Apocalyptic Forecast - Chapter 3
Chapter 3: Which Normal Guy Keeps a Diary?
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation
Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
“Name.”
“Huai Shi.”
“Age?”
“Seventeen…”
Inside the police station, Huai Shi was having his statement recorded. However, the conversation was starting to feel really familiar to him. Why did it feel like he had repeated this a few times already?
He was afraid something would go wrong, so after he had his statement recorded, he even took the policeman’s hand and asked repeatedly, “You guys aren’t looking to hire gigolos here, are you?”
“…”
The policeman’s expression twitched, and he ignored the boy. After he poured Huai Shi a cup of tea, he told the boy he could leave after the check-up.
Huai Shi sat in the chair and sighed. His heart was still pounding.
The alley, the dead man, the goldfish, and the metal box.
All these strange elements were gathered in one place, so even Huai Shi, whose life had also been a veritable roller coaster, was finding it a little hard to digest right now.
There was one thing he could be sure of, however. This was not normal at all!
When he connected it to the explosion at the port earlier, he even wondered if it was a gunfight amongst the members of a drug cartel!
What if that box contained 100 grams of pure snow-white powder? It would be something else if the police caught him then.
Although it was true he was so broke he could not even afford a meal, there was no need for him to look for the buffet line in prison, right?
Under these circumstances, a resident of the East Xia Republic… No, any person with a hint of logic would usually call the cops, right?
“That’s right, you did very well. Under those circumstances, the most logical thing to do is call the cops for help at the first chance you get.”
In the evidence room, the policeman who returned him his things nodded in approval. “If it was a bomb in there instead of heroin, things would get even worse…”
“But what on earth is in that box?” Huai Shi asked, extremely curious.
“I don’t know. We put it under the X-ray and checked it for bombs, so it shouldn’t be anything dangerous. But it looks like an antique. As for what it is precisely, we’ll have to wait for an expert to open it up tomorrow before we can tell. Still, your business is done here, so just go on ahead home.”
With that, he put the basket in front of Huai Shi.
Since there was a fatality involved, everything Huai Shi had on him had been taken apart and checked. Once he received his things back, the first thing Huai Shi did was to take out the thick notebook he had been using for years and flip through it.
No one had touched it.
The policeman in the evidence room saw how anxious he was, so he could not help but burst out laughing. “What’s the matter? Are you worried we read your diary? I can’t believe young people still keep diaries these days. Haha, don’t worry, we didn’t read it, not at all…”
Huai Shi laughed awkwardly and stuffed the notebook into his pocket. When he picked up his phone, he accidentally saw the text telling him how much money he had left in his account again, and his heart began to hurt once more.
After he repeatedly confirmed with the policemen that he would not be receiving a reward for reporting the case, he walked out of the police station in agony. It felt like the entire world was an unspeakably cruel place.
He walked down the streets with his head lowered, and the street lamps cast a long shadow behind him.
In the swaying shadows, there was something like the flapping of a crow’s wings.
Boom!
A clap of thunder rang through the night sky.
It seemed as though it had been waiting for Huai Shi to emerge. After a brief pause that evening, the torrential rain crashed down amidst the claps of thunder and lightning.
By the time Huai Shi reached home, he was completely soaked.
He stood in front of the large metal door and sighed. Taking out a key, he unlocked the chain around the door, and the door creaked open with a piercing screech that even the storm could not hide.
“I’m back…”
No one responded from within the darkness.
His phone torch revealed how bare and dilapidated the old yard covered in fallen leaves looked.
Under the layers upon layers of ivy and vines, there was a wall long since stripped bare. The courtyard behind the metal door was covered with a mess of leaves, and the long-neglected fountain had been dry for ages now. The stone statues on either side were damaged and broken, so they looked eerie and cold.
The cloud-covered sky suddenly lit up with a sharp bolt of lightning, illuminating the creepy visage of that old house extending into the yard.
…
At the foot of Greenview Mountain on the outskirts of New Ocean City, there sat Huai Shi’s home.
A long time ago, it was called the Yu Garden Chalcedony Museum. Back then, this garden had been extremely extravagant, having undergone a construction period of five years and vast funds. The garden was filled with flowers that bloomed through the year, and there were evergreens planted outside the door. The interior was extremely magnificent as well, of course, and the owner was one of the richest men in Hua East. Countless people came and went every day…
However, that all happened ninety years ago now.
