Day 3
Morning of the third day in the shopping center began not with sunlight, but with a heavy, suffocating smell that seeped through the ventilation. It wasn't the aroma of food, though Keiko was already clattering pots in their makeshift kitchen, trying to coax at least some appetizing scent from tin cans of cheap preserves. No, it was a different odor — thick, cloyingly sweet, with a distinct note of decay. The smell of hundreds of bodies rotting under the spring sun just beyond the threshold of their shelter.
Arthur woke instantly. No drowsiness — just a transition from one state to another. He rose from the thin mattress, feeling the cold of the concrete floor through his back, and silently made his way to the window, careful not to disturb the sleeping people.
Pressing close to a crack in the metal shutters, he froze.
There were three times as many of them now. The parking lot had become a sea of grey flesh. Hundreds of figures stood motionless in the predawn twilight, swaying faintly, like dry weeds in the wind. They were all here: clerks in soiled white shirts, schoolgirls with disheveled ribbons, workers in stained overalls. They didn't howl, didn't beat against the doors. They simply waited, their empty eyes staring at nothing. And from the neighboring alleys, like filthy water draining into a lowland, more "guests" continued to trickle in.
Arthur watched this with icy calm. In his "white void," there was no fear — only a statement of fact. He had warned that this was how it would be.
— 多い… (So many…) — came Mori's whisper from behind him.
The Japanese man stood beside him, his face a stone mask, only the whitened knuckles of his fists betraying his tension. Arthur merely gave a short nod.
When he turned around, dozens of pairs of eyes were fixed on him. The people were awake and waiting. A silence hung in the hall, in which one could clearly hear the unspoken question: "You promised we would survive. What now?"
Arthur walked over to Takagi. The girl sat on a folding chair, clutching her pencil so tightly it seemed to be her only weapon.
"Translate for everyone," he said, and his voice cut through the silence like a knife. "The perimeter is holding. As long as we stay quiet and don't show ourselves in the windows — we're safe. The main thing is absolute silence."
Takagi straightened up; her voice sounded crisp and confident as she relayed his words to the hall. The tension eased slightly. People whose shoulders had been convulsively hunched began to relax little by little. Someone smiled nervously, someone exhaled. It was astonishing how little a crowd needed — simply the cold confidence of a leader.
Gojo stood apart, leaning against a pillar. His gaze was evaluating, almost tangible. Arthur felt it between his shoulder blades but never turned around.
In the afternoon, Rei approached him. She wasn't looking for conversation — she simply stood beside him without a word as he checked the locks on the service entrance. Her small hands confidently tightened the metal brackets, testing every bolt.
"You knew there would be this many of them," she finally said quietly, without raising her eyes.
"Yes."
"But you didn't give numbers."
"I said it would get worse."
Rei abruptly lifted her head, her eyes burning with stubborn fire.
"That's not the same thing, Arthur. You decide for us how much truth we can handle."
"Yes," he cut her off. "Because panic kills more efficiently than any corpse."
She stared at him for a long moment, biting her lip, then turned sharply and walked away. Arthur watched her go. She was the type who doesn't accept the rules of the game without a fight. The most dangerous, and at the same time the most valuable, kind of person.
In the evening, his attention shifted to Yuuichi Mitsuya. The boy had tucked himself into a far corner, away from his sister and the others. He sat pale, hugging his knees, staring through the wall. Arthur knew his history, knew the burden he was dragging behind him.
Through Takagi, he relayed the order: Yuuichi was to take the night watch at the north entrance. Every two hours — check the bolts. The boy nodded with visible relief. A concrete task was his salvation from his own thoughts.
Arthur noted to himself: he would take the second shift himself. Before leaving, he tucked a long kitchen knife behind his belt — the very one he had grabbed on his first day in the shelter, when he was helping Keiko sort through the utensils. An axe was unwieldy in a narrow corridor. A knife was another matter.
Night of the Third Day
At night, the shopping center turned into a crypt. The everyday noises vanished; all that remained was the ragged breathing of the sleeping and a low, guttural hum from outside — the endless shuffling of hundreds of feet beyond the shutters.
Arthur walked toward the north entrance without a flashlight. Yuuichi stood by the door, his beam pointed at the floor. He was so immersed in his own nightmares that he didn't even notice the approach.
Within Arthur, a familiar emptiness reigned. It whispered nothing of ethics or pity. It simply observed. But somewhere in the depths of that emptiness, a tiny, barely perceptible sprout of something living had been stretching upward for days now.
Behind the door, a scratching sound was heard. Yuuichi flinched.
— 誰かいるのか? (Is someone there?) — he whispered, his voice cracking.
"I'll check," Arthur replied quietly, stepping out of the shadows.
He walked to the door and slid the bolt back slightly. Grey, gnarled fingers immediately pushed through the narrow gap. Arthur stepped back, and in the same instant, his hand executed a swift, honed movement.
Yuuichi didn't even have time to cry out. He only stared in astonishment at the handle of the knife protruding from his chest. There was no anger in his gaze — only childish bewilderment. "Why?"
