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Hinata looked down at the ruined city from atop a scorched hill. Smoke billowed from toppled skyscrapers, choking the blood-red sky and likely filling the fragile lungs of anyone unfortunate enough to still be down there. The Japan Self-Defense Forces had dropped bombs on the city to try to contain the situation. It was all in vain, of course. They didn’t give up so easily.
Them being mindless, undead, brain-eating zombies.
He fiddled with his knife absently. He knew he had to get out of there to have a chance at survival, but it was still sad to see his home crumble before his eyes. The streets he’d once played and worked in were now overrun. One bite from one of them and it was all over, just like it had been for so many of Hinata’s peers and family members. Thankfully, he’d managed to escape with some of his schoolmates. That, and his fiancé.
He had just proposed to Komaeda when the plague had first begun. He had joked that it was “a hell of an engagement party.” The two of them had hidden out for weeks with their surviving peers, swiping food from nearby grocery stores. That was until they were found. A group of zombies had made their way inside their base, hungry for blood. Hinata had grabbed his fiancé’s arm, rushing them out as fast as he could, but before he could make it he heard Komaeda scream as his arm was…
A mumble from behind nudged him from his reverie.
“Oh, hey Ko. Didn’t notice you there.” Hinata said.
Komaeda gave him a mangled smile of rotting teeth, the corners of his lips flaky with dead skin. He wobbled forward on bony limbs, one leg a puzzle of disintegrating muscle and pale bone. He gave Hinata an unsteady hug, breathing hard. Hinata returned it, a sad smile blooming on his dirtied face.
“Let’s go.”
Komaeda was remarkably lucid despite the poison coursing through his veins. Well, as lucid as someone with a deteriorating brain could be. He was still able to recognize Hinata and some of his friends, but his ability to communicate had been stolen from him. He looked at everyone and everything with glassy eyes, not quite understanding anything. Tsumiki had called it a “miracle” in her characteristic trembling voice, but the word in that context made Hinata feel sick.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, the one thing Komaeda obviously hadn’t forgotten was his undying love for Hinata. The zombie spent most of his time following Hinata like a lost puppy, flopping onto his lap or clinging to his arm whenever he got the chance. He enthusiastically talked to his fiancé like nothing had changed at all, except every sound from his mouth was complete nonsense. In a way, Hinata appreciated the familiarity of it all. It kept him sane, made him forget the love of his life was wasting away.
The stench of death kept all of his friends away, as well as the fear of being attacked. Kazuichi whispered to Hinata one stormy night, “Dude, you know he’s gone right? This isn’t normal…”
The pink-haired man stumbled out of that tent with a patchwork of bruises and a black eye.
Hinata didn’t need any of them anyway. He hated their judgemental stares, laced with revulsion and pity. He didn’t need their “condolences” or advice. They didn’t understand. They didn’t understand any of it.
He laid on the dirty mattress, fiddling with his ring. Komaeda watched him intently, drool pooling on his chin.
“Still an insomniac even now, huh?” Hinata quipped. All he got in response was an empty stare.
“Ok, fine, I’ll go to bed. Don’t need to tell me twice.”
Hinata turned down the light of his lantern. He pulled the holey blanket to his waist and readied himself for another sleepless night.
“...I love you, Nags.”
“I can’t take this anymore! You either leave that fucking monster back where you found it or we’re leaving your sorry ass right here in the middle of nowhere!”
Hinata bristled even more. “What did you just call him?”
Fuyuhiko snarled, pointing at Komaeda, who was being held in Hinata’s protective grasp. “That…that thing is not a “he!” It tried to bite me last night!”
“He can’t help it!” Hinata retorted weakly. “He didn’t mean to hurt you!”
Fuyuhiko looked like he was about to be ill. “Fucking hell…you care more about a dead man than us.”
Hinata matched his intense glare. “I don’t care what any of you say, I’m not leaving my boyfriend behind.”
He scanned his friends’ faces, searching for a glint of approval in any of their eyes. All he saw was guilt.
Kazuichi avoided Hinata’s gaze. “Sorry, dude, I can’t stick around and wait for that thing to kill me.”
Owari laid her hand on Fuyuhiko’s shoulder, her expression resigned. “Let’s go, ‘Ryu. Ain’t no helping him now.”
His friends hoisted up their sacks and retreated off into the barren wasteland, leaving them alone.
Hinata shouted after them, tears burning in his eyes. “FINE! I DON’T NEED ANY OF YOU ANYWAY!”
He crumpled to the ground as the last silhouette faded from view and let out a wretched sob. Komaeda sat down next to him, observing the display with empty eyes. As if motivated by another force, Komaeda’s hand raised, then clumsily swiped at his tears.
Instead of bringing comfort, it widened the hole in Hinata’s chest. Even so, he felt his head lower onto Komaeda’s emaciated shoulder.
