Zhang Yi's face stayed cold. The two women felt it like a breeze off ice, but their new idea — that he must be secretly rich — only made them more eager. To them, indifference was proof; to him, it was a shield.
"Hey, Zhang Yi," Lin Caining tried, voice light and practiced. "You just came from that place, right?" She nodded toward the Michelin restaurant, the way a dog points at a well-fed man.
He answered with a short grunt, hands shoved into his pockets, and started walking toward the supermarket.
They trailed him at once. Fang Yuqing smiled that careful, expensive smile. "Zhang Yi, where are you headed?" she asked, as if she genuinely cared.
"To the supermarket." His voice closed like a door.
For a second the urge to end her rose in his chest — quick and savage. Then the cold logic he'd cultivated since waking took over. Kill her now and he risked witnesses, complications, messy traces. Kill her now and he'd lose the slow, pleasant satisfaction of watching her fall. Patience was a better weapon.
He kept walking.
"Coincidence!" Fang said, bright as a stage light. "We were just going to shop too. We'll come with you."
Of course they would. The restaurant bought them hope. He ignored them and pushed a cart in.
The supermarket smelled like cardboard and oil and possibility. Fluorescent lights made everything too clear. To Zhang Yi it was a vault.
He moved with purpose. The food aisles swallowed him. Instant noodles — the cheap kind and the fancy kind — stacked into his cart by the dozen. Canned meats, dried sausages, rows of self-heating meals, boxes of powdered milk, bags of rice. He picked for shelf life, calorie density, packing efficiency. Taste and prestige came second to survival math.
Fang and Lin mirrored him, putting things into their carts as if helping. Lin couldn't help herself; she whispered loud enough for Fang to hear, "Isn't that over the top? Who needs this much?" Fang only watched the spread and smiled like a moth that had found light.
At the frozen section Zhang Yi paused and added a crate of fresh steaks. Then, with no announcement, he grabbed two plastic bags of live fish, the kind sold for cooking right away. He set them gently into a separate carrier.
It was an experiment, not a statement. If his pocket space preserved frozen goods, what about fresh? Live fish were a brutal test: oxygen, temperature, the small life inside a bag. If they lasted after a trip into that white void, he'd know the rules. If not — he'd at least learn the limitations.
He didn't explain any of that. He stacked, he packed, he calculated in a private language of weights and days.
Lin blurted, "You earn—what—ten grand a month? That meal back there—"
"Lin," Fang hissed, "don't be crude." But the idea had lodged in both their heads: maybe he was hiding money.
Zhang Yi didn't reply. He let them make their guesses. Sooner or later, the rumor would feed itself.
He paid without flinching — a large sum. To others it would seem wasteful. To him it was insurance. Money burned in his pocket as an investment that would buy time, walls, bolts, and comfort.
The supermarket let him borrow three carts. He loaded them with a plan. One cart: canned and dried staples. Two: frozen meats and heavy, long-lasting goods. Three: fresh items and the live fish, sealed tight. He put the heaviest items in the cart he handed to Fang and Lin.
They complained a little when the load shifted and the wheels groaned. Complaints were useful. They signaled effort. They made the whole thing feel more real.
"Zhang Yi, this is a lot. Are you organizing a camp?" Fang pouted.
"Yeah," he said. "Camping."
They laughed, not hearing the menace lurking under the simplicity of his answer. To them, it was a joke. To him, it was practice.
He let them push. He had a car that could haul everything home in two runs. That would be efficient. But efficiency wasn't the point. This was rehearsal. This was bait. If word of his stash leaked, the people who once turned on him would come like wolves. Let them. A properly built refuge could withstand a battering — and then it could turn that battering into an advantage.
As the carts filled, Zhang Yi organized. He separated items by shelf life and by usefulness: canned goods and cured meats in one, cooking oil and fuel in another, a cart reserved for perishables and the experiment. He labeled none of it; his memory would be the label.
The two women grunted as they pushed. Sweat stood bright on their brows. Lin tried to keep her voice light. "How many people are you expecting?" she asked, breath coming quick.
"Enough," Zhang Yi said. He could have said nothing. He could have lied. He told the truth, clipped and small: "The weather's unpredictable. Better prepared than not."
That little sermon sounded to Fang like a rich man's eccentricity. "Oh, you," she said, as if charmed. "Since you don't want to say, say no more. But you owe me a meal, you know."
"Next month," Zhang Yi said. The words were casual. The promise was a hook.
She brightened. "It's a date!"
Lin chimed in: "We'll come too!"
They believed dinner would buy them everything — or at least a chance at buying. That belief was currency.
He handed the two women the heaviest cart and one lighter load. "Push this," he said. "I'll follow." His tone was neutral, almost bored. They obeyed because they wanted to believe in him, and because a free dinner was a powerful motivator.
The carts creaked and rattled. The weight felt right under hands that did not know how to be practical. Zhang Yi watched them, their steps clipping, their chatter a thin soundtrack to his planning.
On the walk back to the neighborhood he rehearsed contingencies. Safe room blueprints. Reinforcement materials. Routes to and from Walmart's South warehouse. Timetables. Staff rotations he already knew from his job. Methods to move things unseen. Ways to use the pocket space to shift bulk quietly, quickly, without alarms.
Three carts, then two, then one — all of it practice for larger moves. Let them carry his immediate future while he set up its long-term security.
They reached his building. Neighbors turned heads at the procession. A man joked about a market run. Children pointed at the stacked bags of rice like flags.
Zhang Yi smiled a little, an action that did not reach his eyes. The smile was a corner turned up by calculation.
Inside the apartment he fed items into the white void one by one. Cans vanished. Packages disappeared. The fresh steaks followed. Then, with a small, precise thought he sent the purse of live fish into the pocket space and closed the thought.
He stepped back. If the fish came out alive later, he'd have a miracle of preservation. If not, he'd know the limit.
Either way, he'd learned something. Either way, he had a head start.
He watched Fang and Lin pretend to be useful as they drank water and wiped their foreheads. Their faces were flushed with exertion and expectation. They thought they'd earned a feast and perhaps a future.
He let them think that.
Outside, the city hummed on. Inside, in the quiet between cartons, Zhang Yi laid the first tiles of a plan that would not be hurried. The world was ending. He had a month, a pocket space, and a warehouse map in his head. That was enough to start.