I Have a Post Apocalyptic Online Friend C2.1

Hey, first of all, thanks for reading my lousy Machine Translation. To be honest, I’d really like it if you guys corrected the mistakes I made. But please speak nicely and politely. My heart is not strong enough to read your too-harsh comments. Have a nice day. 🙂

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Chapter 2. part 1

Zhou An’an tossed and turned all night, unable to sleep. The next day at work, while frying potatoes, she was still preoccupied with the incident, accidentally splashing hot oil on herself and getting a small burn. She went to the employee break room to find a bandage.

Just as she arrived, the boss was berating a male employee, spittle flying nearly three meters.

“Reading novels at work? Not doing your job properly? Do you think you’re some rich kid slumming it for the experience? What novel were you reading just now?”

“Doomsday Descends.”

“Doomsday? Your career is already doomed! Don’t bother coming in tomorrow. I’m not paying you to read novels!”

Zhou An’an stood in a corner, desperately trying to make herself invisible, but the boss spotted her anyway.

“Zhou An’an, it’s not break time yet! What are you doing in the break room?”

She quickly raised her hand. “I burned myself with hot oil and came to get a bandage.”

“You college students are all so delicate! Can’t even handle simple tasks. Put the bandage on and get back to work immediately! One minute of slacking off and I’ll dock an hour’s pay!”

Zhou An’an carefully dodged the boss’s spittle radius and nodded.

The boss stormed off, fuming. The male employee, who had just been called a “cowardly turtle,” sprang to his feet, glaring at the retreating figure through gritted teeth.

“Son of a bitch! If the Doomsday ever comes, I’ll be the first to slaughter that bastard and see how arrogant he is then!”

Zhou An’an lowered her head and quietly walked past him, rummaging through her drawer for a band-aid.

The fast-food restaurant operated on two shifts. Zhou An’an was working the day shift today, from 10 AM to 6 PM. After work, she went to a nearby supermarket to buy groceries.

To save on living expenses, she had always cooked her own meals.

City prices were exorbitant; even the cheapest takeout meal cost twenty to thirty yuan, while cooking at home could reduce the cost to ten yuan per meal.

Yet from her perspective, even ten yuan was too much.

When she was a child, living with her grandfather, their backyard was a vegetable garden.

In spring, they would scatter seeds, and with minimal effort, they’d have an endless supply of cabbage, radishes, chili peppers, and garlic.

Summer brought watermelons, winter sweet potatoes, and chickens raised in the yard provided eggs year-round, as well as chicken stewed with shiitake mushrooms for the Lunar New Year.

Over the entire year, they spent no more than a thousand yuan on food.

Her rented room was too small and lacked a balcony, so she could only grow scallions in takeout containers by the window.

Sometimes, she didn’t have time to harvest them, and the tops would bloom into small, white, spherical flowers resembling dandelions, only hard and unable to float.

During the period after graduation when she couldn’t find a job, she briefly considered returning to her village to farm.

But her grandfather had only left behind a single-story house, now occupied by her Eldest Uncle.

Her Eldest Uncle had three sons, each married with children, bringing the household to nearly ten people. They barely had enough room for themselves, let alone a spare room for her.

Zhou An’an occasionally felt like a wanderer, with no home in the city and none in the village either.

If she ever failed to pay her rent, the landlord would ruthlessly evict her.

She sighed and continued sorting through the half-price cabbages.

For some reason, the supermarket was unusually crowded today. She kept seeing people rushing to the checkout counters with carts piled high, as if they were afraid they’d miss their last chance to buy anything.

Potatoes, pumpkins, and sweet potatoes—vegetables known for their long shelf life—were completely sold out, and several meat sections were nearly empty.

Fish, however, remained relatively untouched. She picked out a palm-sized squid, planning to stew it with cabbage and tofu for a hearty soup.

As she paid, watching the frenzied shoppers, she couldn’t help but recall her speculation from the previous day.

