Chapter 6
If a person knows that she has only eight days to live and there is no way to extend her life, how should she spend the remaining eight days?
If Jiang Yunu were still in her previous world, eight days would be enough for her to do a lot of things.
She might contact her relatives and friends, and spend one or two days saying goodbye to everyone she thinks she should say goodbye to properly. If possible, she can meet in person. If not, she can rely on modern communications and spend 10 to 20 minutes making a video call.
After saying goodbye and explaining what needed to be explained, Jiang Yunu should spend another day dealing with privacy.
As adults, there are always some unspeakable things in mobile hard drives, and some things stored in mobile phones, computers and other electronic devices that they do not want to show to others. These things must be properly handled, deleted or destroyed, to avoid a young person from suffering from the risk of social death after leaving the world, "adding death to death."
After these things are dealt with and everyone who needs to say goodbye has said goodbye, Jiang Yunu will use the remaining time to buy a plane ticket and go to a place she once wanted to go but never could.
She would carefully select a land she had never set foot on but longed to visit, treating it as her final destination, and methodically await the end. Before the quicksand of her life's countdown ran dry, she would likely continue to explore the local area daily, experiencing the new customs and people of a new place, feeling the sense of accomplishment of "unlocking new maps" and adding several new entries to her life's chronicle.
Eventually she would return to her bed, or simply lie down on a patch of public grass, and wait for the life clock to reach zero.
"I have always thought that lying on the bed at the last moment before death, and passing away comfortably like sleeping without any illness or disaster, is a very comfortable way to leave the world." Jiang Yunu was also lying when she spoke, but she was lying on the box bed she had modified herself in the deserted island base, with the foam mattress underneath her that had supported her for many days.
There was no one else on the deserted island, so Jiang Yunu would either go to the top of a deserted mountain, bask in the sun during the day, date the moon at night, or occasionally talk to the two people who took turns working there.
Otherwise, she could only lie in the base and talk to the white-haired child who had been with her for many days.
The person she specifically asked to "chat" was naturally the one sitting on the stool against the wall.
"But if I were to travel and die in a completely new and unfamiliar place, I'd think lying on the public grass wouldn't be bad either." Jiang Yunu shared her "death plan" with the cool and quiet body of the white-haired child. "Because one day I suddenly realized that if I went to a strange place to wait for my life to end, I would definitely have to stay in a hotel or rent a room. If I died lying in someone else's bed, how presumptuous would it be?"
The white-haired child leaned quietly against the wall. Jiang Yunu was not sure if the other party was conscious and still alive. Would he be a real child, or would he be in a similar state to hers, a creature with a child's shell but an "adult core" inside?
Jiang Yunu just assumed that the other party was a real child.
She shared her thoughts like an older sister with a child, continuing to lie on her box bed. "It's not good to die casually in someone else's house, even if you're staying in a hotel bed. So, knowing I'd die that night, I preferred to lie down on a public lawn. It's more open, and I could look at the sky and the stars before I died. It would also be easier for sanitation workers to find me the next morning. The time between death and discovery wouldn't be that long, and the body wouldn't be ugly, so it wouldn't be that scary."
Jiang Yunu was quite thoughtful.
Saying goodbye, handling personal belongings, traveling, and trying to pass away in a way that does not cause trouble to others but is relatively comfortable for oneself - this is the life countdown arrangement that Jiang Yunu used to make for himself.
But of course, life is full of surprises. Death is often not so accurately predicted, and most people are not aware of the number of their lifespans. Death is often a sudden event.
Jiang Yunu had only made plans before, but she had never thought that there would be a day when she would know clearly how much time she had left in her life.
"...But even if I knew the duration, it's useless." Jiang Yunu turned sideways towards the child by the wall. After she finished her plan, she faced the reality before her and sighed, "Here, none of my plans can be carried out."
There is no way to say goodbye to relatives and friends. Jiang Yunu is alone in this new world.
If she had to say that she had relatives and friends, she felt that these white-haired children and the sun and moon that could be seen outside the base could be considered relatives and friends. However, she did not need to say goodbye to these alternative relatives and friends. On the contrary, she estimated that in a few days, she would completely align with her own kind and join the ranks of those lying on the deserted island and losing their vital signs.
