The choice of scrambled eggs with tomatoes wasn't so much a culinary decision as it was Jiang Chen's only viable option. His cooking skills peaked at this single dish, perfected through years of bachelor survival.
Maybe I should hire a chef when I get rich, he mused, then immediately dismissed the thought. His interdimensional secret demanded isolation. Better find a girlfriend instead. The image of gold bars casually discarded in the living room brought a smug grin to his face.
Across the kitchen, Sun Jiao hacked at tomatoes with the precision of a berserker, her cheeks flushing each time their juices spurted. The intoxicating aroma made her swallow repeatedly.
"Easy there," Jiang Chen cautioned as eggs splattered from her violent chopping. "You're treating that tomato like a zombie's neck."
Sun Jiao's knife stilled. An unfamiliar warmth spread through her chest - not just from the alcohol they'd consumed earlier, but from something far more dangerous: nostalgia.
Memories of Shelter 071 surfaced unbidden - the sterile corridors, the equitable rationing, the naive belief that humanity's worst impulses had been engineered away. Most of all, she remembered sunlight piercing the vault door on her seventh birthday, the moment before raiders turned paradise into hell.
"You look like you're trying to murder that cutting board," Jiang Chen remarked, snapping her back to the present.
Sun Jiao's cheeks burned. The realization that she'd been stealing glances at this infuriating man while lost in sentimental reverie sparked equal parts rage and shame. Beneath it all pulsed something even more terrifying - happiness.
Happiness. The word felt alien on her wasteland-hardened tongue.
Dinner became a drunken confessional.
"I don't know how to describe you," Sun Jiao mumbled around mouthfuls of eggs, her speech slurring. "Like someone from... from the fairy tales we read in the shelter."
"Fairy tales?" Jiang Chen nearly choked on his beer.
"All that pre-war nonsense about... about families and love." She waved her chopsticks dismissively, though her eyes shone suspiciously bright. "First time I saw real sunlight? Age seven. Same day I learned fairy tales are bullshit."
The alcohol flowed freely after that.
Somewhere between the fifth and sixth can, decorum disintegrated.
"That's my shoe, you idiot!" Jiang Chen wrestled an empty bowl from Sun Jiao's grip as she mistook it for her EP device.
"Try'n stop me, pipsqueak," she slurred, effortlessly flipping their positions with her enhanced strength. When their lips crashed together, it was all teeth and desperation - more battlefield than bedroom.
What followed defied physics and good taste:
A trail of clothing from kitchen to stairwell
One shattered vase (repurposed as impromptu handhold)
The complete structural failure of a pre-war mahogany bedframe
Dawn found them tangled in sweat-damp sheets, sobriety returning like a hangover.
"...Sorry," Jiang Chen offered lamely, acutely aware the apology came several hours too late.
Sun Jiao traced idle patterns on his chest. "This how civilized men take responsibility?"
"I'll make it right." His ears burned.
She chuckled, the vibration traveling pleasantly through where their bodies connected. "For a man, you're oddly cute."
The compliment disarmed him more effectively than any of her combat moves. When Sun Jiao stretched languidly, the sheet slipping to reveal battle-scarred perfection, Jiang Chen's brain short-circuited.
"Like what you see?" She grinned, all predator.
"Yes." Honesty seemed safest.
Their second round began with Sun Jiao's whispered challenge: "Then earn your keep."
Epilogue: Two Worlds, One Problem
As sunlight filtered through bullet-pocked curtains, Jiang Chen contemplated the gold bars waiting in the living room - and the woman currently using his arm as a pillow.
He'd come for wealth, but somehow acquired something far more complicated.
Welcome to the apocalypse, he thought wryly, where even scavengers can get scavenged.