If everyone’s phones were suddenly adding friends like Lu Yuan, claiming to be from Doomsday and warning that the apocalypse would strike in six months, then countless people would have received this message.

Could their frantic shopping sprees be preparations for the impending Doomsday?

Should she start stockpiling too?

Zhou An’an’s feet twitched with the urge to move.

She glanced at her phone and immediately abandoned the idea. With her meager bank balance, stockpiling or not would make little difference.

Carrying her small squid, Zhou An’an left the supermarket and took the usual bus back to her rented room.

During the ride, someone suddenly pointed out the window and shouted, “Look! What’s that? A UFO?”

All the passengers craned their necks to look at the sky, even the driver stealing glances.

In the pitch-black night sky, a white light danced agilely, leaping and darting across the darkness.

Its shape and trajectory were clearly unlike those of ordinary planes or rockets.

“Is it Starlink?”

“It looks like a meteor!”

“Since when do meteors jump around horizontally like that?”

Many passengers pulled out their phones to take photos. Zhou An’an, who was sitting by the window, quickly raised her phone as well.

She snapped a photo, but feeling it wasn’t enough, she switched to video recording mode.

On her phone screen, the light reminded her of a buffering bar before a video started playing.

The white light flickered for over ten seconds before suddenly expanding into a massive rectangular frame.

Within the frame, a message materialized in glowing text.

The entire bus gasped in unison.

“Did we really encounter a UFO? How can it even write?”

“Could it be a drone projection?”

“What does it say?”

Someone read it aloud:

“Greetings, esteemed Earth players. The Doomsday countdown begins today. Doomsday Players have successfully connected with some New Players. Once the countdown ends, Doomsday Players will arrive in the New World. You can fight alongside your teammates, overcome challenges together, and wish you the best of luck.”

“Fuck! What the hell is this?”

“New Players? Doomsday Players?”

“What countdown?”

As if to answer their questions, the text began to change, transforming into a series of numbers: 196.

Most passengers dismissed it as a prank, but a small group clutched their phones in silence.

Zhou An’an was among the latter. Trembling, she put away her phone, the back of her shirt faintly damp with sweat.

The bus continued its route, stopping at each station. The expressions of the disembarking passengers were markedly different from usual.

Zhou An’an arrived at her stop. Instead of cooking dinner, the first thing she did upon returning home was open her chat with Lu Yuan.

If she had been half-skeptical of his words yesterday, the incident on the bus had now convinced her beyond any doubt.

The white light that had transformed into text had declared: “Doomsday Players have successfully connected with a portion of New Players.”

Lu Yuan was her teammate.

Once the countdown ended, Lu Yuan would also arrive in this world.

During her days spent at home, Zhou An’an had read countless novels about survival games and rule-based horror.

Now, she has become a participant in one of those worlds.

If she were ambitious, she could start training herself immediately, exploiting loopholes in the rules to become the ultimate champion of the game.

But she wasn’t.

What Zhou An’an truly wanted was to ask Lu Yuan where the safest place would be in the future, then desperately flee there to hide.

In the chat, she typed: “A notification just appeared in the sky. You’re my teammate, right? Since you’re already in the Doomsday world, could you…”

Feeling dissatisfied with what she had written, she deleted everything and started over.

Zhou An’an: Sorry for misunderstanding you yesterday. From now on, we’re teammates…

That didn’t sound right either. Maybe she should just let him see the message first.

Zhou An’an’s communication anxiety flared up again, and she deleted everything once more.

Just as she was struggling to find the right words, Lu Yuan sent her a photo.

Lu Yuan: Congratulations! You’re officially my teammate now.

She quickly opened the full-sized image. The message was similar to what she had seen on the bus, with only a few keywords changed:

“Dear Doomsday Players,

The New Game countdown has begun. All Doomsday Players have been successfully paired with New Players. Once the countdown ends, Doomsday Players will enter the New World. You can fight alongside your teammates, overcome challenges together, and face the Doomsday plan. Good luck.”

Zhou An’an was shocked: You received the same notification too!

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