the rooms were small; a few clotheslines were randomly tied throughout the living room. This was more than proof that this was not a well-off family. There were clean clothes on the clothesline that were already dry. Lin Sanjiu did not expect to find what she wanted this quickly when she first stepped into this apartment. However, when she looked at the clothes carefully, she was immediately disappointed.
"This family washed their summer clothes?" Lin Sanjiu questioned herself, feeling puzzled. There were only singlets and short, there wasn't even a single shirt which could keep her warm. She looked around and found it so dirty and messy that she had no interest in going into the bedrooms to look for other clothes. She turned and walked to the neighbor's apartment. Similarly, she destroyed the lock on the door with a few attacks. The fragments of the lock fell to the ground noisily, and that sound echoed through the entire building for a long time. Without a lock, the door creaked open.
This apartment was much cleaner and more comfortable. At least, clothes were strewn all around. Once she stepped in, she sprinted to the bedroom and found two large closets like she expected. One of them held the owners' summer clothes, while the other stored the owners' winter clothes. They were kept neatly but Lin Sanjiu soon sighed.
She looked at many sets of clothes and realized that they were all old people's clothes. There were male and female clothes in the closet. Not only were the clothes too big for her, but the thickest coats also had large red and green peonies prints—evidently, an old couple must have lived here in the past.
As a woman who once had quite a good fashion sense, Lin Sanjiu really wasn't keen on wearing them. However, her arms which were exposed to the cold wind were going numb soon...
"Forget it. It's okay." She made her mind up and took the vests. "Being warm is the most important thing. I will just change out of these if I see other clothes." She wanted to convert a few more clothes into cards but quickly decided against that idea. After searching for some time, she finally found a normal-looking black sweater. She stuffed her arms impatiently into the sweater and decided to quickly put the sweater over her head.
When she looked down, preparing to pull the sweater over her head, she caught a glimpse of a pair of feet in a pair of old cloth shoes. The tips of the old cloth shoes were directly in front of her Timberland boots.
Right now, there was a person standing in front of her—
Lin Sanjiu's arms were caught in the sleeves of the sweater. Her upper body was in a defenseless position. She wanted to scream, but she couldn't make a sound. She quickly retreated backward and pulled her arms apart. The black sweater was ripped in two. Lin Sanjiu regained an unobstructed view of her surroundings. She froze on the spot, then knitted her brows. There was no one else in the room. A pair of green cloth shoes was on the floor—but she didn't remember it being there before, when she entered the room.
She really hated this feeling.
"What the hell is wrong with this world," she had been here less than a day and the number of shocks she received was almost comparable to the total number she accumulated over the previous two worlds, "Even though there is no one here, why is it so eerie..."
Even the courage she gained from her many close shaves with death wasn't quite enough to calm herself. She grabbed the thickest jacket and wrapped it around her conveniently before she subconsciously avoided the pair of old cloth shoes and rushed towards the main door.
When she reached the main door, she paused. This apartment belonged to an old couple, so naturally, they had some old items. Lin Sanjiu spotted a simple Chinese almanac calendar which Lin Sanjiu hadn't see people using for a long time. The old couple probably tore off a page of that calendar every day, leaving a thick stack of torn pages.
This was nothing special, but Lin Sanjiu couldn't help noticing something. The first remaining page of the calendar stated, "30 May, Saturday."
She touched the page of the paper and found that the dust on it wasn't that thick. At most, only a month had passed from that date.
"It's summer?" Lin Sanjiu looked down at the thick flowery cotton-padded jacket on her body.
It wasn't unusual that the climate of an apocalyptic world would change. However, everything in this world seemed normal, aside from that incident at Mausoleum Elementary School, and this temperature could never be the cause of the apocalyptic event. Lin Sanjiu couldn't think of a reason why the temperature would suddenly drop.
Lin Sanjiu didn't want to stay in this apartment another second longer. A suspicion flashed through her mind. Then, she ran back to the passageway and left the residential building through the metal door. Even though it was foggy outside, the soft sunlight outside comforted her.
"I think I should find a safe shelter to stay right now," she said to herself encouragingly. "Fourteen months would pass very quickly..." Lin Sanjiu, sporting a flowery jacket, stood on the spot thinking for some time and headed toward the hotels. The green cloth shoes in the room had changed their direction at some unknown time and were now facing the door.