Chapter 133: Punishing Herself

Director Han Zhiming’s gaze moved briefly to Zhiyi.

She had already begun examining the relocated population estimates.

Left uninterrupted, she would spend the rest of the day correcting them because the numbers were incomplete and incomplete problems resisted being abandoned.

Hanchuan closed the files before they could capture her.

"The 30 minutes are over," he said.

Director Han appeared ready to argue. Then the northern distribution feed showed the first barrier collapsing beneath the crowd.

He turned toward the crisis he was responsible for managing.

"We’ll implement the neighborhood model," he agreed. "Send any additional corrections you identify."

Hanchuan ended the call without promising that they would.

Zhiyi remained focused on the darkened section of the communications wall where the occupancy data had been displayed.

"I could improve the allocation accuracy by 8.3 percent," she said.

"I know."

"That would affect approximately 270,000 people."

"I know that too."

She looked up at him. "Then why did you stop me?"

Hanchuan turned her chair until she faced him instead of the city.

"Because there will always be another number large enough to keep you working," he explained. "Today it’s 270,000 people. Tomorrow it will be three million. If I allow the size of their problem to determine how much of you they receive, they’ll take everything."

Zhiyi considered his answer.

Outside Xiling, people were pushing against soldiers for water. Hospitals rationed power, residential buildings failed and the government attempted to preserve a city that couldn’t be made sustainable.

Every problem was real.

None of them had an end.

"What am I supposed to do while they use an inaccurate model?" she asked.

Hanchuan took her hand and placed it against his chest. "Help for the time we agree to give them. Then come back to me."

Her fingers spread over his heartbeat.

The answer didn’t make the model accurate, but it gave her a boundary she could follow.

"Thirty minutes tomorrow?" she asked.

"If they need another correction."

"And if they don’t?"

Hanchuan lifted her hand and pressed his mouth against her palm. "Then I keep all 30 minutes."

Zhiyi kept her hand against Hanchuan’s chest after he released her palm.

"What would you do with the 30 minutes?" she asked.

Hanchuan looked down at her fingers spread over his shirt.

She had asked for information, not invited him to choose immediately, but the possibilities entering his mind were unlikely to help her return to the water model.

"That depends on what you need," he replied, his voice dropping a notch.

The open answer made her expression tighten.

Hanchuan corrected himself before she could become trapped inside the question. "I would use it for food, sleep, exercise or time alone with you. I’d choose whichever one you had neglected."

"I ate breakfast."

"You did."

"I slept for seven hours."

"Also true."

"I haven’t exercised."

Hanchuan turned her hand beneath his and laced their fingers together. "Then I’m keeping the next 30 minutes."

He led her away from the communications wall.

Zhiyi looked back once at the distribution feeds, but she didn’t resist him. Director Han had the revised model, and 86 neighborhood points had begun receiving their delivery assignments. No additional calculation would move the trucks faster.

The shelter’s main corridor formed a complete circuit around the protected living levels. Shichen had marked distance intervals along the walls so they could exercise without entering the gym, although Zeyu claimed the numbers made walking feel like serving a sentence.

Hanchuan selected a pace Zhiyi could maintain without thinking about it.

She walked beside him rather than using the treadmill because he wanted her away from another screen. Their joined hands moved between them, and his thumb occasionally crossed the side of hers.

The first circuit carried them past the clinic, communications room and kitchen.

Qinghe had returned to his terminal after the hospital call, while Jingwei monitored the government water points with the security feeds minimized beside them.

Shichen’s voice emerged from the maintenance room as he explained Qingsong’s morning checklist to Luo.

The engineer had apparently survived his first encounter with Shichen well enough to request additional instructions.

Zeyu stood near the entrance to the vehicle level, arguing with the shelter’s automated inventory.

"It counted an entire package of crackers against yesterday’s snack allowance," he complained when Hanchuan and Zhiyi passed him. He held the empty wrapper as evidence of an injustice. "A package is a single object. That should make it one serving."

"The label says it contained eight," Zhiyi answered without slowing.

Zeyu looked betrayed. "You’re supposed to support creative interpretations of data."

"No."

Hanchuan guided her through the next fire door before Zeyu could appeal the decision.

The second circuit passed the water-storage controls and independent air system. Every indicator remained within its expected range. Xiling continued functioning because nothing inside it had been designed to depend on the city outside.

Zhiyi checked the water readings as they passed the filtration controls. "Our daily consumption is 3.2 percent lower than projected."

"Shichen restricted the ovens, and Jingwei reduced the water used for vehicle maintenance," Hanchuan explained. Both changes removed unnecessary consumption without affecting anything the six of them needed.

"I reduced my shower by four minutes."

Hanchuan stopped walking and looked at her. Nothing in the household restrictions required her to make that change. "Why?"

"The city has begun rationing water," Zhiyi said, as though the connection between the announcement and her response should have been obvious.

"The city’s shortage doesn’t affect our tanks." Hanchuan studied her expression, beginning to understand that she wasn’t responding to a shortage inside the shelter.

She had reduced what she used because people outside no longer possessed the same amount.

"Using less increases our reserve," she pointed out.

"You don’t need to reduce your shower." He resumed walking only after she did. "Our supply projections already include daily showers for all six of us."

Zhiyi considered the correction while keeping pace beside him. "Four minutes isn’t significant."

"Then keeping those four minutes isn’t significant either."

"It adds 1,460 minutes over one year," she countered. The accumulated total carried more weight for her than a single shortened shower.

Hanchuan reached for her hand. "And our water system was designed to support every one of those minutes. You don’t need to make yourself uncomfortable because the city failed to prepare."

Zhiyi looked down at their joined hands. She hadn’t considered the shorter shower a punishment.

Hanchuan had.

Hanchuan understood that she had converted the habit into a long-term resource calculation. Four minutes had become more than 24 hours of water use before he finished asking the question.

He stopped walking.

Zhiyi took one additional step before their joined hands brought her back toward him. She looked at the place where he stood, then at his face.

"Our supplies were calculated to support six people for four years at normal consumption," Hanchuan reminded her. "The reserves exist so you don’t have to experience every shortage happening outside."

"Reducing unnecessary use preserves the reserve."

"Your shower isn’t unnecessary."

Her attention remained on him.

Hanchuan knew how easily survival became a competition to endure less.

In their first life, every reduction had been justified by what they might need later. Meals became smaller. Water became measured. Heat was withheld until their fingers stiffened, and sleep was surrendered whenever danger approached.

By the time they found each other, comfort had begun to feel like theft from their future selves.

He hadn’t constructed nine shelters so Zhiyi could repeat that life beside full storage rooms.

"The city will lose water, electricity, food and medicine," he said. "We’ll watch people survive without all of them. That doesn’t mean you give them up too."

"I wasn’t giving it to them."

"No. You were punishing yourself because they don’t have it."

Zhiyi’s brows drew together. "I wasn’t punishing myself."

"You reduced something you use because strangers were forced to lose the same thing."

She examined the conclusion rather than reacting to its emotional language.

Hanchuan gave her time.