The boy slowly sank to the floor.
Arthur calmly closed the door and slid the bolt back into place. He stood in the darkness for a second, listening as the commotion outside died away. And at that moment, the "system" within him responded. The white mist in his consciousness parted, revealing a blueprint of incredible complexity.
A portal.
The schematic was detailed, but accompanied by one icy note: atomic energy was required for activation. Arthur looked at Yuuichi's body for another second, then just as noiselessly returned to the hall.
In the morning, Hana Mitsuya found only her brother's empty jacket. She didn't scream — she simply froze, staring at the forgotten phone. Her bright eyes darkened in a single instant, filling with a heavy, adult awareness of loss.
Shizuka silently embraced her, trying to shield her from reality. Hirano concentrated on wiping his glasses, and Takagi simply stared at the floor, unable to lift her gaze. Arthur walked past them, heading for the windows.
The hundreds of corpses outside were still swaying in time to an invisible metronome.
Gojo caught his eye. There was no longer simple curiosity in his grey eyes. Suspicion had now taken up residence there.
---
Day 4
The breach happened at noon, when the sun was at its zenith.
The eastern shutters, tormented by hours of relentless pressure, let out a final, dying metallic groan and collapsed. The crash in the silence of the hall sounded like an explosion.
Panic erupted instantly. Someone screamed, someone bolted. Zombies began spilling through the opening — slowly, a grey, stinking avalanche.
Arthur was already there. His axe worked rhythmically: strike, crunch, next. Beside him, Saeko flickered in and out of view — her wooden sword seemed almost spectral in its movement, so swift and precise were her lunges.
Unexpectedly, Ayane Shirakawa appeared in the front line of defense. She had snatched up a heavy pipe and taken a perfect fighting stance. Her strikes weren't just powerful — they were technical. Arthur noted this in passing: she knew how to kill.
And then, from the depths of the hall, Veridis emerged. Even with her damaged wing, her presence was overwhelming. She let out a low, vibrating growl that made the glass in the shopfronts tremble.
The air around her seemed to boil. She exhaled a cloud of acrid green mist directly into the thick of the corpses. Those caught in the "exhalation" collapsed dead, blocking the path for the rest.
Twenty minutes later, the breach was sealed. Masaru and Sato were hurriedly securing sheets of metal in place.
When the dust had settled, Gojo approached Arthur.
"You knew the shutters wouldn't hold."
"I assumed."
"And you didn't say."
"Would it have changed anything?" Arthur calmly wiped his axe on his trouser leg.
Gojo was silent, but his gaze was more eloquent than words.
"Yuuichi…" he said quietly, and it was no longer suspicion. It was a verdict.
---
Evening of the Fourth Day
The fear in the shopping center had become almost palpable. People huddled together, children fell silent the moment they caught sight of Arthur. He had to give them something to do, or they would devour each other from within.
He sent Takagi and Hirano to the second floor, to the jewelry department. The task: gather all the gold and silver.
Then he approached Gojo.
"We need to check the external service passage. Together. You know the layout better."
Gojo hesitated. Arthur could see him weighing it up — something about this proposal was categorically not to his liking, something didn't add up in the overall picture. But he couldn't refuse without a reason — that would look like cowardice. And Gojo Wakana was no coward.
"Fine," he said at last.
It was quiet outside. Fewer zombies had gathered on this side of the shopping center — they were drawn to the main entrance, where there had once been light and noise. Here, only a narrow service passage stretched between the wall and the neighboring building.
Arthur led. Gojo followed.
They moved cautiously, hugging the wall. Arthur checked every point where metal met brick. Gojo covered the rear.
They were silent.
A lone corpse in worker's overalls stumbled out from around the corner. Gojo saw it first and gestured — I'll take it. Arthur nodded and stepped back.
Gojo stepped forward.
And Arthur stepped after him.
It was over in a second. Gojo managed to turn. There was no fear in his grey eyes — only the bitter realization that he had made a mistake in trusting a man without a soul.
Arthur finished off the zombie and leaned against the wall, looking at Gojo's body.
"You were a good person," he said quietly, in English. "In your world."
Inside him, something shifted again. Deeper. More solid.
Next to the Portal blueprint, a second one emerged: an Altar. Materials: gold, silver.
When he returned to the hall alone, Marin understood everything from his face. She didn't ask a single question. She simply went to a corner and sat down on the floor. A minute later, all five Nakano sisters came over to her. Ichika, Nino, Miku, Yotsuba, Itsuki — they sat around her, shoulder to shoulder, forming a living shield.
Arthur watched them and thought that their strength lay precisely in this unity, which was inaccessible to him.
He closed his eyes. In the white mist of his consciousness stood a small piece of wood — a thin trunk reaching upward out of the void. There were two branches on it. One was alive, warm, human. The second was black, dry, without a single leaf. As if it were dead or had not yet awakened.
The tree grew slowly and patiently.
Just like him.