I couldn’t understand her way of thinking, but we started looking around. Haruka stopped in her tracks when we reached the pet section of the hardware side of the store; she was looking at a cage for a large dog. I figured she was thinking of using it for something. We could probably retrofit it into a sort of zombie trap—
“Yuuma, get inside for a sec.”
“Why?!”
“I want to see you sitting in there. Is there any other reason I’d ask you to do that?”
“I was an idiot for asking.”
“Ohh? Is my cute little doggy talking like a person again?”
“……”
“You haven’t forgotten what you are, have you, Yuuma?”
“…Woof.”
“Very good. Now, in you go,” Haruka said happily and pointed to the cage on display.
I knew by now that once Haruka set her mind on something, there was no changing it, so I moved the cage onto the floor and reluctantly went inside. Even though it was the biggest one they had, it was still pretty cramped…
“Good boy! Okay, I’m going to lock the door.”
“Hey, don’t do that!”
But there was no way to move around quickly in the narrow cage, and its door was mercilessly locked shut.
“Next, I’ll take your photo. Yuuma, look this way.”
“Like I care what you do anymore…”
“Really?! Then let’s put a collar on you!”
“Sorry, I lied! I do care!”
“Too late now. The door won’t unlock until you put a collar on and get your photo taken.”
I was doomed…
“Can’t you respect me as a human being?”
“Human…? Didn’t you change jobs and become my dog the day before yesterday?”
“…Hrnn.”
That was how I ended up with a collar around my neck and Haruka taking pathetic photos of me.
“Yuuma, that collar really suits you. Do you want to wear it back to the dorm?”
“God, no. Please…”
Once Haruka was satisfied, I was allowed to take off the collar, and we walked over to the supermarket section to get drinking water. We started clearing out all the bottled water and tea into our shopping baskets and carried them to the car.
“This is pretty tough work… I reckon you could do this to lose weight…,” Haruka said, already worn-out. I couldn’t really blame her, though, since each basket weighed twelve kilograms filled with six two-liter bottles.
“Weren’t you excited to go on a ‘stealing spree in a deserted supermarket’ yesterday?”
“I thought it’d just be a fancy food free-for-all. I didn’t expect to have to carry bottle after bottle of water…”
“I’ve heard that humans drink more than two liters of water a day.”
“That’s ten liters for five people…and it isn’t just drinking water we need, is it?”
“Pretty soon, we’ll have to start going to other supermarkets for water.”
“Maybe we should check the pockets of the zombies you tied up to find some car keys. We’ll probably have to abandon our car once we run out of gas.”
“Can’t we get some at a self-service gas station?”
“Even if it’s self-service, I think the attendant has to give permission for you to start pumping gas. We might be able to figure out how it works, but we’re now living in a world where we can drive any car we want; we might as well try out a whole bunch.”
“Ever the optimist. You really are dead set on making sure you enjoy this world, aren’t you…?”
“Things are tough enough without the internet or running water, so we need something to cheer us up,” Haruka said with a laugh. Maybe I should follow her example and lean into it a bit more.
“Sure, let’s check the zombies’ pockets. Still…it’ll be hard to travel all over Japan looking for water, so what I really want is to somehow get my hands on a water purifier and set up a base near a river.”
“It would help if we came across someone who knows about water purifiers.”
“If only life were that easy. Maybe we should get a survival guide from the library to study.”
“Bleh… Hey, didn’t Ichinose say she likes to read?”
“…Maybe we can ask her.”
We continued chatting as we carried drinking water to the car, loading it up until we couldn’t fit any more. Haruka got in the driver’s seat, and we set out for the dorm.
“Yuuma, you can sleep if you like. I’ll wake you up if something happens.”
“Yeah? Thanks…”
I pushed my seat back a little, closed my heavy eyelids, and fell asleep to the relaxing vibrations of the car…
When I opened my eyes, I was still in the car. The engine was turned off, though, so I guessed we were already back at the dorm.
“Oh, Yuuma. Good morning.”
Haruka took her eyes off the map she was studying and smiled.
“How long was I asleep?”
“It’s noon now, so about four hours. Everyone helped carry in the water we brought back from the supermarket.”
“You should have woken me up…”
“We were making a fair amount of noise, but you didn’t even stir. I felt bad for you, so I decided to stay with you until you woke up.”
“Oh, thanks. What’re you looking at, by the way?”
“It’s a map of the prefecture. I thought I’d memorize it in case something happens, since we can’t use our phones or GPS.”
“You’re memorizing a map…? Is that even possible…?”
“There’s no way I could memorize the whole thing; I’m more remembering locations that can serve as landmarks.”
“Ah. That’s gonna really come in handy, since I have no sense of direction.”
“Hee-hee-hee. Like I said before, you can leave the driving to me.”
“That means we’ll have to think about protective gear for you. Ichinose suggested wrapping magazines around your arms, but it’d be hard to wear that all the time…”
“We have a million things to do, huh…? Oh, also, Tsukishiro and the others put washtubs and large pots up on the rooftop to collect rainwater. And I found an empty oil drum in the storage room.”
“They had an empty oil drum?”
“Apparently, they used them as makeshift bathtubs for camping. I also found wooden pallets and bricks, which gave me an idea: We could all go to the river nearby and bathe in the oil drum.”
“No way, that sounds too risky. There’s no telling when zombies might attack us if we went to an open area like the river.”
“I was afraid you’d say that… But should we just give up on bathing because we don’t have running water anymore?”
“…What do you mean?”
“You were the one who said we should ‘believe tomorrow will be better than today.’ If we’re going to have hope that we’ll survive, we can’t keep adding to the number of things we already have to endure.”
“…You’ve got a point.”
Maybe we could put up with not having a bath for a few months, but we had to go on living for decades to come. If Tsukishiro and the others never stepped outside the dorm and just spent their days eating the food I brought them, then they could lose their minds sooner or later…
“Let’s see if we can find a river that looks safe.”
“Thank you, Yuuma! Also, while we’re out getting supplies, there’s something I want you to do for me. Won’t I need a swimsuit if we’re going to have a bath by the river?”
“Yeah, true.” It wasn’t like she could bathe in the open with just a towel to cover her body.
—Not that I’d be against that, but I was sure the girls would object.