Chapter 1 – The Living Hell
In a world where fear spreads faster than infection...
One school becomes a battlefield.
One boy becomes a survivor.
But when survival turns into obsession,
the dead aren’t the only ones to fear.
—— ✦ ✦ ✦ ——
Saito Jun had always felt more alive among the dead.
Not the people themselves, but their stories — those chaotic worlds where everything had already fallen apart. His small bedroom in Yokohama was stacked with zombie manga, survival guides, and half-broken consoles that buzzed quietly through the night.
His mother worried about him.
“You’ll rot your mind with that stuff,” she would sigh, setting down his dinner after another late shift at the convenience store. “Go outside once in a while. The real world isn’t that scary.”
But to Jun, it was.
The world of the living was cruel and unpredictable. In the stories he loved, at least fear made sense — there was always a reason to run. At school, he was invisible until someone decided to remind him he existed.
Each morning at Tosei High School was the same: the front gate, the laughter, the sting of someone’s hand on his shoulder. Takeda Hayato and his friends were always waiting.
“Zombie boy’s here!” Hayato shouted one morning, snatching Jun’s bag and shaking it open. “What’s next, gonna eat my brains?”
The group’s laughter echoed through the hallways. Jun stayed silent, clutching his books while the crowd enjoyed the show. Teachers looked the other way. It was routine now.
From a distance, another student watched — Nakamura Kyohei. He was quiet too, unnoticed most of the time. That morning he stood frozen, unsure whether to walk away or help.
When Jun dropped to his knees to gather his scattered notebooks, their eyes met for a second — two ghosts recognizing each other in the noise. Then Hayato noticed Kyohei staring.
“What’re you looking at, freak?” Hayato barked. “You want a turn too?”
Before Kyohei could respond, they turned on him. One boy shoved him; another tripped him. His glasses hit the ground. The laughter grew louder.
It ended only when the class representative, Akiyama Rei, appeared at the end of the hall.
“Enough!” she said, her voice sharp and calm at once. “Do you ever get tired of this?”
The bullies hesitated, muttered something, and backed off. Jun and Kyohei gathered their things in silence. Rei gave Jun a small, kind look — one that almost hurt more than the laughter.
That afternoon, neither Jun nor Kyohei went straight home. They ended up behind the gym, sitting under the stairs near the storage shed. Neither said much. Only the sound of cicadas filled the humid summer air.
Kyohei broke the silence first. “You read that Zombie Survival Guide too?”
Jun looked up, surprised. “Yeah. You?”
Kyohei nodded once. “Borrowed it from the library before someone ripped the last pages out.”
Jun almost smiled. “That happens a lot.”
They didn’t laugh, but the corner of Kyohei’s mouth twitched — the closest thing to it.
For a while they just sat there, watching stray cats move through the grass. It was quiet, but somehow comfortable.
Over the next few days, they started meeting without planning to. Sometimes on the way home, sometimes outside the canteen. They didn’t talk much — a few short sentences, shared snacks, the same tired sighs after class — but the silence between them stopped feeling heavy.
When Hayato pushed Jun again one morning, Kyohei was the one who picked up Jun’s bag and handed it back. No words. Just a small, firm nod.
Rei saw it from across the hall. She didn’t say anything, but when she passed Kyohei, she said quietly, “Good job.”
He looked at her, startled, then lowered his head. It was the first kind thing anyone had said to him all week.
Little by little, Jun and Kyohei became a pair — two quiet shadows moving through the same hallways, never laughing with the others, never joining in, but always walking side by side.
Sometimes, though, Kyohei wondered if Jun’s fascination went too far.
When they talked about zombie outbreaks or survival tactics, Jun’s eyes would light up — not like someone enjoying a story, but like someone waiting for it to happen.
There were moments Kyohei caught him glancing at their classmates with that same far-off look, as if imagining how fast the infection would spread.
He laughed it off at first, but deep down, he felt a small unease.
Maybe Jun didn’t just like those stories. Maybe he believed in them.
By the time the semester dragged toward midterms, the bullying had eased — fewer insults, fewer shoves in the hallway — but the tension never disappeared completely.
Hayato still watched them sometimes, that same smirk on his face, a quiet reminder that he hadn’t forgotten.
And above it all, Tosei High remained what it always was — loud, bright, and somehow dead inside.
—— ✦ ✦ ✦ ——
End of the chapter
