"Shiina-chan, I strongly suggest you join our group. Once Ryueen returns with his so-called connections from the underworld, a pretty girl like you will be absolutely doomed." Arisu's voice was solemn, almost clinical, as they walked through the private compound her father maintained within the school grounds. "What chance does a weak, beautiful girl who can't fight have in an apocalypse world without ending up as some man's property? Nearly zero. And I certainly doubt Ryueen can control whatever animals he drags back with him."
The group moved with practiced efficiency through the compound's manicured pathways, the distant sounds of chaos muffled by the high walls. Around them, Arisu's hand-picked followers cleared out any stray zombies that had breached the inner perimeter. The violence was swift and brutal—blunt weapons crushing skulls, the wet thud of metal meeting rotting flesh. For now, they were secure.
Of course, her group only had access to melee weapons. But the school staff and authorities? They operated on an entirely different level. They moved in coordinated shifts, systematically eliminating the zombie threat with submachine guns that chattered in controlled bursts. The school had also sealed off the bridge entrance layer by layer, fortifying it to a degree that could theoretically withstand RPG fire or sustained bombardment. At least for now, the students inside the walls were safe.
Hiyori Shiina looked at Arisu with doubt written plainly across her delicate features. Her brow furrowed, those soft, intelligent eyes searching Arisu's face for something—hope, perhaps, or the lie she suspected was coming.
"Urgh… Sakayanagi-san, is they really coming?" Hiyori's voice was hesitant, uncertain. "How? I don't think they can bypass the bridge, not with the school sealing off the entrance like that. Would they come by ship? Helicopter? Even if they could, does Ryueen-kun actually have that kind of resources and connections?"
Everyone knew Ryueen talked endlessly about his underworld connections. It was part of his persona, the gangster act he cultivated to intimidate and control. But talk was cheap in a world that had just ended. Hope was cheaper. None of them dared to believe the school would waste its precious resources—its ammunition, its fuel, its manpower—on escorting students' families here. Not when the city beyond the walls had already been overrun by the dead, and no one even knew if their loved ones were still breathing or had already joined the shambling hordes.
Instead of answering directly, Arisu tilted her head, a ghost of a knowing smile playing at her lips. She changed the subject, but the weight of her words only grew heavier.
"Do you want to know why this apocalypse started, Shiina-chan?" she asked, her tone deceptively light. "Why my father knew the first three days would be calm before the storm? Why the government wasted so much of its budget on this school, of all places?"
The group slowed, drawn in by her words. Even those focused on perimeter security found their attention wavering.
"The truth is brutally simple," Arisu continued, her voice dropping to a somber, almost musical register that somehow made the horror more intimate. "We are all already infected. Every single one of us. By the air we breathe, by the water we drink, by simply existing in this world since the outbreak began. We just don't know it yet. We have maybe three days before the symptoms manifest. And when we draw our final breath—whether in sleep, in exhaustion, or in the middle of a sentence—we will turn into those nasty, shambling things outside those walls."
She paused, letting the weight of it settle over them like a shroud.
"That is, unless someone finds a cure. Unless someone develops immunity. Unless humanity somehow claws its way back from the brink." Her smile widened, but there was no warmth in it. "Or unless we simply accept that this is the end, and we are entering a new Dark Age."
The silence that followed was suffocating. The group's expressions shifted in real-time—confusion giving way to dawning horror, disbelief warring with the cold certainty in Arisu's voice. Faces paled. Hands tightened on weapons. A few looked physically ill.
Albert, the massive, quiet presence who had remained utterly silent from the beginning, finally spoke. His deep voice rumbled through the tense air like distant thunder.
"How do you know this?" he asked, his tone measured but probing. "Why reveal it now? And how exactly is the virus spread?"
Everyone leaned in, ears straining, desperate for answers that might offer some thread of control in a world gone mad. Even those who had been scanning the perimeter turned fully, unable to resist the gravity of the moment.
Arisu looked at them—her followers, her pawns, her precious pieces on this broken board—and her expression softened into something almost resembling compassion. Almost.
Arisu didn't let them wait long. She savored the tension for a moment—the way their eyes clung to her lips, desperate for answers—before she finally spoke.
"Umbrella Corporation," she said, the name dropping like a stone into still water. "The violent conflict between the President of the United States and that behemoth pharmaceutical company turned our world into this."
