Apocalyptic Era: Starting from picking up a Bishoujo

The girl was covered in blood, motionless against the wall, her eyes closed.

The beam of the light shone directly on her face, yet she showed no reaction, seemingly unconscious.

I was momentarily taken aback.

Was the frightening specter that roamed this abandoned construction site at night truly a young girl?

No, apart from being "covered in blood," this girl bore no resemblance to the specter I had heard about.

So, was this a living human? But why was she severely injured, and why was she wearing hospital garb in such a deserted place?

Now was not the time to ponder these questions. Since she was a living person with serious injuries, what I needed to do was obvious.

I hurried to her side and crouched down, checking her vital signs with my limited knowledge while pulling out my phone to call for an ambulance.

Meanwhile, I carefully observed her appearance.

She seemed to be only thirteen or fourteen, an age for middle school. Despite the bloodstains on her cheeks, one could see she possessed delicate and youthful beauty, her skin so pale and fragile under the light that it dazzled the eyes. Her head pathetically tilted to one side, her medium-length black hair cascading over her shoulder.

The blue and white-striped hospital gown she wore was severely torn in several places, with dark red plasma oozing from within. These were clearly not injuries from a simple fall or a tumble down the stairs but evidence of deadly violence. There must be an assailant around, someone with a sharp weapon, cold and ruthless.

The blood was very fresh; she must have been injured nearby.

The assailant was close by!

I kept my eyes and ears open, yet caught no sign of any third party moving, but I remained alert.

It looked like I would have to make a police call as well.

However, I did not expect that I wouldn't even manage to make the emergency call. Just as I was about to press the call button, the girl unexpectedly raised her arm and with strength that belied her fragile appearance, grabbed my wrist holding the phone.

She weakly opened her eyes, her consciousness seeming unclear, and I wasn't even sure if she saw my face clearly.

"Do not call the police," she whispered faintly.

After speaking, her eyes closed again, but her palm remained firmly on my wrist, and I couldn't wake her, no matter how much I called.

Do not call the police? Why?

I found it difficult to comply with her request. Regardless of whether I called the police, I definitely had to make the emergency call, as I could not ignore a stranger in distress, and the hospital would surely contact the authorities given her condition.

That was what I had intended.

But soon, I realized that there was no need for an emergency call.

I moved her hand aside, and just then, due to the movement and pulling at her hospital garment, I saw the skin beneath the tears in her clothing.

To my surprise, the skin appeared completely unharmed.

I immediately realized something was off and, forgetting propriety between men and women, I reached out to check beneath her clothes.

This check revealed another very serious issue—through her shirt, I felt an object that was unfamiliar, hard, and cold. Lifting the hem of her garment, I found a menacing prop tucked inside.

The murderous aura I sensed turned into a chill I had never experienced before, shooting up to the crown of my head.

It was a handgun!

I couldn't believe it as I pulled out the handgun and examined it over and over. Even as an amateur, I could tell it was a real gun!

And if my examination of the girl's body was correct, she was indeed unharmed.

If so, why was she unconscious as if she had lost too much blood?

It couldn't be possible that she was just tired and wanted to sleep, could it?

Whose blood was on her, then? If not hers, could it actually be animal blood? You're joking, right? How could I believe that someone who carries a real gun would fake human blood?

I had to revise my initial thoughts: At first, I thought a crime had occurred here and she was the victim, but the truth might well be the complete opposite of my preconceptions.

I must call the police.

Even assuming she was innocent herself, it was still morally correct not to leave firearms in public hands.

However, with this intriguing girl riddled with enigmas, I couldn't help but recognize a seductive brilliance in her, an unpredictable and incredible dramatic potential that completely surpassed my experience and life.

Collapsed in the ruins, a mysterious blood-stained girl—throughout my life, I'd never encountered a more surreal meeting.

At that moment, my curiosity overcame my moral principles.

I had to take her back.

No sooner said than done.