The world changed too quickly. In a mere ninety years, the era of steam power gave way to electricity, and the electric empire moved into a new electronic era. The world was at peace, then at war, and then at peace again… Too many things happened, and there were too many things to remember, so in the end, some things became less important to remember than others.
After a short heyday, Yu Garden had experienced a long silence and gradual decline for many years now. Most people had forgotten about it.
Amidst the rampaging weeds, the extravagance of days past was no more. The climbing ivy covered the cracks on the stained wall, and most of the statues in the courtyard were already disfigured and broken, unrecognizable from their initial forms. After the careless spending and wastage of some thoughtless descendants, this once-magnificent mansion was now empty and derelict. It was almost becoming… No, it had already become a rather unpopular haunted mansion.
To Huai Shi, this worn-down house, the equally aging and falling-apart cello, and his meaningless life were all he had.
However, as the old house fell apart more with every day, as cracks gradually appeared on the cello, Huai Shi was beginning to think that his life was going to bid him farewell soon too.
“Bank account ending with digits 8193 has 144.444 yuan remaining…”
As the storm howled on outside, Huai Shi finally saw exactly how much he had left in his debit card.
“Mama mia… How will I survive?!”
Even if he ignored that ominous string of digits at the end there, he still had a powerful urge to die.
What should he do?
This was all thanks to his mom and dad.
Back when Huai Shi was born, his family still had a business to their name. If they worked a little harder, it was not impossible to regain their past glory. However, after his grandfather died when he was three, Huai Shi’s parents began a rapid downward spiral, spending all of their family’s money at a frightening rate. They were completely broke within a few years.
The two of them were addicts who splurged on food, drink, whores, and cigs. Finally, before the company went bankrupt, they ran away with all the money they had left, leaving Huai Shi alone to deal with the shareholders who were desperately slamming on the door, looking for the debts they were owed…
Almost everything worth anything in the house was swept away.
If Huai Shi’s grandfather had not made a will asking his lawyer to keep this old mansion to Huai Shi, to be inherited when he came of age, Huai Shi would have long since ended up homeless on the streets.
Sometimes, there were really no limits to what a person could tolerate. Take Huai Shi for example. Since he was ten, he felt as though he was going to go mad, but he did not think he would be this mentally strong. Until now, his mind showed no signs of breaking.
At the most, he would occasionally hear footsteps in the old house, or when a faucet leaked in the middle of the night, he heard someone sighing in the middle of his sleep, and so on…
Even so, life went on.
Even if he could not live, he had to.
Now that he thought about it, it was quite a miracle he survived until now.
At first, everything was slowly coming together again. He would grow up, and then he would use his results to get into a university as an honor student on a full scholarship. That way, he would find a job that could earn him enough money. Finally, his life might gradually come back on track.
The only problem was that he was starving to death now.
“Is life always this hard, or is it just when you are a kid?”
Unfortunately, there was no middle-aged man who was fond of flowers around to reply to him.
He was not a kid, and neither was he Mathilda.
So, in the long night of frustration, Huai Shi crouched on the balcony and smoked a cigarette, staring at the storm in the distance and sighing helplessly.
The thunder boomed.
Cold rain fell from the sky, as though threatening to swallow up the entire world.
The anger Huai Shi had pent up over all these days finally exploded from the depths of his heart, making him yell at the sky. “Stupid heavens above, what’re you trying to pull with all these theatrics? If you can, kill me right now!
“—I wanna defy the heavens themselves!!!”
As he yelled, he vented the pent-up anger in his heart. Finally, Huai Shi felt a little better.
Immediately afterward, however, he heard a boom. The black clouds raining down endless water and lightning gave an abrupt shudder, emitting the screech of rending metal at the same time.
Directly above the Chalcedony Museum, a huge gap suddenly appeared in the clouds, followed immediately by a scorching whip of lightning that came down like divine punishment. The lightning landed right on the railing in front of Huai Shi, shattering the old railing into dust.
There was the odor of electricity in the air, and stone pieces flew everywhere. Huai Shi collapsed onto the ground.
“The heck… Is this for real?”
He crawled and stumbled back into the house. Gathering the courage to poke his head out of the window before closing it, he yelled, “I won’t defy you, I won’t defy you anymore! I was kidding, Big Bro!”
Smack!
He closed the window.
Huai Shi sat on a chair, close to tears but unable to cry. He had the urge to yell at the sky again.
Was this life even livable anymore?!
