Chocolate Fic for yumenosete
To: yumenosete
From: cupid_johnny
Title: How We Save The World
Pairing: Ohkura Tadayoshi/Kiritani Mirei, Yokoyama Yu/Ishihara Satomi if you squint, nonexistent Nishikido Ryo/Horikita Maki/Sakurai Sho
Rating: PG13
Summary: In a world where so many of the living are joining the undead, a boy and a girl are going to change everything. Warm Bodies AU.
A/N: Dear yumenosete, Happy White Day! I sincerely hope you enjoy this. ♥♥♥ (Thank you so much to my betas, ASK [lol], you guys know who you are!)
How they meet
She’s the prettiest zombie he’s ever seen.
That is Tadayoshi’s most coherent thought in the midst of the bloodbath that occurs in front of his eyes as he crouches, hidden under one of the tables in what seems to be an old restaurant kitchen. They had gone out fully armed - or as fully armed as they could be, given the limited supply of firearms at the military’s disposal - but the first thing they were taught in the class he’d dubbed Zombie Survival 101 was: defense before offense. Escape instead of attack, run instead of shoot.
When the zombies had converged on them, his first instinct had been to open his mouth and scream in terror, arms flailing and feet tripping over themselves, before common sense slammed into him - literally - as one of his teammates-turned-zombie fodder knocked him bodily to the floor. He had scrambled to hide under the nearest table, biting into his fist to keep from making noise again. Now, he feels a mixture of relief and terror as he hears the others making their escape. Some are unfortunate enough to be caught in the zombies’ clutches. He’s glad that his friends had been too busy volunteering somewhere else to go with this group; if they were here, he knows they would double back to look for him and be possibly eaten, too.
It’s not like him to volunteer to go outside, really. It’s not like him to volunteer for anything. Hina always said that in the event on a zombie attack, Tadayoshi would be the first one to get eaten because he was sure to scream and attract zombies to him before doing anything else. It was supposed to have been a simple enough mission of gathering whatever food and supplies they could find and taking it back to the stronghold. Tadayoshi had been feeling restless, wanting to do something else. He’d been stuck with that feeling for years now. Back then, he’d heard people call it quarter-life crisis.
Now, he supposes it could be called post-zombie apocalypse crisis.
Missions like these are supposed to call only for a number of around three or four. They went out as a group of eight, because someone had reasoned that there was safety in numbers. Somebody should have told them that apparently zombies abided by the same reason.
Maybe he’s lucky this time around. If he ever gets out of here alive, he mentally vows that he will never go out again. Never.
He can hear more than see the apparent squelching that sounds like someone’s brains being devoured (which was a mystery to him, how could zombies actually eat brains? Do they actually smash people’s skulls - but aren’t human bones strong?) Another body drops heavily next to him, twitching from the remains of its life, and he flinches, drawing back, a mewl escaping past his lips.
That’s when he sees her, crouching down next to the body and hands moving in jerking motions. Tadayoshi can’t figure out just what she’s doing until she manages to loosen the strap of the watch around the wrist of the female body, holding it up as if it were a prize, though her brows crinkle as if she can’t quite figure out what to do with it.
A breeze from an open window plays with her hair. Her lips are stained red from blood. She’s wearing, to his surprise, earrings. And what seems to be a dress, though tattered, and a blazer on top of it. White heels - or what were once white heels - complete her look. She blinks slowly, full eyelashes brushing over skin, just before her gaze meets his.
Her mouth forms a bloody ‘O’ in zombie-surprise. His jaw goes slack, because she’s the prettiest zombie he’s ever seen.
His next most coherent thought is: if a zombie is going to eat his brains, he wouldn’t mind if it’s her.
They stare at each other for several moments and Tadayoshi realizes that there’s a ringing in his ears; it’s quiet, both humans and zombies have left or been left for dead, leaving but one human and zombie in the small room.
She raises a hand slowly and he nearly flinches again at the action, but she only brings it to her lips. “Shhhh.”
He blinks, then nods. Seemingly satisfied, she gives him a slow nod in turn before getting to her feet.
Then she’s gone.
☢☢☢
She doesn’t remember being human.
The funny thing (though in hindsight, she doesn’t really find anything funny nowadays; she isn’t exactly capable of feeling anything acutely, only flickers, muted and dull) about the whole eating-brains business is that for some reason, she catches glimpses of people’s random memories whenever she does; faint, like a smoky wisp in the air. She doesn’t remember herself being human. She thinks she’d like to remember. It must have been nice. She thinks anything must be nicer than this.
She can’t even remember her own name.
She has a mental list (oh, that’s “funny” again, she may have a brain but it isn’t really functioning anymore, is it? Because her heart isn’t. But then again, she can still move - albeit slowly - so it must be functioning?) of the things that she wants to remember:
No one does anything with anyone nowadays. It’s nice, if not boring. If there’s one thing she’s capable of actually feeling, it might actually be boredom.
She has a friend. Sort of. They don’t know each other’s names because neither of them remembers and neither of them can speak very well, but in her mind she calls her Sa, the only sound she’d managed to make when she tried to introduce herself. They meet up once in a while, that is, when their paths happen to cross in that aimless wandering most zombies nowadays seem to do. Sa has large, round eyes and full lips. Sa’s lips are the part she notices first each time; they stand out even if she’s a zombie.
They try to talk sometimes, an exercise in futility.
The sun overhead catches the watch she’s clutching in her hand, making the gold glint sharply, blinding her for a moment. This is something she does, sometimes, collect little keepsakes from warm bodies. Once, after eating another girl who looked to be the same age as she was (not that she remembers her age, either), she caught a disjointed memory of being in an amusement park - a loud bang sounding out - then being handed a prize. These are prizes she knows she doesn’t deserve, but they’re beginning to clutter her home.
Home is school, one of the rooms in school, to be exact, that was originally littered with rugby uniforms and footballs. She doesn’t know why she chose it, but she likes it there. Sometimes a waft of something strong drifts past her nostrils, and she likes having some semblance of a sense of smell.
She’s almost Home.
It’s a little strange that she has the whole school to herself after all these years, though she thinks it might be because no one really enjoyed being in school, anyway.
“Hey!” A voice rings out in the empty hallway, bouncing off the walls. Hey hey hey hey hey. She freezes in her tracks, and if she actually had any blood it might have been frozen by now, too. “W...Wait!”
☢☢☢
It’s only when Tadayoshi thinks he doesn’t recognize the area - neighborhood? - that it dawns on him: following the pretty zombie was a really, really stupid idea.
In hindsight, it had been a good plan as any. He knows the way back to base (he thinks) but it’s impossible to be alone out in zombieland and stay alive. Even if he manages to avoid being attacked, he’s pretty sure he’d end up screaming one way or another before he ends up back home. No, that wouldn’t do. He needs to be with someone.
Pretty zombie came to mind, even if technically she wasn’t someone. But she didn’t eat him and she talked (or shushed, at least), and she’s not a boney. Boneys, according to Zombie Survival 101, are creatures far worse than zombies. The nickname comes from their skeletal appearance. They are leveled-up zombies: faster, stronger and meaner. You can escape from a hungry zombie if you have your wits about you, but there’s no chance of that with a boney.
Also, she’s pretty.
In hindsight, he hadn’t really thought at all.
Focusing on her helps. He doesn’t dare look anywhere else (another lesson in Zombie Survival 101: making eye contact with a zombie is a surefire way to let a zombie know that you’re human), afraid to lose sight of her. Keeping his gaze on her was easy: a zombie walking in heels was one of the most fascinating sights he’s ever seen in his entire life. What would have been yelps of terror whenever a zombie loomed ahead in their path, he manages to turn into passable zombie-groans, albeit loud ones.
Tadayoshi doesn’t know where she’s going. He’s getting tired, feet dragging with every step he takes, unconsciously looking as zombie-like as he’s ever been. He wants to look at his wristwatch, sure that somehow they’ve been walking for hours (in his head he can hear Hina yelling that he’s only been walking for five minutes), but he can’t do that, either. He tries not to think of the possibility that she could be going back to a den of zombies somewhere, because who knows, but thankfully she seems to be going through a way that doesn’t have too many people. He’s struck by this thought, people, because the way everyone walked felt like they were each minding their own business, much like how it was when everyone was human.
He follows her to the school. No one else seems to be around. He calls out to her before he can stop himself, freezing on the spot, ready to scream bloody murder if another zombie appears.
She seems to be waiting for him after he’d called out, and he breaks into a half-jog, wheezing and panting and nearly tripping over his feet in exhaustion. Once he’s caught up, she turns slowly and leads the way into a locker room.
The stench of unwashed uniforms, sweat, and sweat-dried rubber punches him in the nose, making his eyes water. He already felt queasy from having crawled and slipped over his comrades’ guts, but now he feels bile rising in his throat. He shuts his eyes, holding onto the doorway for dear life. “It stinks in here,” he manages to get out, just before he doubles over and throws up.
☢☢☢
She’s not pleased.
Not only does he not bother to clean up his own mess, he also manages to find a can of disinfectant spray, which he proceeds to spray all over the room. She lets him - not that she could have done anything otherwise - feeling a twinge of annoyance at his initial reaction to her sanctuary that she suspects would be infinitely more than actual annoyance were she human.
Her arms twitch, feeling a need to cross them over her chest, but the effort is too much, so they remain at her sides.
“Uh,” he begins, “I followed you.”
That much is obvious. She only stares at him.
“I didn’t know where to go?” he goes on, and she doesn’t know whether he’s telling her or if he’s asking himself.
She opens her mouth to speak, or at least attempt to. “H...” After a century, she manages to say, “Hu...man.” She points to him. Then her finger arcs slowly in the air to point to her own chest. “N...not... hu...man.”
“I know,” he says in a tone that would have accompanied an eye roll.
She repeats the action, pointing to herself. “E...at. Hu...man.”
“But you didn’t. Eat me, I mean.” He stares. “So you’re different...right?”
She lifts one shoulder in a weak attempt at a shrug. “J...ust...ate.”
He scrambles to the other side of the room, near the door, looking at her in horror. She doesn’t like the look on his face, even if she knows it’s justified. “You mean you can eat me?”
It would be only one of the reasons why having a zombie and a human in the same room could only be nothing but a bad idea:
☢☢☢
“I’m hungry,” he says much later.
He’s remained by the door, leaning against the wall, one hand unconsciously gripping the door knob. She’s sat down by the lockers. Watching her slowly bend her body is tiring but riveting. One hand slowly smoothes down the skirt of her dress from behind her in feminine modesty as she lowers herself inch by inch. He tries not to stare at her bare legs, though he can’t help but notice that they’re smooth. For a zombie. Not that he’s ever seen other zombie legs before. She looks tired by the time she manages to actually sit. He feels like applauding, but doesn’t.
“So...” She looks at him blankly, although he figures it’s her default zombie resting face. “Do you have...any food? That’s not brains or something?”
She lifts a hand to point to one corner of the room, which doesn’t look any different from the rest of the space, which is frankly a mess. He gives her a dubious look, taking a deep breath before walking over and crouching down to rummage through the pile, making sure he doesn’t have his back turned to her. “Hey, ready-to-eat curry! Haven’t had these in a while - whoa. There’s a lot.You’re a hoarder.”
The corners of her lips turn downward slightly. He thinks it’s cute, even though her lips are still covered with blood, almost brown now from having dried up. He would’ve chuckled if he wasn’t still half-paralyzed at the thought that she could lunge for him and bite him on the neck - oh, wait, those were vampires. “I’ll just take one,” he says, raising the packet and shaking it in the air a little to show her, before walking backwards to his original spot by the door, keeping her in his line of vision.
He feels her watching as he rips the package open with his teeth, tipping its contents into his open mouth and chewing noisily. She’s still staring after some time, making him clear his throat and wipe around his mouth with the back of his hand. “Do you...want some?”
She shakes her head.
“You really don’t eat anything aside from brains?” he asks, curious.
She nods.
“Weird.”
She shrugs. He relaxes a little despite himself, feeling a bit at ease now that they seem to be actually having a conversation.
“So...what’s your name?”
☢☢☢
She looks at him, round eyes unblinking, and shakes her head again.
“You don’t have a name?” he persists.
She shrugs.
“Ah...” His face lights up a little in comprehension. “You don’t remember your name?”
A nod, though that wasn’t exactly true; she remembered the first letter. “Mmmh,” she grunts, brows furrowing ever so slightly. “...Mmm.”
He stares. “Mm?”
“Mmh...!” The pout is deeper now. It’s the first time she’s talked to anyone besides Sa. At least Sa seemed to understand her, or didn’t mind when she couldn’t quite express what she meant. Their conversations were usually composed of grunts in various pitches. “Mmm, mmmnh.”
He frowns, then his face brightens. “Ah! It starts with M!”
