I took a good look at Haruka’s face. “Hmm. I guess if I had to pick between the two…then yeah, I guess you’re more the cute type. Still, I’ve known you since you were in fifth grade, and you’re prettier compared to how you were back then.”
“—What?!” Haruka’s eyes widened. “…So you’re saying that when we reunited, you thought I’d become prettier?”
“…I guess so.”
“Oh… Seeing as I’m younger than you, I just thought I should try to overwhelm you with my cuteness. But what you’re saying is that I can also show you how much I’ve matured…”
“……”
I already knew how much she’d matured from when she let me see her breasts right after we were reunited.
“So which do you like better, a cute girl or a pretty one?” she asked me again.
“Hmm…”
“Both? You’re so greedy.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“I guess there’s only one thing for me to do, then. For you, Yuuma, I’ll become a woman who’s both cute and pretty.”
“O-okay…”
Just then, as Haruka made her mysterious declaration, Amano and the others appeared from the other side of the partition.
“We’ve finished checking for zombie bites, and we didn’t find any,” Tsukishiro said, and we all sighed with relief.
With that, it was decided that the two college girls would join us.
“Now then, let’s get the water purifiers and generator first. Ichinose, we’ll need you to choose the items we want. Amano and Kamiji, the two of you must be tired, so you can stay here and rest.”
“Huh…?! We can?”
I smiled at Amano, who looked worried.
“Sure you can. Your priority should be to regain your strength.”
“Thanks. In that case, I’m going to help myself to that fine wine I found earlier,” Kamiji said with a grin, and she started opening a bottle of wine. I hadn’t realized until then, but she’d also set herself up with a spread of prosciutto and Camembert cheese.
I started to wonder whether it was really okay to have her join our community…
“…Saya doesn’t usually drink during the day,” Amano whispered quietly so only I could hear. “Maybe she has to get drunk to overcome the fear that she might turn into a zombie…”
“…Ah.”
I glanced at Kamiji and noticed that she looked strangely sad.
“…By the way, Amano, I’m sure you must be hungry, but they have sweat suits over there. Maybe you should get changed before you eat…,” I suggested, glancing at her miniskirt. Amano turned bright red.
“…I want to drink until I forget, too…”
“Please don’t. It would be bad if we had to deal with two drunks.”
Once Amano had changed into sweats, we decided to start collecting the things we needed. We pushed a shopping cart large enough for an adult to sit in to the camping equipment section, where we chose water purifiers and a generator following Ichinose’s directions. While we were there, we also grabbed some polyethylene water tanks to fetch water from the river and gas canisters for the generator.
I was looking around for anything else that might be useful when I noticed Ichinose examining the tents.
“I thought it might be easier to change into our bathing suits if we pitched a tent on the riverbank. We could also use them to store things like firewood or fire starters that we don’t want to get wet if it rains.”
“Oh, that’s a good idea.”
I read the instructions for several different types of tents and decided to go for two four-person ones that looked easy enough for beginners to set up.
As soon as I was done with that, Lisa walked up to me, carrying a large cardboard box.
“They have charcoal, so why don’t we use it to cook outside? We’ll be using a lot of gas canisters from now on, right?”
“We could probably do that.”
Ever since the power went out, we’d been using up our gas canisters to cook food. It would be smart to use charcoal instead since our supply was limited.
The camping goods section really seemed to have everything you could want in a zombie world…
Along with the charcoal, we loaded a stainless steel barbecue stove into the shopping cart. With that, there wasn’t room for anything else, so I decided to take what we had out to the car. I headed for the exit, balancing everything in the cart so nothing would fall out.
On the way, I also checked the pockets of the zombies I’d restrained earlier and found several car keys. One of them belonged to a black eight-seater minivan. I started the engine and saw that, fortunately for us, it had a nearly full tank of gas, so I decided to take it.
“…Um, Kousaka,” Tsukishiro whispered while I was loading the things into the trunk. “…Sorry to bother you, but it’s almost ten o’clock, which makes it six hours since the last time we kissed…”
“Oh! Sorry, I wasn’t aware of the time.”
We went back into the store together and moved to the car supplies section, where we started to kiss. As usual, Tsukishiro licked up all the saliva in my mouth.
“…It’s kind of fun sneaking away in the middle of work to make out…,” she said with a bewitching smile.
Was Tsukishiro starting to develop some sort of kink…?
“By the way,” she said, changing the subject, “we should probably keep this a secret from Amano and Kamiji, right?”
“Yeah. We may have to tell them about it at some point, but for now, I think it’s best we keep quiet. We should at least wait till we’ve been living together for a while, and they know we aren’t a threat…”
In a corner of my mind, I also thought it was probably wise to make sure Kamiji wasn’t the type to blab when she got drunk.
About an hour later, we’d loaded our sedan and new minivan to the limit. It had certainly been worth it to come to the home improvement store, as we’d also managed to find a folding table to use outdoors and a huge amount of preserved foods.
But just as we were all back in the parking lot and about to split up into the two cars, Amano raised a question.
“It’s a little late to ask you this now, but do you have a driver’s license, Hyuuga…?”
“Of course not.”
“I was afraid of that… How about the rest of you…?”
We all shook our heads, and Amano looked around with a resigned look on her face.
“Okay… I just got my license, so I’ll drive one of the cars.”
“Then you can take the sedan. I want to try driving the minivan,” Haruka said innocently.
“Are you sure?” Amano asked worriedly. “Aren’t you scared, driving a big car like that?”
“There are only zombies out walking around. Even if worse comes to worst and I end up running one over, it’s not a big deal,” Haruka said with a smile.
Even though what she said was frightening, I guess that was the right sort of attitude needed to survive in this zombie world. Driving is something that takes getting used to, so we wouldn’t be able to survive if we worried about whether or not we had a driver’s license.
“…Um, sorry,” Ichinose interjected. “Could we stop by the river to fetch some water? I want to test the water purifiers.”
And so, at Ichinose’s request, we decided we’d take both cars and head for the river.
“So we know who’s driving, but how should we split up…?” I asked, looking around at the six girls.
But surprisingly, Kamiji was the one to reply.
“Kousaka, Tsukishiro, can we go in the same car? I want to talk to you.”
“Huh? Okay.”
I didn’t know what she wanted to talk about, but I readily agreed. We had to be in the same car anyway since Kamiji might turn into a zombie.
I took some hemp ropes and my bat and got into the back seat of the sedan with Kamiji, while Tsukishiro took the passenger seat. The drivers started the engines, and the minivan left the parking lot followed closely by the sedan.
“…So, Kamiji. What did you want to talk about?” I asked.
Kamiji glanced out the window and began speaking a little awkwardly.
“The two of you were kissing in that store, weren’t you?”
“—Huh?!”