After the deposit, his savings account fell down to three digits. He wanted to find a job, but he nearly joined a host club. He wanted to go home, but he stumbled across an eerie death, and once he was home, he wanted to defy the heavens, but all he got was a lightning bolt in lieu of a warning…
Right now, all he could do was hope his idiotic online friends could bring his miserable life a hint of happiness.
With just a tiny ray of hope, Huai Shi turned on his phone and saw that someone had posted a picture of him standing outside the host club in his class’ WeChat group. Everyone was tagging him, and some guys called Beast and Slaveheart even exclaimed, “Congrats to President Huai on your flashy debut into the world of gigolos! Do you want some of the girls in class to band together and send you a flower wreath?”
“Scram! I don’t like young girls, I prefer smooth-skinned baldies like you two!”
After Huai Shi replied, he turned off his phone and could not help but cover his face.
Great, now everyone in the world knew that he almost became a gigolo…
What was the most frustrating thing in the world? It was not losing your good name overnight after ten years of innocence, it was having your reputation destroyed before even doing anything dirty.
What a meaningless loss!
How did things turn out this way?
He had such a huge house and a cheat code of his own, so his happiness should double and multiply. Two sources of happiness should bring even more joy, and he should be living a dream-like life of ecstasy now, so why—
Boom!
Before he could even complete that thought, there was another bolt of lightning outside the window. It gave Huai Shi a scare, even through the window, and he no longer dared to let his mind wander. All he could do was pull out his thick notebook from his bag, tears pooling in his eyes.
“Can’t you be a little better? Other people have cheat codes that let them add points or give them missions. Some people can change into girls, even. Why is it that all you can do is write a diary?”
That was right, this thing was his cheat code.
Ever since he had a high fever when he was nine, after which he found this thing, he immediately knew that this was not just any random item. He took good care of it, hoping and dreaming every day that he would hear a mysterious voice saying, “Super XX system, download complete”. After that, he would be able to make a name for himself and become a god or a buddha. His life would be an OP fanfiction, and he would burn out hundreds of cash counters trying to count his money. He would be so famous that after he died, they would turn him into a girl in a gacha game…
However, even until now he had no idea what this dang thing could do.
It looked like an old notebook, but it could not be ripped, torn, burned, or soaked. The only impressive thing it could do was automatically write a new diary entry every day, recording every second of his life in real-time… It was as though the diary was saying, “I’m going to record every dumb thing you ever did in your chuuni years and then show them to you later.”
He flipped open the heavy cover, and the silhouette of a crow on the page was still extremely eye-catching.
Huai Shi flipped to the very last page and thought back on his strange life today. When he read the part where he left the police station, he suddenly paused.
“In the swaying shadows, there was something like the flapping of a crow’s wings?”
Huai Shi read it and immediately sighed. “I didn’t know this piece of trash was good at building up the atmosphere too… Maybe I can copy a few paragraphs someday and make it into a fantasy novel. At least that way I can earn some cash.”
Of course, that embarrassing line was mercilessly recorded into the book as well.
“…”
Huai Shi sighed and continued to flip through the pages. To his surprise, instead of finding blank pages like he usually did, he saw an extra thick dividing page at the very end. Beyond the divider, there were a few strange files…
It seemed to be a series of CVs from somewhere, with two-inch passport photos attached.
Most of the files were of tall and well-built men who looked like they could beat up several Huai Shi’s on their own, but there were also a few seductive-looking ladies he had never seen before. There was even a bald prematurely-aging middle-aged face that he seemed to remember seeing in the local news…
Chen Bo, Wang Quan, Mu Jing, Lu Bai…
Those strange files were actually increasing at an alarming rate, and when they finally stopped, there were more than seventy of them in total.
“This is so weird…”
Huai Shi stared at the notebook in his hand, stunned. He then held his chin and mused. Did the lightning strike awaken it or something?
He pushed open the window and put it on the balcony, shouting at the sky, “Do you want to give it another try, sir?”
The heavens ignored him this time. They did not even bother tossing him another bone.
In the awkward silence, there was only the sound of the book pages updating themselves with his foolish action earlier…
“Cough cough, let’s pretend that didn’t happen.”
Huai Shi sighed and retrieved the notebook, tossing it onto the table.
So what if he had no idea what had happened? He still had to look for work tomorrow, so he might as well sleep now. Anything could happen in his dreams…
He tossed himself into bed and closed his eyes.
The next time he opened his eyes, he saw a bent figure under the dim streetlights. It crouched down like a monkey, and when it raised its head at him, it revealed a terrifying mask.
The next instant, he died.