Chapter 413: Fuck The Future
Zhenlan listened to Rouxi’s footsteps fade above them before he looked back at the maps covering her coffee table.
Chenghai hadn’t moved.
He stood beside the sectional with one hand resting on the back cushion, staring at the route he’d drawn through the center of Rouxi’s living room as though he could no longer remember why it had ever seemed reasonable.
Lingyun shifted against the couch and winced when the movement pulled at his ribs. "That went well."
Neither man answered him.
Yuche gathered the abandoned bowls and Blu-ray cases before the maps could cover them completely. He didn’t offer an opinion or tell Zhenlan what Rouxi needed. He simply returned her things to the section of the table that still belonged to her.
The quiet action made the plans look even worse.
Medical space, communications, storage, housing, defensive positions, and a wider perimeter spread across a table that Rouxi used for snacks and movies. Every practical line pushed her home closer to becoming the center of something she’d spent two lives refusing to join.
Yuche glanced at the plans before looking at Zhenlan. "She won’t ask you to choose again."
Zhenlan understood what he meant.
Rouxi had already watched them choose at the black market. When the attack divided the warehouses, neither he nor Chenghai had gone looking for workers, radios, or people who needed orders. They’d stayed with her because nothing outside that corridor had mattered more.
The choice had been easy once someone tried to take her.
This was harder because no enemy had forced the future onto them.
They’d drawn it themselves.
Yuche helped Lingyun stand, ignoring the other man’s complaint that he was capable of walking without supervision. Before leaving the room, Lingyun looked back at the maps.
"For what it’s worth," he said, his usual brightness dulled by pain and exhaustion, "the future was terrible the first time around."
Chenghai looked at him. "You don’t remember it."
"No, but I’ve met both of you and you are complete jackasses. It’s easy to assume that the future sucked, too."
Yuche guided him toward the stairs before Chenghai could reply.
Once the two men disappeared, the living room became painfully quiet.
The radios in the cabinet had stopped crackling, and the plants surrounding the mansion had settled after Rouxi broke contact with the tether. Nothing demanded Zhenlan’s attention except the plans in front of him.
That was the problem.
He’d become too accustomed to demands.
In the first timeline, every hour had belonged to someone else. Workers needed assignments. Guards needed rotations. Survivors needed food, medicine, shelter, and reassurance. Every new threat required more preparation, while every solution created another group that depended on him.
The title of Warlord had begun as something other people called him.
Eventually, it became the only person he knew how to be.
Zhenlan had believed rebirth would allow him to correct his failures. He’d remembered the shortages, betrayals, disease, and waves of evolved zombies that had broken settlements one after another. He knew which supplies disappeared first, which routes became death traps, and how quickly a few frightened survivors could grow into hundreds of mouths.
He’d carried every lesson into this life.
He hadn’t stopped to ask whether he wanted any of it back.
Chenghai lowered himself onto the couch. "I drew the first housing plan after three workers asked whether their families could come if they found them."
Zhenlan remembered.
They hadn’t promised anyone a place. Chenghai had only marked an area that might work if the families appeared. Then Zhenlan had added a wider barrier because new buildings would need protection. The medical space came later, followed by storage and another vehicle route.
Every decision had depended on a future possibility.
None of the people those plans were meant for had ever arrived.
The compound had started growing anyway.
"I added the second wall," Zhenlan said.
Chenghai looked down at the map. "I know."
"I told myself it would give Rouxi more distance from the outer buildings."
"It would’ve brought more people inside it."
"Yes."
Neither man tried to excuse that.
Zhenlan picked up the page showing the proposed communications station. At the top, in his own handwriting, he’d written that the mansion’s height and location made it the natural center for the network.
Natural.
Completely wrong.
He tore the paper in half.
Chenghai watched the pieces fall onto the table but didn’t try to stop him.
Zhenlan tore it again, then reached for the housing plan.
"You don’t need to destroy the surveys," Chenghai said. "Some of the existing utility information is still useful."
"The surveys stay."
"The rest?"
Zhenlan looked at the widening circles surrounding Rouxi’s home. "The rest was never hers."
Chenghai’s mouth tightened. "It wasn’t ours either. Not if you really think about it."
That was the part Zhenlan had failed to understand until Rouxi asked whether they’d liked what happened before.
They hadn’t.
The Warlord’s compound had kept people alive, but it had consumed every piece of the men who maintained it.
Chenghai spent his days listening to radios and counting supplies. Zhenlan measured every decision by how many lives it might save or cost. They slept when there were no emergencies, ate when someone reminded them, and treated every personal want as something that could wait until the next crisis passed.
Only, the crisis never passed. Or if they did, the next one came so quickly after it that it seemed to all blend together.
Even Rouxi’s house had become another future responsibility before either man noticed.
Chenghai pulled the radio notebook from beneath the maps and flipped through pages of schedules, names, and call signs. "The network can operate from the outer building."
"Yes."
"The range will be worse."
"Then they’ll solve that problem without moving it back here."
Chenghai closed the notebook. "The workers can manage their own supplies too."
"They already do most of it."
"We kept checking."
"We kept looking for reasons to be needed."
The admission settled between them.
Zhenlan didn’t need Rouxi to require him as a commander. He didn’t want her affection to depend on the number of walls he could build or people he could organize around her.
He wanted her to look at him the way she had at the black market, when she’d leaned into his warmth without realizing what she was doing. He wanted her hand in his hair again. He wanted to sit beside her without waiting for a danger large enough to justify staying.
None of that required a compound.
Chenghai looked toward the stairs. "What happens when the next stage begins?"
"We deal with anything that threatens this house."
"And everything else?"
Zhenlan looked at the plans one last time.
The future he remembered was filled with territory, followers, radios, and responsibilities that never ended. He’d assumed surviving again meant rebuilding it better.
He no longer wanted it.
"Fuck the future," Chenghai said quietly.
Zhenlan met his gaze.
For the first time, those words didn’t sound reckless. They sounded like all the permission they needed to actually breathe again.
He gathered the expansion plans into one pile while Chenghai removed the radios and notebooks from the cabinet beside Rouxi’s movies.
They kept the original property surveys and anything needed to protect the buildings that already existed, but every page marked for future housing, command, expansion, or another wall went into Zhenlan’s hands.
Lightning flickered between his fingers and the papers caught fire without touching the table.
Chenghai watched the plans curl into ash inside a metal wastebasket, then lifted the main receiver from the cabinet.
Neither man went upstairs to tell Rouxi what they’d decided.
They hadn’t done it for forgiveness.
They’d done it because neither of them wanted to become the Warlord and his second again.
That’s right. Fuck the future. The present in front of them was worth more than anything they accomplished in their last life.