Chapter 10 A Brief Account of Moving Forward 2

Fatty wasn’t the type of person who could hide things, so if he wasn’t willing to tell me now, he must have something on his mind. I didn’t pursue the matter any further and just continued to look ahead.

Fatty’s eyes never left the darkness in front of him, and I even felt his hands shaking slightly until Poker-Face woke up.

I didn’t even notice him waking up and moving around. He was still sleeping there the last time I saw him, but when I looked again, he was already dressed and ready to go. I went over and hastily packed my backpack. When that was done, I glanced at my watch and felt my jaw drop.

It seemed that I had slept for two whole days. Was there a problem with the time again? When I checked my watch against Fatty’s, he patted me with an ashen face and said, “At least we got enough sleep.”

We took one last look at the space outside the gap. Although it was dark, I at least knew that there was a way to get back aboveground from there. If we continued walking into the gap, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to see the sky for a long time.

But at this time, I didn’t think of turning back at all and just continued walking further inside. I found that Fatty was obviously in a bad state. He was very nervous and didn’t lower his gun at all. I also saw that he had made the bullet into a pendant and hung it around his neck. Poker-Face also seemed very focused. In fact, both of them kept looking into the depths of the gap from time to time, which was very abnormal. I couldn’t help but wonder if Poker-Face had also seen something when he was keeping watch.

The path was very difficult to walk, so I didn’t bother saying anything as I continued to move forward. That first day and night were peaceful and there weren’t any accidents.

We had already entered the middle of nowhere by this point, so the three of us stopped by a pile of rocks to rest. We found that there were various stacks of large and small stones here, which created gaps everywhere. Some of the stacked shapes could even be used as recliners. I took out the satellite phone again, but there wasn’t any sound coming from it at this time.

When I suggested that I should take the first watch tonight, Poker-Face and Fatty just looked at me. Then, Fatty threw me a hand-crank charger and told me to fully charge all of my electrical devices such as my flashlight and cell phone and then go to sleep. From now on, I wasn’t allowed to keep watch at night.

Unwilling to accept it, I narrowed my eyes at him and said, “It was an accident before.”

Fatty didn’t argue with me at all and just stood up and went to a high place to smoke. Poker-Face, who was still looking at the depths in the gap and seemed to be thinking about something, completely ignored me.

We were so familiar with each other that we didn’t talk at this time. I already knew in my heart that whatever happened during their watch tonight, they wouldn’t tell me about it.

I charged all of the flashlights fully, which wasn’t an easy job. I soon got tired and felt my shoulders start to ache. I thought about secretly sneaking over and taking a look in the middle of the night, so I decided to lay down first and take a nap. That night, I had a dream that I slept for a whole year.

I was also worried that I wouldn’t be able to wake up, so I came up with an idea to keep an eye on things. I put my cell phone in the crevice of a stone pile on the side and secretly took a few photos of myself. The angle was just right to capture a video of the place where Fatty was keeping watch.

As it turned out, I really didn’t wake up in the middle of the night, but I did feel refreshed when I got up. When I was trying to clear my foggy mind, I saw Poker-Face keeping watch and Fatty sleeping next to me, so I took out my cell phone and opened the video file from last night.

Nothing happened at first. I just saw myself snoring in the dim light with a stupid expression on my face. I pulled up the video’s progress bar and skipped past the first three hours. When I hit play again, Fatty was motionless and Poker-Face was sleeping beside me.

I was just about to skip ahead when I noticed that Poker-Face suddenly woke up and Fatty had climbed down from where he was keeping watch. But instead of changing shifts, both of them went up to me and stared straight at me. Then, I also opened my eyes and sat up.

But the thing was, I didn’t remember waking up in the middle of the night at all.

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