January 13
At three in the afternoon on January 13, the sky was dim and overcast.
The air was thick with suspended dust and fine particles, turning the heavens murky and blunting even the sun's power. Daylight had grown so weak that some nocturnal creatures had begun to stir.
At last, the storm outside had subsided.
The already ruined city now looked even more devastated after the shockwave. The heavy snowpack that had piled up over the previous days had been torn apart, exposing the long-buried ground beneath. With the white shroud ripped away, the rotting corpses that had died with their eyes still open were once again laid bare before the world.
The infected dragged in the dust-laden air with savage breaths. Some of those that had just fallen from the sky lay sprawled on the ground, gasping weakly. Most of them were missing pieces of their bodies. Blue-green blood was smeared everywhere, severed limbs scattered across the streets in a scene so grotesque it turned the stomach.
The roadside trees leaned every which way, many of them uprooted entirely. The once-bustling shopping street was now clogged with rubbish. The wide glass storefronts had shattered into glittering fragments. Dirty water ran unchecked across the pavement, while swarms of red-eyed little flying insects buzzed through the air.
Flowerpots from the high-rises had smashed on the ground, and the once-bright blossoms were nothing but withered stems and yellowed leaves now.
Back at Kyoko's building in the distance, Kyoko and Hanashu were cleaning up broken glass while dressed in makeshift anti-radiation gear fashioned from white raincoats.
For locals from Fukushima, you could say this was almost a professional specialization.
"The furnace room in 1501's almost unusable now," Kyoko said. "A lot of the firewood got soaked."
With thick rubber gloves on, she used a clamp to pick up the firewood that had been drenched by what was either seawater or rainwater and spoke to Hanashu without looking up.
"Kyoko, why isn't this imported Geiger tube sensor reacting at all?"
"Dummy, you have to hold it really close to the thing you're measuring. If it could detect something from that far away, the two of us would already be in our graves."
Dropping the clamp, Kyoko took the Huashengchang DT-9501 from Hanashu's hand and pointed the detector head straight at a small puddle. The probe hovered just above it, no farther than a thumb's breadth away.
No alarm sounded.
Kyoko glanced at the numbers flickering on the display.
0.6 mSv/h.
Still acceptable. Category V—extremely low hazard. No risk of permanent injury. At least in the short term, it wouldn't have much effect on living things.
The real danger came from long-term accumulation. Once total exposure exceeded 20 mSv, the risk became real—cancer, leukemia, the odds of disease steadily rising.
Normal background radiation was under 0.5 mSv/h. At the current level, the fallout was still below 100 mSv—no obvious symptoms, perhaps only a slight reduction in white blood cells.
"This little bit of radiation's nothing. We Fukushima people have been basking in radiation since birth. Honestly, if there's none at all, I almost feel uncomfortable."
Holding the detector, Kyoko laughed at her own joke. Hanashu laughed too.
Joking aside, radiation levels out in the open sea six and a half nautical miles from Fukushima had been around 0.1 mSv/h. In Nihonmatsu, far from the plant itself, the levels had never been especially serious. Under normal circumstances, it was basically just ordinary background radiation.
Once they finished sorting the items touched by the radioactive rainwater, they disposed of them the standard way—burning them, then dumping the ashes into the drainage system on the seventh floor.
Just to be safe, Kyoko found some waterproof plastic sheeting and sealed up every window in 1501, which until now had only been protected by anti-theft bars.
The other rooms had suffered little damage, but the storm had produced plenty of airborne corpses.
Some lucky victims had been flung straight into the outer wall of Kyoko's building, painting the facade with their blood.
One of them had even slammed directly into the wall outside Kyoko's place, frightening Hanashu so badly that she threw herself into Kyoko's arms.
By around six in the evening, the cleanup was finally finished. The two of them resumed the work the storm had interrupted earlier that morning.
Kyoko's safehouse was now truly complete.
The only problem was that the water collection system had become temporarily unusable.
Maybe the system had taken notice of how diligent Kyoko had been. Or maybe it simply recognized that the rainwater was no longer drinkable because of the radioactive particles floating in the air. Either way, the Closed Ecological Cycle quest was marked complete.
Closed Ecological Cycle: Establish a water supply and cultivation system within the safe zone. Due to force majeure, the reward will be issued early, but converted into points instead.
Reward: 10 potato tubers, 1 bag of carrot seeds, 1 bag of cabbage seeds, 12 sterile eggs → converted to 80 points.
