I hadn’t expected that.
“I accidentally saw you. Oh—not that I’m blaming you. Zombies may have taken over the world, but you’re still free to fall in love. The two of you just seem so serious, so I was surprised to see you sneaking off in the middle of work to make out. I want to get a feel for the relationships in this little community. Kousaka, are you messing around with multiple girls here?”
“N-no! Tsukishiro’s the only girl I kiss.”
“Hmm, that’s a surprise. I was sure you were dating that girl named Hyuuga.”
…I guess it was only natural for Kamiji to assume that, considering what Haruka and I had been talking about while Amano was being checked for zombie bites.
But in reality, Haruka’s the one I’m dating…
“Does Hyuuga know you’re seeing each other?”
“…Umm, well…”
“Yeah, she does,” Tsukishiro answered for me while I was hesitating to tell Kamiji more lies.
“She’s seen us kiss a number of times.”
“Seriously…? And you still went ahead and made a move on Hyuuga while your girlfriend was on the other side of the partition? What an absolute scumbag.”
“……”
Sorry, Haruka. Kamiji has things terribly wrong, but there’s no way I can correct her…
That said, I didn’t want to leave things there.
“Um, Haruka and I have been friends since we were kids, so we’re really close.”
“There’s a limit, though.”
“True…”
Sorry, Haruka. It didn’t work.
“How about the others—Hoshimiya and Ichinose, right? Do those two also know about your relationship?”
“Uh…”
“They do. Everyone’s seen us kissing.”
“My God, everyone has seen you kiss?”
“We didn’t do it out of spite…”
“Kamiji, do you think we’re weird?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. It’s just, the two of you look like the quiet type, but you both must have a crazy sex drive.”
Kamiji was still looking out the window as she spoke, but when I saw her reflection in the glass, the tension seemed to have gone from her face.
We drove for about twenty minutes and reached the river we’d been visiting on a daily basis.
“You guys even have a drum bath here?” Kamiji almost cried out in joy, seeing the empty oil drum set up on top of the bricks. “This is great! I’ve been wanting to take a bath this whole time.”
“Well, you have been hiding for five days. Since we’re already here, do you want us to heat up some water so you can go in?” I asked, and Amano and Kamiji’s eyes lit up.
“We’d love to, but are you sure it’s okay?”
“Of course. Go ahead—take a soak and relax.”
They had to be physically and mentally drained after five days in hiding, so I wanted to make it a priority today to let them recover.
Tsukishiro quickly began preparing the bath, placing firewood under the drum and lighting it. Haruka and Lisa fetched water using the transparent plastic containers we’d picked up at the home improvement store and filled up the drum bath.
It looked like everything was taken care of, so Ichinose and I decided to test out the generator. We’d picked out one powered by gas canisters, and it was about the size of a shopping basket and weighed around fifteen kilograms.
Ichinose took the generator out of its box, filled it with oil following the instructions, and set the gas canisters in place. I gave the string coming out of the side a strong pull, and the generator started up with a rumbling sound like a car engine.
“It’s pretty loud… It might alert the zombies nearby and draw them to us if we use it at the dorm,” Ichinose said sadly as she flipped through the instructions. “It also says here that the generator will run for about an hour on a single gas canister, meaning we’d need twenty-four canisters to make the refrigerator work for just one day…”
“We want to be careful about using up all the gas canisters since we also use them for cooking…”
“The generator will stop working once the gas canisters are empty. We can put three canisters in the generator at a time, but that means we’ll have to change them at least every three hours.”
“So they’ll stop working if we go out for longer than three hours.”
“They don’t seem suited for long-term use. Like I thought, we might have to use a building equipped with solar panels as our base instead,” Ichinose concluded, closing the instructions. “…I’m sorry. We wouldn’t have had to waste all this time if I’d known more about generators. It’s my fault for suggesting we use them…”
“It hasn’t been a waste of time,” I said. “I think it’s important to try something for yourself and learn firsthand that it won’t work.”
I really meant that, but Ichinose looked away. I couldn’t blame her, though, since we’d just realized the generator would be useless…
As we were standing there, Haruka approached us.
“How’s the generator?”
“Uh…”
I was reluctant to tell her about it, but she’d have found out anyway, so I decided to tell her the truth.
“It’s too noisy and uses up too much gas, so we’ve decided we won’t be able to use it at the dorm.”
“Oh, really? That’s too bad. But we can still use it here at the river, right? Can I plug a hair dryer into it?” Haruka asked with an expectant smile.
Ichinose quickly reopened the manual.
“…A hair dryer uses a surprisingly large amount of power, so you might not be able to use it on high, but low should be enough.”
“That’s fine! So we’ll be able to use a hair dryer after taking a bath? Amazing!”
It really was. All this time, I’d been drying my hair by the bonfire, so I was pretty excited as well.
“Let’s go to the store and pick up a hair dryer later! The most expensive one they have!” Haruka said happily, which brought a smile to Ichinose’s face as well.
Kamiji had been watching our exchange a short distance away, and she came over to talk to me.
“Hyuuga’s good at lightening the mood, isn’t she?”
“Yeah. I think it’s just the way she is.”
“It’s a gift. I thought she was a bad kid who was trying to snatch you away from her dorm mate, but her positive attitude really comes in handy.”
“……”
I was starting to think that I should tell Kamiji the truth soon, for Haruka’s sake.
While waiting for the water in the drum bath to boil, we decided to put up the tents by the river. We connected the folded poles, extended them, and threaded them through the proper spots in the tent to form the framework. Once that was done, we stuck metal pegs into the ground to hold the tent in place.
It was fairly easy to set up our two tents. We’d decided to use one as a dressing room and the other for storing supplies.
I pushed the tent lightly, but it didn’t move from where I’d put it up. It seemed like it’d be okay as long as we didn’t get hit with a typhoon or something.
I moved the igniters, firewood, towels, and everything else we didn’t want to get wet in the rain into the tent. Yet even after I’d done all that, the drum bath still wasn’t hot.
Then, I noticed that Ichinose had opened a water purifier. We’d picked up a number of different types of water purifiers, but the one she’d opened was a cylindrical shape that you used by attaching it to a plastic bottle. It was small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, but Ichinose said it had a special filter built in that removed bacteria and viruses from any water you ran through it.
Ichinose filled a plastic bottle with water from the river, attached the water purifier to the mouth, aimed it at a clear cup, and squeezed the bottle. The process didn’t take very long as the water was only passing through the filter, and it made a trickling sound as it came out.