She slumps back a little against the lockers, nodding. Somehow, the effort of trying to remember her name made her feel more tired than the effort of forming actual words.
He lets out a laugh, and her head tilts slightly to one side, unfamiliar with the sound. Though if she thinks hard about it, she’s unfamiliar with everything about him. “Well, we’ll figure it out,” he says, and she wonders what he means by we. He seems to think of the same thing as he adds weakly, “I mean… y’know. Maybe one day you’ll remember.”
He falls silent, save for the sounds he makes as he empties the contents of the food packet. She realizes just then that she’s still holding the watch from earlier. It doesn’t glint as much as it did outside, but it serves as a good enough distraction before she looks at him again and sees him with his eyes closed, head lolling slightly to one.
He’s asleep.
She blinks slowly, finding it a bit impressive that he’s let his guard down despite being obviously wary of her before. But then again, he’s the idiot who followed her all the way out here.
He’s safe here. From her.
For now.
☢☢☢
He wakes with the sunlight stabbing his eyelids and he turns his head away with a moan of protest, hand swatting in the air at no one before blinking groggily from a deep sleep that left one unsure of the time and place.
Then he remembers and he’s sitting up gasping with a hand to his throat, hands feeling all over as if to check that all of him is still in one piece, before remembering again just where he is and who he's with, clamping a hand over his mouth. He can feel himself trembling as he slowly raises his gaze to look at her.
She’s sleeping.
At least he thinks so. Her eyes are closed, head resting against the locker door she’s leaning on.
His breath quickens, hand reaching for the doorknob automatically. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep. He shouldn’t have. He’d meant to leave.
Now, he’ll do that now.
He glances at her briefly, making sure that she’s still asleep before twisting the door knob and scrambling out.
Her eyes open slowly as the door swings shut.
☢☢☢
She’s following him this time around. She wonders if that makes her an idiot.
She can’t see where he is, but terrified screams pierce through the air and for the first time in her (zombie) life she wishes she could move faster.
A scream on this otherwise quiet morning (as most mornings were, only punctuated at times by a faint zombie moan here and there) can mean several things:
She doesn’t expect him to calm down at the gesture but he does, mouth going slack and breathing hard. He takes gulps of air before he sits back and eventually moves off of her. She stares at him as she lies on the ground. “U...p. H...elp.”
“Oh! Oh, right. Sorry-” He pulls her upright to sit, surprisingly strong for someone who seemed to do a lot of screaming instead of fighting, making her knock her forehead onto his nose. “Oww!”
“Shhhh...!”
He gazes around wildly before ducking into a narrow alley, crouching down on the ground with his head in his hands. She walks over and stops in front of him, the tips of her shoes touching his. “I ran into a zombie,” he gulps, and somehow she’s not surprised. “A-And, I dunno if he was gonna eat me, or... But he saw me and was like, going towards me and I kinda shoved him and...yeah.” He shivers, lowering his arms to wrap them around himself. “B-But it would’ve been more awful if he turned out to be a boney.”
She nods in agreement, feeling a faint tremor of fear at the base of her spine with that mention. Even zombies are afraid of boneys. She wouldn’t know what to do either if she ever encountered one.
“I don’t know where to go.”
She pauses. “C...ome.”
He looks up at her. “Where?”
“H...ome.”
She doesn’t have to wait long for his answer. “...Okay.” He gets to his feet and suddenly he’s looming over her because he’s taller. The close proximity makes her stumble back a little. “But...how? Out there, there’s...”
“Ac...t.”
He stares at her for a few moments before comprehension dawns on his face. He hunches his shoulders and holds up his arms, taking a heavy step forward and letting out a dragging moan. “Like that?”
“...Too...much.”
☢☢☢
“You’re different.” He opens a can of preserved fruits for his breakfast and sits down, this time on the same side of the room, against the lockers, though still with some considerable distance between them.
She shrugs, her default answer.
“You are,” he insists. He eats by picking out pieces of fruit one by one from the can before popping them in his mouth, licking his fingers clean each time.
“H...ow?”
He holds up a syrup-covered finger. “One, you didn’t eat me - yeah, I know, you just ate. But then, two, you saved me. Three, you saved me again. Four, you...well, you talk. Kind of, but you actually do. And five...” he pauses, looking away. “You...You’re cute.”
She’s staring at him. He meets her gaze briefly before ducking his head again, draining the can in one go and briefly choking on a piece of fruit. He didn’t think it’d feel just as embarrassing to tell a zombie that they were cute as much as it would to tell a real person.
But she’s still a girl.
“Thanks for the food,” he murmurs, placing the empty can down on the floor and pressing his palms together lightly. He next reaches for the bottle of mineral water that he had managed to find after a more thorough scavenging, taking a long drink before putting it down and clearing his throat. “So, uh...this is going to sound really crazy, but...”
She tilts her head slowly to one side, waiting.
“...can I stay?”
He doesn’t have to wait long for her answer. “O...kay.”
☢☢☢
She watches him as he sleeps. He does it a lot.
You’re cute.
She brings a hand to her face, slowly, pressing her palm to one cheek, feeling the same unfamiliar sensation when she brought a finger to his lips earlier.
She’s not entirely ignorant; she knows what it means. She sees that word a lot in the magazines she likes reading sometimes. ‘Cutest getups for summer!’ ‘5 cute ways to do your hair,’ ‘Get that cute makeover you always wanted!’
Painstakingly, she inches closer to him until she’s near enough to hold up a hand to his mouth, which is slightly open. She can feel the puffs of breath against her palm whenever he exhales. She holds her hand up to her mouth next, parting her lips and waiting.
Nothing.
She slowly pokes his cheek with a finger. He mumbles something and she draws her hand away, but he doesn’t wake up.
She presses the same finger to her own cheek. Warmth, she thinks. He’s warm.
☢☢☢
“How about I help you be more human?” he says conversationally, the next day.
She looks at him like she doesn’t quite understand what he means. To be honest, he doesn’t either. “I just thought, you know. Maybe we can…talk more. So you can be more used to it.”
“Al...rea...dy...talk...ing.” She shrugs in that one-way shoulder lift she does, though she doesn’t seem entirely opposed to the idea. He’s still trying to figure out if her deadpan zombie resting face has different meanings underneath.
“Well...yeah, that’s true. But maybe...” he trails off, then brightens. “Ah, how about exercise? Like...I don’t like it that much, either, but maybe stretching or something?”
She grunts in what he takes to be assent, and he moves to sit in front of her, crossing his legs under him. “Okay,” he mutters to himself. “Maybe...fingers would be a good start.” He reaches for her hand and feels a faint spark like static - which is probably actually static - though she’s giving him what he thinks is an expectant look. They look at each other for several moments, her eyes rounder than they usually are and he swears he can see flecks of brown beneath the muted gray of her irises. “Uh...is this okay?”
She nods slowly, mouth parting a little as if in wonder, and he looks away quickly. “Okay,” he mutters to himself again. “Maybe like this.” He cracks one of her knuckles and nearly drops her hand, half-expecting her bones to crack and fall off. “Did...did that hurt?”
She shakes her head, blinking. “N...ice.”
He lets out a bark of laughter despite himself. “What, seriously?”
She tugs her hand away. “T...ry...?”
“Oh, to me? Okay.” He holds out his hand and she takes it in both of hers, brows furrowing ever so slightly in concentration. He laughs because she can’t seem to manage to crack his knuckle until she does, “OWWW, F-” and he’s doubled over in pain, eyes swimming with tears. When he looks up at her, the corners of her lips are quirked up and he stares, pain forgotten. “You’re smiling!”
It disappears.
“No, no, do it again.” He places his index fingers on her cheeks and pushes them up slightly. Her lips pucker up like fish and he laughs at the sight and she’s pouting again. “You’ll get there.”
“Pr...ac...tice,” she says, sounding - to him - upbeat.
“Yeah, that’s right.”
☢☢☢
There are lots of things to do every day.
When they’re not ‘exercising,’ he cleans. Or tries to. The disinfectant spray doesn’t quite cut it, so he ends up doing a bit of tidying (including his puke outside) as he rummages through what he called her “piles of junk.” She watches as he dusts around and complains that he’s tired after a few minutes, and then stretches out to take a nap.
He constantly marvels how she seems to have everything in her room: food (though some are already expired), various items of clothing (mostly for women though some were for men, which he took advantage of by immediately changing out of his bloodstained clothes), various accessories, appliances, toys and trinkets. Once in a while he brings an item to her and she tries to recall what it is and where she got it, speaking out loud.
Practice.
“You really are a hoarder,” he tells her one day after stumbling, quite literally, into a huge pile of shoujo manga. She pouts - though if she could, she’d actually be frowning - and raises a fist slowly, and just as slowly hits his arm without any force, meant to be a rebuke. The action surprises them both and he laughs, covering her hand with his. That action surprises her and she pulls her hand away. He lets her, leaning down to look into her face. She thinks it’s really unfair that he seems so much taller. “So...when your skin turns more grey...is that like the zombie equivalent of a blush?”
She hits him on the shoulder again. He chuckles and pats her twice on the head before moving away, the action so similar to one of the scenes in the manga had he tripped over earlier (she’s read them, too), and she feels heat creeping up her cheeks.
That’s unfair, too.
He finds vinyl records on another day and he lets out a shout, making her jerk unconsciously. “This is awesome,” he practically yells.
“Shhh...!”
“Right, sorry, sorry...hey, you wouldn’t happen to have an LP player around here, would you?” He dives into another corner of the room, making more of a mess than before as he throws objects around excitedly. “Guess not. Subaru would love this though. I think he has one back home. A player, I mean.”
He tells her about his Home and his Friends. He says six names, a lot compared to the only one she considers she has. Three humans: a Subaru who loves music and doesn’t talk much, but says a lot when he’s not talking, a Ryo who has a mean tongue but likes people, really, only he can’t talk to girls when he’s not drunk, and a Hina which is a nickname because he’s a man who loves hitting people over the head when they’re being stupid. She thinks Hina must have hit him a lot. And then there are three now-zombies: a Yasu who was sometimes called Sho-chan, who was kind to everyone, a Maru who did a lot of stupid gags and a Yoko who loved his brothers and friends very much. “They’re still my friends, though. Even if, I dunno, they probably don’t remember their names anymore, like you don’t.”
She points to his chest, her finger pressing into his shirt, feeling the warmth of his skin through the cloth.
“What?”
Speaking is still a struggle, but she tries more often now. “...Name.”
“Ah, mine? It’s Tadayoshi.”
She gives him a deadpan look. “...H...ard.”
He laughs, a warm sound that envelops her. “My friends call me Tatsu.”
“Tat...su.”
“Yeah!” He looks pleased that she managed to say it, and she feels a muted sense of pride in that small accomplishment. “I should call you M or something until you remember your name.” Her brows crumple a little, and he laughs again. The sound elicits something inside her chest, as if she might imitate it, but the most she usually ends up doing is a small cough. “No? Maybe...hm. M. Mm...Mi? Mi-chan,” he decides, grinning when she merely blinks, finding no objection with the nickname.
He puts it to practice a few hours later after yet another nap, having rummaged around the room again, half-cleaning and half-messing things around. “Hey, Mi-chan, look at this.” He plops down next to her, setting down on her lap a stack of magazines with the name Seventeen printed on the cover, in a way that would have probably hurt if she could feel anything. “I think you’d like this. I mean, you probably do, right, ‘cause you brought them back here?”
She can feel her lips tugging upwards slightly. “Fav...o...rite.” He laughs again and she decides she likes the sound. A list of the things she likes about him would be:
His voice is really nice, especially when it’s low.
When he falls silent, she turns to look at him and finds him asleep again, his head lolling against her shoulder. It never fails to amaze her, this ability of his to fall asleep at any given time.
The magazine is open to an article with the title, What to expect from your first kiss. A picture of a full-lipped girl that resembles Sa is printed on the page, her lips puckered slightly, a finger placed lightly over them.
She looks at Tatsu again, her gaze drawn to his parted lips. She barely realizes that she’s leaned down until she feels his breath on her lips, making her jerk back so suddenly that her head connects soundly with the locker door she’s leaning against.
He wakes up with a yelp, jumping to his feet. “What? What is it?”
She shakes her head. A dull throb echoes in her head at the contact with the metal and she thinks, I am changing.
He has to go. Soon.
How they escape
“This is possibly a crazy question,” he says one day. “But I just thought...if I leave...” He meets her gaze and the expression on her face makes him feel like someone jabbed an elbow to his stomach not-too-gently. “...Will you come with me?”
He’s not a total idiot; he knows he can’t stay forever. But he can’t do it alone. He still can’t do it alone.
He waits a long time for her answer. “Cra...zy,” she finally says, and he can’t help but laugh at that.
