"Shenzi~"
I heard my name but didn't turn around.
The float was moving. Not a lot, just that small nervous twitch that meant something was considering the bait. I kept my eyes on it.
"Yuan Shenzi!"
Still didn't turn.
The float dipped. I pulled, nothing. It escaped. "Tch," I clicked my tongue and recast the line.
"Are you seriously ignoring me right now?"
"I'm fishing," I said.
Qin Minxue dropped herself onto the rock beside me, close enough that her shoulder almost touched mine. She tucked her knees up and watched the water like she'd always been interested in fishing and this wasn't her first time following me here specifically.
I glanced at her once. She had that look on her face she always had, sort of soft, sort of expectant, like she was waiting for me to say something worth waiting for.
I looked back at the water.
Minxue was pretty. Not in a loud way. More like the kind of pretty you notice on a quiet afternoon, neat features, dark hair tucked behind one ear, the kind of girl other guys in class spent a lot of effort trying to talk to. She was also, apparently, very patient. Because she kept showing up wherever I was on this trip without being asked.
I genuinely did not think much of it. I'm not particularly unaware as a person. I just... didn't have any real reason to be thinking about girlfriends or whatever. That whole track of thought wasn't really running in my head. Feelings? Sure, I had them. A schedule for acting on them? Not really.
So when Minxue followed me to the dock this morning while everyone else was still setting up tents, I figured she just didn't feel like helping with tents.
Made sense to me.
I wasn't wearing a shirt. Didn't see the point, it was warm, I was planning to get in the water if the fishing got boring, and clothes are annoying when you're trying to move. The morning sun was already doing its thing. I had the rod in one hand and my phone face-down beside me.
"You've been here since six," Minxue said.
"The fish are active in the morning."
"It's almost nine."
"I'm still here, aren't I?"
She made a small sound that might've been a laugh or might've been frustration. Probably both.
I stood up to reposition, the current was shifting slightly left and I wanted to cast toward that cluster of reeds about twenty meters out. When I stretched my arm back to cast, Minxue went unusually quiet.
Thrown the line. Settled back down. She was looking at the water now with her chin resting on her knee.
"You're weird," she said.
"Sure."
"That's not a compliment."
"Didn't take it as one."
She looked at me sideways. I was watching the float. It was a decent silence, the kind that isn't actually uncomfortable even if one of the parties involved wants it to be more than it is.
Then I caught something.
Pulled it up and we both looked at it.
It was a fish. Probably. The shape was roughly fish-shaped. But the color was off, this ugly grey-green that didn't match anything I recognized from this lake, and one of its eyes was sitting slightly too far forward on its face. It was moving wrong too. Even out of the water, gasping like they do, it was more... aggressive about it. Twisting toward my hand.
I held the line further away.
"That's ugly," Minxue said.
"Yeah."
"Is it normal?"
"No."
I looked at it for another few seconds, then set it down on the dock carefully and took a photo. I'm the kind of person who watches a lot of videos, survival stuff, fishing, building, outdoor content, that type. I had probably a reasonable amount of fish knowledge compared to the average seventeen year old. This thing didn't match any of it.
I tossed it back.
"Why'd you throw it back?" Minxue asked.
"Not eating that."
She laughed properly this time. I picked up my rod and considered whether to keep casting or pack up. The fish had put a weird feeling on the morning, like a note played slightly off-key. I couldn't explain it better than that.
I decided to pack up.
We walked back toward camp together, not because I suggested it, she just fell into step beside me. The campsite was alive by now, about thirty-something of us total, class 2-B plus Mr. Hao, our homeroom teacher, who was standing near the fire pit with a coffee thermos looking like a man who had accepted his fate as a chaperone.
He spotted me. "Shenzi. No shirt before ten is not the example I'm looking for."
"It's warm."
"That's not—" He stopped. Sighed. Took a sip of his coffee. "Put a shirt on."
I went and put a shirt on.
The morning moved the way school trips do, loosely, with no real structure, people eating and talking in their groups. I sat with my food and pulled out my phone, half thinking about that fish. Figured I'd look it up. Maybe post the photo somewhere.
I opened the app and the first thing I saw was a video clip reposted about forty times across my feed.
I scrolled.
Same clip, same clip. A different clip of the same thing. A live stream thumbnail, news article. And another video.
I clicked one.
It was shaky footage, phone camera, pointed at a river somewhere, city in the background, high rises, broad daylight. There was a figure in the water and people on the bank filming instead of helping, which told you something. The figure was moving wrong. Not drowning-wrong. Just wrong. Lurching toward the bank.
I clicked another one.
This one was a street. A man, or something that used to be one, and he was—
I closed that one.
I sat there for a second.
Opened a news tab. Then another. The headlines were stacking fast, the kind of fast that means nobody's checked anything before posting because there's no time to check, multiple cities, multiple countries, same pattern, people acting wrong, attacking others, animals behaving the same.
I looked at the lake, thought about the fish.
And thought about the way it had twisted toward my hand.
I looked at my phone again. Someone had already started a live stream titled IT'S ACTUALLY HAPPENING with a hundred thousand viewers that had probably been like eight hundred just an hour ago.
The word nobody wants to say first was already everywhere in the comments, capitalized, repeated, like if enough people typed it at the same time it would become more real
I picked up my food and finished eating it.
Well.