The city was overrun by zombies. My girlfriend, Callie Bernson, the team leader, had taken my best friend, Dan Harrington, and fled in our only armored vehicle, leaving me behind in the shelter to die.

Outside, the scratching of claws against metal echoed through the corridors. The defensive barricades were already starting to fail. My heart sank into despair. I raised my gun to my temple, ready to end it quickly, when a stream of floating text suddenly appeared in front of my eyes.

[It’s hilarious. That cheating couple thinks they’re heading to Paradise, but that place has fallen. It’s packed with high-level zombies now.]

[Don’t die, PC! The person in a coma in the shelter—the one your so-called best friend called dead weight and abandoned—is actually the only S-class ability user. Once she wakes up, she’ll wipe the floor with everything!]

[Just you wait. When your buddy crawls back here in disgrace and finds the big boss awake, he will go to step in and steal the credit for saving her.]

[Hurry up and die already, cannon fodder. I can’t wait for the tragic apocalypse romance between the best friend and the big boss.]

I lowered the gun and sprinted toward the quarantine room. Inside, a woman lay on the bed, sleeping peacefully. I strode over and slapped her hard across the face.

“Honey!” I shouted. “Time to get to work!”

The slap landed hard, and the impact left my palm tingling. In response, the eyelashes on the woman on the bed fluttered, then her eyes snapped open.

I jumped in shock. Wasn’t she supposed to be in a coma? How did she wake up the moment I slapped her?

Her eyes were blood-red. The instant our gazes met, my breathing stalled.

So this was an S-class ability user?

The floating comments exploded across my vision.

[Holy cr*p! The PC hit her! That’s the future zombie king, Ruth Smith!]

[It’s over, it’s over. Ruth has terrible morning rage when she first wakes up. The PC is dead.]

[Relax. Ruth’s memories are scrambled right now. She’s basically an idiot with a strong imprinting instinct.]

Her memory was scrambled?

Just as that thought crossed my mind, Ruth’s fingers twitched slightly. The metal equipment around the bed began to twist with a teeth-grinding screech. A terrifying presence closed in on me, and I knew she was about to kill.

At the last possible second, I lunged forward and wrapped my arms tightly around her waist, bursting into loud sobs.

“Wah! Honey, you’re finally awake! You scared me to death! Those b*st*rds abandoned you and ran away. I’m the only one who refused to give up on you! Even if we die, I’ll die here with you!”

The tension in the air froze for a moment.

Ruth stiffened in my arms. After a long pause, a cool and hesitant voice sounded above my head.

“Honey?”

I looked up at her with the most determined, affectionate expression I could muster.

“Yeah. I’m your husband. You got hurt saving me and fell into a coma. If you can’t remember, that’s okay. I’ll tell you everything, little by little.”

Gathering my courage, I hooked my finger around hers. My voice trembled slightly as I said, “There are zombies everywhere outside right now. Honey, you’ll protect me, right?”

Ruth stared at me for several seconds. Her brows knitted together as if she were desperately trying to search through the chaos in her mind for any trace of me.

In the suffocating silence, I felt like every bit of my act was being stripped bare under her gaze. Then, after a moment, the dreadful tension slowly faded away.

“Stop crying. You’re too loud.” She said coldly and bluntly, “I’ll kill them all.”

The comments went crazy again.

[The PC is a schemer! But I like what I’m seeing.]

[Ruth must think you’re lying to her, but she can’t find the evidence.]

[If Dan finds out the “dead weight” he abandoned got picked up by the PC, he’s going to burn up with rage.]

My gaze turned colder and colder.

Dan and Callie, that cheating pair, had been fooling around behind my back for a long time already. If he really did burn up with rage, good. He deserved it.

Suddenly, a thunderous crash shattered my thoughts. The shelter’s main gate collapsed, and a tide of zombies poured inside, roaring and screeching.

“Honey, this one’s on you.” I hid behind her and pointed at the incoming swarm.

Ruth raised her hand without a trace of emotion. As a deep, dull hum filled the air, the dozen zombies charging in front exploded instantly into clouds of blood mist. Flesh and blood splattered across the walls. The zombies behind them hadn’t even had time to react before a horrifying force crushed them flat into pulp.

This was the S-class ability—gravity manipulation. It was the ultimate wipe-out skill.

Watching the scene unfold, a trace of fanatic excitement flashed in my eyes. I had gambled right. In this apocalypse where all order had collapsed, Ruth was the strongest cheat code, the biggest powerhouse I could cling to. And Callie’s armored vehicle? What was that compared to this?

After killing the last zombie, Ruth turned to look at me. There wasn’t a single drop of blood on her body, though her face looked a little pale.

She lowered her eyes and uttered, “Hungry.”

I immediately pulled out the last chocolate bar I had secretly saved, tore open the wrapper, and held it up to her lips with a gentle smile on my face.

“Thanks for the hard work, honey. Here you go.”

Ruth lowered her head slightly and bit the chocolate from my hand. Her lips were cold. When the tip of her tongue accidentally brushed across my fingertip, a faint electric shiver ran up my arm.

Instinctively, I tried to pull my hand back. However, she grabbed my wrist, and her gaze dropped to my forearm, where I had accidentally scraped myself earlier. Her eyes darkened slightly as the pad of her finger pressed against the wound, gently wiping away the thin line of blood. The icy touch made my whole body shiver.

Then, the comments exploded again.

[Ah! I ship them! The domineering zombie king and her scheming little husband!]

[PC, be careful! If Ruth consumes blood, it might awaken her zombie instincts!]

[Dan’s group just had a tire blowout. They’re surrounded by a zombie horde right now. Callie pushed Dan out to stall the zombies so she could escape!]