“So I guess it’s a no,” he says ruefully.
“May...be.”
He stares. “It’s not a no?”
Her face scrunches up a little, a gesture that he’s recognized she does when she can’t properly express herself as quick as she’d like. “D...dan...” Her lips turn downwards. “Nnn...whh...”
“Calm down,” he tells her, holding her by the shoulders, and she subconsciously does. “Try that again.”
“Da...n...ge...rous.” She bites down a little on her lower lip. “Might...hun...gr...y. Will...eat...you.”
The last word hangs in the air.
He exhales loudly. “I can’t pretend that possibility doesn’t terrify me, ‘cause it totally does. But.” He shrugs. “I was taught that there’s safety in numbers. Two’s still better than one. And...” He pauses, exhaling breathily again. “If...If I’m going to be eaten by a zombie, I’d rather it be you.”
She shakes her head. “Ba...d...i...dea...”
“I trust you, Mi-chan.”
A flicker of emotions pass over her face. “...O...kay.”
He changes back into his old clothes, stiff now from the blood that had dried off, and packs a small backpack of provisions, which includes several Seventeen magazines. He tries to stuff in one of the vinyl records but it won’t fit.
She lingers by the doorway, looking almost sad. “Bye...bye.”
“Maybe we can come back here someday,” he offers guiltily, even though he knows it’s likely he won’t, at least.
Tadayoshi leads the way out. He opens the school doors, strides forward but yells out the next moment, practically tripping over his feet as he steps back to duck behind Mi.
A group of zombies are gathered outside.
One of the them looks tall, pale, and very familiar.
Tadayoshi feels the blood drain from his face. “Yokoyama-kun.”
A zombie with lips even poutier than Mi’s steps forward, her gaze on Mi. “Hu...man.”
Mi steps in front of Tadayoshi, the word easily dropping past her lips, “Mine.”
Tadayoshi doesn’t seem to register the exchange, his gaze still locked on his friend. Yoko stares back at him without any recognition in his eyes, and Tadayoshi feels weak. He reaches for Mi’s hand without thinking, lacing his fingers through hers and holding on for dear life.
Each and every zombie turns to look at their joined hands, including Mi.
It’s Yoko who steps aside first. The other zombies follow, for some reason, parting until there is a path in the middle for them to go through.
Tadayoshi snaps to attention, tugging on Mi’s hand. “There,” he says, nodding in the direction of an abandoned van in the school parking lot. He doesn’t know how Mi somehow gets into the seat beside him with her stiff limbs and her heels, and his hand is shaking as he feels around for the keys, jamming it into the ignition when he finds it and slamming his feet down the on accelerator, praying that this thing actually has gas for them to escape.
The tires screech loudly as they roar out of the parking lot just before he sees the zombies in the rear view mirror, running after them, arms stretched out and mouths open in hungry snarls.
☢☢☢
He drives for what seems like hours and hours until he pulls over, leaning his head against the steering wheel, shoulders shaking. “I can’t believe I’m crying,” he says, laughing wetly. “Usually it’s Ryo-chan who cries first. I’m younger, but he’s like the baby, really. I just...I never thought...”
She reaches out and touches his arm. “Sleep.”
He raises his head, and she feels something tugging at her chest at the sight of his tear-stained face, though she’s not sure what it is or what she should do about it. He swipes his forearm over his eyes. “Okay,” he agrees tiredly. “Okay.”
They move to the middle of the van and he lays his head on her lap. She’s not sure why, but her hand automatically moves to his hair, fingers combing gently through them.
“Hey, Mi-chan?” he mumbles groggily, already on the verge of slumber.
She hums in reply, closing her eyes.
“You’re warm.”
Her eyes snap open.
☢☢☢
He wakes up because it’s cold. He shivers, sitting up and rubbing his hands over his arms, looking at the clouds overhead past water-dotted windows of the van. It must have rained during the night.
Then he realizes he’s all alone.
“Mi-chan?” He swivels around, looking at the back seat, and - though he knows it’s stupid - under his own seat. “Mi-chan?” He stands up partly to look at the front seat. Empty. Inhaling sharply, he fumbles for the door handle, sliding the door open in a hurry and nearly falling out of the van in the process. “Mi-chan?”
He steps in a puddle but he barely notices, breaking into a run. “Mi-chan!!!”
Shhhhhh.
He stops abruptly and stumbles, knees crashing to the ground. He’s all alone but he’s still alive.
He knows then that she’s left him.
☢☢☢
“You’re an idiot,” is the first thing Ryo says to him when they finally see him.
Tadayoshi knows it’s Ryo-speak for I’m so fucking glad you’re back. “I know,” is all he says, lips stretching more into a grimace than a smile, rubbing one ass cheek where he’d been injected numerous times with an antibody vaccine.
As it turned out, Tadayoshi was within the perimeter of the military patrol. Ryo, Hina and Subaru were notified immediately, but it took them hours before they actually saw Tadayoshi as he was put through a rigorous medical check-up to ensure that he had no strains of the zombie virus in his bloodstream.
“Wait, let me get this straight,” Hina says. “You got dumped by a zombie?” Yep, that’s Hina, always hitting right where it hurts.
“You don’t have to say it like that,” Tadayoshi mumbles wearily.
“And you saw Yokoyama-kun but you didn’t bring him back,” Ryo adds, practically snarling.
“He can’t,” Subaru reasons. “Yoko’s a zombie.”
“So was that chick.”
“It’s different,” Tadayoshi says tiredly. “She’s different. She responds. Yeah, I thought she was pretty, and following her was a stupid idea, but she responds, she interacts. Hell, she even talks. Yokoyama-kun just-”
“How is he?” Ryo interjects. Out of all of them, Tadayoshi knew Ryo was the one hit the most by their friends’ zombie-fication. “Did you see Sho-chan and Maru, too?”
“No. Just Yokoyama-kun. He’s...” Tadayoshi paused, struggling for words. “He’s...exactly the same. Except, you know.” He shrugs. “A zombie.”
“Still pale?” Subaru asks, smiling ruefully.
“Pretty much.”
“But he’s a zombie?” Hina asks. “Just a zombie, I mean. Not, you know. A boney.”
“He ain’t gonna be a boney,” Subaru answers for Tadayoshi. “Yoko had a lot of fat when he became a zombie.”
They all laugh until Tadayoshi can’t tell whether they’re still laughing or already crying.
How to be human
The journey back Home takes days. She’s never really felt weary before, but she does now, and she doesn’t like the feeling but doesn’t dislike it entirely, either. It rains somewhere in between, and she stops for a moment to raise her face to the sky, eyes wide open, rain pooling on her eyelids before spilling over her eyelashes like tears.
As she nears the school, she makes a mental list of the things she’ll throw out once she gets Home:
The same group of zombies are gathered in the corridor, all facing her. She nearly takes a cautious step back when Sa pushes her way past, moving as fast as Mi has ever seen her. “Changing,” Sa says.
Mi nods. “Yes.”
Sa gestures to the group. “Every...one.”
Mi looks around, mouth falling partly open. And then she hears it - no, feels it inside her. A thump. Faint. But it’s there.
The one Tatsu called Yokoyama walks forward, standing beside Sa. “Danger,” he warns.
Sa nods in agreement. “Boneys,” she adds.
“Escape,” Yokoyama suggests. “Must.”
Sa holds Mi’s hand. It’s not as warm as Tatsu’s, but the contact feels nice. “Lead.”
All of the zombies nod. Mi finds herself nodding along with them until she realizes what they mean. “...Me?”
☢☢☢
Subaru, Ryo and Hina know Tadayoshi well enough to interpret the usual faraway look on Tadayoshi’s face as something else; they know he’s thinking of Mi. They drag him to their favorite hangout the next moment, a not-so-secret pub inside the stronghold that’s open almost 24/7, even if the supply of alcohol is practically nonexistent on some days. They’re nearly drunk when Tadayoshi tells them about Mi in detail, and this somehow turns into a discussion about their types of girls, a frequent subject even though their answers never really vary.
“Cute,” Ryo slurs. “An’ can cook real well.”
“Mi’s cute,” Tadayoshi puts in, sighing almost dreamily. “Like, really cute. Human-cute.”
“Well-mannered,” Hina says.
“Mi’s well-mannered… she wears heels...”
“Your turn!” Hina smacks Subaru over the head for no reason. “What d’you look for in a girl?”
“A pulse would be nice,” Subaru answers seriously after some thought.
“Mi doesn’t have a pulse,” Tadayoshi cuts in sadly. “But she’s really pretty. I mean it. She has round eyes an’ long eyelashes an’ pouting lips an’ hair that’s kinda wavy…”
“Like that chick o’er there?” Ryo waves his beer in the direction of the pub entrance, sloshing the drink over all of them.
“Tat...su,” the girl says, and Tadayoshi falls off his seat.
☢☢☢
The sun is beginning to set when they all stop. “Go,” Yokoyama tells her.
“...Alone?”
The whole group debates on this for several moments, the discussion peppered with one or two words and grunts of assent and dissent. “Obvious,” Yokoyama argues at the suggestion of at least two zombies attempting to enter the human base, more so if it was a group. The similar stiff gaits would give them away. Some walked a bit faster than the others, but overall the journey to the walled human fortress had taken days as well.
Sa looks up at the darkening sky. “Hurry.”
Mi braces herself and nods. She can do it. You’re different, Tatsu had said. Yes, she is.
Sa dusts her dress off and holds Mi’s hand tightly in both of hers. “Take...care.”
Mi squeezes back faintly.
She doesn’t think she can pull it off when one of the soldiers guarding the gate shouts out “Halt! Who goes there?!”
Act normal. Act normal. Act. Normal.
She walks forward, giving them a smile that she’s sure looks more like a scowl instead. “Hi. Sorry, got lost.” Good, good. Short words were good.
The soldiers look her up and down. “It’s almost curfew,” one says gruffly. “Hurry up and get inside.”
“Sorry,” she says again as she walks past the looming concrete walls. Her feet tremble with every step, but she keeps her shoulders squared and her lips stretched into a smile until they disappear from view.
Finding Tatsu isn’t easy. She still can’t say his name and attempting to might give her away, so the most she manages to ask random people is “Tatsu, where…?” They either shrug, shake their heads, or ignore her, pushing her this way and that in the crowded streets of the human district full of people going home for the day.
Being among humans is the most terrifying experience she’s ever had in her zombie life.
“Tatsu?” an old man echoes, squinting at her. “If y’mean Tadayoshi, think I saw him at th’ pub earlier.” He hiccups and gestures down the street. “Jus’ go straight, sweetheart, y’won’ miss it.”
Tatsu turns to look just as she steps inside the pub. Their eyes meet; his mouth drops open and a thump resounds in her chest for the second time.
☢☢☢
“What’s Maki doing with her, again?”
Maki’s one of the few - or, okay, only - female friend Tadayoshi has. Sister, really. Older sister, even; she’s always seemed far calmer and wiser in years than he ever was even though she’s three years younger than him. She’s the only person he thought to approach when it came to helping them hide Mi, but when Maki leads her away, he’s suddenly not sure being apart from Mi is such a good idea.
“Relax.” Hina shoves Tadayoshi down to sit on one of the camp beds in their sleeping quarters. “She looks too much like a zombie. Maki-chan’s just making her look more human for now.”
“Are we sure it’s safe to leave her with Maki-chan?” Ryo wants to know, beginning to pace back and forth in the same manner Tadayoshi had been doing mere moments ago. “If she hurts Maki-chan, I’ll kill her.”
“Relax.” Subaru pulls on Ryo’s hand to make him sit on the bed between him and Tadayoshi. “We know she’s cute and I think she can cook well enough, but she can also defend herself.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Ryo asks, visibly flustered.
“Don’t play dumb, do you think we don’t know?” Tadayoshi chimes in without missing a beat, nudging Ryo in the ribs.
“It’s just too bad she seems to have eyes for that local newscaster, though,” Hina adds, snickering. “But you’re a lost cause if you can’t even call her Maki-chan to her face.”
“It’s okay to cry if you want to,” Subaru tells Ryo.
“I hate you all,” Ryo hisses without venom.
The door to the women’s quarters opens partly and Maki calls out, “We’re coming out!” She steps forward with a smile. “Here she...eh? Wait.” She pokes her head back inside. “Mi-chan? You can come out, it’s okay.”
☢☢☢
She stares at herself in the mirror, lips parting in wonder. Getting out of her old clothes and into new ones was hard, but between Maki’s patience and her own determination, they manage. Now she’s dressed like Maki in a long-sleeved shirt and overalls. Her heels were swapped for a pair of standard combat boots provided by the military. Maki had braided her hair in two parts and applied something Mi recognized from the Seventeen magazines as lip gloss on her lips.
“Mi-chan?” she hears Maki call out.
