Li Youcai's last memory was of huddling in the innermost cubicle of the laundromat, clutching the handwritten copy of his family's ancestral book, The Eighteen Laundry Techniques, and listening to the world outside fall apart. Then... he passed out?
"So, I'm not dead?"
He pushed himself up and found himself lying on the battered recliner by the laundromat's entrance, covered with a bedsheet washed pale. The shop was filled with a familiar smell of laundry detergent, bleach, and years of limescale. In the air after the apocalypse, it somehow seemed... a little fresh?
He stood up, his legs slightly unsteady, and walked to the glass door. Through the grime, he looked outside.
The street was still the same street, but everything was unrecognizable...
