On the seventh day of hunger, I could no longer tell whether the buzzing in my head was the flies or the howling of my stomach.
Nestled behind a shelf in an abandoned supermarket, I stared at the expired packet of potato chips in front of me for ten minutes. The shelf life was three months early, and the oil inside seeped out of the packaging bag, sticking together in a sticky mess. But my Adam's apple still rolled.
The end came so damn suddenly.
On June 13th, Saturday, I was still delivering my last takeout order. The customer was a homebody living on the 28th floor. He ordered a spicy hotpot and added extra coriander. As soon as I parked the car, I heard screams in the distance, and then the whole city seemed to have been pressed on the mute button—and then, there was blood.
I survived purely by luck. I was riding an electric bike that day, and I could get out of the gaps when there was a traffic jam. Relying on this advantage, I rushed all the way back to the old community where I rented, hid in the semi-abandoned supermarket downstairs, pulled down the rolling shutter door, and stayed like this for seven days.
In seven days, all the water in the supermarket was robbed, the food was turned over, and even the instant noodle seasoning packets on the shelves were cleaned out in the last two days. The potato chips in my hand were found after rummaging under three cash registers.
To eat or not?
Damn it, forget it. I closed my eyes and popped the chips into my mouth. The moment the salty taste exploded on my tongue, I almost shed tears - not because it tasted bad, but because it was so real, so real that it reminded me that I was still alive.
The phone suddenly lit up.
My first reaction was to shut down the phone to save power, but when my peripheral vision caught sight of the content on the screen, the hairs all over my body stood up.
