Vol 1 Chapter 1 (1/2)

Chapter 1

My awakening was as unpleasant as having the ringing of the alarm clock pound at your head when you were exhausted but having trouble sleeping.

After shaking my foggy head and focusing my mind, I realized I was not in my bedroom.

I saw a clear blue sky.

I smelled a damp green scent.

I was surrounded by several reinforced concrete buildings. By the time I realized I was at the high school’s courtyard, the energy of a crowd reached me through the bright air.

The clock in the center of the courtyard said it was 2 PM.

A Weather Sphere that monitored for any signs of or damage from a tornado or flooding sat on top of the clock. It looked like a super high-tech Stevenson screen and it was full of cameras and meteorological sensors.

However.

Even now, students were seated at the desks, cla.s.ses were being taught in the cla.s.srooms, and the school was running like normal in Kukyou City.

Wow, I hate this feeling.

It was like the calm before the storm, or a peace I knew would soon be destroyed.

The skin of my fingertips crawled.

I was wearing my school uniform, my usual collapsible bicycle with a cargo rack stood next to me, and my pocket contained my smartphone and a cheap balloon drone. The drone synced with my phone and let me take video from the sky, so it was in the presets for when I had fun “here”.

Yeah, that’s my bike all right.

It even had the cargo rack placed pretty high up for how small the wheels were. That was thanks to a rather forceful request from Ayumi and Erika who wanted to ride on the bike with me.

Just to be sure, I rang the bell next to the handlebars.

Then I spoke to the smartphone in my hand.

“Maxwell, display the physics on that action.”

“Sure.”

Lines of numbers immediately filled the smartphone’s screen and scrolled without end. This was the hidden side of the scenery I was looking at without much thought. Inside the bell, the spring contracted, recoiled, and was released. There was an action and reaction when the hammer hit the bell itself, the bell itself vibrated, the sound propagated through the air and reflected off of the surrounding terrain, the multiple waves collided to combine or counterbalance each other, etc. It was all listed out there, but a human like me would need a month to look through it all.

That was why I let Maxwell give the overall conclusion.

“All green. The disaster environment simulator was constructed without issue.”

“Oh, good. That’s what I wanted to hear.”

I sighed and addressed what worried me most.

“Let’s get down to business. Are you synced with the Cla.s.s Rep like usual?”

“Sure. Perfectly.”

In the disaster environment simulator, everyone would move “just like in reality”, but then the Cla.s.s Rep could not change into a bikini and dance a s.e.xy dance for me. So as an emergency measure, I had Maxwell’s system possess the Cla.s.s Rep to take manual control.

It was an emergency measure only built into the Cla.s.s Rep’s file set, so it wouldn’t work on Ayumi or Erika. In other words, I couldn’t get back at them by making them do a reggae dance. If I opened too many backdoors like that, the disaster prevention foundation helping with the data a.n.a.lysis would notice. And they’d laugh at me.

My secret folder had hidden both the swimsuit set and the backdoor possession program.

“I’m in the school courtyard. Maxwell, tell me where you are. Let’s meet up ASAP.”

“Due to the change in your privilege level, searches and other administrative modes are temporarily unusable. I recommend having me use visual confirmation of the surrounding landmarks to meet up with you.”

“You’re kidding, right? I’m supposed to search for a single person in a city of 800,000?”

And as if searching for the Cla.s.s Rep wasn’t bad enough, the real trouble would soon begin.

A zombie and a vampire would face each other head-on and fill the city with the walking dead.

In fact, it had already begun.

“Hot!? Hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hooooooot!!!!!!!”

Some kind of black ma.s.s cut past me while screaming and rolling on the ground.

It had started right off the bat.

This was a beautiful girl in a black gothic lolita dress and a mini-hat on her splendid ringlet curls. In other words, it was my older sister. As soon as she was dropped into virtual reality, the direct afternoon sunlight had hit her, so she was starting to sizzle all over. She was even turning into ashes a little, so she broke the hallway window and jumped inside.

That was an unusual sight for a clean freak like her.

I hid in the bushes and watched.

Hearing the high-pitched noise, the perfect female teacher who was also a childhood friend and a returnee (she taught English) ran out of a nearby cla.s.sroom to see what was going on.

“Wh-what is this!? Hey, you’re Amatsu’s older sister…aren’t you? Did you break this windo-…”

“Chomp☆”

“Kiiiyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

Erika went right for it with quite the comical voiced sound effect.

