Like a reflex, Liu Hong immediately turned and ran backward with the crowd.
A torrential downpour fell from the sky, and yellow taxis surrounded the area. Behind him, a Black woman was begging another woman to help retrieve her passport from inside a taxi.
He had no idea why that woman would agree to help fetch a passport with a tsunami approaching, but out of sheer instinct, he grabbed the woman who had started to turn back and pulled her along with him.
Startled by the sudden yank, the woman nearly shook him off.
At that moment, a man who appeared to be her companion ran over, grabbed her hand, and said, "Look behind you."
Only then did the woman turn around to look. Seeing a tsunami wave dozens of meters high sweeping toward them, she didn't hesitate for another second and ran back with her companion—
while still remembering to pull the Black woman along with her.
Liu Hong didn't care about any of that. The moment the woman was pulled away by her companion—even managing to look back during such a perilous crisis—Liu Hong had already bolted straight toward a tall building behind him.
The structure looked sturdy enough that it wouldn't easily be washed away, even by a tsunami.
Scarcely dozens of seconds after Liu Hong rushed inside, he heard a commotion and saw that the exact same group of people had run in right behind him.
They were also hurrying up the stairs right on his heels.
Liu Hong ignored them; saving his own life took priority now.
When he reached the second floor, he still didn't feel safe, so he kept going and ran up to the third floor. Looking down from the third-floor window, he saw that the building had high ceilings and resembled a library, filled with books and wooden bookshelves.
The second floor was a massive library hall.
Above it was a mezzanine level, equivalent to a third floor.
Liu Hong was currently standing on this mezzanine level.
The tsunami outside had just roared past, but the seawater had not breached the second floor.
It should be safe here for the time being.
Only then did Liu Hong let out a sigh of relief. He noticed that while the weather outside had been bitterly cold, it wasn't nearly as chilly indoors—there must have been central heating.
Yet his clothes were completely soaked, especially his shoes, which were drenched through.
Wearing them felt thoroughly uncomfortable.
Even though he had just engaged in a frantic sprint and the indoor air had some warmth to it, he was still shivering from the cold.
He didn't recognize a single soul here, and the people around him were chattering entirely in English.
Yet someone who had barely passed his College English Test Band 4 could understand their conversation effortlessly, and even felt capable of communicating with them.
Liu Hong knew this whole situation was rather bizarre, and he recalled his experience earlier that morning—that suffocating sensation of death.
His whole body trembled, whether from fear or from the cold, he couldn't tell.
The cold, however, was very real. Now a tsunami had hit.
A tsunami again!!
Judging by conditions outside, though, it wouldn't be like this morning's earth-shattering cataclysm where the land itself sank.
This was just a tsunami.
Even so, disaster relief took time, and the water on the streets wasn't going to recede anytime soon.
He had participated in disaster drills before.
He had practiced for earthquakes, but certainly never for tsunamis.
Still, the basic precautions were likely similar. The most important thing right now was not falling sick.
He had to change out of these wet clothes immediately to avoid catching a cold!
Everyone around was trying to make phone calls or sitting where they were to recover from the shock.
Liu Hong, on the other hand, sat straight down on the floor and took off his shoes.
With everyone preoccupied with their own survival, no one had the time or energy to mind what others were doing.
Just as he had taken off his shoes and was about to remove his socks, he saw the young man who had rescued the girl earlier run over to a counter that looked like an information desk to ask where a telephone was.
That reminded him: of course! There was an information desk here!!
Enduring his discomfort, he put his shoes back on, stood up, walked downstairs to the information desk, and asked the woman sitting there where he could find dry clothes and shoes, because he was about to catch a cold.
He even failed to stifle a sneeze while asking.
The woman at the information desk told him the location of the lost-and-found or cloakroom area, saying there should be dry garments there, though most of them belonged to other people who had checked them in.
However, she added that he could borrow some temporarily to keep himself from actually catching a cold, provided he returned them if their owners came looking.
Liu Hong didn't catch the tail end of what she said; his soaked shoes felt so wretched that he headed straight in the direction she pointed.
Sure enough, upon arriving, he found two rows of clothes, mostly heavy winter coats.
At the very end stood a desk. He had no idea what this room was actually used for, but Liu Hong didn't care about that right now.
Given this setup, this really was a massive library—not only was the building huge, but the amenities were top-notch too!!
Without any further hesitation, Liu Hong pulled the door shut behind him, stripped off his wet garments, and changed into a dry set of clothes. He found a pair of shoes that fit reasonably well; even without socks, wearing them was infinitely better than staying in soaked footwear.
He wrapped himself in a heavy coat and curled up on a sofa behind the desk, waiting for his body temperature to slowly rise.
Once his body finally warmed all over, Liu Hong stayed put. The commotion outside gave him more than enough mental static to ponder what on earth was going on.
Sitting on the sofa facing a window with stronger light, Liu Hong pulled over the clothes he had arrived in and began rifling through the pockets to look for clues.
He found a set of keys, a wallet, a watch, and a handkerchief.
There was nothing else.
The pockets of his trousers were completely empty.
Right, when he first arrived here, he must have been getting out of a taxi just as he spotted the tsunami.
He had immediately turned and run, leaping over a few cabs.
His original body probably had other things on it, but he must have left them behind in the taxi.
That's right, this body.
Liu Hong had checked just a moment earlier: he was now a White man in his late twenties.
He had an average build, and as for facial features, he honestly couldn't tell.
To his eyes, all White men looked pretty much the same.
He only remembered those two people earlier because they looked different from the usual White people in his mind; they were distinctive and even looked somewhat familiar.
Liu Hong opened the wallet and found it stuffed tight with US dollar bills.
It seemed he was quite well off in this life?
Wealth was useless now, though! With a disaster happening, money probably had nowhere to spend.
Still, seeing it was a nice morale boost!
Liu Hong's own wallet had never been that thick.
Next, he pulled several credit cards out from the side slots, all issued by banks he didn't recognize.
There was also an identity card.
Ah, he now knew his name: Hunter.
A very common name.
Just as Liu Hong was staring at his ID card, the door behind him was suddenly pushed open.
Liu Hong hadn't locked the door earlier; figuring that if he felt uncomfortable enough to need a change of clothes to avoid falling sick, someone else might need to as well.
So he had only pulled the door shut without latching it.
Until someone pushed it open just now.
However, they didn't seem to notice Liu Hong.
The woman matter-of-factly told the man to take off his clothes and went to fetch him dry garments, while the man stood there shivering.
No one knew what they had been through.
The woman draped the coat over the man, then stripped off her own outer layer and threw her arms around him.
This made Liu Hong, who had just been about to turn around and remind them he was still here, widen his eyes in utter shock.
Was it going to get this spicy right off the bat???