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?”