Chapter 1 – The Day It Began

Arata slouched into the classroom, the chatter of his classmates washing over him as a dull, distant hum. Second year had just begun, and everyone seemed desperate to pretend life was normal again. Laughter, gossip, complaints about teachers—ordinary noise for an ordinary morning.

He dropped into his usual seat—third row, by the window—and rested his head on his folded arms.

Grandfather wanted me to forget about that life, he thought, watching sunlight spill across the polished floor. Just be normal. Just be a student.

For a moment… it almost felt possible.

Then the sound came.

The kind that shatters worlds.

A deafening crash tore through the school courtyard. Metal screamed. Concrete split. The windows rattled violently as a shockwave rippled through the building. Students jolted upright, startled cries filling the room.

Arata lifted his head slowly.

Through the window, he saw a delivery truck crushed through the front gate, its hood twisted into mangled steel. Debris lay scattered like shrapnel across the courtyard. The driver stumbled from the cab and collapsed onto the pavement, blood streaking his arms and face.

Panic spread instantly.

Students rushed to the windows, shouting over one another. Someone screamed that the driver was dying. Their teacher barked for order, then bolted for the door and sprinted downstairs toward the scene.

Arata’s eyes narrowed.

The teacher reached the driver and dropped to his knees—

—and then a blood-soaked figure in the passenger seat lunged forward.

Jaws clamped into the teacher’s shoulder.

The scream that followed cut through the courtyard like a blade.

The classroom exploded into chaos. Chairs scraped and toppled. Bags were knocked to the floor. Someone burst into tears. Someone else vomited near the door.

Arata didn’t move.

He watched with cold, detached clarity as the bitten driver convulsed on the pavement. His limbs twisted unnaturally, jerking hard enough to crack bone—then he rose again, unsteady, eyes empty, movements wrong.

A female teacher ran in to help.

His teeth sank into her arm.

More screams.

More blood.

More panic.

Students surged toward the exits in a frantic wave. Arata slipped from his seat, unhurried, weaving through fallen books and panicked bodies like water around stone. He avoided the windows, kept to the shadows, and headed for the stairwell.

His steps were silent. Controlled.

Not like a student.

Not like a child.

Like someone trained.

He climbed to the rooftop as the school below collapsed into madness. Doors slammed. Footsteps thundered through hallways. Screams overlapped and bled together into one endless wall of sound.

Arata stepped to the edge of the roof.

Shimamoto was burning.

People ran through the streets, chased down and torn apart. Vehicles crashed into storefronts. Smoke rose thick and black into the sky. Sirens wailed—and then fell silent, one after another.

The infected flooded the school grounds like a living tide.

Even from here, he could hear them. The pounding. The scraping. The wet, guttural moans leaking up through the stairwell.

Arata stood alone against the rising smoke, watching the end of everything unfold.

A slow breath.

A quiet whisper.

“Grandfather… I couldn’t escape that life, after all.”