Despite her pain, Tsukishiro managed to swallow some. I didn’t know how much she’d need to overcome the virus, though, so I kept feeding her more and more of my saliva…
……I had no idea how much time went by.
A while after I began feeding her my saliva, Tsukishiro’s cloudy eyes slowly returned to their original color, and her body temperature gradually started to rise. Her condition seemed to have improved, so I stopped kissing her.
As soon as I did, Tsukishiro let out a weak noise.
“…Kou…saka…”
“Tsukishiro! Do you recognize me?!”
“Yes… I… I’m still alive, aren’t I…?”
“Of course you are! You didn’t turn into a zombie!”
Tsukishiro appeared human, unlike when I had transformed, and the bite mark was still there. It looked like my saliva had saved her…
“…Tsukishiro, I have to go and make sure there aren’t any zombies still in the dorm. I’m afraid to leave you here, though, so I’m going to carry you on my back, if you don’t mind.”
“That’s…fine…,” she said weakly. It seemed Tsukishiro still wasn’t feeling all that great. I lifted her onto my back and began making my way through the dorm building.
I checked all the floors and didn’t see any more zombies. Considering all the noise we’d been making in the yard, maybe they’d never made it past the second floor. Still, with just the light of my phone to go by, I couldn’t say for sure that it was completely safe, so we’d have to stay on our guard until the morning.
I returned to the first floor to lay Tsukishiro on a bed, then went up to where Lisa and Ichinose were. Although the two of them looked worried, they said they hadn’t sensed any zombies approaching the room. Still, considering what had happened to Tsukishiro, I asked them to stay in their rooms until morning.
I quickly returned to where Tsukishiro was on the first floor but saw no signs of her turning into a zombie. It must have been half an hour by then since she’d regained consciousness. Was it safe to assume that she was okay…?
“Tsukishiro, how are you feeling…?” I asked quietly, and she sat upright on the bed.
“It hurts where I was bitten, but I think the rest of me is fine.”
“Good…”
“Thank you, Kousaka. It must have been hard for you to walk around carrying me on your back…”
“It was no big deal… Anyway, now that the threat’s over, I’d like to talk to you about where we go from here.”
“—What?!”
Tsukishiro looked away, her face full of embarrassment for some reason.
“…Are you saying you wish for us to be in a relationship?”
“That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m talking about whether we should tell the others that you were bitten by a zombie and managed to overcome the virus by kissing me.”
“Don’t say it in such a confusing way!” Tsukishiro berated me, red in the face. “Where we’re going from here? Of course that’s where my mind would go!”
“S-sorry…”
Come to think of it, Haruka gave me a similar sort of warning before…
“…I’m sorry; I guess I was a little agitated,” Tsukishiro said. “…It’s probably because of that long, passionate kiss from earlier, but that was all I could think about…”
“I—I see…”
“I only confessed my feelings for you because I thought I was going to die, but then you went ahead and saved me. You’ll have to take responsibility for that.”
“Oh, uh…”
“Hee-hee! I’m only joking, of course. I’m grateful to you for saving my life, Kousaka, and I couldn’t ask for anything more. So back to the topic at hand; what we need to decide now is whether to tell everyone about what just happened, right?”
“Right. I think it would only worry them finding out that two of their dorm mates have been bitten by zombies—”
“I think we should tell them,” Tsukishiro said firmly. “I’ll leave it to you to decide if you want to tell them about yourself, Kousaka. However, I think the right thing to do is to tell them everything and let them decide whether we can stay in this dorm.”
“What if they kick us out, though?!”
“I’ll accept their decision and look for another place to use as a base.”
“……”
Tsukishiro was right about everything.
That said, it was one thing to be right and another thing entirely as to whether that would help everyone.
Unlike me, Tsukishiro couldn’t turn herself into a zombie whenever she wanted. I couldn’t imagine that she would survive if she left the dorm, but maybe that was a risk she was willing to take…
“Kousaka? Is something wrong?”
“It’s nothing. Okay then, we’ll tell everyone about us tomorrow.”
“Thank you.” Tsukishiro bowed deeply to me, a determined look on her face. “…Also, I was on duty guarding the gate tonight, so do you think I should I go back?”
“No, I’m worried about your condition, so rest up for tonight. I’ll take your place on guard duty. Come and tell me right away if you start to feel strange.”
“I will. Thank you.”
As soon as she said that, Tsukishiro went to lie down on the bed. She’d probably only been putting up a strong front and still wasn’t feeling all that well… It wasn’t as if I could do anything by being here, though, as I’d only get in the way of her rest. I silently went out to the yard and got into the passenger seat of the car. Haruka was still in the driver’s seat—and she immediately began complaining.
“You said you were bringing Tsukishiro and that other woman to the car. What have you been doing for over an hour?”
“Oh, sorry… A lot happened.”
“What d’you mean?”
“……”
She was sure to get in a bad mood if I told her I’d kissed Tsukishiro. Even if I explained it was practically mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, I had a feeling Haruka wouldn’t accept it. So I decided to put it off until later.
“I’ll tell everyone tomorrow morning.”
“What is it? Don’t leave me hanging. No way… Did someone get bitten by a zombie…?”
…Her instincts were as sharp as usual.
“Actually, the woman who came here looking for help had been bitten by a zombie. So that became an issue.”
“She had…?” Haruka closed her eyes and quietly put her hands together. I said a silent prayer with her.
“…I’m going to take over guard duty tonight, so you head back to the room,” I told her. “Thanks for all your help.”
“No, let me stay here with you… After everything that’s happened, I doubt I’d be able to get any sleep anyway.”
“Oh…”
We sat like that for a little while, until Haruka broke the silence with a quiet murmur.
“…I killed a lot of zombies.”
“You took action. And that was the thing that helped me make up my mind to fight.”
“Did I do the right thing, though? Those zombies may have learned to communicate like you can…”
“All of us here would be dead if we hadn’t killed those zombies. Right now, that’s all that matters… Still, I don’t want to kill any more zombies, either, if we can help it. I think we need to come up with a system for the base so we won’t have to fight them. Maybe we could set up a second gate so zombies can’t get in right away, even if they breach one of them. We could also build a deep moat around the fence so zombies can’t get near us.”
“That’s brilliant…! You sure are good at coming up with ideas, Yuuma…!”
“Still, it wouldn’t be enough to deal with that three-meter-plus zombie. Something like that would probably be able to easily climb over a moat and the fence…”
“What was the deal with that huge zombie?”
“No idea, it must have mutated or something; I’m pretty sure the tallest person in the world is around two hundred and seventy centimeters. Maybe something weird happened when the zombie virus entered their body, different than how it affected me… I can’t picture us being able to restrain a monster like that, so we’ll need to have weapons ready for the next time a zombie that big shows up…”
There were a lot of other things we had to go over as well, like how to contact each other in an emergency and how to quarantine survivors who came to us seeking help for a while.
I stared at the cracked windshield, the cogs in my mind turning.