An odd silence lingered as Rika and Yuto looked at each other, then back at him.
Rika crossed her arms, her expression thoughtful yet slightly stern.
"That was before. Things are… different now."
The atmosphere in the room grew heavier. Dion sighed. There wasn't anything he could say to refute her. There was a distance that had grown between them and it was his fault. He had to leave and he did it in the worst way possible.
He had simply disappeared. He left everyone letters, but he didn't speak to them. Mira was the one who handled the aftermath of everything for him.
Before he could say anything else, the sharp trill of the bell cut through the tension, signalling the end of lunch break.
"Shit," Yuto muttered, glancing at the clock. "We gotta go."
Dion sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. "Yeah, I guess so."
Rika slung her bass over her shoulder, and Yuto grabbed his backpack. They didn't say much as they packed up; the earlier joy of their reunion was dulled and toned over by a grating awkwardness. Dion stayed back, watching them go, feeling an odd mixture of frustration and melancholy well up inside him.
"I'll be back tomorrow, so think about it, okay?" Dion called after them, his voice echoing slightly, "Please."
Rika paused at the doorway, glancing over her shoulder, "We will," she replied.
"It was good seeing you, man," Yuto said quietly, before disappearing into the hallway with Yuto.
And just like that, Dion was alone again. He mumbled a silent curse to himself there. A lot of his anticipations for coming back were siphoned away as Rika's words came to him again.
'Things are different now,' He thought.
"I deserve it, though." He sighed and, with a bit of a chortle, thought, 'What else did I expect?'
He had two more sto,ps then he would just leave. However, since class time had resumed, it wasn't like he could go see all the people he needed to in the middle of their class or work.
There was just over an hour or so until school ended, and thinking so, he decided to just wait it out on the roof so he wouldn't get called out for being a stranger loitering about.
He silently wondered if the guard was already looking for him, after all, he was just supposed to be dropping something off.
Nevertheless, at this point, he realised that he was just using the fact that he could feel the Awakening approaching eventually as an excuse. As valid as it was, it was nonetheless an excuse to bring himself back here.
He waited for a little while as people filtered back into their classrooms before getting up. Then, he left the Music Club room.
However, walking through the fourth floor's hallway, he soon came to an abrupt stop.
His gaze sharpened as he listened:
"Attention, all students and teachers!"
"Attention, all students and teachers!"
"At present, there is a violent struggle occurring on the premises."
"Students, stay with your teachers and follow their instructions!"
"I repeat. At present, there is a violent struggle occurring on the premises."
Brrvt!!
A school-wide broadcast echoed, then it abruptly cut, leaving the halls lingering with silence for a few moments.
His brows furrowed in a mix of curiosity and caution.
'Did I not leave barbarity back in Europe?' He thought half seriously.
Yet, a cutting edge sharpened in his gaze moments later:
Brrvt!!
"GGRAAAGGGHH!!!"
"AARGH, HELP ME! STOP! HELP!"
"HELP! I'M GOING TO DIE!!"
"GRAA-BRVT"
Blood-curdling screams thundered throughout the school from the same announcement speakers that had just given a warning of a violent struggle on the premises. In the background of these screams was the resounding commotion of a struggle.
Across all the classrooms, students and teachers alike were all stunned into a daze, absent-minded as their brains processed for a few prolonged seconds.
"..."
"..."
Meanwhile, Dion had been struck to disbelieving silence as well. Not simply because of the suffering man over the announcement system, but due to what haunted the halls of his floor; no more than a dozen meters away from him.
They had shattered and crashed through the door to the cleaners' lounge. Things removed from humanity; revenants.
He rushed to the window by the side, his eyes gradually widening, looking down at the currently few figures trudging at the bottom. Then he yanked his gaze back to the seven things groaning, slobbering and trudging at a pace slower than a walk, towards him.
"This...isn't what's supposed to happen..."
Paler than alabaster, fatally, with chunks of flesh torn off them, slopping out blood and muscle tissue.
They had lost their pupils and irises, leaving white sclera veined with black. Similarly, across their bodies, meandering lines of black denigrated their figures as they trudged around like live people.
He grimaced; he could feel spiritual essence in them. That could only mean one thing - the Awakening.
Dion's expression was sterned and his jaw was tensed. A vicious agitation glinting in his eyes.
'What the hell is going on?' He thought, 'And why so soon? There should have been a strong influx of days before anything serious happened! Why didn't I feel anything?'
"Tsk!" He immediately turned on his heel.
"Moreover! Zombies for a world's awakening?!" He roared, "Fuck you very much!"
"!!!"
Pandemonium.
""!!!""
A grand upheaval reverberated through the whole campus and building, rumbling its stone floors at the stomps of swarms of students; desperate youths howling, clawing, kicking and ramming their way out of their classrooms into the hallways.
Incoherent shrieks and cries for help resounded along with malicious hollers of curses for people to get out of the other's way.
The hysterical students looked as if they were scattering out from a huge sack of tot spiders.