Her voice was calm, almost clinical, as if she were reciting a textbook rather than describing global annihilation. "They spread the virus to the world. Three days ago, we breathed that pollution into our lungs. And in three days—maybe less, maybe more—human beings will gradually transform into those monsters outside these walls."
The group stood frozen, processing. Albert's jaw tightened. Hiyori's hand crept to her mouth.
"No one knows this truth. Not yet. The world is still in chaos, still reeling, still pretending this is some isolated outbreak that can be contained." Arisu's lips curled into a thin, knowing smile. "But Umbrella delivered their final ultimatum to every government on Earth. Cooperate, or be consumed. This is their message. This is their leverage."
She paused, letting the weight settle.
"At least now, we have some resistance. Some immunity. Our cells are adapting, fighting back—that's why we didn't turn immediately. The final wave of the outbreak is today. But make no mistake."
Her eyes swept over them, cold and clear. "The virus is still inside us. It lives in our brains, dormant, waiting. It will activate the moment we draw our last breath—whether from injury, illness, or simple old age. We are all ticking time bombs."
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the group. Even the distant sounds of gunfire and moaning seemed to fade.
Albert's jaw tightened. Hiyori's face had gone pale, her lips pressed into a thin line.
Shino Manabe looked like she wanted to interrupt, to demand answers, but something in Arisu's calm, unhurried delivery kept her silent.
"Do you want to know why this school has so much budget?" Arisu continued, her tone shifting slightly, taking on an edge of dark amusement. "Why we have individual islands, military-grade resources, weapons, fortifications that could withstand RPG fire? Why the government poured billions into what looks like just another elite academy?"
She let the question hang.
"Because this school was never just a school. It was a breeding ground. A testing facility. The government wanted to create super soldiers—excellent graduates who met the genetic and psychological standards for the T-Virus to be refined, controlled, weaponized. They wanted to engineer humans who could survive the apocalypse and emerge stronger, faster, smarter. Inhumane in strength and intelligence. The perfect soldiers for the race toward global hegemony once the dust settled."
Her eyes swept over them, watching their expressions shift from shock to dawning, horrified understanding.
"The Class A students? They get the jobs, the positions, the power in the new world order. The rest—Class B, C, D—they were always meant to be sent home. Expendable. Forgotten. But the most excellent student, someone like the Student Council President Manabu, he was offered the serum itself. Superhuman strength. Inhuman intellect. The prize for being the best among the best."
She smiled, and there was something almost predatory in it.
"This is the true nature of our school. And this is the reason the apocalypse began."
Shino Manabe couldn't hold back any longer. She stepped forward, her voice rough with frustration and barely contained anger. "So what's the catch? What does any of this conspiracy have to do with us? You haven't given us a damn answer about a cure for this virus—why bother with all these long-winded explanations if you're just going to leave us hanging?"
Hiyori Shiina shot her a disapproving look. "I think everyone deserves to know the truth, Manabe-san. Whether it gives us a cure or not, we have a right to understand what's happening to us."
Then she turned back to Arisu, her soft features composed but her eyes sharp with intelligence. "Sakayanagi-san... is Umbrella Corporation the one providing that serum you mentioned? And if what you're saying is true, does the school still have access to it?"
Arisu nodded slowly, a flicker of approval crossing her face. Always the sharp one, Hiyori. Always asking the right questions.
"The school has a stockpile," Arisu confirmed. "And you can spread the word. Tell everyone you trust—everyone who contributes, who earns points, who proves their value—that they will have an opportunity to receive a share."
The effect was immediate. Eyes widened. Postures straightened. A palpable shift rippled through the group—fear transforming into something else, something hungry. Ambition. Greed. Hope, twisted and dangerous.
Manabe's expression changed from skepticism to sharp interest. Even Albert's stoic mask cracked slightly, a flicker of calculation in his otherwise calm gaze.
Of course, Arisu deliberately omitted the finer details. The ones that would turn that hungry light in their eyes into ashes.
She didn't mention that the success rate for transformation into a super soldier was barely one percent. She didn't mention that the other ninety-nine percent didn't just fail—they turned. Right there on the operating table, in the middle of the procedure, their bodies rejecting the serum and their minds collapsing into ravenous madness.
