They found a place by midday.
A small shopping center on the outskirts — two stories, with metal shutters over the shopfronts. The shutters were lowered. The doors — locked from inside.
Arthur looked at the building for a few seconds.
Then he knocked on the door — three times. Quietly. Steadily.
Silence.
He knocked again.
"There's no one there," Takagi said.
"Or there is, but they're afraid to open," he answered.
Pause.
Then — something creaked behind the door. Then — quiet footsteps. Then — the click of a lock.
The door opened a few centimeters. An eye appeared in the crack — male, elderly, frightened.
「何者だ?」
(Who are you?)
Takagi stepped forward.
She spoke quickly and crisply — Arthur caught about half of it. Students. Alive. Not infected. Need shelter.
The man behind the door was silent.
Then the door opened wider.
Inside the shopping center there were about twenty people.
Not just school students — adults, elderly, several children. They had barricaded themselves here in the morning when it all started and had not left since. There was enough food — a grocery shop on the ground floor. Water too. But the people were frightened and bewildered, and no one knew what to do next.
Arthur assessed the situation rapidly.
Good shelter — the metal shutters would hold; zombies outside were not yet massed in dangerous numbers. Enough food and water for several days. But sooner or later the zombies would find them — noise, scent, chance. This was not a permanent place.
A temporary base. Nothing more.
He stepped aside and sat down against the wall.
Closed his eyes.
White mist. The Sprout. The sole branch — human, warm, pulsing. And in its core — the dark breath. Slow. Steady.
Sleeping.
He opened his eyes.
Veridis had settled by the far wall — where there was enough space. The people in the shopping center looked at her with horror and amazement, kept their distance, whispered. One child — a boy of about six — came too close and reached out his hand.
His mother ran after him with a cry.
Veridis did not stir. Only glanced at the boy with one eye — appraising, without aggression. Then looked away.
The mother snatched the child and dragged him farther.
Hirano observed this with the delighted expression of a person who has just witnessed something confirming his theory.
"She controls herself," he said to Arthur. "She understands she must not frighten people."
Arthur looked at Veridis.
She was staring at the wall with the air of a creature profoundly indifferent to others' interpretations of her behavior.
"Or the child simply doesn't interest her," Arthur said.
Hirano wilted slightly.
The day was ending.
Takagi organized the people — quickly, harshly, without unnecessary words. Distributed watches, checked the food and water supplies, compiled a list of what was present and what was lacking. People obeyed — not because they knew her, but because she spoke with that confidence they all so desperately needed right now.
Arthur watched this.
Takagi Saya. Sharp. Arrogant. But — clever enough to understand when she had to take charge of organization and do it well. She was not doing it out of kindness. She was doing it because she saw a task and solved it.
A kindred trait.
He almost smiled.
Mens sat in a corner and observed the people around — silently, attentively. Her scarlet eyes moved slowly from face to face. She did not understand the language. But she understood people — seven years of service in the Crimson Wastes had taught her to read fear, submission, hidden strength, without words.
Sometimes her gaze would linger on someone a little longer.
The people she examined in this way — instinctively turned away.
One of the men approached Arthur and asked something — quickly, nervously, nodding toward Mens.
Arthur caught "she" and "dangerous."
"No," he said shortly.
The man was not reassured — continued talking, gesticulating.
Takagi came over and said something to him — sharply, in two sentences. The man fell silent and walked away.
"He was asking who she is and why her eyes are like that," Takagi said to Arthur. "I told him it was none of his business."
"Thank you."
Takagi looked at him.
"Don't thank me. I simply don't want people panicking ahead of time." Pause. "But you will tell me about her. Later."
Not a question.
"Later," he agreed.
Evening.
Shizuka bandaged Veridis's wounds — carefully, with that professional calm that kicks in for medics when the patient is unusual but the task is clear. Veridis did not resist. Only growled warningly a few times when Shizuka touched particularly painful spots.
"Easy, easy," Shizuka said each time. "I am not hurting you. I am helping."
Veridis clearly did not understand the words.
But the intonation — she understood.
Arthur watched this from the side and thought that Marikawa Shizuka had turned out to be a surprisingly interesting person. Not sharp, like Takagi. Not dangerous, like Saeko. But — with something of her own. With that soft persistence that is sometimes stronger than any firmness.
Rei sat apart from everyone.
She had chosen a spot by the window — not right up against it, slightly to one side, so she could see the street without being seen from outside. Her spear beside her. Knees drawn up to her chest.
Arthur came over and sat down nearby.
Not close — he left distance. Enough so that she would not feel pressure.
She did not move away. But she did not turn either.
The silence stretched for a long time.
"You knew there would be a bus there," she said finally. In English. Quietly.
"Yes."
"And about this place — you also knew?"
"Roughly."