As for personal belongings, Jiang Yunu didn't have many personal belongings to deal with on the deserted island. She did have some in her previous world, but it was too late for them to deal with them.
The number of days she has been here is the number of days she may have died in her original world.
"Thinking about my family and friends, while grieving, they may have also seen my private life and been shocked by my personal collection," Jiang Yunu commented with mixed feelings. "This may make my farewell ceremony both sad and funny."
The cold body of the white-haired child was silent.
The other party had no idea what this "sister" who looked to be the same age as her had collected. She lost her life before she had the chance to understand much about the world. She had no way of experiencing the adult world, nor could she understand the complex human nature.
Jiang Yunu sat up from the box bed, walked around the pit, and then went to the rock wall farther away. She walked around where a set of alloy cabinets used to be placed, but now she had dismantled them and only a few boards were left nailed to the wall.
She didn't actually have anything to do, but she felt that she had been lying on the box bed for long enough and couldn't help but get down and take a walk.
Jiang Yunu strolled around and returned to the pit. He picked up the thin electronic clock whose battery had unexpectedly broken, which did not match the time zone of the deserted island but was still trying to move forward.
She really thought that a long time had passed, but when she picked up the clock and looked at it, she found that only four hours had passed since she opened a bottle of nutrient solution and drank it.
Four hours passed, and Jiang Yunu suddenly felt that half a day had passed.
It turns out that waiting for life to slip away with nothing to do is similar to waiting for the last class to end when you were in school - both times feel like years, and ten minutes feels like half a lifetime.
There was no one for her to say goodbye to, nothing to pack.
Jiang Yunu was sure that with her current strength, she could not leave the island, and she could not go anywhere she wanted to go.
"Although this island is a new place to me in the past."
Jiang Yunu continued to look for her limited "companions" to talk to - this time it was the moon.
Because the sun was too bright, Jiang Yunu put it at the end of her list of talking partners. She favored the moon over the sun and the moon without hesitation, and thought it would be nice to climb to the top of a barren mountain at night, feel the "sea breeze" without the smell of sea water, bask in the moon, and talk to the moon that would silently shine its soft light on her.
Jiang Yunu said to Yueliang, "But I've only been exposed to so little in this new world. It's like being suddenly dropped into a brand new, large map, only to be allowed to peek at a corner, and then told, 'The gaming experience is about to end.'"
She lay carefree against the rock wall. In the past, Jiang Yunu had been more particular, a lingering desire for civility and cleanliness, brushing off dust and blowing away sand. Lately, she'd become wilder, climbing barefoot and sitting or lying on the ground at will. It felt like if it weren't for the sun, she'd probably roll around in the sand during the day.
When Jiang Yunu was without another living creature by his side, he seemed to have completely released the wildness in his bones.
"I'm a little unwilling to accept this." Jiang Yunu raised her middle finger to the sky, and suddenly realized that Yueyue was also within her range. She quickly retracted her finger, very clear about rewards and punishments, and lay on the stone wall to comfort Yueyue, "It's not for you, but for letting me go to this strange world without any reason, and giving me such a dead end right from the start."
Jiang Yunu is good at adapting to the environment, self-regulating, and actively coping with difficulties.
But she is not completely without temper. Sometimes the arrangements made by fate for her are too outrageous, and she will still complain about it.
"I can accept that life is full of challenges," Jiang Yunu said, "but I don't accept being trapped by external conditions right from the start."
Of course, humans can also be dissatisfied with fate.
Regardless of whether you can change the fate of a dead end, if you have a unwillingness to accept the outcome, you will not easily fall into despair and depression while waiting to die.
Jiang Yunu really couldn't find a way to leave the island, nor could he find a way to contact the outside world.
The nutrient solution was consumed step by step every day, decreasing day by day, but only Jiang Yunu's mentality seemed to remain stable.
While waiting for the countdown to her life, she no longer deliberately avoided calorie consumption, but tried to find something to do every day so that she could still maintain a certain degree of fulfillment during the "countdown".
Jiang Yunu began to think about burying the children in the pit.
Although the pit beneath the base seemed to be a natural "burial pit," the unattended, white-haired children quietly piled up inside. Looking at these incorruptible corpses for a long time, one almost had the illusion that they were not a pit of children, but some kind of human-shaped dolls. As far as death was concerned, this form of sleep seemed less peaceful and solemn.
