We silently make our way to the kindergarten near campus, it’s about a 30 minutes’ walk. Me and Yuma are walking in the front, then the girls and Daichi brings up the rear, he’s carrying a metal pipe that he found in the storeroom.

Nobody dares speak, afraid of all the zombies around us, until Yuma asks:

“Hey Ren, is this not the perfect time to farm some crystals? Those rotting corpses are barely even moving.”

“We do need more crystals… but let’s try to be careful, Aoi and I already had an encounter with zombies during the day that could have ended badly. They appear docile, but if you get to close or make a loud sound they’ll attack... Although, if we see a zombies on his own… It’s basically begging to be turned into a crystal at that point right?”

Me and Yuma smirk.

Aoi seemed to have remembered her childhood friend when I brought up the zombie-encounter near the supermarket:

“I wonder how Tanaka is doing in his new group?”

“Oooh I didn’t know you cared for Tanaka that much Aoi, if you want, we can go check up on him. We wouldn’t want to let mister childhood friend feel lonely right.”

“Stop teasing Rina! After everything he has done, I hope he at least receives some kind of retribution. If it wasn’t for him I would still be a happy couple with Re-“

It appears she let something quite dangerous slip out, she tried to salvage the situation:

“No I don’t mean it like that! It’s just that… it’s wrong to spread false rumors like that you know!”

Rina had a devilish smile on her face:

“Don’t worry about Ren from now on Aoi, I’ll take care of him instead.”

I felt a mixture of happiness and embarrassment at the sight of the two girls fighting over me, but Yuma brought me back to reality with his teasing:

“Looks like someone is finally in his popular phase...”- He suddenly ducked inside of a bush and pulled me with him. “Wait, look there Ren, aren’t those two zombies all by themself?”

“Good call Yuma, you take the left one, I’ll take care of the right one.”

After reading further in the ‘Blood-Magic circles for dummies’ while we were preparing to leave the gymnasium earlier, I realized it was possible to alter magic circles and even combine them. This zombie was a perfect test subject to try out my altered ‘crimson blade’ on.

I first draw the regular magic circle for ‘crimson blade’ and then add the ‘life steal’ circle to it.

Success! The blade was actually formed and it didn’t look any different from the regular one, hopefully it does have an additional ability though.

Me and Yuma run towards the zombies while the rest of the group stays back. Yuma brutally bashes the skull in of the left zombie before it even had the change to do anything about it. Meanwhile, I quite easily manage to decapitate the other zombie with my crimson blade. I yell out:

“It worked! It healed the bite wound from where I drew my blood!”

Yuma tries to be supportive, but I don’t think he has any idea what I was yelling for:

“G-Good job man!”

…

And so we killed our way towards the kindergarten, when we finally arrived, Yuma triumphantly stated:

“I killed 8 of those bastards, from now on, you guys can call me the new zombie slayer of the group!”

“Isn’t it a bit childish and even disrespectful to count your kills like that?”

“Y-Yeah you’re right Ren, I’m sorry…”

“Besides, not that it matters, but I killed 5 zombies more than you.”

“Hey I thought counting your kills was childish?!”

Me and Yuma continued joking around for some time until we arrived at the front door of the building. We might have been joking around about our kill counts, but we did collect 42 crystals in total, with help from my blood crystal refinement of course.

“Okay I’ll summon an imp to scout first. We’ll first head to the lunch room and grab some food before heading upstairs and looking for Miu.”

I summon an imp and use its eyes to map out the inside of the building, there are quite a few zombies in the hallways. I follow the signs that say cafeteria and finally arrive at a locked door where a bunch of zombies are pounding against. I look inside and see… A little girl?

“Let’s head inside Yuma, I saw a little girl that could be Miu! The rest should follow us closely and try to keep up with us.”

We both sprint inside, I’m slightly faster than Yuma, which is for the best since I know the layout. I killed 5 zombies on my way to the locked door and Yuma handled all of the zombies I missed, this way, we were sure the rest of our group won’t have any trouble following us.

In the distance I can see the pile up of zombies knocking on the front door, I ready some blood and start drawing a blood berserk magic circle.

