The Apocalypse Solution Provider

Chapter 12: The School Beauty Returns Home

Five days until the apocalypse.

Another sunset. Seven o’clock in the evening.

Su Jin hauled his backpack into the cramped rental, his corporate suit swapped out for a cheap, locally sourced tank top and board shorts.

It had been a highly productive day.

He’d burned half the afternoon in a bookstore, speed-reading encyclopedias to patch the gaping holes in his local world-building knowledge.

The rest of his time went to field reconnaissance—scouting escape routes, mapping market prices, drafting a survival budget, and bribing the neighborhood security guards with cheap smokes.

Crunching the numbers, his current cash reserves were painfully tight… assuming, of course, he was stocking Supplies for maximum super-saturation.

If it came down to bare-minimum caloric intake for four people, they could survive for months.

If he didn’t need to stockpile specialized tactical gear, this much money could have kept them fed for over two years.

The local purchasing power was enough to bring a tear to a salaryman’s eye.

He dumped the backpack on the floor and fished out the sleek handbag he’d acquired.

From its depths, he extracted a pen, a notebook, and two plastic takeout bags.

One bag held steamed white rice; the other, greasy stir-fried pork.

Surviving on boiled cabbage was fine in a pinch, but tonight, he’d treated himself to actual meat from a dingy street-side joint.

It tasted passable. More importantly, the fact that this parallel world used standard rice and normal chopsticks was a massive logistical relief.

The two portions currently sitting on his table were leftovers he’d packed up.

Su Jin flipped open his notebook with one hand and tore into the plastic bags with the other.

Mid-tear, a distinct wave of heat seeped through the plastic into his fingertips.

Su Jin stared at the steaming takeout, his brain stalling for a second.

He’d read enough trashy webnovels to know the tropes. The protagonist gets a magical Storage Ring, tosses a roast chicken inside, and pulls it out three years later piping hot. Infinite shelf life. Time stasis.

But seeing it in reality—feeling the physical heat of the pork—was deeply unnerving. Was it genuine temporal suspension?

In those stories, pausing time was treated like a bargain-bin cheat code.

The food looked exactly as it had an hour ago. If this held true, he wouldn’t have to worry about his stockpiled rations rotting.

He popped open the lid, scooped up a clump of rice, and shoved it into his mouth.

Two chews in, his jaw stopped. His expression darkened. He quickly shoved a piece of pork into his mouth.

It wasn’t temporal suspension.

The temperature was identical, but the rice had gone stale and hard, and the meat had taken on that distinct, slightly oxidized leftover taste.

The dimensional space inside the bag was just a perfect thermal insulator. Molecular degradation was still occurring.

Could aerobic bacteria survive in there? He needed a petri dish to run a proper culture test.

Wait… by that logic, even a mystical Pill tossed into a Storage Ring would eventually pass its expiration date!

What kind of bastardized physics governed this spatial pocket?

Su Jin slapped his forehead, letting out a dry, self-deprecating chuckle.

Why was he debugging a magical item? Trying to apply the scientific method to sheer metaphysics was a fool’s errand.

Since getting drafted into this transmigrational nightmare, not a single variable had made logical sense.

Still, a hollow sense of grief washed over him. He’d spent a lifetime worshipping at the altar of rational science. If gravity and thermodynamics were suggestions here, what the hell was left to believe in?

He certainly couldn’t pray to his ancestors. The old ghosts had spent most of their lives starving anyway.

Shoving his existential dread back into its designated mental folder, Su Jin ate his stale rice and organized his intel.

Halfway through the meal, three sharp knocks hammered against the door.

Su Jin flinched, his muscles instantly coiled tight. He dropped the chopsticks and crossed the room in three silent strides.

He pressed his eye to the peephole. Fu Qingdai.

She stood alone in the dingy hallway, wringing her hands together, her posture screaming generalized anxiety.

Su Jin yanked the door open, grabbed her by the wrist, and hauled her inside.

Fu Qingdai let out a choked gasp, stumbling over the threshold.

Her frantic eyes locked onto Su Jin’s face, and the panic visibly drained from her shoulders. “I… I got out, Cousin,” she whispered breathlessly.

“Solid work,” Su Jin praised, masking his relief with a sharp nod. “When did they release you? Any operational hiccups?”

“Today… I got back around noon. My mom just left for her shift.” Fu Qingdai stared hard at her own shoes, trembling slightly. “No hiccups. I don’t know what you did to that nurse, but she kept defending me… Oh, she pulled me aside and said my ‘condition’ still requires monitoring. She wants you to call her with status reports.”

