Danger Index

“Young man.” The stout man held his dagger against the girl’s neck, then impatiently yelled, “We have no animosity against you; there’s no reason to get in a fight like this.”

“If you want to save this girl, reveal yourself, and then we can make a deal.”

The stout man yelled into the fog, but he didn’t know where Chang was hiding. He couldn’t see anything but the fog. He wasn’t even able to hear Chang’s footsteps, which made him feel powerless.

“Say something!” There was only a muffled echo from the fog, so the stout man shouted, “I said, say something!”

The stout man nervously looked around, and sweat soaked his shirt.

However, not even a ripple appeared in the fog, nor did a response. All he could hear was the moaning from his accomplice.

This oppressive silence made his stout figure tremble from fear and anxiety.

“Son of a bitch! You think I’m afraid of you, huh? I’ll count to three; if you still decide to hide, then this little girl…” The stout man cried while pressing the dagger tighter to the girl’s neck.

A gunshot from in front of him ended everything; the bullet went through his plump lips as he was thinking about what to say. It entered his head, and his stout body collapsed with just a deep groan.

Four meters away, Chang put down his pistol – although he was an amateur with guns, shooting someone in the head just four meters away wasn’t a big challenge for him.

Chang came in front of the little girl from the fog. Blood from the long scar on her face had congealed from the end of her eyebrows to the corner of her lips.

Surprisingly, the little girl stopped crying when she saw Chang approach. In the pool of blood, a pair of shining eyes fixed onto this man that was half a meter taller than her.

“Close your eyes and give me a minute, okay?” As if her shining eyes had stung him, Chang turned his head and walked to the man who was still jerking on the ground.

The scar faced man was still scrawling, but due to his spine being broken, the movement of his upper and lower body was extremely disjointed, as if a maggot was wriggling around.

“You know what? You’re more disgusting than a maggot.” Chang lowered his body and sat on the scar-faced man’s chest. He looked into his eyes and said so indifferently.

Then, as if the world had lost all sound, Chang slowly inserted his scalpel into the man’s chest.

Whiff…

The blade pierced through his lungs, and it sounded like a slight gust of air from poking through a ball. Chang patiently waited until the man’s chest completely collapsed before he took a deep breath. The smell of death gushed out from the cut.

Chang stayed in a daze for a while, then pulled out the scalpel and wiped off the dripping blood onto the scar-faced man’s shirt. He then returned to the little girl.

“Take these antibiotics; I'll help sanitize the cut on your face.” Chang gave her some pills from his backpack, then carefully cleaned the cut with rubbing alcohol.

After he finished that, however, Chang was confused.

Should he take the girl with him? It was a great concern in his mind.

At this moment, he could only take care of himself. Within a day, he had been teetering on the brink of life and death several times, and that was without anyone else dragging him behind.

Bringing her along meant that the situation would only become worse.

“You don’t want to take me with you, do you?” After she took the pills, she softly asked. Her sensitivity allowed her to understand Chang’s thoughts.

"I'm afraid that I can’t take care of you.” Chang confessed, "Where are your parents?"

“I ran out from an orphanage. I don’t have any parents or family.” The corners of her mouth curved into a smile at Chang, but along with the smile, blood oozed from the cut.

“Take me with you please… I won’t drag you behind! I have a special power.”

“A special power?” Chang frowned. If a kid told him such a thing yesterday, he would certainly think that the kid was joking, but everything was different today. After he personally experienced the extraordinary feeling from his slight mutation, he wouldn’t belittle anyone who said things of this sort.

"What kind of special power do you have?" Chang asked.

“Since yesterday, I could sense all kinds of danger, even if they were far away.” The girl described with her hands, using simple words to explain, “For example, for those three men, their level of danger was about this big…”

The girl clenched her fist, showing what she envisioned to be “as big as a fist”.

“As for you, the level of danger you give to me is this big…” The girl drew a circle that was the size of an adult fist.

“Okay…” Chang looked at the girl; he knew she wasn’t lying. He then asked, “What about in the hospital, did you sense anything?”

“Yes, it was huge.” She raised her arm as high as she could and drew a giant circle, “It’s even bigger than this.”

“Okay… come with me then.” Chang decided to bring her along and held her hand.

Knowing that the girl had danger-sensing capabilities, he no longer held his previous concerns.

Originally, he wasn’t going to bring her with him. First, he didn’t have the ability to take care of a kid; second, she would definitely weigh him down. He wasn’t a hero or anything. He was simply an ordinary high school student – he even failed the f*cking entrance exam. Looking back, he had saved someone’s life twice. But even a hero wouldn’t get involved in a survivor’s afterlife, not to mention bringing someone with him – unless she had special powers.

The ability to recognize and visualize danger was an extremely practical ability for survival. The chance of surviving would be significantly improved if he knew whether something was stronger or not, as he could avoid them instead of meeting their attacks.

“If you can sense danger, why did you get caught by those men?”

“They were average men; I couldn’t really feel anything from them.” The girl answered.

 "Oh." Chang nodded. He now understood that the danger levels she sensed wasn’t really how dangerous a being was, but rather their vitality. She mistook the pressure from those powerful being as being danger. In other words, she couldn’t sense whether a being intended to harm her.

“Okay, how about this… from now on, let’s just say that the danger of those thugs was at level 1. If we run into something that is several times stronger, use numbers to help me understand the level of danger you feel from it compared to those thugs. Understood?”

She nodded.

“Okay, so what is my danger level?”

“Somewhere between 2 and 3.” The girl counted with her fingers.