She edges past the door, looking almost shy, hand lightly rubbing her arm where Maki had brushed powder earlier.
“Makeup,” Maki explains. “There wasn’t much, so I put some only on the exposed parts.”
“You did great,” one of Tatsu’s friends says quickly.
Maki smiles at him. “Thank you, Ryo-kun,” she says, and Ryo sinks down further on the bed in embarrassment.
Tatsu stands up, walking up to Mi. “Wow,” he breathes.
“Okay?” Mi asks, uncertain.
“I kind of miss seeing your legs,” he says, and her punch to his arm is quicker this time around. He laughs. She’s missed that sound. “It’s perfect.” He reaches for her hand (“Oi, too fast, you’re moving too fast,” says another of Tatsu’s friends with hair sticking out of his chin) and the contact reminds her of Sa. Her face scrunches up in concentration. He lets go of her hand to grasp her shoulders gently. “Slowly.”
She shakes her head, knowing it’s no time to be slow, grasping his elbows for purchase. “Your Yoko,” she begins, trying to get the right words out. “And many others, waiting.”
“Waiting?” Tatsu echoes. (“Yoko?!” Ryo yelps.) “Where?”
“Outside.”
As if on cue, an alarm blares throughout the stronghold, the one that rang for emergencies bordering on states of calamities. “Attention, citizens. Attention. A huge concentration of zombies have been spotted approximately ten kilometers from the stronghold. Arm yourselves and prepare for battle.”
“No!” Mi bursts out over the persistent alarm. “Not attack.” She shakes her head again. “Call off. No danger.”
“Hey, what’s she saying?”
She looks into Tatsu’s eyes, her gaze almost pleading. “Changing. We...we’re changing.”
How they fight
They devise a plan.
The first part of the plan is splitting up. It’s not a very even split: all the guys will go with Mi, and Maki will go to Sho, the local newscaster. “His father’s one of the council leaders,” Maki says. “Sho-kun will listen to me. And maybe his father will, too.” She leaves right away, though not before calling out in reminder, “Make sure your walkie-talkies have working batteries! We need to keep in touch!”
The second part of the plan is reaching the zombies before the army does. Hina reveals an underground tunnel that leads right to the area where the zombies are, if Mi’s sense of direction is anything to go by. No one even questions how he knows this: it’s Hina and he knows everything.
The next part is meeting up with the zombies.
“And then what?” Ryo wants to know as they run through the tunnel. Well, jog. Mi’s legs aren’t very fast, yet, but she’s doing a fair job of keeping up with them. She’s almost faster than Subaru, at least.
“And then we don’t know,” Hina calls back. “We’re winging it.”
“I thought we had a plan?” Ryo demands.
The ground above them vibrates distantly, but the shaking is enough to coat them lightly in dust. “Looks like the army’s going all out,” Subaru observes.
“You mean those are war tankers?” Tadayoshi squeaks.
No one affirms or denies this.
The tunnel shakes again, and Hina’s climbing up a ladder, biting down on his lower lip in concentration as he tries to pry open a metal hatch overhead. “Are you crazy?!” Ryo calls up. “If those are tankers driving by, we’re gonna be flattened!”
“This is the only way out!” Hina says through gritted teeth.
“But what if-?!”
“Only one way to find out!” Hina pushes at the metal with a shout, and then he tumbles out and is gone.
“This isn’t a variety show,” Ryo’s bawling even as he climbs the ladder next. “We can’t just jump out to our dea-” and then he’s gone because Subaru shoves him out. Subaru’s next, then they’re all helping Mi from the other side and Hina’s closing the hatch shut after Tadayoshi climbs out.
They all take a moment to catch their breaths. “No tankers,” Ryo wheezes.
“Yet,” Subaru adds matter-of-factly.
“Hello,” someone says, and they all turn to look. Tadayoshi crashes into Ryo with a yelp in his attempt to step back; even Hina is startled at the sight of seemingly thousands of zombies, all docile and waiting. Even Mi appears slightly taken aback.
“Hi,” the zombie tries again, lifting a hand in a stiff wave. Tadayoshi blinks at her, recognizing her faintly as the zombie with the poutier lips.
“Glad...you can make.” Yoko steps forward from the zombie crowd, giving each of them a nod. Subaru, Ryo and Hina stare, mouths dropping open; tears are already running down Ryo’s face and Hina’s reaching out, but the moment is broken when Maki’s voice crackles through Tadayoshi’s radio.
“Base to Tatsu. Base to Tatsu.”
It takes Tadayoshi several moments to unstrap the radio from his belt; his hands are shaking badly at the sight of so many zombies. “G-Go ahead.”
“What’s your 20?”
“Uhh...right where t-the zombies are.”
He hears Maki suck in a breath, dropping radio etiquette the next moment. “I failed. Sho-kun’s dad wasn’t convinced, though they’re still talking. But you guys should hide everyone. The army’s-” The line breaks into static.
“Maki-chan?”
Yoko takes another step forward, looking at Hina in the eye. “Boneys,” he says.
Maki’s voice crackles back to life. “The army’s on the move.”
“They’re coming,” she and Yoko say at the same time.
☢☢☢
“Outpost to base.”
“Go ahead.”
“Sir, we’re seeing zombies fighting boneys.”
“Roger that.”
“Over and out.”
“Base to outpost, stat.”
“Go ahead.”
“...Did you say zombies...are fighting...boneys?”
“Affirmative.”
“Boneys? Not humans?”
“Zombies are fighting boneys. Do you copy?”
“Pardon the language, but that is the weirdest fucking shit I’ve ever heard.”
☢☢☢
“Who do we shoot?” the general asks no one, looking confused.
“This bastard!” A boney skids to the ground at the feet of the soldiers, thrashing and snarling. A hundred bullets are pounded into it in a heartbeat.
Yoko blinks at the soldiers, raising a hand in greeting. “Hey. Hey there, hey,” he says as he staggers over to Tadayoshi and the others are, who had been gaping at the battle, unable to do anything else. He points to Mi, gaze on Tadayoshi all the while. “Boneys. After her.” He steps closer. “Must protect.”
Tadayoshi blinks. “...Me?”
“The hatch,” Hina says. “Go back through it. Hide!”
“Stay safe,” Ryo tells them as Mi climbs back down the ladder.
“Stay together,” Subaru says. It’s the last thing they hear before the hatch is shut above them again.
Tadayoshi takes her hand. “Come on.”
☢☢☢
“Sir, our thermal sensors detect several boneys inside the base.”
“Roger that. We’re on it.”
“There also seems to be one zombie inside the base. Needs confirmation because of its fluctuating body temperature.”
“...”
“Got your ears on?”
“...Copy that.”
“The boneys seem to be after the zombie, sir.”
“...”
“Sir? The zombie is also running with a human.”
“To think I didn’t think anything else could top the weird shit I heard earlier.”
How they love
When he hears the siren, he doesn’t think they’re being chased until the sound draws nearer - and then he doesn’t know what to think. Tadayoshi fumbles for his radio and presses hard, bleating “Maki-chan, Maki-chan!” into it.
“Tatsu-kun, where are you?”
“I don’t know!” he gasps out. He holds the radio up in a death grip, other hand gripping Mi’s hand just as tightly. “We’re being chased. They must think Mi-chan’s a threat!”
He’s never heard Maki curse before. It’s slightly reassuring. “Lead them to the perimeter! I’ll try to assemble a medical team and get to you immediately.”
“Medic-?! Are you saying we’re going to d-”
“Just keep running!” And then the line goes dead. He glances sideways at Mi and realizes just then that she’s running. Actually running.
“All that practice we did must’ve paid off,” he manages to quip.
Her lips quirk up; he thinks it’s definitely a smile. “Stay together,” she reminds him.
He ducks into a doorway at random and staircase after staircase looms ahead of them. She stumbles several times on the first few flights up, and there’s a touch of pain to her voice whenever she cries out that makes Tadayoshi’s heart constrict. Finally they reach another door and they’re stumbling out to a rooftop.
At the edge they discover that there’s nowhere to go except to a canal below. It appears to be a hundred-foot drop, definitely not conducive for jumping.
It also doesn’t look deep.
They can die either way.
“Hey, Mi-chan?” Tadayoshi breathes out, pressing his other hand against a stitch at his side. “You know in movies when the hero and the heroine are in the middle of this huge - thing - like the world is ending or whatever and what they should be doing is concentrating on escaping and staying alive but they turn to each other and make out instead?”
☢☢☢
She has no idea what he’s talking about.
She shakes her head, tugging on his hand. “Tatsu...no time...”
“I think this is the perfect time for that,” he goes on as if she hadn’t spoken, leaning down to press his lips to hers.
Warmth spreads from their lips down to her toes, and her eyes fall shut, forgetting everything else. She’s never felt this warm before.
A gunshot echoes in the distance. And then there’s nothing but pain.
She’s flying.
“MI-CHAN!!!”
No one ever told Tadayoshi that diving into a body of water from hundreds of meters above would hurt like crashing into a ton of bricks. But that isn’t his foremost thought. He flails in the water, choking and gulping down the taste of blood.
Blood.
Was he injured?
“Mi-chan,” he calls out, thrashing about. He can’t see anyone on the surface. Feeling his stomach sink, he takes a deep breath and dives in.
His hand somehow grasps hers and he pulls her up. They’re both gasping for air when they break through the surface. He holds her tight in his arms and he realizes she’s shivering.
And smiling. “T-Tatsu,” she beams up at him, hands fisting in his shirt. “I’m b-bleeding,” and it’s the worst and best thing he’s ever heard.
“Don’t die on me,” he tells her as he kicks out his legs to propel them to the side of the canal.
She shakes her head, leaning against his shoulder. “Just started t-to live.”
“HELP!” Tadayoshi yells, lifting an arm from the water and waving. It feels like forever before the medical team arrives just like Maki said it would, and Maki’s there, jumping down from the ambulance.
“Tatsu-kun!” she calls out as she runs over. “Was Mi-chan shot?”
“Yes!”
“Wait, is that her blood?”
“Yes!”
“That’s great!” Maki cheers just as she reaches them, arms outstretched to pull Mi out of the water.
“No it’s not!” Tadayoshi counters, “it’s not,” but he’s laughing and crying at the same time.
How they live
They’re taking down the wall today.
Everyone is encouraged to participate, Sakurai Sho reports on the morning news program. In other news, boneys are now being worked on by medical experts. “At this point,” one expert says, whose name on screen reads Aiba Masaki, “We can’t rule anyone out. Not even animals!” The boneys’ re-humanization, Sakurai continues, is slow-going, but progressing.
Tadayoshi and Mi watch the event unfold from uphill some distance away. The gentle slope provides them a good view. They can see Hina below, pounding concrete to dust enthusiastically. Maru’s there, too, though he’s more occupied with making up random gags with his hammer, waving it over his head a bit precariously, than actually destroying the wall. Hina stops pounding once in a while to smack him over the head - with his hand, not the hammer.
Maru doesn’t remember any of them, still - doctors say it’s unlikely the zombies will ever recover their previous human memories - but he once said that Hina’s smacks on his head were full of warmth.
Yoko and Sa are helping, too. Before they begin, Yoko makes sure to put on protective gloves over Sa’s hands. They always spend every waking moment together.
Someone - one of them, or maybe all of them - points out to Ryo that even a former zombie beats him when it comes to the romance department, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Right now, he’s doubled over on the ground, reduced to helpless laughter at Maru’s antics. Even Maki laughs along as she passes out bottles of water to the volunteers, and Hina yells at them both for laughing when “it’s not even that funny!”
Subaru sits on the grass not far away, Yasu beside him. Both heads are bent over a guitar. Hesitant strums of music float in the air, but it’s music nevertheless.
Sa turns and gives Mi and Tadayoshi a bright smile, waving. Yoko beckons to them, but Tadayoshi shakes his head, calling back, “No thanks.”
Mi laughs softly and slips her hand into his. “You wouldn’t want that to interrupt your favorite pastime, would you?”
“What’s my favorite pastime?”
“Doing nothing.”
He laughs, and no other sound in the world can make her feel as warm.
“You know,” she goes on as he laces his fingers through hers, “maybe someday, when there are magazines again, I’ll write...like, an article.”
A breeze drifts by and plays with her hair. He catches a lock of hair with his other hand, curling it lightly around his fingers. “What would it be about?”
She smiles and leans her head on his shoulder. “How we saved the world.”
The End.
--
* Description of ready-to-eat curry here (see retort curry)
* Walkie-talkie lingo taken from here and here.
From: cupid_johnny
Title: How We Save The World
Pairing: Ohkura Tadayoshi/Kiritani Mirei, Yokoyama Yu/Ishihara Satomi if you squint, nonexistent Nishikido Ryo/Horikita Maki/Sakurai Sho
Rating: PG13
Summary: In a world where so many of the living are joining the undead, a boy and a girl are going to change everything. Warm Bodies AU.
