Chapter 5 - ...fire!

Yuuri froze at the sound of the gunshot. Oh no, she thought, the panic welling up in her chest, oh no, nonono, please, please don't let that mean what I think it means!

She could always go back and get the axe, but then the entire conversation on the stairs would have been for nothing. It was officially decision time, so she turned back to Yuki and said, "If this goes wrong, run."

But Yuki didn't reply… at least, not verbally. Instead, she put on a remarkably determined look that told Yuuri everything she needed to know. She could hear Yuki's voice in her head whispering, Rule 3. No one goes anywhere alone.

That settled it, then. She took another deep breath, pushed on the door, and entered the room.

The Sniper was there, waiting, rifle up and aimed at her head.

"KURUMI!" Miki cried, even as the shot rang out.

Before her, Kurumi's shovel clattered to the ground. The girl followed soon after, collapsing to her knees.

Miki couldn't help it she rushed out of the protection of the wrecked Prius, seizing her friend by the shoulders. "You stupid, stupid—"

Kurumi started to laugh.

When Miki looked up, she found the older student ashen-faced, but very much alive. She was looking a few meters away.

On the ground, the infected otaku lay dead, the top of its head torn through by sniper fire.

Yuuri stood there, hands held up as she stammered, "I-I'm s-sorry for int-inter-rupting."

The Sniper was an older man, mid-30s with a grizzled look that suggested either a long life of backcountry work, or just a long amount of time outside. He was wearing worn but clearly upkept tactical gear, and Yuuri corrected her original assumption from criminal to mercenary, as his equipment was obviously more involved than anything your standard-fare thug would ever get their hands on. He held the rifle in position with steady, surgeon-like hands, but his face and eyes had a strange, glazed-over look of one who had either seen too much, or who hadn't seen anything new in a long, long while.

"My name is Yuuri Wakasa," Yuuri went on. She hadn't been shot yet, so her confidence was building. "I am—was—a student at Megurigaoka High School. It's—it's nice to meet you. What's your name?"

The Sniper slowly lowered the weapon, and when he spoke, his voice was low and raspy.

"But… you're just children," he said.

Yuuri glanced behind her and saw, to her amazement, Yuki, determined, axe out and at the ready. When the pink-haired girl noticed that the danger was gone, though, she lowered the weapon and joined Yuuri before the man with the gun. "There's four of us," Yuuri explained. "We survived at first by barricading ourselves in the school, but there was a fire and—"

"The Company said you were all going to die," the Sniper insisted. The gun was no longer raised, but the man was still clearly not-all-there. "The police, the military, all caught… infected. Everyone else was supposed to die..."

"Company?" Yuuri asked, shocked, her mind immediately going back to the manual from the School's shelter. "Is—are you talking about Randall Corporation? Is that who hired you?"

But he clearly wasn't listening. "I've taken so many of you," he whispered. "Dozens, I think, maybe hundreds…

"Of course the children would survive, of course, OF COURSE!" He burst out laughing, punctuated with a loud HAH that made Yuki jump and shrink closer to Yuuri.

Yet even this outburst was soon over, and his face drooped again. "I killed them all. Every one I could see, you know. I wonder—I wonder if any of them were like you."

He wandered over to the window. At this point, Yuuri was too confused and concerned to say anything to him, so she whispered to Yuki, "I'll send the signal to Miki and Kurumi. You head back to the stairway and make sure that it's still clear. I'll meet up with you soon."

Yuki gave her a wide-eyed look, but ultimately smiled, nodded, and left, leaving Yuuri alone with the Sniper.

She approached him slowly, and stated, "My group and I are leaving soon. We're going to a place called Saint Isidore University. We think that other survivors will be waiting for us. Would you like to come with us?"

No reaction.

"I know that the RV is cramped, but there's enough room so that all of us can go."

No reaction.

"Do you… do you want to stay here?"

This time, he said, "I'm a killer. Do you get that? I kill people. I blow their damn brains out. I killed so many of them… so many of you. The one below, I would have killed her too. I wanted to kill her."

Remembering Yuki's speech to her, Yuuri reached out, waited for the man to react, and when he did not, lightly rested a hand on his shoulder. "You made a mistake," she said simply, "but as long as you're still able, you have the chance to make it better."

