Current Time: Now
The scene in Class D was as noisy and chaotic as always, but the usual energy of teenage gossip and complaint had curdled into something uglier. The door was locked, bolted from the inside with a heavy wooden desk shoved against it. The windows were closed, curtains drawn tight despite the stuffy heat, blocking any view of the nightmare outside. Inside, students huddled in groups, whispering frantically, some crying, others staring at their phones with desperate hope for news that would never come.
Everyone was panicking.
Except for the teacher.
Sae Chabashira stood at the front of the room, arms crossed, her expression cold and utterly detached as she watched her students devolve into chaos. She had no expectations for this trash heap of a class in the first place—not before the apocalypse, and certainly not now. Class D was the dregs, the rejects, the ones who couldn't compete even when the stakes were just graduation and job prospects. In a world where the stakes were life and death? They were already dead. They just hadn't stopped breathing yet.
Let them tear each other apart, she thought coldly. It's only a matter of time anyway.
Haruki Yamauchi slammed his palm against the desk before him, the sharp crack cutting through the nervous murmurs and drawing every eye in the room. His face was flushed, spittle flying as he jabbed a finger accusingly at no one in particular.
"I told you, didn't I?!" His voice cracked with hysteria. "I told you there were fucking zombies out there! You didn't believe me! You mocked me! Called me crazy, said I was trying to skip class, said I was making it up for attention!" He laughed, a harsh, broken sound. "Who's laughing now?! Huh?! Who's the crazy one now?!"
From the back of the room, a lazy drawl cut through his tirade like a knife through butter.
"So what if you knew, boy?" Rokusuke Koenji didn't even bother to look up from the compact mirror he was studying, one foot propped casually on his desk as if the world hadn't just ended. His reflection smiled back at him, perfect and unbothered. "You're still acting disgracefully. You knew what was coming, and yet here you are—pissing yourself, trembling like a leaf, making a spectacle of yourself like the clown you've always been."
The venom in his words was casual, effortless, the disdain of a predator for a particularly annoying insect. Koenji didn't need to raise his voice. He didn't need to posture. His presence alone was enough to make Yamauchi's tirade feel small and pathetic.
Yamauchi's face went red with fury, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. For a long, charged moment, it looked like he might actually do something—might finally challenge the golden boy who had always looked down on him, always dismissed him, always made him feel like less than nothing.
But Yamauchi was a coward. Everyone in Class D knew it. He feared the strong and bullied the weak, and Koenji—with his perfect physique, his aristocratic bearing, his utter lack of fear—was very, very strong.
So Yamauchi did what cowards always do. He looked for easier prey.
His eyes swept the room, assessing, calculating, and landed on the cluster of gyaru girls huddled together near the windows.
Their usual confidence was gone, their faces pale with fear beneath the makeup, their designer clothes suddenly useless in a world that no longer cared about brand names.
And at the center of that group, still staring at her phone with forced nonchalance, was their leader—a blonde-haired girl with violet eyes and a defiant tilt to her chin that even the apocalypse couldn't quite erase.
Kei Karuizawa.
Yamauchi's gaze lingered on her, growing hotter, more invasive. He let his eyes roam over her body with deliberate slowness, undressing her in front of the entire class, letting everyone see exactly what he was thinking.
Karuizawa felt it like a physical touch—greasy and wrong. She looked up from her phone, her violet eyes narrowing as they met his.
"What the hell are you looking at, you jerk?!" The words exploded out of her, sharp and defensive, the old Karuizawa fire flaring despite the fear coiled in her gut.
Yamauchi smirked. Perfect. This was exactly what he wanted—a reaction, a fight, a chance to put this bitch in her place.
"What's your contribution to the apocalypse, Kei Karuizawa?" he sneered, stepping closer, emboldened by her fear. "Me? The men in this class? We killed zombies out there. We risked our lives. Look at this blood on my face—" he gestured dramatically at a smear of dark red across his cheek, "—that's from a zombie I put down with my own hands. That's how we protected you. That's what we sacrificed while you and your useless friends sat here with your phones and your makeup and your tits, contributing absolutely nothing."
His voice rose, feeding on the silence of the class, on the way Karuizawa shrank back.
"What right do you have to lecture me?! What right do you have to look down on anyone?! You're nothing without men like me to protect you! Nothing but a weak piece of meat waiting to be eaten!"
His eyes crawled over her again, slower this time, lingering on her chest, her hips, the curve of her thigh beneath her skirt. He licked his lips unconsciously, drunk on the power of seeing her afraid.
In the old world, a woman like Karuizawa would never have looked twice at him. She was popular, beautiful, surrounded by friends and admirers. He was nothing—a loser, a coward, someone she wouldn't even acknowledge in the hallway.
But the old world was gone.
And in this new world, strength was the only currency that mattered. His strength. His ability to fight, to kill, to protect. And women like Karuizawa? They were just dependents now. Just warm bodies to be claimed by whoever was strong enough to keep them alive.
Let her see what happens to weak women without a strong man to protect them, he thought savagely. Let her learn her place.
Karuizawa shrank back further, her bravado crumbling under the weight of his gaze. She could feel the class watching, whispering, waiting to see what would happen. Her friends—the girls who had always backed her up, always had her back—were suddenly silent, their eyes downcast, unwilling to draw attention to themselves.
They're abandoning me, she realized with sickening clarity. They're all abandoning me.
The whispers grew louder, uglier. Someone snickered. A boy in the back made a crude comment about what Yamauchi might do with a "pretty thing" like Karuizawa once the rules really broke down.
Sae Chabashira watched it all unfold from the front of the room, her expression never changing. The atmosphere was spiraling out of control—she could feel it, taste it in the air like ozone before a storm. Yamauchi's aggression, Karuizawa's terror, the class's vulture-like hunger for drama and blood.
A good teacher would intervene. Would restore order. Would protect the vulnerable student from the predator.
But Chabashira simply watched, her face cold, her arms still crossed.
Class D, she thought with infinite contempt. Trash from beginning to end. Not even the end of the world can change what you are.
Hirata Yosuke suddenly stood amid the storm.
The golden boy of Class D—the friendly, dependable, ever-smiling mediator who had spent two years smoothing over conflicts and keeping the peace—rose from his seat like a man stepping onto a battlefield.
His face was pale, his hands trembling slightly at his sides, but his eyes held a desperate, flickering resolve that hadn't been there moments before.
Seeing this, Yamauchi's expression curdled with displeasure.
His lip curled, revealing yellowed teeth.
"What the hell do you think you're doing, Hirata?"
Behind Yamauchi, Ike Kanji shifted forward, positioning himself as muscle—or at least, what passed for muscle in Class D.
He was smaller than Hirata, softer, but he had the coward's courage of backup and numbers.
His presence was meant to intimidate, to remind everyone that Yamauchi wasn't alone in his vision of how things should work now
Women spread their legs for men. Men killed and scavenged and brought back supplies. That was the natural order, wasn't it? That was how survival worked?
Before the confrontation could escalate—before words could become shoves and shoves could become something worse—the world outside interrupted.
BOOM.
The sound was massive, deafening, an explosion that rattled the windows and sent dust cascading from the ceiling.
Everyone froze.
Every head turned toward the door.