Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
The sound echoed against the concrete wall, dull and repetitive.
"…Boring."
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
The baseball bounced faster now, rebounding off the sound proof wall with slightly more force, as if even it was frustrated.
"Boooring!"
Thudthudthud—
CRASH!
The world exploded into light.
"Ah—!"
A blazing ray of noon sunlight poured in like divine punishment, stabbing directly into his eyes. He yelped, scrambling upright from his lazy position—legs that had been propped against the wall slipping as he flailed.
The baseball had made a fatal mistake.
It had bounced straight through the window.
Glass rained down, tinkling into nothingness far below the highest floor of the school building, breaking the silence.
"…Ah."
He squinted, shielding his eyes with one hand as sunlight scorched his face. Standing there in silence, he stared out the broken window, suddenly struck by an overwhelming sense of life contemplation.
What am I doing with my life?
Why am I here?
Shouldn't I have gone to class today?
The answers dissolved instantly when the sunlight hit his face again as he approach the window.
"Too bright," he muttered, stepping closer anyway.
That's when he noticed it.
"…Ommaa gaa."
One building in the distance was on fire.
No—two!
Smoke spiraled into the sky like dark fingers clawing upward, and far beyond that, military helicopters hovered, small but unmistakable against the blue.
"…Is that… normal?"
He leaned farther out the window, ignoring the danger of standing on the fiftieth floor.
More smoke.
More sirens—distant, warped.
Too many helicopters.
"…Is this the Purge?!" he wondered aloud.
"Or… Rupture?"
He paused.
"…No, wait. This feels more like an apocalypse thingy on movies and animes."
A beat.
"I hope it's not parasites, and definitely please not aliens!"
That would be the worst.
Satisfied with that assessment, he looked down.
Far, far below—on the empty street—lay a lonely baseball. It looked absurdly small, abandoned in the middle of the road.
"…Huh."
He blinked.
The street was clean.
No cars.
No people.
No traffic jams.
No screaming crowds.
"…Wow. They evacuated safely? That's impressive."
That didn't feel right.
"If they evacuated this cleanly… then they knew in advance," he murmured.
"Or the infection source is far away…"
He nodded to himself.
"…Maybe it spread online."
That made sense. Everything bad did these days.
Another pause.
Grrrmmmmbbllee.
"…Oh."
He placed a hand on his stomach.
"I'm hungry."
He glanced one last time at the burning skyline, the helicopters, the empty streets, the broken window, and the silent world below.
"…Well."
He turned away from the apocalypse.
"Time to head to the cafeteria."
After all—
It was lunch time.
Stairs
Normally, people would take the stairs.
This was not a normal situation.
The protagonist—an eccentric high school student whose name had yet to matter—stood at the edge of the stairwell on the fiftieth floor and made what he believed to be a calm, reasonable decision.
He grabbed the railing.
And jumped.
"Weeeee."
The sound echoed longer than expected, swallowed by the hollow spine of the building. Wind brushed past his ears as gravity handled the difficult part, floor numbers slipping by like pages skipped in a book he didn't feel like reading.
Sliding down the railing was efficient.
Elegant, even.
Each descent emptied his mind of unnecessary thoughts—such as death, regret, and how stupid this would look if he died halfway down.
He did it again.
And again.
It was around the third floor when friction, pain, and survival instinct held a brief emergency meeting and unanimously voted to stop.
"…Okay," he muttered, hopping off.
"This is where horror movies usually start."
From here on, he moved carefully.
Not because he was brave—but because he didn't want to die stupidly, like some background extra who existed solely to demonstrate being a cannon fodder.
However—
Nothing happened.
The building remained silent.
No screams.
No undead wandering the halls.
No dramatic encounters or horrors lunging out from blind corners.
If this were a story, tension should have been creeping in right about now.
Instead, there was only quiet.
"…This is suspicious," he said.
Freed from immediate danger, his mind did what it always did best.
Overthink.
If zombies were real—and based on current evidence, they absolutely were—then this school was ridiculously well-designed.
High walls.
Reinforced gates.
Multiple buildings with overlapping functions.
Entire upper floors left empty.
It was almost as if the place had been prepared in advance.