He turned his head to look at her, his dreary, unfocused eyes drifting over her face as his mouth slowly twisted into a smile. "A chance," he said. "I can—I can make it all better! Of course I can!"

Tears starting to stream down his eyes, he took Yuuri's hand and said, "You're right, there is always a chance."

He let go of her hand, slung his rifle over his shoulder, and gave her a deep bow.

"Thank you," the Sniper said, and then threw himself out the window.

It took roughly two and a half seconds for the Sniper to fall from the top floor of the building and through the windshield of one of the parked cars below. Amazingly, even after two months of inactivity, the battery was still charged enough to power the security system, and the car's alarm shrieked to life.

Through endless pain and blurring vision, the Sniper was able to pick his head up enough to see the blonde-haired, girl on her feet, those big, blue eyes wide open in terror.

They look even better without the scope, he thought. Those eyes were the last thing he saw.

Miki looked up from the body of the dying sniper to the top floor window. In the dimming light, she couldn't see into the room that the Sniper had been using as a base, but she knew that Rii was up there, looking back down.

I'll take something in the room and throw it at the ground. Don't worry, you'll know.

She had stated not a minute earlier that Yuuri was capable of killing someone, but seeing the scene in front of her, she didn't want to believe that she'd seen what must have happened. Decapitating infected with a shovel was horrific enough, but this…

"Uh… Miki?" Kurumi said.

Miki took her eyes off of the Sniper and looked around. Perhaps it was the sound of the car, but equally likely, Miki supposed, was the time of day. She had wondered where all of the infected had gone off to during the day, and why they hadn't encountered any in this part of the city. It was then that she realized—if infected students could stick to schedules, wouldn't infected adults do the same?

The work day was over, and they were parked in the middle of street during Rush Hour

All around them, buildings were starting to disgorge infected men and women, each slowly shambling out of their respective doors and onto the street. Some of them heard the car alarm, stopped, and turned to investigate the noise. "Time to go!" Miki declared, and they rushed together for the RV.

Half an hour later, Miki leaned against the side post of a slide in Yokohama Park while Yuki climbed up the ladder, telling her side of the story as she did so.

"... but the man didn't want to come with us, so Rii-san and I ran back downstairs and here we are!" she concluded.

Miki was reasonably certain that the story was missing lots of important pieces. Yuki had downplayed her own fear of the gunshots at the beginning, had failed to provide a reason why the Sniper had fallen out the window, and offered no explanation for why Rii-san looked like she'd already cried her eyes out by the time she returned to the RV. Even more concerning was a gap of time where Yuki described climbing stairs, but dodged Miki's questions on how Yuuri had been handling the situation. A bruise on her cheek was passed off as "I hit my head on the way upstairs. I'm so clumsy!"

It wasn't the first time Miki had assumed that Yuki was covering for Yuuri, and it was fair to assume that it wouldn't be the last.

"It sounds like an exciting story," Miki said. "There were moments where Kurumi and I were worried that you'd never return."

"And make my cute junior sad?" Yuki said with a pout. "Never! That would be mean, Mii-kun!"

Miki sighed. "I wish I had your optimism, senpai."

"It's not just that," Yuki said, reaching the top of the ladder, "It's the right thing to do! Mii-kun already had one friend go missing, two would be twice as bad!"

Two would have been hell itself, Miki reflected, then, remembering her conversations with Rii and Kurumi, looked up and said, "Yuki—"

"UWAAAA! Don't look up my skirt!"

She hadn't seen anything, but her head snapped down and just the same. "Sorry! Sorry! I just wanted to ask you a question!"

"If it was about what you saw—"

"I didn't see anything! It's something else entirely!"

"It's okay, Mii-kun, we all have our strange days!"

"Senpai!" Miki gave an annoyed huff. "Fine, I won't ask you."

"Aww, now I really want to know."

She took a deep breath and said, "Why do you still read Eyeball Man manga?"

Initially, she heard no response from Yuki, just the sound of her shoes striking the metal top of the ladder, followed by a squeaking noise as she slid down the slide. Miki looked up to see Yuki sitting there at the end, her arms held out as if she'd flown down the slide instead of descending the conventional way. The pink-haired girl looked back at her and said, "Because everyone wants to be a hero, and it's nice to read about people who want to help other people. Lots of other people think so too, which is why they made a manga out of it!"