Hinata was able to find true shelter after what seemed like weeks. He rested under a roof as the rain pattered outside. This new town thankfully had all the amenities needed to sustain life. There was a barely-touched grocery store and abandoned restaurant as well as access to lots of bottled water. There was even an intact apartment complex. Okay, it was mostly intact.
For Komaeda’s needs, things got a little more…complicated.
As a zombie, Komaeda was only able to eat the skin, muscle, and brain matter of the human dead. He didn’t exactly have access to a full range of mobility, so Hinata was often stuck finding food for him. The first time he went out, he’d approached the dead body of a teen girl, feeling sick to his stomach. He had gotten used to the overpowering odor long ago, but the sight of that girl, once filled to the brim with youthful hopes and dreams just like him, lying half-eaten in a heap on the floor…it did things to him.
He prayed for forgiveness from whatever god was out there and dragged her mangled body to his hungry fiancé. He forced himself to watch Komaeda tear through her flesh until she was nothing but bone. After all, he’d have to get used to it at some point.
Komaeda finished and happily stretched across his blood-coated limbs across Hinata’s lap, making a contented sound. Hinata felt himself smile at the sight. It would all be okay. He could protect both of them this way.
Komaeda had tried to attack him for the first time.
Hinata had been in the midst of a fitful slumber when he was awoken by a guttural snarl. He’d opened his eyes to meet Komaeda’s, right in front of his, swirling with a rabid desire. Hinata had screamed and wrenched himself from his grasp and pinned him down right before his fiancé’s teeth could close around his neck.
Komaeda had slurred tearful but incoherent apologies over and over again once he’d returned to his senses, but the damage had been done. Hinata could no longer feel safe around him as he was.
So, Hinata found himself tightening the restraints around Komaeda’s arms, whispering apologies as he went. Komaeda was compliant as a doll as he worked, staring down at his lap as if in shame.
Once he was secured, Hinata slid on a pair of heavy-duty gloves and brandished his solution: a muzzle. One he’d picked up from a conveniently located pet store a couple of blocks away.
“I’m so sorry, baby, but I have to do this.”
He secured the muzzle to his fiancé’s cold face with misty eyes. Komaeda looked back at him with nothing but affection, even as his teeth chased after Hinata’s hands.
The muzzle didn’t stop Komaeda from trying to give him “love bites,” but it did prevent them from breaking any skin. Despite that hurdle, Komaeda’s communication skills seemed to be improving! Hinata could make out more and more phrases from his fiancé’s babbling, like “Goodnight,” “I’m sleepy,” “I’m hungry,” and “I love you too.” Hinata cried seemingly endless tears after hearing his name from Komaeda’s mouth again.
He was just so glad he was at last able to talk with Komaeda again. He thought he was starting to go crazy…
Komaeda whispered sweet nothings to him as he stroked Hinata’s lengthening hair (he just couldn’t seem to find a pair of scissors). He snuggled closer, happy to feel the warmth of his skin again.
“We’ll always be together, okay? I’m not going to leave you, ever.” Hinata said into Komaeda’s stained shirt.
“And I’ll always be here, my beloved Hinata-kun,” Komaeda replied in his soothing, melodic voice.
Hinata smiled as he drifted off to sleep. He finally had the love of his life back…
The next few days were a blur.
Hinata searched tirelessly for more corpses to feed his ever more ravenous fiancé, but they’d appeared to have cleaned the entire town out. Not a scrap of human flesh existed, not even in the surrounding woods. He got more and more desperate as Komaeda frantically gnawed at anything that came into his line of sight. The gnashing of teeth echoed in Hinata’s ears even miles away.
He watched as Komaeda pawed at his muzzle in a vain attempt to remove it, eyes bloodshot. “Help me.” Those words rang in Hinata’s mind over and over. “Help me.”
He was eventually forced to leave the town in his quest for food. He left behind a starving Komaeda and ventured down the beaten path at the edge of the town, armed with an axe…just in case. He was predictably set upon by small groups of zombies, but their slow movements made them easy to cut down. He didn’t spend much time agonizing over the lives he’d just ended. There wasn’t any time to.
Hinata cleared a section of brush with his axe to emerge into a small village. He cautiously crept down the streets, senses alert. It appeared to be completely abandoned. Until he heard distant, labored breathing.
He entered the hut. Hinata quickly determined that the sounds weren’t from a zombie, but a person. A person Hinata recognized.
Kazuichi.
The man was laying still on a pile of blankets. His skin was pale and his fingertips blue. Hinata checked for a pulse. Very, very weak, but present. Hinata quickly discovered the cause of his condition: a large chunk of flesh missing from his abdomen and the telltale signs of an impending zombie infection.
