I’m Selling Near-Expiry Food in the Apocalypse

Mi Beibei is a vocational college graduate living in a third-tier city who has built a modest life with a small apartment and a steady job. Her world collapses when she loses her employment and is forced to rely on online loans to pay her mortgage. Within six months, her debt spirals to over thirty thousand yuan, and when the loan platform suddenly demands full repayment, she faces financial ruin. With her credit exhausted and friends unwilling to help, Mi Beibei is left with only 194.5 yuan to her name. After a failed job interview leaves her with no bus fare, she discovers a warehouse selling near-expiration food at rock-bottom prices. Seeing an opportunity, she buys a small stock of instant noodles and self-heating meals, hoping to resell them on the street to survive.

Her initial attempts to sell food to passersby are met with indifference and rejection, as customers are wary of buying items close to their expiration dates. Despite the humiliation and physical exhaustion, Mi Beibei persists, setting up a makeshift stall every evening. Her perseverance is rewarded when she makes her first sale to a young man, giving her a fragile sense of hope. However, her mundane struggle for survival is abruptly interrupted one morning when she looks out of her storage room window and witnesses a horrifying scene. The peaceful neighborhood outside has transformed into a ruined, post-apocalyptic landscape filled with rubble and slow-moving zombies. While her other windows show the normal world, the storage room window serves as a portal to this desolate realm.

Initially terrified, Mi Beibei tests the connection by throwing a garbage bag out the window, which attracts the attention of a group of survivors in the apocalypse. The group, led by a muscular man named Liu Jingming and a woman with water-manipulation abilities named Gu An'an, is starving and desperate. They discover Mi Beibei has food and propose a trade. In a world where currency is worthless, they offer her gold jewelry in exchange for her supplies. Mi Beibei agrees, trading four boxes of self-heating rice and instant noodles for a bundle of gold necklaces. This transaction marks the beginning of a lucrative business that bridges two worlds.

Mi Beibei sells the gold at a local jewelry store, receiving over thirty thousand yuan, which allows her to pay off her crippling online loan debt and send money to her aging parents. Empowered by her newfound capital, she returns to the near-expiration warehouse and buys a massive inventory of food, including compressed biscuits, ham sausages, and various snacks. She also purchases an electric cargo vehicle to transport her goods and restocks on daily necessities like sanitary products and toiletries, which are scarce in the apocalypse. She establishes a regular trading schedule with Gu An'an's group, becoming their primary supplier.

As her business grows, Mi Beibei expands her clientele to include other survivors, such as a young man named Yang Xiaoyi and a cold, stoic warrior named Zhang Minglang. She learns that the survivors possess supernatural abilities, including spatial storage, which they use to transport the goods she provides. Mi Beibei officially opens a shop in the apocalypse, using a handmade sign to advertise her wares. She carefully maintains her double life, appearing as a successful entrepreneur in her world while serving as a vital lifeline for the survivors in the other. The story follows her transition from a desperate, unemployed woman to a confident merchant who has secured her financial future and gained a unique position of power between two realities.