"So you read it because you think it's nice to be nice?"

She shook her head. "I read about it because it reminds me that other people think it's nice to be nice."

Had that been what happened with the Sniper? Perhaps he'd realized his mistake and realized what Yuki was talking about. Perhaps Kurumi had too, which is why she was willing to take the risk.

"Hey, Mii-kun? Why do you read Steppen King novels?"

"Because…" the original reason had been beyond her, but now, looking back on it, the answer was obvious. "It's because no matter how bad things get, the bad things must come to an end eventually. Not always happily, but they do always end."

Yuki reached out and gave her a big hug. "Well, I know we're going to get a happy end! Right Mii-kun?"

Miki smiled, patted her once on the head, and said simply, "Right, senpai!"

In the RV, Kurumi took a seat opposite to Yuuri and, grinning, said, "I've checked the map, and even though my driving was a bit crazy, we're still on course for Saint Isidore. I think we'll be there in a few more days."

"We only got one basket of food from the mini-mart, plus the snacks that Yuki shoved into her backpack." Yuuri said, consulting a line in her supply notebook. "It'll give us another day or so, but we'll need to stop of somewhere else."

"That's fine," Kurumi said, then with a wink added, "Just... no tall buildings this time. Or maybe I'll park closer to the door."

Yuuri smiled and shook her head. "No tall buildings" was an even taller order for somewhere like Japan, but they had learned a number of valuable lessons from the experience, and they wouldn't be caught in such a difficult position ever again.

"You know, Rii-san..."

Yuuri looked up from her notes to find that Kurumi was avoiding her gaze, and was instead tapping her two pointer fingers together as a nervous tic.

"If you're wondering, I didn't push him!" Yuuri blurted, then, shocked, threw her hands over her mouth, took a deep breath, than said, "What I mean to say…"

She lowered her hands and tried again, "What I meant was that the sniper jumped out the window on his own. I was hoping that he'd come with us, or maybe just give us some supplies and directions, but I think that he was just too broken. It was really bad, Kurumi. It made Yuki's case at the school look simple."

"Yeah, I thought it would be something like that. Killing them is something you get used to after a while, but I don't think that any of us could do that to a normal person."

But Kurumi still looked nervous, and swallowing, continued with, "Miki told me about the knife."

Now it was Yuuri's turn to look away. "I see."

"I just wanted you to know… I'm okay with it. In fact, it's my mistake for asking that of you. If I'd taken time to read the whole Emergency Manual, I would've known about the medicine and would've told you to wait.

"But even without that, knowing how much it would hurt you to even try… that's not what a good friend does. If I really wanted something like that, I should've done it myself—"

"NO!" Yuuri said, reaching across the table and grabbing Kurumi's arms. "No matter what happens, we should all be trying to find answers until there's no hope left. That's why we're going to Saint Isidore… and Randall Corporation if we have to."

Kurumi didn't reply to that, but muttered, "I guess I just wanted you to know… I forgive you."

Yuuri responded with a sad smile, and, "Thank you, Kurumi."

"Oh, Rii-san?"

"Yes?"

"You can let go of me now."

Yuuri released Kurumi's wrists, and the other girl stood up and said, "I think I'm going to go out and play with Yuki and Miki for a few minutes. I could use some downtime after everything that happened."

"That's fine," Yuuri said, "Just, keep aware of your surroundings, and bring everyone back if you see anything dangerous."

Kurumi gave an amused snort, said, "Thanks, Big Sis," and slipped out of the vehicle.

Now alone, Yuuri lay her weary head on the table and watched out the window. A lot had happened to them in the past few months, but they were getting through it all together. Not just the infected—Megu-nee's departure, Miki's arrival, and now this—they were managing personal crises too. Even if she broke down from time to time, even if any of them broke down, they were there to support each other, and they probably would be until the end, whenever and wherever that was.

And she would always be there to watch over them.

She absentmindedly pushed a lock of hair out of her face and whispered, "That's right, because I'm the big sister…"

The story continues in the manga, Chapter 33.

Author's Note:

I wrote this as a way to apply my knowledge of the characters, and force a conversation between Kurumi and Rii about the knife incident, which never takes place in the Manga. Hopefully, you found this situational experiment just as interesting to read as it was for me to write it.

8andahalfby11

September 2, 2017