Su Jin tapped his chin in approval, steering her toward the cheap laminate dining table.

“Take a seat. We need to brief.”

“Okay…” Fu Qingdai murmured, perching nervously on the very edge of the plastic chair.

“Cousin, what’s our next move?”

Su Jin walked over to the rusted sink, filled a cracked mug with tap water, and slid it across the table toward her.

He dropped into the opposite chair. “Moving forward, I handle the macro-level logistics. You execute the micro-tasks exactly as I assign them. But before I give you your next objective, we are setting three absolute ground rules. You will burn these into your skull. Do you understand?”

“I understand… tell me the rules,” she replied, her voice barely a whisper.

“Excellent. Rule One: No emotional, impulsive decisions. Rule Two: Total information transparency. If a stray dog barks at you, I want it in the report. Rule Three: When I give you a task, you execute it flawlessly, no loose ends. Can you handle that?”

“I can!” Fu Qingdai snapped her head up, finally meeting his gaze with a spark of desperate resolve.

“Perfect. I like the energy,” Su Jin said, flashing a thumbs-up. “You’re a smart kid. I have full confidence in your KPI delivery.”

“Ultimately, beneath the tasks and the rules, your only real job is to trust me implicitly. I know you’re terrified, and you’re questioning my credentials. But let me be absolutely clear: I never ask my clients to judge me by my success rate. I ask them to judge me by my failures. And I have never failed an extraction.”

“Really?” Fu Qingdai’s dull eyes ignited, latching onto his corporate bravado like a lifeline.

“Obviously. Only Trisolaran scum lie. We Namekians operate on pure, unadulterated truth.”

“Why are the Trisolarans so evil?!” she asked, fiercely invested.

“My point exactly.”

Seeing the color return to her cheeks, Su Jin felt a knot loosen in his own chest.

He was bound to this apocalyptic fetch quest anyway; he might as well maintain strict professional standards.

He couldn’t afford a mental breakdown, and his fragile, traumatized client required active psychological management.

“Cousin… what’s my first mission?” Fu Qingdai asked, sitting up straighter.

“Right…” Su Jin started, but his eyes snagged on the dusty electrical outlet by the baseboard.

A glaring oversight hit him—he hadn’t verified the local power grid all day. He had two power banks, but those wouldn’t bridge the gap until zero hour.

His smartphone was a critical asset right now, and it would be borderline mandatory later.

The wall socket was a standard two-prong. Physically, his charger would fit, but plugging it in blind risked frying the motherboard. Better to consult the local database.

“Before we proceed, a technical question: what’s the baseline voltage running through that socket?”

“220 volts.”

“Do you happen to have a dead scientist in this world named ‘Volt’?”

“No. The unit of electrical potential was named after our nation’s foundational physicist, Li Songxi.”

“So the unit is officially called a…”

“A volt.”

“Makes total sense.”

Su Jin deadpanned, utterly defeated by the logic. The HEAVENLY DAO COMPANY’S auto-translation matrix was terrifyingly robust, seamlessly converting cultural concepts in real-time… even if it refused to translate his handwritten chicken scratch.

Whatever. The semantic mechanics didn’t matter. The phone would charge. He’d test it with a power bank first just to be safe.

A 220V standard was identical to the standard grid back on Earth. That wasn’t a random coincidence.

It simply meant that 220V was the universal sweet spot between economic viability and physical efficiency.

Physics hadn’t entirely failed him after all. His corporate pragmatism and Earth-bound common sense were still valid currencies here.

“Is something wrong, Cousin?” Fu Qingdai asked, eyeing him nervously.

Su Jin shook his head and whipped out a fresh notebook. “Negative. Now, give me a full psych evaluation on your parents. I need microscopic detail. No omissions. This dictates whether I can establish a legitimate, front-facing relationship with them. If we nail this social engineering, I gain open access to your apartment, which makes protecting them infinitely easier. Start talking.”

Fu Qingdai nodded emphatically, but hesitated right before speaking. “Cousin… once I finish the briefing, will you tell me more about Planet Namek?”

“Deal. You talk first.”

…

One hour later.

“Cousin, that’s everything I know,” Fu Qingdai said, her hands clutching an empty mug. “Do you need any other intel?”

Su Jin snapped the notebook shut. “We’re good. Tomorrow, I breach your apartment. You have two objectives before I arrive.”

“What are they?”

“Manipulate your mother into cooking a massive feast of heavy meat dishes, and then steal two thousand bucks for me.”