She had seen enough. She had beaten them already, and if they had any brains at all, the fear should have stayed with them long enough to keep them off her floor forever. But the chat made it clear they had not learned enough yet. That was fine. They would not survive long enough to keep being annoying. The apocalypse was still young. Their injuries were already bad. The zombies outside were already growing in number. Bai Li could practically hear the future closing around them. In a day or two, maybe less, they would stop talking about her and start screaming about themselves. She had no intention of sitting there and correcting every false message. Let them spread their rumors. Let them call her a murderer. Let them pretend they had been innocent. They would not last long enough for those lies to matter.

She put the phone down for a moment and looked at the quiet room around her. The computer screen still showed the camera feed. The hallway was empty now except for the damage and the shadows. The stairwell would probably become a problem later, but for the moment it was quiet enough. Bai Li picked the phone back up and scrolled one last time through the building chat. The same voices were still talking. The manager was still trying to sound important. The men were still trying to protect their pride by turning into victims in the chat. The woman who had been neutral was still making comments about Bai Li’s bad temper. A couple of others were piling on with little warning messages and careful tone, all of them acting like they were the reasonable ones in the room. Bai Li read it all with the same indifferent expression. These people were not dangerous. They were not smart. They were not even worth the effort of remembering for long. They were just ugly little insects thrashing around in a collapsing building.

In the end, Bai Li only gave a soft scoff and unlocked her screen again, this time going back to Weibo where the comments were still much more interesting. There was a thread about a Thai GL novel adaptation with fans arguing over whether the leads had better chemistry in the book or the drama. Another post had people sharing favorite GL manga art and talking about which couples felt the most natural. One fan wrote that they liked stories where two women fell in love while acting like they were not already halfway in love from the beginning. Bai Li found that one funny enough to smile at. She preferred that kind of sweetness anyway. It was better than listening to people who had just been beaten and were now typing lies with shaking hands. Her thoughts drifted to Yan Cijin for a second, she wondered what she was doing now.

..

..

On the other hand, Yan Laojin looked at her daughter and asked with real concern about Bai Li, her brows pulled together as she glanced toward the phone and then back at Yan Cijin’s face. "What’s going on? So many people are saying such terrible things about Bai Li. How can these people be so muddle headed? Jeez, I always knew that the people in this complex were judgmental and hypocrites. Now look at them cursing such a good girl!" Yan Laojin clicked her tongue in irritation as she spoke, and the more she talked the more annoyed she became on Bai Li’s behalf. She had never even met the girl properly, but she had already formed a very clear impression from the way her daughter spoke about her and from the few things she had heard in the building group chat. A person who stocked up in advance, stayed calm in a mess, and still ended up being surrounded by greedy mouths was clearly not the problem. The problem was the people who thought the world suddenly owed them something. Yan Laojin glanced at Yan Cijin again, and then, with a kind of self righteous certainty that only mothers could pull off, she said, "No, my dear daughter. Go and pay Bai Li a visit and coax her. After all, who would coax her if not her girlfriend!"

Yan Laojin said it with such a firm and satisfied smile that she almost looked more excited than her daughter. She even nodded to herself as if she had just solved the whole thing in one sentence. To her, it was very simple. Bai Li was clearly a good girl. Bai Li had been kind enough to let her daughter come over yesterday and had even been polite when talking about dressing the wound. And now some ugly people in the building had gone and said terrible things about her, which Yan Laojin thought was just ridiculous. If a person had good manners, kept herself together, and did not rush into other people’s homes with greedy intentions, then she deserved better treatment. Yan Laojin had no patience for those residents. She had lived long enough to know that once fear hit, a lot of people dropped their decent masks very quickly. She had already seen enough to know that the people in this complex were not as good as they pretended to be. So she looked at Yan Cijin with an expression that was both serious and encouraging, then waved her hand like she was sending her daughter on an important mission. "Go on," she said. "If you do not go now, what if Bai Li thinks you are avoiding her? A girlfriend needs a little coaxing too, you know."

Yan Cijin was still sitting on the carpet in the living room with Lili, and the little girl was holding onto a cat toy and making tiny playful movements as if she were a kitten herself. The whole thing was very cute and very distracting, which only made Yan Cijin’s mother more amused. Lili wriggled around on the carpet, then crawled closer

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TO BE CONTINUED.