She didn't mention that only individuals with extraordinary strength of will, exceptional physical constitution, and inhuman intellectual fortitude could survive the process. The kind of people who were already monsters in human skin before the serum ever touched their veins.
Let them dream, she thought.
Let them hunger.
The chaos and anarchy that her ex-boyfriend had tried so carefully to orchestrate—the riots, the power struggles, the violent collapse of order—had been temporarily suppressed.
Not by force, not by fear, but by temptation.
By the oldest, most reliable tool in the human toolkit: greed.
Hope was a leash. And Arisu held it firmly in her delicate hands.
"Remember, everyone," Arisu's voice cut through the tense silence like a silk blade, soft but impossibly sharp, "only my father knows the exact location of the serum reserves. Him and a handful of his most loyalists—men who would die before speaking. Once anything happens to him, or to this school, it would be most regrettable. We would suffer a catastrophic loss of this very resource that could mean the difference between survival and joining those things outside."
The implication was clear as crystal and twice as sharp. Touch my father, and you destroy your own chance at salvation.
The rhetoric landed exactly as intended. Eyes that had been gleaming with ambition now flickered with calculation, with caution, with the cold realization that the old man was untouchable—not because they loved him, but because his continued breathing was directly tied to their own hopes of transcendence. For now, they would behave. For now, the fragile peace held.
They continued walking in silence, the weight of unspoken threats and promises pressing down on everyone's shoulders like a physical thing.
When they finally entered the villa—a lavish structure hidden within the compound, fortified and isolated—the scene that greeted them made even the most hardened among them stop dead in their tracks.
There, standing in the center of the room with the casual ease of someone waiting for guests, was the former Student Council President himself. Manabu Horikita. The living legend of the school. And beside him, his ever-faithful secretary, Tachibana—both of whom were supposed to have graduated. Supposed to have moved on. Supposed to be anywhere but here, in the heart of an apocalypse, waiting in a hidden villa like chess pieces already positioned for the endgame.
Arisu's grin widened into something genuinely delighted, a predator's smile at the perfect timing of a trap sprung. "Fufufu... Horikita-san, if you would be so kind? Please demonstrate for us—show them the strength of a true super soldier. Let them witness firsthand how the school rewards unwavering loyalty."
Manabu Horikita regarded her with those calm, unreadable eyes that had intimidated generations of underclassmen. Then he nodded once, a slight, almost imperceptible movement.
"Follow me," he said simply, his voice carrying that same quiet authority that had never diminished, never faded. "All of you. Let us introduce you to the new world."
He turned and walked toward a steel table bolted to the floor—industrial grade, thick enough to stop a car. Without ceremony, without posturing, without the slightest visible effort, Manabu's hand moved in a blur. The table split. Cleanly. Effortlessly. As if it were made of paper rather than reinforced metal. The two halves crashed to the floor with a thunderous clang that echoed through the villa like a death knell.
Silence.
Absolute, stunned, breathless silence.
Then the murmuring began—not of doubt, but of awe, of hunger rekindled, of desperate hope given physical form. They had seen it. With their own eyes. The serum worked. The transformation was real. And it was glorious.
In that moment, every shred of doubt toward Arisu's story evaporated like morning mist under a harsh sun. The proof stood before them, carved in steel and impossible strength.
And so, Principal Sakayanagi—the old man himself, the keeper of the keys, the warden of this gilded prison—finally took back order of the school. Not through force of arms, not through political maneuvering, but through the oldest and most reliable currency of all: demonstrated power. The chaos that had threatened to consume them subsided, replaced by a tense, watchful calm.
And his daughter?
His daughter had executed every piece of this gambit flawlessly. Move by move. Word by word. She had taken a group on the verge of fracturing into competing warlords and bound them together with the chains of shared ambition. The loyalty of the various factions toward their separate leaders began to waver, eroded by the tide of evidence and the promise of something greater.
Except for one.
Kiyotaka Ayanokouji's group remained untouched.
Followers could be bought. Followers could be swayed by evidence, by logic, by the promise of power. But a cult? A cult was different. A cult followed their leader not because of what they could gain, but because of what they already believed. They would follow until the bitter end. They would die to set ablaze the vision he had planted in their hearts. And no amount of steel tables cut in half could sever that bond.
Arisu's smile, for just a fraction of a second, tightened at the edges.
One piece remained stubbornly off the board.
But that was a problem for another day.