Chapter 2: Rust
The throbbing sting in his finger kept resurfacing, gnawing at Lin Feng's usual composure like persistent static.

He leaned out, scanning the alley—the blood-red patches weren't just on the door. The entire passage had been colonized by what Maeve insisted was slime mold, its crimson tendrils mottling the walls like a fresh wound. The sight dragged him back to that night.

"Goddamn slime mold." Lin Feng hissed through clenched teeth. Shaking off the memory, he jerked his umbrella open and stepped into the curtain of rain.

To meet Maeve Chen, he needed to take Bus 404 to the other side of the river. The bus was late. At the roadside, municipal crews in hazmat gear wrestled with pressure hoses, their jets of water slicing through the gelatinous red masses creeping across the pavement.

The slime mold—or whatever Maeve had called it—now clung to the trees, railings, even the asphalt. At this point, Lin Feng wouldn’t have batted an eye if someone walked past completely covered in the stuff.

A layer of grayish, powdery film floated on the waterlogged streets, likely spores from the organism.

Soon, Bus 404 rumbled to a stop. Lin Feng boarded and took his usual seat by the window. The aging diesel engine sputtered unnaturally as it started—a grating, metallic whine that shouldn’t have been there. Not that Lin Feng paid it any mind.

The aging Bus 404 rattled through its final stops in the old quarter before lurching onto the Northspire Haven Bridge.

Across the span lay the new district—a gleaming testament to the city's expansion two decades back. This bridge had been the lifeline between the halves back then, though nowadays it stood forgotten, dwarfed by sleeker modern crossings downriver.

A no-frills suspension job, the steel-framed relic squeezed just one narrow lane each way, its rusting cables humming in the harbor wind.

The bus crawled along the bridge in stop-and-go traffic. Lin Feng, who had been scrolling through news on his phone, started feeling queasy and reluctantly pocketed it, turning to look out the window.

What he saw made him wonder if the motion sickness was making him hallucinate.

The once steel-gray bridge had turned a disturbing crimson, its surfaces now fuzzy with growth—like something from a surreal dream. Crowds had even gathered to take selfies with the bizarre sight.

But Lin Feng's gut twisted with unease. A shadow seemed to settle over his mood, mirroring the gloomy weather outside.

"Maybe I'm just overthinking it..."

He was meeting Maeve Chen near the university's old snack street—a place he hadn't visited since graduation.

Lin Feng arrived at the snack street entrance only to get a text from Maeve: "Wait there! 5 mins!!"

Killing time under the drizzly rain, he watched students flow past. Despite the endless gray skies and slime mold outbreaks plaguing the city, the crowd here buzzed with normalcy—teenagers packed shoulder-to-shoulder at food stalls, laughing as they jostled for pork buns and bubble tea.

The mundane scene somehow eased the knot in his chest. Maybe things really were okay.

True to her word, Maeve emerged within minutes—sprinting toward him from the university's back gate, her floral umbrella bobbing like a drunken butterfly through the mist.

She’d rushed out in strappy sandals despite the rain—her once-pristine feet now splattered with mud, toes curling against the wet pavement as if clinging for dear life.

"You…made it," Lin Feng managed, the words lagging half a beat behind his thoughts.

Even after their occasional post-graduation meetups, this dance of familiarity still stumbled.

"Sorry to keep you waiting." Maeve shook out her umbrella and ducked under his without ceremony.

The umbrella was decent-sized, but not meant for two. They stood pressed shoulder-to-hip, the humid space between them thick with the heat of her breath—quick and damp from running.

"Got carried away with makeup." She framed her face with mud-streaked fingers, striking a mock-glam pose. "Worth the wait, right?"

Lin Feng found himself fighting a smile—a reflex so foreign it startled him.

Maeve's outfit didn't help: denim shorts and a fitted tee clinging to her petite but well-proportioned frame. At 157cm, she shouldn't have had legs that looked this deceptively long, now glistening with rain beads. From his vantage point, the curves were...distracting.

Her roundish face usually played up the cute aesthetic—button nose, apple cheeks, all framed by mascara-smudged lashes. But—

"Pro tip," he heard himself say, "waterproof mascara exists for a reason."

Maeve gasped, spinning around to fish out her compact mirror. A defeated whimper escaped her. "Ugh! My makeup's raccooning! No wonder everyone was staring—thought I nailed the smokey eye! Facepocalypse!"

...

They eventually settled into a quiet corner at the nearby steakhouse. Lin Feng waited patiently—through three makeup wipes and one cold steak later—as Maeve scrubbed away the evidence.

