The next morning somehow felt even stranger than the last one.

Which was impressive considering I woke up yesterday to find my dining room transformed into a military communications center overnight for no rhyme or reason. We had just managed to get rid of the military. I didn’t need two of my guys turning into them.

I can’t say that I was impressed about that whole turn of events... but it seemed to be the least of my worries.

Today the mansion just felt...

Off.

And I hated it.

I walked into the dining room expecting food and immediately stopped.

Chenghai had not moved once since yesterday, still sitting in front of the radio like it held all the answers. And there was still no food.

Okay, so that wasn’t strictly right. We had a lot of ingredients... but they weren’t being put together to form a meal.

The radios crackled softly across the table while Chenghai continued to take notes with enough military equipment to overthrow a small country. Zhenlan stood near one of the windows checking inventory off on a clipboard he found somewhere while several open crates sat scattered around the floor beside him.

Nobody looked up when I walked in.

That alone was disturbing.

Normally at least one of them would tell me to eat breakfast before I started surviving entirely off caffeine and spite.

Instead Chenghai adjusted one of the radio frequencies slightly while writing something else down beside one of the maps.

"...bridge access compromised due to vine overgrowth—"

Static swallowed the rest.

Chenghai still wrote something down.

Okay.

Now I was starting to feel mildly concerned.

I looked between the two men slowly. "Did both of you secretly join the military while I was sleeping? Is Li coming back?" I gasped. "Don’t tell me that Wei Guang is back!"

But neither one answered.

I narrowed my eyes, trying to figure out what could have happened two days ago to set them off that much, but I really couldn’t think of anything.

Then I noticed what Chenghai was eating.

I stared at the cold can sitting beside his notebook for several long seconds.

Beans.

Just... cold beans straight out of the can like some kind of exhausted raccoon digging through garbage at three in the morning.

What the hell?

I pointed at it immediately. "Why are you eating prison food?"

That finally got Chenghai’s attention.

He looked down at the can in his hand like he forgot it existed in the first place.

"It has protein."

I blinked once.

Then twice.

That was possibly the worst thing anyone had ever said to me inside this house.

"What do you mean it has protein?" I demanded. "That isn’t an answer. The meat in the fridge has protein. So does the protein power bars in the cupboards. There are like a hundred different sources of protein than cold beans eaten out of the can."

Lingyun immediately started laughing from somewhere behind me while Yuche looked up from whatever he was doing on the iPad.

For some reason, the other two still looked normal.

Thank God.

At least I hadn’t completely lost my mind yet.

I pointed toward Chenghai dramatically. "Why didn’t you cook?"

Silence.

Actual silence.

The man just stared at me like he genuinely didn’t understand the question.

That was horrifying.

Slowly, I narrowed my eyes, feeling a glimmer of hope. "And since you aren’t making breakfast...Does this mean I can have snacks instead?"

"No."

Yuche answered so quickly that I almost felt insulted he expected me to make bad decisions.

Almost.

"If he doesn’t want to cook, I’ll make something."

That was better.

Much better.

I walked farther into the room and leaned against the back of one of the chairs while eyeing Chenghai suspiciously.

The longer I looked at him, the stranger he seemed.

Not physically.

Nothing obvious like that.

But his entire posture had changed somehow.

He was more rigid, more alert. More like he was before the apocalypse came and mellowed him out.

It was like he was waiting for someone to kick the door open and start shooting at us.

Which honestly felt dramatic considering how many times he had opened the door to intruders.

The killer jungle outside already handled most of our security problems.

Zhenlan wasn’t much better.

He kept checking the windows every few minutes while reorganizing supplies inside the crates with enough focus to make me wonder if he was planning to invade another country later.

At this point I was genuinely starting to miss the previous version of both men.

Lingyun wandered into the kitchen still grinning to himself while Yuche finally stood from the table.

Neither seemed bothered by the weird atmosphere filling the dining room.

Actually, now that I thought about it, both of them looked way too relaxed compared to the other two.

Almost normal.

Which somehow made Zhenlan and Chenghai seem even stranger.

I frowned slightly.

"...Did you two get possessed? Transmigrated? Reborn?"

That finally made Chenghai look up again.

His eyes narrowed slightly. "Possessed?"

"Yes. By angry military ghosts or something."

Lingyun nearly choked laughing.

Even Yuche looked mildly amused as he walked into the kitchen.

Meanwhile neither Chenghai nor Zhenlan seemed to understand why that was funny.

Okay.

That was definitely concerning.

One of the radios crackled suddenly.

"...northern shelter requesting emergency medical assistance immediately—"

Static swallowed the voice.

I didn’t understand why Chenghai was so concerned about what was going on outside. That was outside. It didn’t have anything to do with us.

Yuche opened the fridge while Lingyun leaned against the counter beside him.

Then Yuche glanced toward Chenghai before snorting softly.

"If he doesn’t want to cook, I’ll make breakfast," he offered again, and I had the suspicious feeling that it wasn’t for my benefit.

His gaze slid briefly toward the cold can still sitting beside Chenghai’s notebook.

"But we all know how you feel about useful people. What is his new role going to be? It’s not like he really does anything except cook anyway."