A/N: Dear yumenosete, Happy White Day! I sincerely hope you enjoy this. ♥♥♥ (Thank you so much to my betas, ASK [lol], you guys know who you are!)
How they meet
She’s the prettiest zombie he’s ever seen.
That is Tadayoshi’s most coherent thought in the midst of the bloodbath that occurs in front of his eyes as he crouches, hidden under one of the tables in what seems to be an old restaurant kitchen. They had gone out fully armed - or as fully armed as they could be, given the limited supply of firearms at the military’s disposal - but the first thing they were taught in the class he’d dubbed Zombie Survival 101 was: defense before offense. Escape instead of attack, run instead of shoot.
When the zombies had converged on them, his first instinct had been to open his mouth and scream in terror, arms flailing and feet tripping over themselves, before common sense slammed into him - literally - as one of his teammates-turned-zombie fodder knocked him bodily to the floor. He had scrambled to hide under the nearest table, biting into his fist to keep from making noise again. Now, he feels a mixture of relief and terror as he hears the others making their escape. Some are unfortunate enough to be caught in the zombies’ clutches. He’s glad that his friends had been too busy volunteering somewhere else to go with this group; if they were here, he knows they would double back to look for him and be possibly eaten, too.
It’s not like him to volunteer to go outside, really. It’s not like him to volunteer for anything. Hina always said that in the event on a zombie attack, Tadayoshi would be the first one to get eaten because he was sure to scream and attract zombies to him before doing anything else. It was supposed to have been a simple enough mission of gathering whatever food and supplies they could find and taking it back to the stronghold. Tadayoshi had been feeling restless, wanting to do something else. He’d been stuck with that feeling for years now. Back then, he’d heard people call it quarter-life crisis.
Now, he supposes it could be called post-zombie apocalypse crisis.
Missions like these are supposed to call only for a number of around three or four. They went out as a group of eight, because someone had reasoned that there was safety in numbers. Somebody should have told them that apparently zombies abided by the same reason.
Maybe he’s lucky this time around. If he ever gets out of here alive, he mentally vows that he will never go out again. Never.
He can hear more than see the apparent squelching that sounds like someone’s brains being devoured (which was a mystery to him, how could zombies actually eat brains? Do they actually smash people’s skulls - but aren’t human bones strong?) Another body drops heavily next to him, twitching from the remains of its life, and he flinches, drawing back, a mewl escaping past his lips.
That’s when he sees her, crouching down next to the body and hands moving in jerking motions. Tadayoshi can’t figure out just what she’s doing until she manages to loosen the strap of the watch around the wrist of the female body, holding it up as if it were a prize, though her brows crinkle as if she can’t quite figure out what to do with it.
A breeze from an open window plays with her hair. Her lips are stained red from blood. She’s wearing, to his surprise, earrings. And what seems to be a dress, though tattered, and a blazer on top of it. White heels - or what were once white heels - complete her look. She blinks slowly, full eyelashes brushing over skin, just before her gaze meets his.
Her mouth forms a bloody ‘O’ in zombie-surprise. His jaw goes slack, because she’s the prettiest zombie he’s ever seen.
His next most coherent thought is: if a zombie is going to eat his brains, he wouldn’t mind if it’s her.
They stare at each other for several moments and Tadayoshi realizes that there’s a ringing in his ears; it’s quiet, both humans and zombies have left or been left for dead, leaving but one human and zombie in the small room.
She raises a hand slowly and he nearly flinches again at the action, but she only brings it to her lips. “Shhhh.”
He blinks, then nods. Seemingly satisfied, she gives him a slow nod in turn before getting to her feet.
Then she’s gone.
☢☢☢
She doesn’t remember being human.
The funny thing (though in hindsight, she doesn’t really find anything funny nowadays; she isn’t exactly capable of feeling anything acutely, only flickers, muted and dull) about the whole eating-brains business is that for some reason, she catches glimpses of people’s random memories whenever she does; faint, like a smoky wisp in the air. She doesn’t remember herself being human. She thinks she’d like to remember. It must have been nice. She thinks anything must be nicer than this.
She can’t even remember her own name.
She has a mental list (oh, that’s “funny” again, she may have a brain but it isn’t really functioning anymore, is it? Because her heart isn’t. But then again, she can still move - albeit slowly - so it must be functioning?) of the things that she wants to remember:
- being human
- her name
- seeing colors
- warmth
- how she became a zombie
No one does anything with anyone nowadays. It’s nice, if not boring. If there’s one thing she’s capable of actually feeling, it might actually be boredom.
She has a friend. Sort of. They don’t know each other’s names because neither of them remembers and neither of them can speak very well, but in her mind she calls her Sa, the only sound she’d managed to make when she tried to introduce herself. They meet up once in a while, that is, when their paths happen to cross in that aimless wandering most zombies nowadays seem to do. Sa has large, round eyes and full lips. Sa’s lips are the part she notices first each time; they stand out even if she’s a zombie.
They try to talk sometimes, an exercise in futility.
The sun overhead catches the watch she’s clutching in her hand, making the gold glint sharply, blinding her for a moment. This is something she does, sometimes, collect little keepsakes from warm bodies. Once, after eating another girl who looked to be the same age as she was (not that she remembers her age, either), she caught a disjointed memory of being in an amusement park - a loud bang sounding out - then being handed a prize. These are prizes she knows she doesn’t deserve, but they’re beginning to clutter her home.
Home is school, one of the rooms in school, to be exact, that was originally littered with rugby uniforms and footballs. She doesn’t know why she chose it, but she likes it there. Sometimes a waft of something strong drifts past her nostrils, and she likes having some semblance of a sense of smell.
She’s almost Home.
It’s a little strange that she has the whole school to herself after all these years, though she thinks it might be because no one really enjoyed being in school, anyway.
“Hey!” A voice rings out in the empty hallway, bouncing off the walls. Hey hey hey hey hey. She freezes in her tracks, and if she actually had any blood it might have been frozen by now, too. “W...Wait!”
☢☢☢
It’s only when Tadayoshi thinks he doesn’t recognize the area - neighborhood? - that it dawns on him: following the pretty zombie was a really, really stupid idea.
In hindsight, it had been a good plan as any. He knows the way back to base (he thinks) but it’s impossible to be alone out in zombieland and stay alive. Even if he manages to avoid being attacked, he’s pretty sure he’d end up screaming one way or another before he ends up back home. No, that wouldn’t do. He needs to be with someone.
Pretty zombie came to mind, even if technically she wasn’t someone. But she didn’t eat him and she talked (or shushed, at least), and she’s not a boney. Boneys, according to Zombie Survival 101, are creatures far worse than zombies. The nickname comes from their skeletal appearance. They are leveled-up zombies: faster, stronger and meaner. You can escape from a hungry zombie if you have your wits about you, but there’s no chance of that with a boney.
Also, she’s pretty.
In hindsight, he hadn’t really thought at all.
Focusing on her helps. He doesn’t dare look anywhere else (another lesson in Zombie Survival 101: making eye contact with a zombie is a surefire way to let a zombie know that you’re human), afraid to lose sight of her. Keeping his gaze on her was easy: a zombie walking in heels was one of the most fascinating sights he’s ever seen in his entire life. What would have been yelps of terror whenever a zombie loomed ahead in their path, he manages to turn into passable zombie-groans, albeit loud ones.
Tadayoshi doesn’t know where she’s going. He’s getting tired, feet dragging with every step he takes, unconsciously looking as zombie-like as he’s ever been. He wants to look at his wristwatch, sure that somehow they’ve been walking for hours (in his head he can hear Hina yelling that he’s only been walking for five minutes), but he can’t do that, either. He tries not to think of the possibility that she could be going back to a den of zombies somewhere, because who knows, but thankfully she seems to be going through a way that doesn’t have too many people. He’s struck by this thought, people, because the way everyone walked felt like they were each minding their own business, much like how it was when everyone was human.
He follows her to the school. No one else seems to be around. He calls out to her before he can stop himself, freezing on the spot, ready to scream bloody murder if another zombie appears.
She seems to be waiting for him after he’d called out, and he breaks into a half-jog, wheezing and panting and nearly tripping over his feet in exhaustion. Once he’s caught up, she turns slowly and leads the way into a locker room.
The stench of unwashed uniforms, sweat, and sweat-dried rubber punches him in the nose, making his eyes water. He already felt queasy from having crawled and slipped over his comrades’ guts, but now he feels bile rising in his throat. He shuts his eyes, holding onto the doorway for dear life. “It stinks in here,” he manages to get out, just before he doubles over and throws up.
☢☢☢
She’s not pleased.
Not only does he not bother to clean up his own mess, he also manages to find a can of disinfectant spray, which he proceeds to spray all over the room. She lets him - not that she could have done anything otherwise - feeling a twinge of annoyance at his initial reaction to her sanctuary that she suspects would be infinitely more than actual annoyance were she human.
Her arms twitch, feeling a need to cross them over her chest, but the effort is too much, so they remain at her sides.
“Uh,” he begins, “I followed you.”
That much is obvious. She only stares at him.
“I didn’t know where to go?” he goes on, and she doesn’t know whether he’s telling her or if he’s asking himself.
She opens her mouth to speak, or at least attempt to. “H...” After a century, she manages to say, “Hu...man.” She points to him. Then her finger arcs slowly in the air to point to her own chest. “N...not... hu...man.”
“I know,” he says in a tone that would have accompanied an eye roll.
She repeats the action, pointing to herself. “E...at. Hu...man.”
“But you didn’t. Eat me, I mean.” He stares. “So you’re different...right?”
She lifts one shoulder in a weak attempt at a shrug. “J...ust...ate.”
He scrambles to the other side of the room, near the door, looking at her in horror. She doesn’t like the look on his face, even if she knows it’s justified. “You mean you can eat me?”
It would be only one of the reasons why having a zombie and a human in the same room could only be nothing but a bad idea:
- She could eat him
- He could kill her
- no
- just
- no
☢☢☢
“I’m hungry,” he says much later.
He’s remained by the door, leaning against the wall, one hand unconsciously gripping the door knob. She’s sat down by the lockers. Watching her slowly bend her body is tiring but riveting. One hand slowly smoothes down the skirt of her dress from behind her in feminine modesty as she lowers herself inch by inch. He tries not to stare at her bare legs, though he can’t help but notice that they’re smooth. For a zombie. Not that he’s ever seen other zombie legs before. She looks tired by the time she manages to actually sit. He feels like applauding, but doesn’t.
“So...” She looks at him blankly, although he figures it’s her default zombie resting face. “Do you have...any food? That’s not brains or something?”
She lifts a hand to point to one corner of the room, which doesn’t look any different from the rest of the space, which is frankly a mess. He gives her a dubious look, taking a deep breath before walking over and crouching down to rummage through the pile, making sure he doesn’t have his back turned to her. “Hey, ready-to-eat curry! Haven’t had these in a while - whoa. There’s a lot.You’re a hoarder.”
The corners of her lips turn downward slightly. He thinks it’s cute, even though her lips are still covered with blood, almost brown now from having dried up. He would’ve chuckled if he wasn’t still half-paralyzed at the thought that she could lunge for him and bite him on the neck - oh, wait, those were vampires. “I’ll just take one,” he says, raising the packet and shaking it in the air a little to show her, before walking backwards to his original spot by the door, keeping her in his line of vision.
He feels her watching as he rips the package open with his teeth, tipping its contents into his open mouth and chewing noisily. She’s still staring after some time, making him clear his throat and wipe around his mouth with the back of his hand. “Do you...want some?”
She shakes her head.
“You really don’t eat anything aside from brains?” he asks, curious.
She nods.
“Weird.”
She shrugs. He relaxes a little despite himself, feeling a bit at ease now that they seem to be actually having a conversation.
“So...what’s your name?”
☢☢☢
She looks at him, round eyes unblinking, and shakes her head again.
“You don’t have a name?” he persists.
She shrugs.
“Ah...” His face lights up a little in comprehension. “You don’t remember your name?”
A nod, though that wasn’t exactly true; she remembered the first letter. “Mmmh,” she grunts, brows furrowing ever so slightly. “...Mmm.”
He stares. “Mm?”
“Mmh...!” The pout is deeper now. It’s the first time she’s talked to anyone besides Sa. At least Sa seemed to understand her, or didn’t mind when she couldn’t quite express what she meant. Their conversations were usually composed of grunts in various pitches. “Mmm, mmmnh.”
He frowns, then his face brightens. “Ah! It starts with M!”
She slumps back a little against the lockers, nodding. Somehow, the effort of trying to remember her name made her feel more tired than the effort of forming actual words.