When I saw that comment, I couldn’t help but laugh.

“What are you laughing at?” Ruth tilted her head and looked at me.

“Nothing,” I said, hugging her arm and planting a kiss on her cheek. “I just think… the weather’s really nice today.”

For the next month, I lived the most comfortable life I’d had since the apocalypse began. Ruth and I occupied a villa complex halfway up a mountain. It was easy to defend and hard to attack, and supplies were plentiful.

With Ruth around, every zombie within a five-kilometer radius had been wiped out. While other survivors were killing each other over a piece of moldy bread, I was soaking in a bath with Evian mineral water. While others trembled in fear during zombie hordes, I was ordering Ruth to peel grapes for me.

“Honey, these grapes are really hard to peel. My hands are getting sticky.” I sighed dramatically.

Ruth was in the middle of repairing the villa’s outer wall. When she heard me, she immediately stopped working. She walked over, washed her hands, picked up the grapes, and carefully peeled off the skins before feeding them into my mouth.

“Sweet?” she asked, her eyes looking like a cat waiting for praise.

“Sweet.” I smiled and patted her head. “You’re amazing, honey.”

Even though she had amnesia and didn’t talk much, her execution was flawless. If I said go east, she would never go west. If I said someone deserved to die, that person definitely wouldn’t live to see tomorrow.

The only problem was that she kept asking about things from before she lost her memory. Since I had no real answers, I could only make things up.

I half-held Ruth in my arms, idly tracing circles in her palm with my finger as I told her, “Actually, you were the one who pursued me first.”

I secretly glanced at her expression. Seeing her eyebrow lift slightly, I grew bolder and continued my nonsense.

“At the time, you were the captain of the ability-user squad, and I was part of the logistics team. Even though Dan—you know, the guy who drove off in the armored vehicle—had always had a crush on you, he pretended to be my best friend just to get closer to you, but you never looked at him once.

“You only had eyes for me. To win me over, you even handed all the crystal cores you collected to me for safekeeping. You said they were your gift to me.”

Ruth looked down at me. A hint of confusion flickered in her cold eyes.

“Was I really that much of a… simp?” she asked hesitantly.

“What do you mean by simp? That’s called devotion!”

I pretended to get angry, baring my teeth and waving my hands around. My eyes even reddened instantly.

“That day, when the zombies surrounded the city, we could have left together. But to protect me, you overused your powers to hold back the zombie horde. Before you fell into a coma, you gave the armored vehicle key to Dan and Callie, begging them to take me away.”

As I said this, I felt the air around Ruth suddenly grow colder. Seizing the moment, I lowered my gaze and pretended to be heartbroken.

“But they betrayed you. They stole the armored vehicle you had specially modified for me. They tried to drag me onto the vehicle by force, but I jumped off and crawled all the way back to your side. At that moment, I swore that if you never woke up… I would die with you. Because without you, I wouldn’t want to live either.”

What I said was seven parts lie, three parts truth. The truth was that they did run away. The lie was that I had never planned to die with her; I was planning to kill myself.

Ruth stayed silent for a long time, so long that I started to think my story was too ridiculous and she had seen right through it. Just then, her cold hand gently touched my face. The movement was clumsy and unfamiliar, yet there was something obsessive and possessive about it.

“Stop crying.”

Her voice was cold, but there was a hint of softness in it. Her fingers brushed against the back of my neck.

“Since they stole your vehicle and tried to separate us… When I find them, I’ll tear their bones apart one by one and let you play with them. Okay?”

I pulled her back into my arms, a victorious smile curling at the corner of my lips.

“Okay. You’re the best, honey.”

A few sarcastic comments drifted past in the floating chat.

[Don’t get cocky, you cannon fodder. When Dan comes back and exposes your lies, you’re dead.]

[Exactly. Ruth hates being lied to the most. Anyone who lies to her gets torn to pieces.]

[Dan and Callie are on their way back. They’ll probably be at the villa complex soon.]

I read the comments, the smile on my face growing deeper. It was good that they were coming back. After all, I had prepared a very special gift for them.

Dan and I had known each other since we were kids. Growing up, he took my toys, my scholarships, and eventually my girlfriend from me. Yet, he always wore that same innocent expression.

“Xavier, you’re stronger than I am. What’s wrong with letting me have it?”

Callie was the same. I was the one who built the search-and-rescue team and planned our routes. Yet in the end, she drove off in the vehicle with Dan, abandoning both Ruth, who had been injured and unconscious while saving them, and me, who stayed behind to cover their retreat. That debt had to be settled properly.

Three days later, on a stormy night with pouring rain, a battered armored vehicle—barely holding together—smashed through the gates of the villa complex. Callie and Dan crawled out of the car, covered in mud and looking utterly miserable. Behind them, more than a dozen mutated zombies were chasing them.

“Help! Is anyone there? Help!” Callie screamed, her voice hoarse.

Dan gripped a machete in his hand, but it was useless against mutated zombies.

Just as one of them lunged forward, about to bite through Dan’s neck, I stood on the second-floor balcony, holding a cup of coffee, calmly looking down at the scene below.

“Ruth,” I said lightly, “they’re too loud.”

From the shadows behind me, Ruth stepped forward and simply glanced down at the yard.

“Boom!”

In an instant, the zombies were crushed flat against the ground by the overwhelming force of gravity. The sound of bones shattering rang out, and a moment later, they were all reduced to pulp.

Callie and Dan stared blankly at what had just happened. Then, they both looked up. Under the flash of lightning, they finally saw me standing on the balcony and Ruth standing behind me.

Both of them froze.

“X-Xavier?” Callie stammered, “You’re not dead? And that monster… Is that Ruth?”