Pause.
"How?"
Arthur stared out the window. At the street that was darkening — quickly, the way a street darkens in a city where no one turns on the lights anymore. Out there, in the darkness, shadows sometimes moved. Slow. Aimless.
"I know this world," he said.
Rei finally turned. Looked at him.
"What does that mean?"
"It means I know what will happen next. Roughly. And I know how to survive."
She looked at him for a long time.
"Takashi also thought he knew how to survive," she said quietly.
It was not an accusation. Simply — a fact. Thrown into the air and left to hang.
Arthur did not answer.
She turned back to the window.
They sat in silence for a few more minutes. Then Rei stood — without words, without explanation — and walked away to the other end of the hall.
Arthur watched her go.
Broken. Closed. Angry — not at him specifically, simply at everything. At the morning. At the zombies. At the fact that the world had turned out to be exactly this.
But she had sat beside him. Spoken with him. On her own.
That meant something.
He was in no hurry.
Night.
People were settling wherever they could — on the floor between shelves, on pushed-together benches, straight on jackets thrown under heads. The children fell asleep quickly — a child's organism knows how to shut down when it cannot cope with reality. The adults — with more difficulty.
Watches were distributed, two by two.
Arthur took the first shift.
He sat by the entrance door, leaning his back against the wall, and listened to the night outside. It was quiet out there — that particular silence that exists in a city where everything background has vanished — cars, voices, music from windows. Only occasionally — a distant sound. Shuffling footsteps. Something falling.
Veridis lay beside him.
She was not asleep — he knew it from the way her nostrils moved, from the way her head sometimes lifted. She was listening to the night, just like him.
Mens came over and sat down beside him — silently, as always.
He looked at her.
She was staring straight ahead. At the metal shutters. At the darkness beyond them.
Her mark on the back of her hand was pulsing — quietly, slowly, in that rhythm he had long since stopped noticing. The way one stops noticing the sound of one's own breathing.
He looked at his own hand.
The same rhythm. The same pulse.
Somewhere inside the human branch — a dark breath. Slow. Deep.
Sleeping.
Arthur thought about what would happen when it woke. Not now — he could feel it was not now. But someday. In one of the worlds. It would wake — and speak.
He was not afraid of that.
He simply thought about it.
Mens suddenly said something quietly — in her own language. He did not understand the words. But the intonation was clear — questioning. She was asking something.
He looked at her.
She was looking at his hand. At the mark. Then — at him.
"Don't understand," he said.
She was silent for a moment. Then — slowly, carefully, like a person trying an unfamiliar instrument — she said in English:
"…he. Sleeps?"
Arthur raised an eyebrow.
She knew English? Or — a few words, snatched from the day's conversations?
"Yes," he answered. "Sleeps."
Mens looked at his hand for another second. Then — lowered her head. Something in her posture shifted. Barely perceptibly. Something akin to the way shoulders relax when you have been carrying a heavy burden for a long time and have finally set it down.
She had awaited his awakening.
For seven years she had awaited it.
And now she was waiting again.
Arthur looked at her and thought that he did not know what to do with her. Not in the practical sense — she was useful, she was adapting faster than he had expected, she was dangerous in the right moments. In another sense. A sense he was only just beginning to learn to notice.
She was alone.
The same way he had been alone all his former life.
Only her solitude was different — she had always been beside her god, had always heard his rhythm, always known there was someone who needed her. And now that someone slept. Fell silent. Left her in a world where she did not understand the language, did not know the rules, had nothing except a mark on her hand and a person beside her whom she followed.
Arthur was not her god.
But he was the one who carried her god inside him.
That made the situation more complicated than he would have liked.
Outside — a sound. Distant. Then nearer. Then quiet.
Veridis raised her head.
Arthur laid his hand on his axe.
But the sound did not repeat. Simply night trash fallen from somewhere. Or a zombie catching a parked car.
Veridis lowered her head again.
Arthur removed his hand from the axe.
The night went on its way.
Somewhere deep inside the shopping center, the group slept — weary, frightened, alive. Takagi with the notebook she surely had not released even in sleep. Hirano, who twitched at every sound even in a state of doze. Shizuka, who had finally let go of her medical bag and slept on a jacket placed under her head.
Rei — he could not see her from here, but he knew she was not asleep. He knew it from the way she had sat earlier. People like that do not fall asleep on the first night.
Saeko was on watch at the other entrance — he could hear her footsteps sometimes. Steady. Quiet. She moved in the darkness like a person to whom darkness is familiar.
Arthur stared at the darkness beyond the shutters.
The first day in the new world was ending.
He was alive. The group was alive. Veridis was alive.
Mens — beside him.
The Sprout in the white mist — stood. The branch — held. The darkness inside it — slept.
For now, everything was all right.
For now.