She didn’t hold back at all! She dug her fangs right into the teacher’s throat!

Talk about making up your mind quickly.

Wasn’t this like having cutlet curry served to you the moment you woke up!?

Erika was suddenly in top form, perhaps because she had escaped the direct sunlight by getting inside. I was seriously conflicted over whether or not to go in and stop her, but I had no weapons and facing my vampire sister would only get me bitten.

…Or so I thought?

“Gulp, gulp.”

“…Uuh.”

“Gulp, gulp.”

“…Ahh.”

“Bh!? Gbweh!! Cough, cough. W-wait, don’t you have way too much blood, Sensei? Urp…”

My sister was about at her limit just by making one more vampire.

That was because she had to drink enough blood to be fatal. For an adult, that was between one and two liters…which meant it was like chugging an entire family-sized drink bottle. And this was a thick liquid that caught in the throat and stank of rust, so it may have been a bit much for that light eater. Her lunchbox was super small.

And it made no sense. She was already at her limit only five or ten minutes after starting. If she couldn’t do it, there was no reason to force herself. She had brought this on herself and now she was looking dizzy! Although her face was looking nice and smooth, so maybe there wasn’t anything to worry about!!

But at the same time…

An explosion of screams and shouts burst from the school building. However, this was not because a cla.s.s full of students was panicking after my sister suddenly bit into a teacher’s neck.

The commotion was on the second story of the building.

I filled the balloon with gas and sent the drone up into the air so I could see what was going on through one of the windows.

“More p.a.w.ns! More! Chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp.”

“Wah, wah!! Amatsu…-san!?”

“Yes, yes. Sorry, sorry. Can I at least get a quick bite in!?”

It was already pandemonium up there.

For some reason, I was reminded of a special sale that let you pay 500 yen for as much as you could stuff in the plastic bag.

You really are being sloppy about this, Ayumi!!

Apparently both my sisters had their issues. If they were this much alike, why did they have to fight so much!? And didn’t I get a say when I was always caught in the middle!?

The source of the commotion was my little sister. She had black twintails with only the very ends curled, she was slender and flat-chested, and she had st.i.tches all over her body. She was wearing a marathon runner’s midriff-revealing jogging suit with only the top of a track suit over it. It made for quite a healthy and s.e.xy outfit. It amounted to a thin tank top and hot pants, so when my flat little sister wore it, I could just about spy the adorable mounds through the armpit or neck. She had a smartphone on the belt around her thigh, but was that for a health management app? You’re a zombie!!

And…

Ayumi ran from cla.s.sroom to cla.s.sroom biting any handy boy or girl. After a few dozen seconds, the bitten kids turned pale and similarly attacked students and teachers. My vampire sister had to drink a liter or two of blood, but my zombie sister apparently only had to take one bite. From there, she became a glutton(?) only interested in flesh.

Meanwhile, ugh, the smell around me changed.

I felt like an invisible wall of rusty odor was pressing against my face.

Then a ton of zombies practically poured down the stairs as they rushed to the first floor.

They were packed in like sardines and clearly looked just like corpses, but they were still fresh. Simply put, they were not rotting yet. Of course, Ayumi underwent a preservation treatment every day to keep her skin white and springy, so maybe zombies just didn’t rot away that quickly. …Either way, they would eventually fall apart if nothing was done.

Erika seemed to have given up after finally making the one teacher into her servant. When I checked in the window using the drone, I saw her lying on her back in the hallway and patting her stomach with her slender hand. I was pretty sure she would fall asleep if I patted her head and sang her a lullaby.

But as long as the Swimsuit Cla.s.s Rep wasn’t taken out, anything was fine by me.

In fact, wouldn’t it be for the best if my sisters settled things right away and the simulation ended?

“Mwa ha ha!! Now do you see what true infection is like, Onee-chan!? You don’t need the one-of-a-kind skill of an expert artisan!! It’s ma.s.s-produced fast food that covers the globe!! Now, prepare to be swallowed up by a mob of the dead!!”

Yeah, that girl did like her burgers and fried chicken.

It was something like 70 against 2.

Just as Erika finally got up from the floor, a crowd of zombies poured in from a different staircase too. The way was blocked in both directions.

Normally thinking, she was hopelessly outnumbered.

But once the wall of zombies started b.u.mping shoulders, something strange happened.