"I just wanted to stay alive."
The sniper girl nodded.
"A lot of people did," she said.
She didn't say the rest.
"It's not just the infected out here," the girl with the gas mask said. Her voice came through muffled, but still sharp. "You get that, right?"
I blinked. "What do you mean?"
She turned her head slightly, like she couldn't believe she had to explain it.
"Before everything collapsed, there were already people who took advantage of any kind of crisis. Looters or killers. The kind of scum that crawl out when no one's watching."
She took a slow step forward, the cracked lens of her mask catching the light. "Now there's no law. No help, no rules. People rob, kill, take. Just because they can."
I swallowed, unsure if I should say anything, but the words left me anyway.
"I didn't know… I mean, I just saw people attacking each other. Cannibals, or… whatever they are. I stayed hidden. I didn't have power or internet. I thought. I thought the government would fix it."
They laughed.
The girl with the black bangs pushed off the rusted column, rifle still in hand, and looked at me like I was some kind of joke.
"The government's dead, kid," she said, flat and cold. "Gone. Burned with the rest of the world. This thing tore through cities in days. Tokyo, Osaka, the mainland, the islands. Nobody got spared. You think some committee's still out there planning rescue missions?"
I felt my face get warm.
"I figured…"
"Oh, he figured," the boy with the bat muttered, shaking his head. "Jesus."
"You seriously didn't know that?" the sniper asked, arms crossed, eyes narrowed like she couldn't decide if I was lying or just brain-dead.
I tried to explain. "I didn't see anyone. I didn't talk to anyone. I stayed in this boarded-up house for weeks. Months, maybe. I didn't count the days."
I lied.
"Yeah," bangs girl said, voice thick with sarcasm. "That explains why you look like you've never even held a weapon."
"I have one," I said, reaching slowly to show the knife Mizuki gave me, I almost forgot about it, it was still strapped at my side. I didn't draw it, just pointed.
"Oh, a knife," she said with a mocking little smile. "Cute."
They all looked at each other.
Just that kind of silence where you feel like you already lost before it started.
I clenched my hands to keep them from shaking.
I missed Mizuki. Vale. Zai. Even when they ignored me or talked over me, it didn't feel like this.
I missed the sound of the safe house's back door shutting. The tin cup of instant soup Mizuki handed me when no one else remembered to.
This was worse.
Out here, I wasn't just the weakest one.
I was the punchline.
The girl with the gas mask crouched beside a metal rail, adjusting the strap on her rifle like we weren't even a threat worth keeping standing for.
"You want to know why we're alive?" she said, voice flat through the mask. "It's not luck."
"No one survives this long without knowing people," the tall one added, the sniper. "Or having something to trade. A skill, a weapon, a gun. Information. Access."
The boy with the bat leaned forward slightly, resting the handle on his shoulder. "We were with a group near Tachikawa, before it fell. Real military shit. Tunnels. Ration vaults the size of gyms. You think this is bad? We saw what happened when the evac boats stopped coming. We saw command collapse."
The girl with bangs scoffed. "You can tell who had something before this all started. Connections, clearance. The ones who were nothing back then? Yeah, they didn't last two weeks."
"I patched people up at a temp base under Shinagawa Station. They only let us treat people with verified ID. The rest they just got turned away. Left outside the gates."
She looked at me with a kind of pity that somehow stung worse than mockery.
"No name. No net presence. No family? You were already dead."
My mouth opened, but I didn't say anything.
What was I going to tell them? That I used to live in a regular house? That my only connection was a half-functioning phone and a dead girlfriend? No one ever really looked for me?
"I just…" I tried. "I didn't have anything."
"Yeah," gas mask girl said. "That's obvious."
They weren't being cruel just to be cruel.
They just didn't see me as part of their world.
They were trained.
I was nothing.
We weren't the same and they knew it.
"I didn't have access to anything," I said. I was trying not to sound defensive, but it still came out like an excuse. "For weeks. I didn't know how bad it was."
"But why?" I asked. "How did this even happen? I thought the government, I thought they'd do something. I thought they cared."
That changed the air.
"They didn't care before," she said flatly. "Why would they start now?"
She took a step forward. Her voice stayed even.
"The dead didn't take Tokyo because someone slipped up. They took it because everyone ran. The police, the military, emergency response, they all backed out or locked the gates behind them. Left the rest of us to figure it out."
"You must be naïve," she said. Then added, sharper, "No. Not naïve. Stupid."
"There's nothing left to protect," gas mask girl added. "No centers. No hospitals. No evacuation zones. Just people trying to steal from each other before they starve."
"Or die from infection," bangs girl muttered.
"Or get hunted by the psychos," the guy with the bat said. "There's packs of them out there. Armed. Trained. Some of them used to be security teams. Then they realized nobody was signing their paychecks anymore."
He looked at me, smirking.
"They kill for water. For a jacket. I saw a guy get beaten to death for a half-full lighter."
I swallowed. My mouth tasted bitter.
"Where did all the rich people go?" I asked, before I could stop myself.
The boy laughed under his breath.
"They either locked themselves in bunkers and got eaten inside," he said, "or paid for a helicopter to nowhere."
"Don't waste time worrying about them," gas mask girl said. "They're gone. Just like the rest."
There was a short silence after that.
I missed Mizuki. Her voice. The way she'd shove a bowl of food at me like it was nothing, but always made sure I had it. I thought she was being cold, back at the safehouse. But now I realized, that was care even if she was cold. The quiet kind. She never explained things, but she didn't leave me in the dark either.
Now I was out of her reach.
I looked at the four of them. I didn't say anything.
They looked back the same way you'd look at something half-broken, still moving, but not worth fixing.
Like I'd already lost, and just didn't know it yet.