I arrive at the door and violently throw the zombies of it, I take my crimson blade, which still has the life steal enhancement, and start slashing. It probably doesn’t look very graceful, but I never learned any sword techniques, so I’m just using the raw strength I got from blood berserk to hack and slash the zombies in little pieces.

The rest of the group are still behind me so I rip open the door myself, which actually didn’t put up much resistance, probably due to my ‘blood berserk’-enhanced strength.

I see the back of a little blond girl in the corner of the cafeteria, she turns around to look at me and… Shit… Looks like I was already to late, the entire half of her face has melted, like somebody dipped her head in oil and lit it on fire… Did she get those injuries when the zombies bit her? Are zombies capable of doing so horrendous?

I ready my blade, determined to put her out of her misery. But before I could strike, Yuma runs into the room screaming:

“Miu, you’re alive!”

I try to stop him:

“No Yuma, it’s too late already, look at her face!”

Yuma ignores me and hugs her:

“Y-You’re wrong Ren, my sister isn’t a monster… This… This is how she has always looked like…”

It looks like Yuma is telling the truth because the little girl starts crying and calling him ‘big bro’.

…

Once the situation has calmed down somewhat and everybody of the group arrived at the cafeteria, I take a good look at her face while my ‘blood berserk’ isn’t active and like Yuma said, these injuries don’t look fresh, looks like she is just a unfortunate child who was disfigured at an early age.

We all look a bit confused, but then Yuma starts telling us his story:

“You see, Miu used to be a regular, beautiful little girl. Perhaps even the cutest thing on earth. But some 5 Years ago an accident happened…

Me and my little sister grew up in a brothel together with our mom, that’s the reason why Miu has blond hair with blue eyes while I have black hair and brown eyes… My mom was mentally challenged and a bit simple, despite all that we were happy, we had each other and that was enough.

But one day a customer from the brothel claiming to be Miu’s father came in. He swore that he would take us out of poverty, to live as a family at his place.

Of course my mom believed him, she didn’t even question it, but when he ran away with all her money that she was saving for our college tuition, something in her snapped.

She became depressed and spend her days laying in bed al day, I had to get a job at the age of 14 to support our family… She wasn’t the warm person she used to be anymore, nonetheless we still loved her and appreciated everything she had done for us.. everything she had sacrificed for us…

But then one day I came home from work to see my little sister of 4 years old crying. Our mom was standing over her holding a bowl of boiling hot water, she screamed that this was the only way that she could think of to protect her daughter from evil men.

I tackled my mom to the floor, but… it was already too late, I immediately took Miu to the nearest hospital, the first-aid treatment alone cost me everything I had saved up for the past 2 years… They said the damage was irreversible, she would have to live in constant pain and with a disfigured face.”

Yuma started sniffling:

“I – I came home that evening from the hospital with Miu all bandaged up and we found our mom lying on the floor in a comatose state, the only thing she could say was: “I’m sorry Miu, you were too beautiful, I don’t want you to end up like me.”

She stayed like that for 3 years until she finally gave up and died in her bed… Even though Miu had to go through all of that, even though she has to live in constant pain and with a disfigured face… She always smiled at me when I dropped her off at school, she smiled at me during dinner and when I read her a bed time story, she never complained, she never looked depressed…”

A tear fell down Yuma’s cheek:

“My sister is simply the strongest and most beautiful girl I know…”

Most of the girls start crying, especially Sarah. Even I feel something well up from inside of me… Man, I feel really bad about mistaken her for a zombie now… In the future I should only use ‘blood berserk’ in emergencies, the whole ‘not thinking clear’ part is a more serious handicap than I thought.

“I-Im sorry about before Yuma, really, I feel like shit… how can I make it up to you?”

Yuma wipes his tears away:

“Don’t worry about it Ren, it was my fault for not telling you about my sisters condition beforehand. Besides, without you I probably would have never been reunited with her again.”

You’re kind Yuma, maybe too kind… I worry about what would have happened if Yuma didn’t stop me from swinging my blade… God dammit ren! Be more careful, this isn’t a game! I should pay more attention and not act based on assumptions anymore.

Himari, the only girl that didn’t bawl her eyes out, stands up:

“Miu, could you please tell us why you are here all on your own?”

Yeah I was actually wondering that too…