Chapter 348 - Talk to a friend

Chapter 348: Chapter 348 - Talk to a friend

By the time Yunfeng stepped outside, the base had already come alive. People were moving between the villas carrying buckets and supplies, dragging broken furniture out onto the streets and clearing away the mess left behind from yesterday.

Somewhere farther down the road, one of the generators coughed several times before finally rumbling to life. It was loud enough to make a few people turn toward it, but Yunfeng found himself smiling faintly at the sound.

Yesterday, this place had been filled with zombies and dead bodies. Today, people were arguing about where to dump broken furniture and who had taken the last clean bucket. It wasn’t much, but it felt strangely good.

Muchen had gone back upstairs after Yunfeng practically forced him to eat breakfast and rest, while Qiu Yue had finally disappeared into one of the rooms after being strictly ordered not to touch another microscope until he slept.

Yunfeng didn’t trust the doctor to listen, but unless he physically tied him to the bed, there wasn’t much else he could do.

As he walked down the road, Yunfeng absently ran his fingers through his hair again. More white had appeared since morning.

The roots were almost completely white now, with most of the black remaining toward the ends.

His fire still hadn’t returned, but every now and then there was a faint tingling beneath his fingertips, like tiny sparks trying to wake up under his skin.

Qiu Yue had been right. Whatever the zombie girl had done to him was wearing off.

"Stop touching it. You’re going to pull it all out before it even turns white again."

Yunfeng looked over and spotted Jai crouching beside a pile of broken concrete outside one of the villas. There was still a faint smear of dried blood beneath his nose, and although his complexion looked much better than yesterday, he was clearly not completely recovered.

Yunfeng immediately frowned and walked over. "Why are you working?"

Jai glanced up at him as though the question was ridiculous. "Why are you?"

"My powers are coming back."

"And my nose stopped bleeding."

"That doesn’t mean you’re fine."

Jai raised a brow. "And your hair turning white doesn’t mean you’re fine either."

Yunfeng opened his mouth, only to realize he didn’t have a proper answer to that. Jai’s lips immediately curled into a smug smile.

"Exactly."

"Shut up."

Yunfeng crouched beside him anyway and began helping. For the next few minutes, neither of them spoke much. Jai sorted through the debris while Yunfeng moved the heavier pieces aside, and for once, there wasn’t a zombie trying to eat them, someone screaming for help, or Muchen chasing Yunfeng down a street threatening to beat him. The quiet should have been relaxing.

Instead, Yunfeng’s mind returned to what Muchen had asked him the previous night.

Who are you going to tell next?

He already knew the answer. ℯℯ𝑙.

Jai.

It had to be Jai.

Yunfeng glanced sideways at him. Jai was completely focused on the rubble in front of him, tossing smaller pieces into one pile and anything useful into another. Yunfeng looked away, picked up a broken plank, and threw it aside. A few seconds later, his eyes drifted toward Jai again.

Jai stopped what he was doing.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Jai stared at him for a second before returning to work.

Yunfeng pretended to be busy.

Another minute passed.

He looked again.

This time Jai didn’t even bother lifting his head. "If you look at me one more time, I’m going to assume you’ve fallen in love with me."

Yunfeng nearly dropped the piece of wood in his hand. "What the hell?"

"You’ve been staring at me for the past five minutes."

"I haven’t."

"You have."

"You’re imagining things."

Jai finally looked at him. "I’m starting to think that zombie did something to your brain instead of your powers."

Yunfeng rolled his eyes, but the joke only delayed the problem for another few seconds. He had told Muchen everything. He had sat there and admitted that he came from the future, that he had died in another life and woken up inside this body, and somehow that confession had been easier than this.

But Muchen had never known the original Yunfeng.

That was the difference.

From the day Muchen met him, the Yunfeng he knew had always been him. There wasn’t another person hidden behind years of memories for Muchen to compare him to.

Jai had known this body long before Yunfeng ever woke up inside it.

He had grown up with the original owner. They had fought, laughed, probably gotten into trouble together countless times. Jai wasn’t simply Yunfeng’s friend now. He had been that person’s friend first.

Yunfeng rubbed his palms against his pants and finally spoke. "Jai."

"Hm?"

"If..." The word came out, and then Yunfeng’s courage immediately failed him.

Jai waited for several seconds before glancing over. "If what?"

Yunfeng stared down at the rubble between his shoes. "If your friend wasn’t actually your friend... would you hate him?"

Jai slowly stopped working.

"What?"

"Hypothetically."

"That did not make it better."

"Just answer."

