January 13
After dinner, with the last rays of sunset fading from the gray-yellow sky, Kyoko felt the apartment had become unbearably stuffy. The furnace room next door filled the place with welcome warmth, but it also made the air damp and heavy.
She wanted to take Hanashu up to the rooftop for some fresh air. By now, the radiation in the atmosphere had fallen to a very safe level.
There was no need for cumbersome raincoats or masks. The two of them slowly climbed the stairs side by side.
Mindful of what had happened last time—going out without proper weapons and nearly getting killed when a monster attacked—Kyoko had deliberately brought both her gun and her katana this time.
Japanese quick-draw and American quick-draw, both were essential. If she could solve things with a gun, why would she bother gambling on close combat?
Standing atop the building, they could see for several kilometers in every direction.
This place held many of Kyoko's memories. To the east of the neighborhood was a newly built commercial complex. To the south stretched a cluster of detached houses. To the north stood the government office district. To the west lay a city park. Farther out, one could make out the E4 expressway, the Tohoku route, cutting straight through central Nihonmatsu.
She had spent all eighteen years of this life in this unremarkable little city, barely ever leaving Fukushima Prefecture. Even though Tokyo was only a three- or four-hour ride away from here.
Beyond the southern residential block stood the district where her junior high and high school had been.
Starting school early had always bored Kyoko to death. She had never worried about grades. Every day at school had felt more like a vacation than anything else.
By the time she graduated junior high, a lot of the girls in school already hated her because of one incident. Then in high school, she had been isolated.
Not that Kyoko had cared much. What trouble could a bunch of middle-schoolers really cause? But in a small city, even the tiniest piece of gossip could spread like wildfire. And so Kyoko earned herself a rotten reputation among students her age.
The reason? A boy all those girls adored had fallen for Kyoko, who at the time had been the captain of the kendo club. Every day after club activities, he would linger around, begging for a chance to spar with her. But he never got one. Anyone who wanted Kyoko to draw her sword first had to fight the vice-captain and beat her. Only then would Kyoko step in.
And generally speaking, no one could beat that vice-captain.
Just as expected, the guy had been beaten black and blue, then fled in panic.
Kyoko had assumed he would finally stop making a fool of himself.
Instead, he turned out to be like gum stuck to a shoe, showing up in front of her club every single day.
Kyoko had wanted to cut the idiot in half. Never mind that she didn't even like boys in the first place—this creep was downright incomprehensible. Worse, a whole flock of girls kept trailing after him every day. If Kyoko had been their parent, she would have thrown all of them straight back into character creation.
Then, in late July, as summer vacation approached, the idiot decided to pull his most ridiculous stunt yet.
At the graduation ceremony, Kyoko had almost fallen asleep. Then all of a sudden, loud commotion broke out. She opened her eyes to find the entire school staring at her.
The lunatic had chosen his student representative speech to drop to his knees in front of the whole school and confess to her.
Kyoko did not even glance at him. She got up and left.
They were graduating, for heaven's sake. Why would she care?
The idiot hadn't expected that outcome. He'd thought public pressure and his "persistence" would force the orphaned Kyoko to accept him. Instead, the whole thing blew up in his face, and things turned ugly.
Of course, a normal boy was no match for the captain of the kendo club. Kyoko flattened him without difficulty.
Leaving the stunned audience behind, Kyoko walked off without a backward glance, annoyed only that her shoes now felt dirty.
And from that day on, his fangirls hated her.
Ridiculous, wasn't it? The kind of melodramatic nonsense that could probably only happen in a Japanese school. If it had been somewhere further west, nothing like that would ever have happened. They only gave you fifteen minutes for lunch, you stayed at school until one in the morning, and classes started at 7:50 a.m. There simply wouldn't have been enough free time for this kind of absurdity.
Seeing Kyoko lost in memory, Hanashu didn't interrupt. Nihonmatsu held important memories for her too.
Her grandparents had been elderly farmers in the countryside. She had never liked noisy, crowded cities. What she longed for was the stillness and slow pace of rural life. A book, a fishing net, two old people, one little village—that had once been her whole summer.
But all of that beauty was gone now. Her grandparents had passed away peacefully before the disaster, leaving this world before it slipped into the abyss.
When someone sank into deep thought, it was hard to pull them back. A person's awareness of the outside world dropped to its lowest point.
Even someone as sharp as Kyoko was no exception.
By the time the last traces of sunlight had vanished from the sky, night had fully descended.
And that meant the nocturnal creatures were beginning their performance.
Just as Kyoko and Hanashu were about to leave, they heard the sound of something hard scraping nearby. Hanashu switched on her flashlight and pointed it toward the source.
The beam met the blood-red head of an unknown monster.