Jiang Yunu first tried to dig a hole at the foot of the mountain at the entrance of the base. She lacked the right tools, and the sand was fine and soft to dig, and the fine sand was also highly fluid. She worked for almost half the time of a bottle of nutrient solution, and only managed to dig a hole big enough for half of herself to fit in.
Digging a pit and relocating the burial site is obviously not feasible.
There were far more than a few children in the pit, and Jiang Yunu had little nutrient solution left. She couldn't dig so many holes. She felt that if she continued like this, the pits she would eventually dig might not be able to bury half of the children, and she wouldn't even be able to fill the entire "reserved seat" for herself.
Jiang Yunu then thought about straightening everyone's bodies in the pit, and then transporting sand from outside the base to fill the pit.
This "project" lasted about two bottles of nutrient solution.
Jiang Yunu had previously obtained a large number of pipes and cables from dismantling abandoned equipment. She connected them together to form a long, sturdy rope. She then tied one end of the rope to the back of an alloy cabinet nailed to the stone wall and the other end to her waist. With the help of this simple climbing rope, Jiang Yunu finally descended to the pit where she had woken on the first day of her journey.
Jiang Yunu was busy in the pit for a long time. After counting for the first time, he found that there were 22 children who had lost their vital signs, including the child still sitting on the box.
She is the 23rd one who is “extra”.
Jiang Yunu tried her best to move the 21 children in the pit. She couldn't make every one of them lie flat in the pit, and some of the children at the bottom were too difficult to reach. She could only ensure that most of the children stretched out their bodies and had a more comfortable sleeping position than before.
After doing all this, Jiang Yunu returned to the pit. She looked at the child who was still leaning on the box on the neighboring wall and gave him the nickname "Twenty-two".
"Twenty-two." Jiang Yunu said, "Sorry, you have to sit outside for a while."
Before Jiang Yunu went down into the pit, she had already brought in several baskets of sand from outside the base. But she knew that this was a drop in the bucket for the landfill work, and she would need to make many more trips back and forth. The white-haired child, number 22, remained outside the pit for a while, acting as a companion for Jiang Yunu as she carried the sand, and also as a kind of silent supervisor.
Jiang Yunu transported sand day and night, treating this as the last important thing before the countdown of her life.
However, she was born to find fun for herself and paid attention to the combination of work and rest. When she was tired of transporting sand, she would go swimming in the "sea water" for an hour or two, or climb the mountain twice barefoot. She would also go to bask in the moon and talk to the moon regularly at night.
Sometimes, Jiang Yunu would just play around in the base. She would change the positions of her little supervisors, sometimes making them sit with their legs together, sometimes with their legs crossed, saying, "Let me show you how I work."
However, there was one time when Jiang Yunu wanted to make it a little more difficult for Twenty-Two to sit like a "meditator". However, that posture was too difficult for a body lacking independent consciousness. The white-haired child slid off the bench and was quickly caught by Jiang Yunu. She embraced the cold body and immediately apologized to Twenty-Two. She then quickly straightened the child, moved him back to the bench, and sat him in the most stable position with his legs together.
After arranging the twenty-two, Jiang Yunu realized belatedly how absurd his behavior was.
In a way, she could be said to be playing with corpses.
Jiang Yunu: "..."
Jiang Yunu patted Twenty-Two's white hair and said, "Forget it, never mind him. You won't bother with me, right?"
Twenty-two, there's nothing you can do even if you want to make a fuss.
On the day when the fine sand finally accumulated to a sufficient amount, Jiang Yunu only had two bottles of nutrient solution left, and the time on the island was night.
Jiang Yunu opened the gate of the base, allowing the moonlight to illuminate the corridor at the entrance of the base.
Then she pushed the last box of sand, walked into the base from the corridor in the moonlight, came to the pit below, and began to slowly pour the first box of sand into the pit.
There seemed to be a strange noise coming from the distance, but that sound was drowned out by the sound of fine sand flowing and sand hitting the pit wall.
Jiang Yunu didn't notice this anomaly. She focused on watching the quicksand pour into the pit and the child at the bottom slowly buried in the soft, golden sand.
"Good night," she said. "The lights in the base are shining on this pit. It's a little bright."
But now it's dark and everyone can go to sleep peacefully.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
