"Xiaoqing, how about we go on a date tomorrow? Where do you want to go? Maybe the amusement park?"

A man’s voice kept buzzing by her ear, rambling on and on like if she didn’t answer, he could keep talking forever without running out of breath.

What the hell was all that noise for? Wasn’t he scared of attracting zombies?

Clara Sinclair opened her eyes impatiently, ready to snap at him. But the second she saw the scene in front of her, she froze.

What met her eyes was an absurdly luxurious bedroom, all done up in pink like some over-the-top princess dream. She was lying on a huge bed. The mattress was perfectly soft, the pillow height was just right, and the quilt against her skin had that smooth, expensive silk texture you could tell at a touch.

A young human man sat at the bedside. Handsome, maybe in his twenties, looking at her with a syrupy, affectionate gaze.

Clara quietly pinched herself.

Okay. That hurt. So this was real.

The apocalypse had already lasted ten years. She had been a level-ten space ability user, an absolute powerhouse, and even then, in the survivor base, all she had was a tiny private room, a narrow little bed, and one blanket she had practically fought for with her life. Forget high-end silk covers. In those days, having a whole blanket at all was already peak luxury.

Clara lowered her eyes and looked at her hand.

It was slender, pale, and soft, without even the slightest callus. A proper pampered hand, the kind that had never touched rough work a day in its life.

The problem was—

This was not her hand.

Seeing that Clara stayed silent, the man who had been talking didn’t get annoyed at all. Instead, he kept going in that patient, gentle tone of his. "You think the amusement park is too childish? Then how about Michelin? Want to go to Yilianzi?"

Yilianzi?

Clara’s gaze sharpened instantly.

Wasn’t that the famous Michelin restaurant mentioned in the novel she had read before bed yesterday to kill time, Apocalypse Sweetheart: I’m Everyone’s Favorite? The book had gone on and on about the presentation of the dishes and how insanely good the food tasted. She still remembered it clearly.

Apocalypse Sweetheart: I’m Everyone’s Favorite was exactly the kind of story the title promised—peak Mary Sue energy, full-blown plot armor, and every single person in the world somehow obsessed with the fake-sweet heroine Vivian Lorne.

And in that book, there was a cannon-fodder side character with the exact same name as her: Song Xiaoqing.

She was a sophomore in college, majoring in painting. Her father owned a listed company, and her mother was a major investor. Her starting hand was absolutely cracked. But then both of them died in a car accident, leaving behind a massive inheritance.

So how dumb was this version of Song Xiaoqing?

Dumb enough to have everything and still pick a two-faced parasite for a boyfriend.

That boyfriend was Spencer Aldridge.

He was the campus heartthrob, ridiculously handsome, but dirt poor. His father worked as a migrant laborer, and his mother stayed back in their hometown doing odd jobs.

But ever since he started dating Clara—no, the original Song Xiaoqing—Spencer had been shamelessly siphoning money off her nonstop. Thanks to her, his parents’ living conditions upgraded overnight, and they didn’t even need to go out and work anymore.

Then came New Year’s Eve, 2032.

An asteroid passed close to Blue Star and changed the planet’s magnetic field, triggering genetic mutations in living things across the globe. That very night, everyone fell into a strange, unexplained sleep.

A few hours later, nearly sixty percent of the population opened their eyes again.

But they were no longer human.

They had become zombies.

Of the people left, only one percent awakened abilities.

And it wasn’t just humans. Animals and plants mutated too.

Unfortunately, when Song Xiaoqing woke up, she was still just an ordinary person.

Spencer Aldridge, on the other hand, became an ability user.