Hinata’s heart ached for his friend. He must have either wandered off and gotten injured or been abandoned due to his injury. Disgusting…
He turned around to leave, but then stopped in his tracks. The longer he stared, the longer Kazuichi was looking less like a friend, and more like fresh meat…
Hinata knew he should hate himself for the thoughts that were running through his muddled mind, but he couldn’t bring himself to. He considered things logically. Souda had little to no time left. He was destined to either die from his wound or be transformed into a mindless walking corpse. It would be a mercy kill. Souda would be happy knowing he could do one last good thing by sustaining another life.
At least, that’s what he told himself as he raised the axe.
Hinata snapped back into reality the next day.
He looked around, wide-eyed. His eyes locked onto the mirror. He was an absolute wreck. His matted hair fell down to his shoulders and bags hung under his bloodshot eyes. His cheeks were hollow, and his skin was ashen as the dust that clung to his torn and bloody clothing. He hadn’t eaten or drank for what seemed like weeks and his body made sure to let him know now that he was no longer under its spell.
Komaeda’s gasps echoed throughout the room and his eyes stared at nothing. He’d decayed even more over the past months, with bits and pieces of his body falling away every day. Part of his skull was cracked open, revealing the pink matter inside, and one eye socket was empty.
Surrounding him were clumps of pink hair and the remnants of a yellow jumpsuit.
Hinata rushed to the window and heaved, throwing up nothing. Oh God, he could still feel the warm blood on his skin and hear the slap of metal against bone. What had he done??
His head spun with disgust and despair and pain as he stared down at the empty street below. MURDERER. MURDERER. MURDERER.
He’d killed his best friend, and for what?? How many coherent words had actually passed Komaeda’s lips? How much of his affection had Komaeda actually shown in earnest? How much of all of it had simply been the figments of a lonely mind?
His brain projected images of a half-eaten arm, a swatch of Kazuichi’s skin dangling from Komaeda’s hungry lips. He felt the urge to vomit once again.
Once he was done, he stumbled over to the desk. He stared blankly down at the revolver that he had picked up from one of the many towns they’d passed through, his mind a vortex of empty noise. He needed to end it. End all of it.
As if he were a zombie himself, he raised the barrel to his temple, and-
A cold hand wrapped around his ankle. Hinata looked down to see Komaeda staring up at him, whimpering. Maybe it was instinct, or maybe it was the last remains of sense in his mind, but Komaeda had stopped him from blowing his brains out. He knew his fiancé was going to hurt himself. He knew.
The gun clattered against the stone floor. Hinata raised a trembling hand to his mouth. Had he really been about to…
Komaeda made a confused noise and cocked his head. Hinata dropped down to the floor and enveloped him in a hug, his shoulders shaking as he held his beloved to his chest. Komaeda relaxed against him, peering up at Hinata, eye empty as ever.
He couldn’t believe he’d tried to leave his beloved Komaeda. In his wedding vows he’d practiced, he’d sworn to stay with him for better and for worse. In sickness and in health. Til’ death did them part. He couldn’t do it after all, and he would never try again. He would cherish his undead fiancé just as much as he did when he was fully alive. Whether it cost the lives of others or his own sanity.
“I…I’ll stay with you, no matter what happens to you or to me,” he whispered solemnly. Komaeda hung limply in his arms.
Sorry, Kaz.
He should have known the world wouldn’t have let him live with what he’d done for long. If you could have even called it “living.” With his guilt not having been punishment enough, his actions came back to bite him in a more deadly way.
Bite him…how ironic.
He chuckled despite the burning pain. He and Komaeda had been set upon by a large group of hungry zombies. Hinata had fought them off as best he could, but with almost no food in his body and depleted energy from lack of sleep, it had hardly been a fair battle.
So, there Hinata lay, covered in infected bites. Everything stung like hell, and he could feel the poison seeping into his blood. His thoughts were becoming fuzzier by the second. He knew there was no chance of saving him, not with how many points of contact there were. He wondered distantly if this is how Kazuichi had felt before he’d died.
Komaeda had managed to scare the zombies away, but he’d been too late to save him from his fate. The zombie kneeled next to Hinata, whining fearfully. He distantly understood that his fiancé was fading, but was helpless to do anything. Tears poured from his intact eye socket but Komaeda didn’t seem to register them as he held Hinata’s cold hand.
Hinata was going to miss being able to feel.
He wiped away the tears with a trembling hand. “It’s okay, lovely. I’m not going anywhere. Even if I’m different, I’m staying right here. With you. Just wait for me, okay?”
He closed his eyes and waited for the numbness to envelop him. He wondered how much he’d remember when he woke up. Would he know his name? Remember his friends? Recall the months he’d spent traveling with Komaeda? He didn’t know, but whatever happened…
Not even undeath would do him and Komaeda part.