He lets out a laugh, and her head tilts slightly to one side, unfamiliar with the sound. Though if she thinks hard about it, she’s unfamiliar with everything about him. “Well, we’ll figure it out,” he says, and she wonders what he means by we. He seems to think of the same thing as he adds weakly, “I mean… y’know. Maybe one day you’ll remember.”
He falls silent, save for the sounds he makes as he empties the contents of the food packet. She realizes just then that she’s still holding the watch from earlier. It doesn’t glint as much as it did outside, but it serves as a good enough distraction before she looks at him again and sees him with his eyes closed, head lolling slightly to one.
He’s asleep.
She blinks slowly, finding it a bit impressive that he’s let his guard down despite being obviously wary of her before. But then again, he’s the idiot who followed her all the way out here.
He’s safe here. From her.
For now.
☢☢☢
He wakes with the sunlight stabbing his eyelids and he turns his head away with a moan of protest, hand swatting in the air at no one before blinking groggily from a deep sleep that left one unsure of the time and place.
Then he remembers and he’s sitting up gasping with a hand to his throat, hands feeling all over as if to check that all of him is still in one piece, before remembering again just where he is and who he's with, clamping a hand over his mouth. He can feel himself trembling as he slowly raises his gaze to look at her.
She’s sleeping.
At least he thinks so. Her eyes are closed, head resting against the locker door she’s leaning on.
His breath quickens, hand reaching for the doorknob automatically. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep. He shouldn’t have. He’d meant to leave.
Now, he’ll do that now.
He glances at her briefly, making sure that she’s still asleep before twisting the door knob and scrambling out.
Her eyes open slowly as the door swings shut.
☢☢☢
She’s following him this time around. She wonders if that makes her an idiot.
She can’t see where he is, but terrified screams pierce through the air and for the first time in her (zombie) life she wishes she could move faster.
A scream on this otherwise quiet morning (as most mornings were, only punctuated at times by a faint zombie moan here and there) can mean several things:
- A human has been caught by a zombie
- That human is him
- He’s screaming because he’s still alive
- Also because he’s possibly being devoured at the moment
- Though he’s possibly escaped because the screaming is getting nearer and louder
She doesn’t expect him to calm down at the gesture but he does, mouth going slack and breathing hard. He takes gulps of air before he sits back and eventually moves off of her. She stares at him as she lies on the ground. “U...p. H...elp.”
“Oh! Oh, right. Sorry-” He pulls her upright to sit, surprisingly strong for someone who seemed to do a lot of screaming instead of fighting, making her knock her forehead onto his nose. “Oww!”
“Shhhh...!”
He gazes around wildly before ducking into a narrow alley, crouching down on the ground with his head in his hands. She walks over and stops in front of him, the tips of her shoes touching his. “I ran into a zombie,” he gulps, and somehow she’s not surprised. “A-And, I dunno if he was gonna eat me, or... But he saw me and was like, going towards me and I kinda shoved him and...yeah.” He shivers, lowering his arms to wrap them around himself. “B-But it would’ve been more awful if he turned out to be a boney.”
She nods in agreement, feeling a faint tremor of fear at the base of her spine with that mention. Even zombies are afraid of boneys. She wouldn’t know what to do either if she ever encountered one.
“I don’t know where to go.”
She pauses. “C...ome.”
He looks up at her. “Where?”
“H...ome.”
She doesn’t have to wait long for his answer. “...Okay.” He gets to his feet and suddenly he’s looming over her because he’s taller. The close proximity makes her stumble back a little. “But...how? Out there, there’s...”
“Ac...t.”
He stares at her for a few moments before comprehension dawns on his face. He hunches his shoulders and holds up his arms, taking a heavy step forward and letting out a dragging moan. “Like that?”
“...Too...much.”
☢☢☢
“You’re different.” He opens a can of preserved fruits for his breakfast and sits down, this time on the same side of the room, against the lockers, though still with some considerable distance between them.
She shrugs, her default answer.
“You are,” he insists. He eats by picking out pieces of fruit one by one from the can before popping them in his mouth, licking his fingers clean each time.
“H...ow?”
He holds up a syrup-covered finger. “One, you didn’t eat me - yeah, I know, you just ate. But then, two, you saved me. Three, you saved me again. Four, you...well, you talk. Kind of, but you actually do. And five...” he pauses, looking away. “You...You’re cute.”
She’s staring at him. He meets her gaze briefly before ducking his head again, draining the can in one go and briefly choking on a piece of fruit. He didn’t think it’d feel just as embarrassing to tell a zombie that they were cute as much as it would to tell a real person.
But she’s still a girl.
“Thanks for the food,” he murmurs, placing the empty can down on the floor and pressing his palms together lightly. He next reaches for the bottle of mineral water that he had managed to find after a more thorough scavenging, taking a long drink before putting it down and clearing his throat. “So, uh...this is going to sound really crazy, but...”
She tilts her head slowly to one side, waiting.
“...can I stay?”
He doesn’t have to wait long for her answer. “O...kay.”
☢☢☢
She watches him as he sleeps. He does it a lot.
You’re cute.
She brings a hand to her face, slowly, pressing her palm to one cheek, feeling the same unfamiliar sensation when she brought a finger to his lips earlier.
She’s not entirely ignorant; she knows what it means. She sees that word a lot in the magazines she likes reading sometimes. ‘Cutest getups for summer!’ ‘5 cute ways to do your hair,’ ‘Get that cute makeover you always wanted!’
Painstakingly, she inches closer to him until she’s near enough to hold up a hand to his mouth, which is slightly open. She can feel the puffs of breath against her palm whenever he exhales. She holds her hand up to her mouth next, parting her lips and waiting.
Nothing.
She slowly pokes his cheek with a finger. He mumbles something and she draws her hand away, but he doesn’t wake up.
She presses the same finger to her own cheek. Warmth, she thinks. He’s warm.
☢☢☢
“How about I help you be more human?” he says conversationally, the next day.
She looks at him like she doesn’t quite understand what he means. To be honest, he doesn’t either. “I just thought, you know. Maybe we can…talk more. So you can be more used to it.”
“Al...rea...dy...talk...ing.” She shrugs in that one-way shoulder lift she does, though she doesn’t seem entirely opposed to the idea. He’s still trying to figure out if her deadpan zombie resting face has different meanings underneath.
“Well...yeah, that’s true. But maybe...” he trails off, then brightens. “Ah, how about exercise? Like...I don’t like it that much, either, but maybe stretching or something?”
She grunts in what he takes to be assent, and he moves to sit in front of her, crossing his legs under him. “Okay,” he mutters to himself. “Maybe...fingers would be a good start.” He reaches for her hand and feels a faint spark like static - which is probably actually static - though she’s giving him what he thinks is an expectant look. They look at each other for several moments, her eyes rounder than they usually are and he swears he can see flecks of brown beneath the muted gray of her irises. “Uh...is this okay?”
She nods slowly, mouth parting a little as if in wonder, and he looks away quickly. “Okay,” he mutters to himself again. “Maybe like this.” He cracks one of her knuckles and nearly drops her hand, half-expecting her bones to crack and fall off. “Did...did that hurt?”
She shakes her head, blinking. “N...ice.”
He lets out a bark of laughter despite himself. “What, seriously?”
She tugs her hand away. “T...ry...?”
“Oh, to me? Okay.” He holds out his hand and she takes it in both of hers, brows furrowing ever so slightly in concentration. He laughs because she can’t seem to manage to crack his knuckle until she does, “OWWW, F-” and he’s doubled over in pain, eyes swimming with tears. When he looks up at her, the corners of her lips are quirked up and he stares, pain forgotten. “You’re smiling!”
It disappears.
“No, no, do it again.” He places his index fingers on her cheeks and pushes them up slightly. Her lips pucker up like fish and he laughs at the sight and she’s pouting again. “You’ll get there.”
“Pr...ac...tice,” she says, sounding - to him - upbeat.
“Yeah, that’s right.”
☢☢☢
There are lots of things to do every day.
When they’re not ‘exercising,’ he cleans. Or tries to. The disinfectant spray doesn’t quite cut it, so he ends up doing a bit of tidying (including his puke outside) as he rummages through what he called her “piles of junk.” She watches as he dusts around and complains that he’s tired after a few minutes, and then stretches out to take a nap.
He constantly marvels how she seems to have everything in her room: food (though some are already expired), various items of clothing (mostly for women though some were for men, which he took advantage of by immediately changing out of his bloodstained clothes), various accessories, appliances, toys and trinkets. Once in a while he brings an item to her and she tries to recall what it is and where she got it, speaking out loud.
Practice.
“You really are a hoarder,” he tells her one day after stumbling, quite literally, into a huge pile of shoujo manga. She pouts - though if she could, she’d actually be frowning - and raises a fist slowly, and just as slowly hits his arm without any force, meant to be a rebuke. The action surprises them both and he laughs, covering her hand with his. That action surprises her and she pulls her hand away. He lets her, leaning down to look into her face. She thinks it’s really unfair that he seems so much taller. “So...when your skin turns more grey...is that like the zombie equivalent of a blush?”
She hits him on the shoulder again. He chuckles and pats her twice on the head before moving away, the action so similar to one of the scenes in the manga had he tripped over earlier (she’s read them, too), and she feels heat creeping up her cheeks.
That’s unfair, too.
He finds vinyl records on another day and he lets out a shout, making her jerk unconsciously. “This is awesome,” he practically yells.
“Shhh...!”
“Right, sorry, sorry...hey, you wouldn’t happen to have an LP player around here, would you?” He dives into another corner of the room, making more of a mess than before as he throws objects around excitedly. “Guess not. Subaru would love this though. I think he has one back home. A player, I mean.”
He tells her about his Home and his Friends. He says six names, a lot compared to the only one she considers she has. Three humans: a Subaru who loves music and doesn’t talk much, but says a lot when he’s not talking, a Ryo who has a mean tongue but likes people, really, only he can’t talk to girls when he’s not drunk, and a Hina which is a nickname because he’s a man who loves hitting people over the head when they’re being stupid. She thinks Hina must have hit him a lot. And then there are three now-zombies: a Yasu who was sometimes called Sho-chan, who was kind to everyone, a Maru who did a lot of stupid gags and a Yoko who loved his brothers and friends very much. “They’re still my friends, though. Even if, I dunno, they probably don’t remember their names anymore, like you don’t.”
She points to his chest, her finger pressing into his shirt, feeling the warmth of his skin through the cloth.
“What?”
Speaking is still a struggle, but she tries more often now. “...Name.”
“Ah, mine? It’s Tadayoshi.”
She gives him a deadpan look. “...H...ard.”
He laughs, a warm sound that envelops her. “My friends call me Tatsu.”
“Tat...su.”
“Yeah!” He looks pleased that she managed to say it, and she feels a muted sense of pride in that small accomplishment. “I should call you M or something until you remember your name.” Her brows crumple a little, and he laughs again. The sound elicits something inside her chest, as if she might imitate it, but the most she usually ends up doing is a small cough. “No? Maybe...hm. M. Mm...Mi? Mi-chan,” he decides, grinning when she merely blinks, finding no objection with the nickname.
He puts it to practice a few hours later after yet another nap, having rummaged around the room again, half-cleaning and half-messing things around. “Hey, Mi-chan, look at this.” He plops down next to her, setting down on her lap a stack of magazines with the name Seventeen printed on the cover, in a way that would have probably hurt if she could feel anything. “I think you’d like this. I mean, you probably do, right, ‘cause you brought them back here?”
She can feel her lips tugging upwards slightly. “Fav...o...rite.” He laughs again and she decides she likes the sound. A list of the things she likes about him would be:
- his laugh
- his warmth
- his voice
- when he’s sleeping
- also when he’s not sleeping
His voice is really nice, especially when it’s low.
When he falls silent, she turns to look at him and finds him asleep again, his head lolling against her shoulder. It never fails to amaze her, this ability of his to fall asleep at any given time.
The magazine is open to an article with the title, What to expect from your first kiss. A picture of a full-lipped girl that resembles Sa is printed on the page, her lips puckered slightly, a finger placed lightly over them.
She looks at Tatsu again, her gaze drawn to his parted lips. She barely realizes that she’s leaned down until she feels his breath on her lips, making her jerk back so suddenly that her head connects soundly with the locker door she’s leaning against.
He wakes up with a yelp, jumping to his feet. “What? What is it?”
She shakes her head. A dull throb echoes in her head at the contact with the metal and she thinks, I am changing.
He has to go. Soon.
How they escape
“This is possibly a crazy question,” he says one day. “But I just thought...if I leave...” He meets her gaze and the expression on her face makes him feel like someone jabbed an elbow to his stomach not-too-gently. “...Will you come with me?”
He’s not a total idiot; he knows he can’t stay forever. But he can’t do it alone. He still can’t do it alone.
