Chapter 9: School Life
Turns out, living a normal life is surprisingly difficult once you've died multiple times.
Who knew?
The first three days passed rather uneventfully.
Which, considering my recent experiences, was honestly terrifying.
I spent most of those days investigating.
Because if there's one thing I've learned from getting repeatedly thrown into fictional worlds, it's this:
The sooner you figure out where you are, the better your survival chances become.
Unfortunately, this world wasn't exactly eager to reveal its secrets.
I searched the internet.
I watched the news.
I browsed forums.
I even bought newspapers.
Yes.
Actual newspapers.
Apparently this world's technology was slightly behind what I was used to.
To give context on how bad it was, I was currently the proud owner of a flip phone.
A flip phone.
I hadn't touched one of these since middle school.
Truly.
A horrifying world.
Still, despite all my efforts, I found nothing.
No mysterious incidents.
No rooftop murder games.
No giant monsters.
Nothing.
Just a perfectly ordinary world.
Which somehow made me even more suspicious.
Because if the last two worlds had taught me anything, it was that normality was usually temporary.
Besides, there was another problem.
Even if this world was fictional, that didn't automatically mean I'd recognize it.
The anime hair certainly helped.
Seriously.
There were way too many naturally pink-haired people walking around.
But anime hair alone wasn't enough.
Unless I ended up in a particularly mainstream series, recognizing a world purely from everyday life was surprisingly difficult.
And if this world's main plot revolved around a future event, then there was no way I'd discover it beforehand.
Not unless I met one of the main characters.
Or got extremely lucky.
By the third day, I'd exhausted every reasonable avenue of investigation available to me.
So I reluctantly accepted reality.
For now, I'd simply have to live my life. Whether I like it or not.
Which led me to my current predicament.
School.
Again.
Honestly, I was getting a little tired of repeatedly becoming a high school student.
I was already a college student back in my original world.
Surely I'd suffered enough.
Apparently not.
Because on the fourth day, I found myself standing in front of my new school.
Fujimi Academy.
The name itself meant nothing to me.
I had never heard of it before.
Still, something felt strangely familiar.
Not the school.
The uniform.
I looked down at myself.
Blazer.
Shirt.
Tie.
Standard anime protagonist package.
Yet for some reason, the moment I saw it, something clicked inside my brain.
I'd definitely seen this uniform before.
Somewhere.
I just couldn't remember where.
Unfortunately, Japanese school uniforms were about as unique as Kirito clones in every isekai anime.
Meaning not very.
So, hoping that seeing the school itself would trigger something, I hurried toward campus.
Several minutes later, I arrived.
And immediately realized that seeing the school itself wasn't helping at all.
The school itself looked impressive.
Large.
Prestigious.
Well-maintained.
But by anime standards?
Generic.
Painfully generic.
I spent the next twenty minutes wandering around campus like a detective with absolutely no detective training whatsoever.
I examined posters.
Club advertisements.
Achievement boards.
Student announcements.
I even discreetly scanned the faces of passing students.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Then the bell rang.
TUUUUUN~!
I sighed.
So much for detective work.
Left with no choice, I headed toward my classroom.
Finding my classroom was surprisingly easy.
Finding my seat was not.
Thankfully, every anime classroom in existence apparently follows the same architectural blueprint.
Rows of desks.
Large windows.
A blackboard.
And, if you're lucky, a conveniently placed seating chart.
Mine happened to be beside the window.
Naturally.
Apparently, becoming a window-seat protagonist was now a universal constant.
I had barely sat down when someone approached me.
"Hiro."
I looked up.
A boy around my age stood beside my desk.
Brown hair.
Average height.
Completely unfamiliar face.
He frowned.
"You okay?"
"...Should I not be?"
The boy blinked.
"No, I mean, you've been acting kinda weird lately."
"...Ah."
Danger.
Social danger.
The most terrifying kind.
I quickly searched my memories.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Who the hell was this guy?
"Still half asleep?"
He laughed.
"Guess staying up all night gaming finally caught up to you."
"...Yeah."
I nodded slowly.
"Let's go with that."
The boy snorted.
"You're hopeless."
Then, apparently deciding that I was beyond saving, he returned to his seat.
I watched him leave.
"..."
I had no idea who that was.
Not even remotely.
Which raised a rather concerning problem.
Apparently, this world's version of me had a social life.
I did not.
This could become an issue.
___________
"This equation can also be expressed as—"
I stared blankly at the blackboard.
Math.
My old enemy.
To be fair, I wasn't actually paying attention.
Not because I was lazy.
Well.
Not entirely because I was lazy.
The truth was that I had absolutely no idea what the teacher was talking about.
Apparently, this world's version of me had already completed midterms.
Meaning classes had been going on for quite some time.
From my perspective, however, this was literally my first day.
Expecting me to understand advanced mathematics under these circumstances felt deeply unreasonable.
Fortunately, years of academic experience had taught me an important skill.
Pretending.
So while everyone else diligently copied notes, I secretly continued my investigation.
Using my phone.
Carefully.
Discreetly.
Mostly.
The school network turned out to be surprisingly useful.
Far more useful than anything I'd found online.
Still.
The deeper I dug, the stronger that strange sense of familiarity became.
This school.
These uniforms.
Something about all of this was bothering me.
Then I found it.
A name.
Located near the very top of the school's achievements page.
One that immediately stood out from everything else.
Saeko Busujima.
"...Huh?"
I knew that name.
No.
I definitely knew that name.
"...No way."
With slightly trembling fingers, I immediately searched the student directory.
A profile appeared.
Accompanied by a photograph.
Long purple hair.
Sharp blue eyes.
Beautiful.
Intimidating.
Captain of the Kendo Club.
I stared at the screen.
For several seconds, my brain simply stopped functioning.
Because despite the differences between anime and reality—
There was absolutely no way I could mistake her.
At one point in my life, she had literally been one of my favorite anime characters.
"...Holy shit."
I had unconsciously sat up straight. I didn't even realize it until then.
My eyes slowly drifted away from the phone.
Then toward the classroom.
The students.
The windows.
The peaceful school grounds outside.
Everything suddenly clicked.
The uniforms.
The school.
The name.
Fujimi Academy.
There was no way.
Absolutely no way.
Because if I was right, then this peaceful little classroom was going to turn into a slaughterhouse in the near future.
I slowly closed my phone.
Then quietly looked out the window again.
There was no need to investigate any further.
I already knew exactly where I was.
"...I'm in Highschool of the Dead."
And somehow.
That realization worried me more than the rooftop murder world.
Because unlike masked psychopaths, zombies had a nasty habit of multiplying.