I picked up the metal bat and charged for the front entrance of the store; however, the thick automatic glass doors blocked my path. They wouldn’t open because of the power outage.
“No!! Get away from me!!”
“Stopppp!!”
I was trying to pry open the automatic doors, when this time, I heard two people’s voices.
I reflexively lifted my bat, smashed the glass, and raced inside the building. Five zombies had cornered two young women against a wall.
There was no time to lose!
“I’m sorry!!” I shouted, slamming the bat into the head of the zombie in the middle. The back of its skull was crushed from the impact, and the zombie fell forward.
The other zombies reacted to the sound of my voice. They stopped in their tracks, turned around, and looked at me. I used that opening to send two more zombies flying and create a path.
“Get out of here!” I shouted, and one of the women—a redhead in jeans—took off running. However, the other—a silver-haired woman wearing a miniskirt—slumped on the spot, unable to move. She must have been frozen in fear.
“Amano!! Hurry!!”
The redhead rushed back and tried to help the other woman to her feet. It didn’t seem to be working, though, so I gave up on getting them out of here and instead stood in front of the two women with my back to them.
“It’s okay if you can’t run. I won’t let any more zombies come near you.”
Come to think of it, there was no telling how many zombies there were. Maybe it was easier to fight if I kept the girls where I could see them.
The lighting in the store was dim, so I figured it was probably okay to transform into a zombie—and I transformed with my back still turned to the women. I swung the bat with monstrous strength and shooed the zombies away. Others nearby had also gathered around us, and I crushed their heads one after another, resulting in headless corpses lying all over the place.
Eventually, silence fell inside the store. I remained on alert, but no more zombies appeared, so I reverted to my human form and turned to face the two women. They were both motionless, staring at me in amazement. They must have been in shock, especially the silver-haired one called Amano, whose mouth was hanging open and eyes were unfocused.
I wanted to give them a chance to calm down, but I was also worried about Haruka and the others I’d left in the car. I needed these two to quickly come to their senses.
I crouched down until I was eye to eye with Amano.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
It was only then that she focused her gaze on me.
“…You…saved us…?”
She seemed to be in a daze after almost being killed. With a reaction like that, it was impossible to think she could be acting.
I considered the possibility that they might be with the organization that spread the zombie virus and quickly rejected that idea. It didn’t make sense for them to go to the trouble of being attacked by zombies, and they wouldn’t have lived through it if I hadn’t come along.
“For now, I’ve taken care of the zombies that were nearby.”
“Th-thank you…”
“Are you hurt?”
“N-no, I’m fine…”
“Good. And…did either of you get bitten?”
“No…”
“That’s good.”
I checked Amano’s body as I spoke. The woman we’d invited into the dorm the other day had been bitten by a zombie and look what had happened to Tsukishiro. Rather than taking people at their word, I had to check for bite marks myself.
I didn’t find any tears in her clothes, and her legs looked free of scratches beneath her miniskirt—
“—?!”
While examining Amano’s body, I realized something serious: Slumped on the ground as she was, I could see up her skirt…
I’d caught a glimpse of something I shouldn’t have. The moment I realized this, my brain struggled to catch up.
But that’s weird. Shouldn’t she be wearing underwear…?
Time seemed to stop, but then I realized I had to look away, so I quickly stood up and averted my gaze. I stared at the ceiling, finally coming up with an explanation for what I’d seen.
It was the fifth day since the zombie scare had begun. A person who’d been hiding all this time wouldn’t have gotten hold of a change of clothes or been able to do their laundry. It wouldn’t be surprising if, in this zombie-infested world, a woman in a skirt wasn’t wearing underpants.
“—Ah!!” Amano suddenly shouted and closed her legs. Pressing her skirt down, she nervously asked, “…Did you…s-see…?”
“…No, it’s too dark—”
“Of course he saw,” the red-haired woman declared. “He noticed when he was checking to see if those zombies had bitten you, then quickly looked up at the ceiling. It was clearly an unnatural action, so there’s no doubt about it.”
“Whaaa…?” Amano blushed. She looked like she was about to cry.
The red-haired woman had seen through everything—not just that I’d seen up Amano’s skirt, but that I’d been checking for bite marks.
“The way you looked away immediately was so cute, like a virgin.”
She can even tell I’m a virgin…?!
I didn’t know how to react, and the red-haired woman smiled at me.
“Anyway, thanks so much for saving us. I’m Saya Kamiji. This here is Mayu Amano. We go to the same college. We ran inside this store and hid in the staff room until we got so hungry we had to come out, and that’s when the zombies attacked.”
“—Amano, don’t let something like that worry you. This high school kid saved our lives, so consider yourself lucky if all he saw was your you-know-what.”
“C-consider myself lucky?!!” Amano almost screamed as she got to her feet, still holding her skirt down.
She turned to me.
“H-hey,” I stammered, “it’s not like I’m a pervert or anything. It couldn’t be helped… I didn’t have a change of underwear, and I haven’t been able to do laundry…”