"Eighty points is eighty points, I guess. Better than nothing."
Instead of feeling pleased, Kyoko looked faintly dissatisfied. Eighty points wasn't much—barely enough for a handful of sterile eggs. In the shop, even one sterile egg cost six points.
The point value was based on scarcity in the apocalypse. Because of production, storage, and preservation issues, a sterile egg was now worth more than an ordinary bullet.
Leaving Hanashu at home to sort the bottled water they'd collected, Kyoko headed up to the twentieth floor to inspect how dangerous it was outside.
She pushed open the iron door, rust smearing onto her gloves as she did.
The rooftop beyond was a mess.
"What is this, a rooftop or a junkyard?"
Squatting down, she checked the accumulated puddles and debris for radiation.
"The ambient radiation out here's a bit risky. 0.8 mSv/h... And this trash—1.3 mSv/h? Did it get blown in from somewhere closer to the source?"
With a shovel in one hand, Kyoko scooped up the contaminated junk and pitched it off the roof. By chance, some of it struck wandering infected below.
One infected looked up, opened its foul-smelling mouth to hiss—
and Kyoko dumped another load right into its throat.
Direct hit. The infected choked.
Hiss attempt: failed.
Up on the rooftop, Kyoko's face had gone bright red under the mask. Between the constant bending, lifting, and throwing, and the hot breath trapped behind the face covering, she was panting heavily.
At last, after flinging away the final heap of filth, she leaned against the doorframe and breathed hard.
Then Hanashu came thumping up the stairs, hurrying over to tell her about the water situation.
She ran up to Kyoko and handed her a cup of boiled water at just the right temperature.
Kyoko drank while listening to Hanashu's report.
"So you're saying that if we stop heating the hot spring bath, our remaining fresh water will last us about two weeks?"
"Yeah. Some of the water we stored earlier got contaminated. The window in 1504 didn't break, but it leaked. Dirty water from outside got onto the buckets by the window."
Hanashu paused to catch her breath before continuing.
"Kyoko, even though we covered the water with tarps, the tarp had holes in it. Almost a quarter of the buckets got hit."
Earlier, Hanashu had gone into the storage room in 1504 and found damp streaks beside the buckets of precious fresh water they'd been stockpiling. At first she thought one of them had sprung a leak, but on closer inspection she discovered the water had seeped in through the window.
Kyoko had worried about exactly this, which was why she had spread the water across different storage points and covered it with waterproof tarps in the first place.
But when it rained, it poured.
Bottle caps were meant to fasten, not to be perfectly airtight. Contaminated rainwater could still seep inside.
They had started with a total of a little over sixty liters.
Now they had to throw away more than ten.
Put another way: that was enough to fill seven one-and-a-half-liter bottles. Or eleven of those giant tea bottles. Or two big water jugs.
Before the apocalypse, people used more than that just for a bath.
Now, even a single bottle of drinking water had to be guarded like treasure.
That was a headache.
Whether or not they kept heating the bath was a minor issue. At worst, they would just endure the cold and wear more layers inside.
But even so, the numbers no longer worked out the way they wanted.
"I'll think of something," Kyoko said at last. "Hanashu, move the waste water into the stairwell for now. Store it there."
She sent Hanashu away, then stood alone on the twentieth-floor rooftop, staring at the neighboring building just beyond the dividing wall.
Just as she had thought earlier, if she could get over that rooftop wall, she could access another whole building full of supplies.
"So it's actually a three-building complex... I've been cooped up at home so long I misremembered the layout of my own neighborhood."
The building Kyoko lived in turned out not to be part of a two-building block, but a three-building row—three identical towers stuck together. Her unit was in the third one, facing the main road and the commercial street.
Climbing up onto the small rooftop access structure—one with no guardrail at all—she peered over the wall toward the neighboring rooftop.
And then, suddenly, she felt it.
As if something over there were watching her.
A chill ran down her spine.
When she looked again, there was nothing.
Kyoko was a little afraid of heights to begin with, so she quickly climbed back down onto the roof proper.
After waiting a while and seeing no sign of anything unusual, she returned to the fifteenth floor.
But once Kyoko was gone, the rooftop door of the neighboring building slowly creaked open.
Several black shapes crawled out.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( 126 )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter108)
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I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter144)
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Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 70
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 99
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 95
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 99
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 92
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 47
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 44
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player 43
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 26
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 32
Uma Musume: From Beginner 26
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