He waits a long time for her answer. “Cra...zy,” she finally says, and he can’t help but laugh at that.
“So I guess it’s a no,” he says ruefully.
“May...be.”
He stares. “It’s not a no?”
Her face scrunches up a little, a gesture that he’s recognized she does when she can’t properly express herself as quick as she’d like. “D...dan...” Her lips turn downwards. “Nnn...whh...”
“Calm down,” he tells her, holding her by the shoulders, and she subconsciously does. “Try that again.”
“Da...n...ge...rous.” She bites down a little on her lower lip. “Might...hun...gr...y. Will...eat...you.”
The last word hangs in the air.
He exhales loudly. “I can’t pretend that possibility doesn’t terrify me, ‘cause it totally does. But.” He shrugs. “I was taught that there’s safety in numbers. Two’s still better than one. And...” He pauses, exhaling breathily again. “If...If I’m going to be eaten by a zombie, I’d rather it be you.”
She shakes her head. “Ba...d...i...dea...”
“I trust you, Mi-chan.”
A flicker of emotions pass over her face. “...O...kay.”
He changes back into his old clothes, stiff now from the blood that had dried off, and packs a small backpack of provisions, which includes several Seventeen magazines. He tries to stuff in one of the vinyl records but it won’t fit.
She lingers by the doorway, looking almost sad. “Bye...bye.”
“Maybe we can come back here someday,” he offers guiltily, even though he knows it’s likely he won’t, at least.
Tadayoshi leads the way out. He opens the school doors, strides forward but yells out the next moment, practically tripping over his feet as he steps back to duck behind Mi.
A group of zombies are gathered outside.
One of the them looks tall, pale, and very familiar.
Tadayoshi feels the blood drain from his face. “Yokoyama-kun.”
A zombie with lips even poutier than Mi’s steps forward, her gaze on Mi. “Hu...man.”
Mi steps in front of Tadayoshi, the word easily dropping past her lips, “Mine.”
Tadayoshi doesn’t seem to register the exchange, his gaze still locked on his friend. Yoko stares back at him without any recognition in his eyes, and Tadayoshi feels weak. He reaches for Mi’s hand without thinking, lacing his fingers through hers and holding on for dear life.
Each and every zombie turns to look at their joined hands, including Mi.
It’s Yoko who steps aside first. The other zombies follow, for some reason, parting until there is a path in the middle for them to go through.
Tadayoshi snaps to attention, tugging on Mi’s hand. “There,” he says, nodding in the direction of an abandoned van in the school parking lot. He doesn’t know how Mi somehow gets into the seat beside him with her stiff limbs and her heels, and his hand is shaking as he feels around for the keys, jamming it into the ignition when he finds it and slamming his feet down the on accelerator, praying that this thing actually has gas for them to escape.
The tires screech loudly as they roar out of the parking lot just before he sees the zombies in the rear view mirror, running after them, arms stretched out and mouths open in hungry snarls.
☢☢☢
He drives for what seems like hours and hours until he pulls over, leaning his head against the steering wheel, shoulders shaking. “I can’t believe I’m crying,” he says, laughing wetly. “Usually it’s Ryo-chan who cries first. I’m younger, but he’s like the baby, really. I just...I never thought...”
She reaches out and touches his arm. “Sleep.”
He raises his head, and she feels something tugging at her chest at the sight of his tear-stained face, though she’s not sure what it is or what she should do about it. He swipes his forearm over his eyes. “Okay,” he agrees tiredly. “Okay.”
They move to the middle of the van and he lays his head on her lap. She’s not sure why, but her hand automatically moves to his hair, fingers combing gently through them.
“Hey, Mi-chan?” he mumbles groggily, already on the verge of slumber.
She hums in reply, closing her eyes.
“You’re warm.”
Her eyes snap open.
☢☢☢
He wakes up because it’s cold. He shivers, sitting up and rubbing his hands over his arms, looking at the clouds overhead past water-dotted windows of the van. It must have rained during the night.
Then he realizes he’s all alone.
“Mi-chan?” He swivels around, looking at the back seat, and - though he knows it’s stupid - under his own seat. “Mi-chan?” He stands up partly to look at the front seat. Empty. Inhaling sharply, he fumbles for the door handle, sliding the door open in a hurry and nearly falling out of the van in the process. “Mi-chan?”
He steps in a puddle but he barely notices, breaking into a run. “Mi-chan!!!”
Shhhhhh.
He stops abruptly and stumbles, knees crashing to the ground. He’s all alone but he’s still alive.
He knows then that she’s left him.
☢☢☢
“You’re an idiot,” is the first thing Ryo says to him when they finally see him.
Tadayoshi knows it’s Ryo-speak for I’m so fucking glad you’re back. “I know,” is all he says, lips stretching more into a grimace than a smile, rubbing one ass cheek where he’d been injected numerous times with an antibody vaccine.
As it turned out, Tadayoshi was within the perimeter of the military patrol. Ryo, Hina and Subaru were notified immediately, but it took them hours before they actually saw Tadayoshi as he was put through a rigorous medical check-up to ensure that he had no strains of the zombie virus in his bloodstream.
“Wait, let me get this straight,” Hina says. “You got dumped by a zombie?” Yep, that’s Hina, always hitting right where it hurts.
“You don’t have to say it like that,” Tadayoshi mumbles wearily.
“And you saw Yokoyama-kun but you didn’t bring him back,” Ryo adds, practically snarling.
“He can’t,” Subaru reasons. “Yoko’s a zombie.”
“So was that chick.”
“It’s different,” Tadayoshi says tiredly. “She’s different. She responds. Yeah, I thought she was pretty, and following her was a stupid idea, but she responds, she interacts. Hell, she even talks. Yokoyama-kun just-”
“How is he?” Ryo interjects. Out of all of them, Tadayoshi knew Ryo was the one hit the most by their friends’ zombie-fication. “Did you see Sho-chan and Maru, too?”
“No. Just Yokoyama-kun. He’s...” Tadayoshi paused, struggling for words. “He’s...exactly the same. Except, you know.” He shrugs. “A zombie.”
“Still pale?” Subaru asks, smiling ruefully.
“Pretty much.”
“But he’s a zombie?” Hina asks. “Just a zombie, I mean. Not, you know. A boney.”
“He ain’t gonna be a boney,” Subaru answers for Tadayoshi. “Yoko had a lot of fat when he became a zombie.”
They all laugh until Tadayoshi can’t tell whether they’re still laughing or already crying.
How to be human
The journey back Home takes days. She’s never really felt weary before, but she does now, and she doesn’t like the feeling but doesn’t dislike it entirely, either. It rains somewhere in between, and she stops for a moment to raise her face to the sky, eyes wide open, rain pooling on her eyelids before spilling over her eyelashes like tears.
As she nears the school, she makes a mental list of the things she’ll throw out once she gets Home:
- stupid Seventeen magazines
- stupid vinyl records
- stupid human food
- stupid-
The same group of zombies are gathered in the corridor, all facing her. She nearly takes a cautious step back when Sa pushes her way past, moving as fast as Mi has ever seen her. “Changing,” Sa says.
Mi nods. “Yes.”
Sa gestures to the group. “Every...one.”
Mi looks around, mouth falling partly open. And then she hears it - no, feels it inside her. A thump. Faint. But it’s there.
The one Tatsu called Yokoyama walks forward, standing beside Sa. “Danger,” he warns.
Sa nods in agreement. “Boneys,” she adds.
“Escape,” Yokoyama suggests. “Must.”
Sa holds Mi’s hand. It’s not as warm as Tatsu’s, but the contact feels nice. “Lead.”
All of the zombies nod. Mi finds herself nodding along with them until she realizes what they mean. “...Me?”
☢☢☢
Subaru, Ryo and Hina know Tadayoshi well enough to interpret the usual faraway look on Tadayoshi’s face as something else; they know he’s thinking of Mi. They drag him to their favorite hangout the next moment, a not-so-secret pub inside the stronghold that’s open almost 24/7, even if the supply of alcohol is practically nonexistent on some days. They’re nearly drunk when Tadayoshi tells them about Mi in detail, and this somehow turns into a discussion about their types of girls, a frequent subject even though their answers never really vary.
“Cute,” Ryo slurs. “An’ can cook real well.”
“Mi’s cute,” Tadayoshi puts in, sighing almost dreamily. “Like, really cute. Human-cute.”
“Well-mannered,” Hina says.
“Mi’s well-mannered… she wears heels...”
“Your turn!” Hina smacks Subaru over the head for no reason. “What d’you look for in a girl?”
“A pulse would be nice,” Subaru answers seriously after some thought.
“Mi doesn’t have a pulse,” Tadayoshi cuts in sadly. “But she’s really pretty. I mean it. She has round eyes an’ long eyelashes an’ pouting lips an’ hair that’s kinda wavy…”
“Like that chick o’er there?” Ryo waves his beer in the direction of the pub entrance, sloshing the drink over all of them.
“Tat...su,” the girl says, and Tadayoshi falls off his seat.
☢☢☢
The sun is beginning to set when they all stop. “Go,” Yokoyama tells her.
“...Alone?”
The whole group debates on this for several moments, the discussion peppered with one or two words and grunts of assent and dissent. “Obvious,” Yokoyama argues at the suggestion of at least two zombies attempting to enter the human base, more so if it was a group. The similar stiff gaits would give them away. Some walked a bit faster than the others, but overall the journey to the walled human fortress had taken days as well.
Sa looks up at the darkening sky. “Hurry.”
Mi braces herself and nods. She can do it. You’re different, Tatsu had said. Yes, she is.
Sa dusts her dress off and holds Mi’s hand tightly in both of hers. “Take...care.”
Mi squeezes back faintly.
She doesn’t think she can pull it off when one of the soldiers guarding the gate shouts out “Halt! Who goes there?!”
Act normal. Act normal. Act. Normal.
She walks forward, giving them a smile that she’s sure looks more like a scowl instead. “Hi. Sorry, got lost.” Good, good. Short words were good.
The soldiers look her up and down. “It’s almost curfew,” one says gruffly. “Hurry up and get inside.”
“Sorry,” she says again as she walks past the looming concrete walls. Her feet tremble with every step, but she keeps her shoulders squared and her lips stretched into a smile until they disappear from view.
Finding Tatsu isn’t easy. She still can’t say his name and attempting to might give her away, so the most she manages to ask random people is “Tatsu, where…?” They either shrug, shake their heads, or ignore her, pushing her this way and that in the crowded streets of the human district full of people going home for the day.
Being among humans is the most terrifying experience she’s ever had in her zombie life.
“Tatsu?” an old man echoes, squinting at her. “If y’mean Tadayoshi, think I saw him at th’ pub earlier.” He hiccups and gestures down the street. “Jus’ go straight, sweetheart, y’won’ miss it.”
Tatsu turns to look just as she steps inside the pub. Their eyes meet; his mouth drops open and a thump resounds in her chest for the second time.
☢☢☢
“What’s Maki doing with her, again?”
Maki’s one of the few - or, okay, only - female friend Tadayoshi has. Sister, really. Older sister, even; she’s always seemed far calmer and wiser in years than he ever was even though she’s three years younger than him. She’s the only person he thought to approach when it came to helping them hide Mi, but when Maki leads her away, he’s suddenly not sure being apart from Mi is such a good idea.
“Relax.” Hina shoves Tadayoshi down to sit on one of the camp beds in their sleeping quarters. “She looks too much like a zombie. Maki-chan’s just making her look more human for now.”
“Are we sure it’s safe to leave her with Maki-chan?” Ryo wants to know, beginning to pace back and forth in the same manner Tadayoshi had been doing mere moments ago. “If she hurts Maki-chan, I’ll kill her.”
“Relax.” Subaru pulls on Ryo’s hand to make him sit on the bed between him and Tadayoshi. “We know she’s cute and I think she can cook well enough, but she can also defend herself.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Ryo asks, visibly flustered.
“Don’t play dumb, do you think we don’t know?” Tadayoshi chimes in without missing a beat, nudging Ryo in the ribs.
“It’s just too bad she seems to have eyes for that local newscaster, though,” Hina adds, snickering. “But you’re a lost cause if you can’t even call her Maki-chan to her face.”
“It’s okay to cry if you want to,” Subaru tells Ryo.
“I hate you all,” Ryo hisses without venom.
The door to the women’s quarters opens partly and Maki calls out, “We’re coming out!” She steps forward with a smile. “Here she...eh? Wait.” She pokes her head back inside. “Mi-chan? You can come out, it’s okay.”