"Stupid humidity," she finally huffed, snapping her compact shut. "Ruins everything."

"You look...fine without it." The forced chuckle sounded more awkward than intended.

"Yeah?" She pursed her lips playfully. "Good enough. Now eat—their ribeye's killer when it's not fossilized."

They ate in silence for minutes, the clink of cutlery their only conversation. Maeve seemed genuinely engrossed in demolishing her steak—the girl could probably write a Yelp review mid-chew.

This impromptu meal should've felt awkward, yet Lin Feng sensed it as a life raft. Maybe his dumpster fire of an existence actually had salvageable parts.

"So...how's the thesis going?" he finally ventured.

"Bless this mutant slime mold!" Maeve waved her fork like a conductor's baton. "Got enough data from the crimson clusters alone to graduate twice over."

"Blessing?" Lin Feng's knife screeched across the plate. "More like a warning. Those blood-red patches...they feel..." He trailed off, staring at the rare steak oozing pink.

The sight of blood—or anything crimson enough to mimic it—always dragged Lin Feng back to that night.

The sidewalk had been a mosaic of congealed blood and... other things. Bone fragments scoring the cobblestones. Matter no one should see clinging to magnolia leaves.

His steak knife trembled, carving jagged lines into the plate as the memory tightened its grip.

"Lin Feng!"

Her hand darted across the table, small but insistent around his wrist. "They saved you for this." Her thumb brushed his pulse point. "For living."

"By hating every breath?" A bitter laugh escaped him. "The world took them and gave me... this." The knife clattered down. "This rotting city. These bloodstained streets."

After speaking, Lin Feng looked at the pedestrians outside the window. The rain seemed to have grown heavier.

For a moment, the sound of rain drowned out all else. Maeve Chen's voice came through muffled: "Come on, things will get better. I'm here with you."

Lin Feng barely caught the first part. With a knowing smile, he said, "Thank you."

"'Thank you'..." Maeve Chen pursed her lips, giving him a light glare before instantly brightening up again. "Let me show you my research findings from this period!"

She unlocked her phone and pulled up several images—microscopic photos of the slime mold.

"Like I told you that day, this thing that looks like mold is actually a mutated slime mold!"

"The fuzzy parts are its fruiting bodies, which highly resemble mold. Beneath the fruiting bodies lies its true form—the plasmodium (the slime mold’s gelatinous core). It's this slimy substance, usually yellow in color."

"Right? There were studies claiming slime molds are 'intelligent' single-cells," Lin Feng recalled. "Someone even used them to map Tokyo's subway system—ended up replicating the actual network."

"Did that experiment myself!" Maeve pointed her fork at him. "But calling it intelligence is anthropomorphizing. It’s just biological programming creating the illusion of intent."

"Like statistical optimization. The plasmodium (the slime mold’s gelatinous core) explores every path as it grows, then consolidates the most efficient pathways."

"Then why the mold disguise?" Lin Feng leaned in, his steak forgotten.

"Still figuring that out myself." Maeve tilted her head, rainwater dripping from her bangs. "Mold's fungi, slime molds are amoebae—totally different kingdoms. Even though both produce fruiting bodies and spores, they're evolutionary strangers."

"Here's the kicker—" she leaned forward, eyes gleaming with scientific fervor—"these slime molds retain living plasmodium (the slime mold’s gelatinous core) after sporulation. And right now? Every raindrop's packed with their spores!"

"Any health risks?"

"Zero!" She waved a dismissive hand. "They're saprophytic vegans, thriving in this miserable humidity. Once the sun comes out—poof!—they'll die off." Resting her chin on her palm, she grinned. "Since when did you become my thesis advisor?"

Lin Feng's gaze darted sideways. "Can they...consume iron?"

"No way!"

"Then why the blood-red transformation?"

Maeve's brow furrowed—a rare crack in her perpetual optimism.

Minutes later, they stood by the roadside railing, hunched over a pulsating crimson mass. With tweezers from her bag, she peeled back the fuzzy fruiting bodies to reveal the slime mold's true form: a veined, blood-red plasmodium (the slime mold’s gelatinous core) clinging to the metal like some alien parasite.

Lin Feng grimaced. "Actual slime monster."

"More like nature's demolition crew," Maeve muttered. She scraped away the plasmodium (the slime mold’s gelatinous core)—only to gasp.

Beneath the ooze lay polished steel. The rust-eaten railing had been...reprocessed. Gleaming pits dotted the surface where metal should've been, edges dissolved as if bathed in acid.

"This can't—" Maeve's hands trembled dialing her advisor. The line rang into oblivion, a strained dial tone mirroring the storm's howl.