"How am I supposed to answer when I don’t even know what you’re asking?" Jai turned toward him fully now, confusion written across his face. "What do you mean my friend isn’t actually my friend?"

Yunfeng wished Muchen were there. Somehow saying this ridiculous thing aloud to Jai made it sound even worse than it had in his head.

He picked at a crack in the piece of concrete beside him. "I mean... what if someone else was living in your friend’s body?"

Jai stared at him.

Yunfeng waited.

Jai continued staring.

"What?"

Without warning, Jai reached over and pressed the back of his hand against Yunfeng’s forehead.

Yunfeng immediately slapped it away. "What are you doing?"

"Checking if you have a fever."

"I’m being serious."

"That is exactly why I’m checking."

"Jai."

"Did that little zombie hit you in the head yesterday?"

"No."

"Did something hit you in the head?"

"No!"

Jai looked genuinely concerned now, which somehow made the entire thing worse. Yunfeng let out a frustrated breath and stood abruptly. "Forget it. I shouldn’t have asked."

He had barely taken a step when Jai caught his wrist.

"Hey."

Yunfeng looked back.

The amusement had disappeared from Jai’s face. He studied Yunfeng for a few seconds, and that familiar sharpness in his gaze made Yunfeng uncomfortable. Jai knew when something was wrong. He always did.

"What is going on with you?" Jai asked more quietly. "You’ve been acting weird since you came over here."

"Nothing."

"That’s bullshit."

Yunfeng pulled his wrist free. "I said forget it."

Jai watched him for a moment longer. Yunfeng was already preparing himself for another round of questions, but Jai eventually sighed and returned to the rubble.

"Fine. I won’t ask."

That actually made Yunfeng pause. "That’s it?"

"What do you want me to do? Tie you down until you confess your deepest secrets?"

Yunfeng gave him a look.

Jai shrugged. "You’ll tell me when you want to. Until then, I’ll just assume you’ve finally lost your mind."

Despite himself, Yunfeng laughed softly and crouched beside him again.

Jai bumped his shoulder against Yunfeng’s. "We’ve survived zombies, starvation, crazy people, your terrible personality and whatever the hell happened yesterday. I doubt whatever you’re hiding is going to make me run away screaming."

Yunfeng’s smile weakened slightly.

You don’t know that.

But he didn’t say it.

They continued working, and gradually the strange tension between them eased. Jai started complaining about the amount of cleanup they still had left, while Yunfeng half listened and moved debris into piles.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Jai chuckled.

"Do you remember when we were thirteen and you broke the window in my dad’s office?"

Yunfeng’s hand stopped.

Jai didn’t notice. He was already grinning at the memory. "You threw that stupid ball even after I told you not to. The second the glass broke, you looked me straight in the face and said it was my fault."

Yunfeng stared at him.

He didn’t remember.

Not even vaguely.

Jai continued laughing as he worked. "And then my dad came in, and you stood behind him looking all innocent while he yelled at me. I still can’t believe I didn’t beat you up afterward."

Yunfeng forced a small smile. "Sounds like something I’d do."

"It was absolutely something you’d do."

Jai continued talking, describing how they had tried to hide the broken glass before Shinju noticed and somehow made the entire situation worse. He remembered every detail. Where Yunfeng had been standing, what excuse he’d used, how they had spent the rest of the afternoon trying to avoid Shinju.

Yunfeng listened quietly.

He smiled when Jai laughed. He even threw in a comment here and there so Jai wouldn’t notice anything strange.

But he remembered none of it.

He didn’t remember the window. He didn’t remember being thirteen with Jai. He didn’t remember Shinju yelling at them or the two of them hiding afterward.

Because it hadn’t been him.

That realization wasn’t new. Yunfeng had known from the moment he woke up in this body that there had been someone here before him. But sitting beside Jai and listening to him laugh over a memory that clearly meant something to him made it feel different.

Jai wasn’t talking about some faceless original owner.

He was talking about his childhood best friend.

Someone he had loved in his own way long before Yunfeng arrived.

Yunfeng lowered his gaze to his hands. These weren’t even the hands he had been born with. This face wasn’t his either. The name Jai called him belonged to another person first.

With Muchen, he had been terrified that the truth would make his lover see him differently.

With Jai, the fear was worse.

Because if Jai believed him, then Yunfeng wouldn’t simply be confessing that he came from the future.

He would be telling Jai that the boy who had broken that window with him, grown up beside him and shared all those memories with him was gone.

And Yunfeng had no idea whether Jai would look at him afterward and still see his best friend.