-

Once I decided what to do, I quickly took off my coat, wrapped it around the girl who was too small for it, and then carried her in my arms.

I usually didn't have much appeal to the opposite sex, being rather immune to it, and as I held the girl's soft body, my thoughts began to wander. Ordinarily, mere physical contact with the opposite sex wouldn't lead me astray. But at that moment, this strange beautiful girl possessed a deadly allure, like a poisonous flower.

She was so mysterious and dangerous, harboring the possibility of shattering the life I had led until now.

Was it really necessary to take her back? Even if I followed her request to stop calling the police, I could have just left her there. But I was genuinely curious, incredibly curious—why she was nearly naked and covered in blood, why she was carrying firearms and ammunition illegally, what unbelievable story hid behind all this. I had to find out.

I carried her away from the abandoned construction site.

My rental house off-campus shared something in common with this desolate construction site—it wasn't far from Saltwater University, where I studied.

The issue was that although I could use backroads to avoid being seen for the first half of the journey, completing the entire distance unavoidably exposed us to passersby and surveillance cameras, and the security guard at the residential complex would see us, possibly stopping us for questioning.

So midway, I hid the girl in the bushes nearby, ran back to my rental house as fast as I could, fetched a large suitcase I once used when moving, and hurried back to the original spot.

On my way back, I was incredibly worried, terrified that the girl might have awakened and left during my absence, or that due to extraordinarily bad luck, she had been discovered by someone passing by during that brief period.

Fortunately, my luck hadn't run out to that extent.

I took the girl out of the bushes. She was small, and it wasn't hard to curl her up and put her into the large suitcase. I had worried that this might be presumptuous, but she really fit inside.

Conscience! I never imagined that one day I would end up like one of those perverts in adult stories, transporting an underage girl inside a suitcase.

My heart raced, my mind wandered, but what intoxicated me more than those vile thoughts was the unreasonableness of the experience and of acting so unreasonably myself.

Yes, this situation was undoubtedly strange, certainly not something normal to occur in everyday life.

What would happen next?

I entered the residential area where I lived, and glanced back as I passed the security booth.

The guard was idly playing with his phone, not even glancing at me, a suspicious figure dragging a suitcase back and forth in the dead of night. Everyone I encountered along the way never paid any attention to me.

However extraordinary this night was for me, to others it was just an ordinary day.

-

I dragged the large suitcase back home.

Luckily I was a university student living alone off-campus; otherwise, I wouldn't know how to report this situation to my parents.

I took the girl out of the suitcase. Clearly, the interior of a suitcase was not a comfortable means of transport; even the girl, deep in her unconsciousness, frowned in discomfort.

I was thankful that the bumps along the way hadn't awakened her. Despite the security guard's indifference, if cries for help from an underage girl suddenly emerged from the suitcase, I would've indeed found myself in an embarrassing predicament.

I tried once more to awaken her, predictably without success. She was not yet ready to wake up. Best to let her rest for now.

I carried her to my bedroom and laid her flat on the bed.

Although letting her continue wearing blood-stained clothes wasn't ideal from a hygiene perspective, and the sheets and blanket got stained too, I decided not to help her change her clothes myself. I'd let her change when she got up. If she didn't wake up by tomorrow, I'd help her then.

I'd sleep on the sofa in the living room tonight and let her have the bed in the bedroom. This wasn't out of any so-called chivalry but because if she were in the living room and woke up, she could leave without me noticing. By staying in the living room, I'd be alerted if she tried to leave the bedroom.

Just in case, I carefully placed an empty soda can on the outside handle of the bedroom door. The handle wasn't round but bar-shaped; under normal circumstances, the can could be balanced quite stably, but if she turned the handle from inside, the can would inevitably fall and make a conspicuous sound.

Would she be the witch to ruin my life, or something else? Before leaving the bedroom, I looked at her sleeping face, unable to suppress the excitement within me, feeling the vigorous pulse even behind my ears.

I was truly looking forward to what tomorrow might bring.