Its crimson eyes squeezed shut, unable to bear the sudden brightness.
What it didn't realize was that this would be the last thing it ever saw.
Kyoko didn't hesitate for even half a second. She drew her pistol and fired three shots straight into its head.
Three neat bloody holes opened in its skull, and the creature toppled backward off the parapet.
But its fall drew in more infected.
They let out a unified howl as they climbed over the rooftop wall from the neighboring building, spilling onto Kyoko's side.
"Damn it! Where did all these infected come from? Don't tell me all the ones trapped in the other building got loose!"
Kyoko had overlooked one crucial fact: the stairwells in the other two connected buildings had never been sealed off like hers.
By the time she realized that, it was already too late.
Several days of smooth sailing had made her careless. She had been making a racket in her own building every day. There was no way the neighbors in the other towers hadn't heard it—unless every last one of them had gone deaf.
Gunfire rang out in rapid bursts.
Muzzle flashes leapt from Kyoko's pistol as one infected after another dropped, while she covered Hanashu's retreat into the building behind them.
She emptied magazine after magazine, but the monsters didn't thin out.
If anything, they seemed to multiply.
"Damn it, how many of them are there?! Hanashu, load more rounds for me!"
Kyoko's pistol had finally run dry. There was no time to reload it herself. She tore off the gun and the ammo pouch from her belt and threw them to Hanashu.
Cursing herself for not buying more spare magazines, Kyoko had no choice but to fight hand-to-hand with no real protection.
She drew her sword and threw herself into a bloody melee.
Against ordinary infected that fought without technique, she didn't need anything elaborate. The most basic forms were enough.
"Hah—die!"
With a swift sliding step, Kyoko cut into the horde. Her blade flashed in a blur, and several corpses dropped headless to the rooftop. One rolling head she even kicked like a ball straight into another charging infected.
Now that night had fully fallen, she could only see the enemies by the flashlight Hanashu had set down behind her.
"There's no end to them! Why are there still more?! Fine—have some steel!"
After parrying one attack, Kyoko counterattacked at once, shouting as her sword struck again.
Between those she had just shot and those she had cut down, at least thirty bodies now littered the rooftop.
It was like trying to hold back a tidal wave.
Her sword was slick with foul-smelling fluid, and her clothes were stained with blood.
The narrow rooftop was quickly carpeted with infected corpses, but more were still scrambling over the wall from the neighboring building, climbing over the bodies of their dead comrades to get at her.
Kyoko realized she could no longer solve this with close combat alone.
So she began falling back while fighting.
"Kyoko, I loaded the bullets!"
Inside the doorway behind her, Hanashu had managed to refill two fifteen-round magazines in a frantic rush.
Kyoko snatched the pistol back, still holding her sword, and dragged Hanashu with her as they retreated inside. They rushed into the corridor and slammed the door shut behind them.
But before they could even catch their breath, infected who had climbed over the rooftop structure on the uppermost level came dropping onto the other side and charged straight at them.
"Ah!"
In the scramble to escape, Hanashu tripped over the threshold and fell.
Hearing her cry out, Kyoko immediately threw down her sword and grabbed Hanashu before she hit the ground.
"Kyoko, just run! Leave me here and let me hold them off!"
With her ankle and knee throbbing in pain, Hanashu couldn't move fast anymore. Terrified of slowing Kyoko down, she was ready to sacrifice herself to buy time.
"Don't be stupid! If I hadn't brought you up here, none of this would've happened! And besides, your tiny body isn't even enough to clog their teeth. Trust me—we're getting out of this alive!"
Kyoko hoisted Hanashu onto one shoulder and kept firing with her free hand at the infected closing in.
Hanashu, choking back tears because she could do nothing, could only watch as Kyoko's figure grew more and more solid in her heart.
The infected kept coming.
But so did hope.
They had already fallen back to the sixteenth floor. Their home was just below. If they could reach the storeroom and switch to better weapons, they might still turn this around.
They were almost there.
Kyoko's little armory in Room 1503 was practically calling to them.
And then, just like a plane crashing at the last possible second, they went down right at the staircase landing on the fifteenth floor.
Kyoko hit the concrete hard.
Her head slammed into the iron door with a bell-like clang, and bright red blood sprayed across the floor.
"Hanashu... what do I do...? Is this... where it ends... for me... and Hanashu...?"
Her pupils dilated. Her breathing turned ragged. Her head pounded so hard the world split into double images.
Collapsed on the ground, Kyoko shut her eyes in helpless unwillingness.
The last thing she saw was Hanashu desperately dragging her toward the room.
Join here to read ahead.
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TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
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From Junkman to Wasteland 66
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From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 99
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I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player 43
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Uma Musume: From Beginner 26
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