Desperately, violently, and without care for the lives of those beside them, as if they were baby sharks in a womb, hundreds of people fought against each other to get through the hallways of all the floors, unwittingly throwing themselves to their deaths.
They were met with dozens of grotesque, trodding zombies along their way. Many fell prey, being clutched and eaten into amid their gurgling, horrific cries.
And those that fell would soon arise.
As zombies.
On the second floor~~~
A similar scene was playing out.
Yet there was a group of three - two boys and a girl, coordinating, unlike the rest who ran blindly, they were running through the halls towards the Administrative Building connected to their Classroom Building.
A far less populated building, hence, much safer. Or so they believed.
One of them was Takashi Komuro.
The other young man was his best friend, Hisashi Iguo; he was quite handsome, with grey hair and brown eyes, standing a little taller than Komuro.
The beautiful young lady with them, Rei Miyamoto, had waist-length orange-brown hair that was tied in a single small ponytail on the back of her head. She leaves the rest of her hair down with bangs hanging over her face, while she has two strands sticking out above the rest of her hair, reddish-brown eyes, and she has a slender figure with an ample bosom. She stood at an average height for girls - 164cm.
The three of them ran side by side, two of them holding a weapon. Takashi had a bat, while Rei had the broken-off stick pole of a broom; the metal end was coiled to make a share, pointed tip.
"Isn't that Wakisaka from Modern Japanese?" Rei asked the two, ahead of them was the figure of a man unhurriedly walking.
He was a little ways away, so they couldn't tell so easily.
"Is he going to try to stop us?" Takashi asked with a faint scowl.
"Careful! Something's wrong with him." Hisashi warned, noticing the man's faint limp.
They were just about to reach the corner they had to turn into when the ashen, blood-lathered figure of the trodding man came towards them.
"!"
They stopped to a stop as they caught a proper look at him.
"Grrghagh!"
The zombie gurgled and growled as he verged on Rei, who was only a few steps away, somewhat ahead of the two boys.
"Eh-Wh...No!!" Rei squealed as she swung her broomstick through the air, "Don't come any closer!"
"Stab him! Don't hold back!" Hisashi hollered, "He's one of Them!"
"!"
She groaned and whimpered, skidding back slightly as she had to block the zombified Wakisaka's lunge by holding his body away from her with the stick horizontally.
"!"
"Argh!" She hollered as she forced him back and continued, "Don't underestimate a member of the spearmanship club!"
She shoved him back into stumbling steps with a push of the butt of her stick, chasing as she thrust the sharp end into his chest, lodging it in deep.
A surefire lethal stab. The zombie even remained stationary, seemingly unmoving.
"Alright!" Takashi gave an animated celebratory fist wave.
Yet Wakisaka's body began to flail, widening Rei's eyes in shock.
Her hands still tightly gripped the pole, so as he flailed, he flung and thudded her against the wall. She coughed out air and spit as she plummeted to sit on the ground.
"I pierced him in the heart," Her voice croaked and quivered as she continued, "How...?"
"!"
Just as the zombie tried to lunge down to feast on Rei, Hisashi ran in, choking it from behind with his forearm, then locking the choke with his other arm folded in under its armpit.
"Kgh!" He groaned, his brows creasing deeply and his teeth clenching feeling the unnatural strength and resistance the zombie had and he hollered, "Pull it out, Rei! Now!"
"!"
She hurriedly growled to her feet, clutching the staff with both hands and yanked it out.
"Get away from him, Hisashi!" Takashi yelled, having made a grim realisation.
Yet it came too late.
"I can handle thi-?!"
The zombie's head creaked and wrung itself at an unnatural angle against the resistance of Hisashi's hold. Its jaw has already widened.
"!"
Krmnch!
"Aaarrgghh!"
Blood splattered through the air as the zombie ate into Hisashi's shoulder, tormenting him into a gut-wrenching scream.
""Hisashi!"" Takashi and Rei hollered in unison, but while Takashi stood frozen both by what had just happened to his best friend, with his heart thundering against his chest, Rei bolted forward, yelling into a thrust into the zombies heart once again.
Yet Hisashi continued to scream as the zombie's teeth munched down harder, shattering through bone.
"Do something, Takashi!" She had been trying to pry the zombie off Hisashi by this point, yet Takashi remained frozen, "You're a man, aren't you!?"
"Do something! Anything!"
Takashi's jaw tensed. His hold of the bat's grip creaked.
He roared with a guttural intensity, rushing in and hammering down his bat over the zombie's skull. Amid head cracking and squelching, he reduced the zombie's skull to a deformed mess.
She yanked it off and away from Hisash, who then fell over to his behind, clutching his blood-spilling shoulder and wincing.
Rei, his girlfriend, followed him down and mumbled forth a flurry of worries as she helped tend to his wound.
Takashi hovered over them, eyeing the scene with a grim intensity as he heaved for breath. His eyes trailed off to the corpse to the side.