By the time he realized he was mentally planning a multi-year survival strategy—food logistics, clearing routes, hypothetical farming schedules—his stomach growled loudly, reminding him why he'd come down in the first place.
Right.
Lunch.
The cafeteria greeted him without resistance.
He ate like someone who assumed tomorrow still existed.
Packaged food. Leftovers. Snacks prepared by clankers. He even paused mid-bite to nod respectfully toward the automated cooking machines.
"Good job, my slaves," he said sincerely.
"You held out… I'm your new owner now, hehe… hehe… WHAHAHAHA—!"
His laughter echoed through the empty cafeteria, loud enough that even the machines briefly paused—optical sensors swiveling toward him—before collectively deciding he wasn't worth processing and returning to their endless duties.
At the main gate, reality finally reasserted itself.
A single corpse lay sprawled across the floor along with some bullet shells scatter on the ground.
Its head was gone.
Not bitten.
Not torn.
Obliterated.
Bullet holes riddled the body with clinical precision. Above, mounted machine guns rested in silence, their stillness far more unsettling than if they were firing.
"…Ah."
Yikes.
He felt a little bad for that guy.
The gate itself looked reinforced to an unreasonable degree—sensors embedded everywhere, weapon slots, materials thick enough to make tanks feel insecure.
"…This school really went all out," he murmured.
"Shouldn't I call this a fortress instead?"
For a moment, suspicion rose.
Then he remembered the school's strange reputation. The funding. The rumors. The half-joking Illuminati conspiracy nonsense he'd never cared enough to think about before.
"…Never mind. That explains everything."
"At least I can make use of it."
He moved on.
The dome greenhouse came next—vast, automated, quietly thriving. Crops grew patiently under artificial sunlight, tended by machines that didn't care whether the world had ended or not.
On the way out, he grabbed a wooden bat from a locker.
Conveniently placed.
Like a coincidence.
Right.
Not because he felt threatened by whatever abomination might bypass the walls.
Because stories like this always punished people who didn't.
The utility room was the last surprise.
It was enormous.
Power controls. Backup systems. Energy options bordering on excessive—many of which he didn't even understand.
"…Wow."
After a brief internal debate lasting exactly three seconds, he activated solar and wind power.
If the world was ending, he might as well do it efficiently.
He wandered for hours afterward, searching for anyone—anyone—but found only clankers, dust and circulating air.
Eventually, he sat down on the one of stairs of Building One.
The tallest structure on campus.
Closest to the gate.
Closest to answers he didn't yet have and his home.
The bat lay forgotten beside him.
As twilight settled in, a thought surfaced—slow and heavy.
Why did everyone evacuate?
This place was a fortress, with enough order and manpower this place would be impenetrable.
Yet it was empty.
Entire floors cleared out. Belongings left behind. Not abandoned in panic—removed with intention and efficiency.
And unfortunately for him—who lived at the very peak, where no one ever went—even if the world ended, there had been no one to warn him.
"…So you guys evacuated," he murmured.
"Bastards."
Rain fell gently, interrupting his thoughts.
He looked up at the darkening sky, realizing—belatedly—that an entire day had passed.
It was quiet.
Too quiet.
This was the kind of silence he used to want.
So why did it feel uncomfortable now?
It was just…
Too lonely.
He sighed, stretched, and resolved to find them.
"Ah… what a drag—oh."
He looked up.
Then flipped off a vaguely finger-shaped cloud that seemed to be mocking him.
The rain answered harder.
Lights flickered on across the campus—classrooms, corridors, facilities—automatically responding to dusk.
He sighed again and climbed back toward his domain.
Fiftieth floor.
Room 3.
Through the broken window, distant fires still burned. Some lights still glowed.
The world hadn't ended completely.
Man… I should've brought my phone, it's too boring here.
He thought.
Just enough.
He turned off the lights, lay down on the futon he'd smuggled in a month ago, and closed his eyes.
Tomorrow—
He would look for answers.
Grumble.
"…Ah."
He hadn't eaten dinner.
He shot upright, flicked the lights back on.
"FUCK!"
And sprinted toward the cafeteria for a night snack.
—End :3