☢☢☢
She stares at herself in the mirror, lips parting in wonder. Getting out of her old clothes and into new ones was hard, but between Maki’s patience and her own determination, they manage. Now she’s dressed like Maki in a long-sleeved shirt and overalls. Her heels were swapped for a pair of standard combat boots provided by the military. Maki had braided her hair in two parts and applied something Mi recognized from the Seventeen magazines as lip gloss on her lips.
“Mi-chan?” she hears Maki call out.
She edges past the door, looking almost shy, hand lightly rubbing her arm where Maki had brushed powder earlier.
“Makeup,” Maki explains. “There wasn’t much, so I put some only on the exposed parts.”
“You did great,” one of Tatsu’s friends says quickly.
Maki smiles at him. “Thank you, Ryo-kun,” she says, and Ryo sinks down further on the bed in embarrassment.
Tatsu stands up, walking up to Mi. “Wow,” he breathes.
“Okay?” Mi asks, uncertain.
“I kind of miss seeing your legs,” he says, and her punch to his arm is quicker this time around. He laughs. She’s missed that sound. “It’s perfect.” He reaches for her hand (“Oi, too fast, you’re moving too fast,” says another of Tatsu’s friends with hair sticking out of his chin) and the contact reminds her of Sa. Her face scrunches up in concentration. He lets go of her hand to grasp her shoulders gently. “Slowly.”
She shakes her head, knowing it’s no time to be slow, grasping his elbows for purchase. “Your Yoko,” she begins, trying to get the right words out. “And many others, waiting.”
“Waiting?” Tatsu echoes. (“Yoko?!” Ryo yelps.) “Where?”
“Outside.”
As if on cue, an alarm blares throughout the stronghold, the one that rang for emergencies bordering on states of calamities. “Attention, citizens. Attention. A huge concentration of zombies have been spotted approximately ten kilometers from the stronghold. Arm yourselves and prepare for battle.”
“No!” Mi bursts out over the persistent alarm. “Not attack.” She shakes her head again. “Call off. No danger.”
“Hey, what’s she saying?”
She looks into Tatsu’s eyes, her gaze almost pleading. “Changing. We...we’re changing.”
How they fight
They devise a plan.
The first part of the plan is splitting up. It’s not a very even split: all the guys will go with Mi, and Maki will go to Sho, the local newscaster. “His father’s one of the council leaders,” Maki says. “Sho-kun will listen to me. And maybe his father will, too.” She leaves right away, though not before calling out in reminder, “Make sure your walkie-talkies have working batteries! We need to keep in touch!”
The second part of the plan is reaching the zombies before the army does. Hina reveals an underground tunnel that leads right to the area where the zombies are, if Mi’s sense of direction is anything to go by. No one even questions how he knows this: it’s Hina and he knows everything.
The next part is meeting up with the zombies.
“And then what?” Ryo wants to know as they run through the tunnel. Well, jog. Mi’s legs aren’t very fast, yet, but she’s doing a fair job of keeping up with them. She’s almost faster than Subaru, at least.
“And then we don’t know,” Hina calls back. “We’re winging it.”
“I thought we had a plan?” Ryo demands.
The ground above them vibrates distantly, but the shaking is enough to coat them lightly in dust. “Looks like the army’s going all out,” Subaru observes.
“You mean those are war tankers?” Tadayoshi squeaks.
No one affirms or denies this.
The tunnel shakes again, and Hina’s climbing up a ladder, biting down on his lower lip in concentration as he tries to pry open a metal hatch overhead. “Are you crazy?!” Ryo calls up. “If those are tankers driving by, we’re gonna be flattened!”
“This is the only way out!” Hina says through gritted teeth.
“But what if-?!”
“Only one way to find out!” Hina pushes at the metal with a shout, and then he tumbles out and is gone.
“This isn’t a variety show,” Ryo’s bawling even as he climbs the ladder next. “We can’t just jump out to our dea-” and then he’s gone because Subaru shoves him out. Subaru’s next, then they’re all helping Mi from the other side and Hina’s closing the hatch shut after Tadayoshi climbs out.
They all take a moment to catch their breaths. “No tankers,” Ryo wheezes.
“Yet,” Subaru adds matter-of-factly.
“Hello,” someone says, and they all turn to look. Tadayoshi crashes into Ryo with a yelp in his attempt to step back; even Hina is startled at the sight of seemingly thousands of zombies, all docile and waiting. Even Mi appears slightly taken aback.
“Hi,” the zombie tries again, lifting a hand in a stiff wave. Tadayoshi blinks at her, recognizing her faintly as the zombie with the poutier lips.
“Glad...you can make.” Yoko steps forward from the zombie crowd, giving each of them a nod. Subaru, Ryo and Hina stare, mouths dropping open; tears are already running down Ryo’s face and Hina’s reaching out, but the moment is broken when Maki’s voice crackles through Tadayoshi’s radio.
“Base to Tatsu. Base to Tatsu.”
It takes Tadayoshi several moments to unstrap the radio from his belt; his hands are shaking badly at the sight of so many zombies. “G-Go ahead.”
“What’s your 20?”
“Uhh...right where t-the zombies are.”
He hears Maki suck in a breath, dropping radio etiquette the next moment. “I failed. Sho-kun’s dad wasn’t convinced, though they’re still talking. But you guys should hide everyone. The army’s-” The line breaks into static.
“Maki-chan?”
Yoko takes another step forward, looking at Hina in the eye. “Boneys,” he says.
Maki’s voice crackles back to life. “The army’s on the move.”
“They’re coming,” she and Yoko say at the same time.
☢☢☢
“Outpost to base.”
“Go ahead.”
“Sir, we’re seeing zombies fighting boneys.”
“Roger that.”
“Over and out.”
“Base to outpost, stat.”
“Go ahead.”
“...Did you say zombies...are fighting...boneys?”
“Affirmative.”
“Boneys? Not humans?”
“Zombies are fighting boneys. Do you copy?”
“Pardon the language, but that is the weirdest fucking shit I’ve ever heard.”
☢☢☢
“Who do we shoot?” the general asks no one, looking confused.
“This bastard!” A boney skids to the ground at the feet of the soldiers, thrashing and snarling. A hundred bullets are pounded into it in a heartbeat.
Yoko blinks at the soldiers, raising a hand in greeting. “Hey. Hey there, hey,” he says as he staggers over to Tadayoshi and the others are, who had been gaping at the battle, unable to do anything else. He points to Mi, gaze on Tadayoshi all the while. “Boneys. After her.” He steps closer. “Must protect.”
Tadayoshi blinks. “...Me?”
“The hatch,” Hina says. “Go back through it. Hide!”
“Stay safe,” Ryo tells them as Mi climbs back down the ladder.
“Stay together,” Subaru says. It’s the last thing they hear before the hatch is shut above them again.
Tadayoshi takes her hand. “Come on.”
☢☢☢
“Sir, our thermal sensors detect several boneys inside the base.”
“Roger that. We’re on it.”
“There also seems to be one zombie inside the base. Needs confirmation because of its fluctuating body temperature.”
“...”
“Got your ears on?”
“...Copy that.”
“The boneys seem to be after the zombie, sir.”
“...”
“Sir? The zombie is also running with a human.”
“To think I didn’t think anything else could top the weird shit I heard earlier.”
How they love
When he hears the siren, he doesn’t think they’re being chased until the sound draws nearer - and then he doesn’t know what to think. Tadayoshi fumbles for his radio and presses hard, bleating “Maki-chan, Maki-chan!” into it.
“Tatsu-kun, where are you?”
“I don’t know!” he gasps out. He holds the radio up in a death grip, other hand gripping Mi’s hand just as tightly. “We’re being chased. They must think Mi-chan’s a threat!”
He’s never heard Maki curse before. It’s slightly reassuring. “Lead them to the perimeter! I’ll try to assemble a medical team and get to you immediately.”
“Medic-?! Are you saying we’re going to d-”
“Just keep running!” And then the line goes dead. He glances sideways at Mi and realizes just then that she’s running. Actually running.
“All that practice we did must’ve paid off,” he manages to quip.
Her lips quirk up; he thinks it’s definitely a smile. “Stay together,” she reminds him.
He ducks into a doorway at random and staircase after staircase looms ahead of them. She stumbles several times on the first few flights up, and there’s a touch of pain to her voice whenever she cries out that makes Tadayoshi’s heart constrict. Finally they reach another door and they’re stumbling out to a rooftop.
At the edge they discover that there’s nowhere to go except to a canal below. It appears to be a hundred-foot drop, definitely not conducive for jumping.
It also doesn’t look deep.
They can die either way.
“Hey, Mi-chan?” Tadayoshi breathes out, pressing his other hand against a stitch at his side. “You know in movies when the hero and the heroine are in the middle of this huge - thing - like the world is ending or whatever and what they should be doing is concentrating on escaping and staying alive but they turn to each other and make out instead?”
☢☢☢
She has no idea what he’s talking about.
She shakes her head, tugging on his hand. “Tatsu...no time...”
“I think this is the perfect time for that,” he goes on as if she hadn’t spoken, leaning down to press his lips to hers.
Warmth spreads from their lips down to her toes, and her eyes fall shut, forgetting everything else. She’s never felt this warm before.
A gunshot echoes in the distance. And then there’s nothing but pain.
She’s flying.
“MI-CHAN!!!”
No one ever told Tadayoshi that diving into a body of water from hundreds of meters above would hurt like crashing into a ton of bricks. But that isn’t his foremost thought. He flails in the water, choking and gulping down the taste of blood.
Blood.
Was he injured?
“Mi-chan,” he calls out, thrashing about. He can’t see anyone on the surface. Feeling his stomach sink, he takes a deep breath and dives in.
His hand somehow grasps hers and he pulls her up. They’re both gasping for air when they break through the surface. He holds her tight in his arms and he realizes she’s shivering.
And smiling. “T-Tatsu,” she beams up at him, hands fisting in his shirt. “I’m b-bleeding,” and it’s the worst and best thing he’s ever heard.
“Don’t die on me,” he tells her as he kicks out his legs to propel them to the side of the canal.
She shakes her head, leaning against his shoulder. “Just started t-to live.”
“HELP!” Tadayoshi yells, lifting an arm from the water and waving. It feels like forever before the medical team arrives just like Maki said it would, and Maki’s there, jumping down from the ambulance.
“Tatsu-kun!” she calls out as she runs over. “Was Mi-chan shot?”
“Yes!”
“Wait, is that her blood?”
“Yes!”
“That’s great!” Maki cheers just as she reaches them, arms outstretched to pull Mi out of the water.
“No it’s not!” Tadayoshi counters, “it’s not,” but he’s laughing and crying at the same time.
How they live
They’re taking down the wall today.
Everyone is encouraged to participate, Sakurai Sho reports on the morning news program. In other news, boneys are now being worked on by medical experts. “At this point,” one expert says, whose name on screen reads Aiba Masaki, “We can’t rule anyone out. Not even animals!” The boneys’ re-humanization, Sakurai continues, is slow-going, but progressing.
Tadayoshi and Mi watch the event unfold from uphill some distance away. The gentle slope provides them a good view. They can see Hina below, pounding concrete to dust enthusiastically. Maru’s there, too, though he’s more occupied with making up random gags with his hammer, waving it over his head a bit precariously, than actually destroying the wall. Hina stops pounding once in a while to smack him over the head - with his hand, not the hammer.
Maru doesn’t remember any of them, still - doctors say it’s unlikely the zombies will ever recover their previous human memories - but he once said that Hina’s smacks on his head were full of warmth.
Yoko and Sa are helping, too. Before they begin, Yoko makes sure to put on protective gloves over Sa’s hands. They always spend every waking moment together.
Someone - one of them, or maybe all of them - points out to Ryo that even a former zombie beats him when it comes to the romance department, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Right now, he’s doubled over on the ground, reduced to helpless laughter at Maru’s antics. Even Maki laughs along as she passes out bottles of water to the volunteers, and Hina yells at them both for laughing when “it’s not even that funny!”
Subaru sits on the grass not far away, Yasu beside him. Both heads are bent over a guitar. Hesitant strums of music float in the air, but it’s music nevertheless.
Sa turns and gives Mi and Tadayoshi a bright smile, waving. Yoko beckons to them, but Tadayoshi shakes his head, calling back, “No thanks.”
Mi laughs softly and slips her hand into his. “You wouldn’t want that to interrupt your favorite pastime, would you?”
“What’s my favorite pastime?”
“Doing nothing.”
He laughs, and no other sound in the world can make her feel as warm.
“You know,” she goes on as he laces his fingers through hers, “maybe someday, when there are magazines again, I’ll write...like, an article.”
A breeze drifts by and plays with her hair. He catches a lock of hair with his other hand, curling it lightly around his fingers. “What would it be about?”
She smiles and leans her head on his shoulder. “How we saved the world.”
The End.
--
* Description of ready-to-eat curry here (see retort curry)
* Walkie-talkie lingo taken from here and here.