Chapter Text
The streets were silent except for the wet shuffle of the dead. Kurara moved like a shadow, the heavy weight of her family’s gear strapped tight against her frame. Each slash, each precise strike of her blade was clinical, efficient. She could not afford mistakes—not when the Oosuzuki name was now hers alone to carry. Not when the only thing left to prove her existence was her survival.
The stench of decay pressed against her helmet. Corpses sprawled in front of the convenience store entrance, their twisted limbs tangled like discarded dolls. She stepped over them, careful not to disturb the blood-wet glass. Inside, shelves leaned, half-emptied, wrappers and rotting food scattered in the aisles.
Kurara’s breathing slowed as she searched. Quiet. Always quiet. Every move is deliberate. A can here, a lighter there. Not much was left, but enough to last another day.
Then she heard it.
Sobbing.
Her head snapped up, blue eyes narrowing beneath the shifting expression of her tomato helmet. The sound was raw, trembling. Human.
She crept toward the noise, boots muffled on the dusty tiles. Behind the counter, half-hidden by shadows, sat a boy—no, a young man around her age. His clothes were in tatters, stitched and patched so many times they barely held together. His body trembled as he clutched something small in his lap.
Kurara froze. It wasn’t something. It was someone.
A child. Lifeless. Pale.
His little body was limp, head resting against the older boy’s chest. And the boy… the boy rocked him slowly, muttering broken apologies through his sobs. His face was gaunt, streaked with dirt and tears.
Kurara’s grip tightened on her blade. Instinct screamed: walk away. Survivors were dangerous. Survivors meant risk. But she couldn’t move. Not yet.
The boy’s red eyes flicked up suddenly, catching her in the dim light. Wide, panicked, as if he were staring at a ghost.
His eyes locked on her ghoulish tomato mask. The sneer that carved across its surface twisted in the dim light, and for a split second, it must have looked like death itself was standing over him.
He screamed.
Not a long wail, but sharp, panicked—loud enough to rattle the half-broken glass at the front of the store. Kurara cursed under her breath and lunged forward, clamping a gloved hand over his mouth before the sound could rise again.
“Shut up,” she hissed, her voice low but commanding. Outside, there was already a stir. The dragging shuffle of feet, the hollow moans of the hungry.
The boy thrashed against her, his arms tightening around the corpse. He kicked at the counter, desperate, terrified. His muffled cries still broke through her palm.
Kurara’s heart pounded—not with fear, but with calculation. If he kept this up, they were both dead.
“Listen to me,” she whispered, leaning close, the mask’s shifting grin just inches from his face. “You want to die? Fine. But you’ll kill me with you. So quiet. Now.”
Her words sliced through the panic. His wild movements slowed, though his breathing came in ragged gasps against her hand. She loosened her grip—just enough to let him breathe without noise.
Outside, the undead pressed against the glass, drawn by the echo of his shout. Cracks spidered across the pane. Kurara’s eyes flicked to it, then back to him.
“Good,” she muttered, lowering her hand but keeping her blade angled near his throat—just in case. “You stay quiet, we live. You make another sound, you’ll feed them first.”
The boy’s lip trembled. His eyes darted from her mask to her weapon, then back to the small body in his lap. He swallowed hard, trying to find words that wouldn’t shatter the fragile silence.
Kurara crouched slowly, still tense, still ready to strike. Her voice dropped softer, careful now.
“I’m not here to hurt you. But you’re going to get us both killed if you don’t calm down. Do you understand?”
The boy gave the smallest nod, though his hands didn’t loosen from the child. His jaw clenched as though holding back another cry.
Kurara’s gaze lingered on the boy, on the way he clutched the body as if it were the only thing anchoring him to the earth. She didn’t need to ask—she knew. A sibling.
Her chest tightened, just for a moment. She pushed the thought down hard. She had lost too. Her family, her bloodline, everything that once gave her name weight. The world had already burned, and grief was a luxury no one could afford.
“We move,” she said flatly, rising to her feet. She shoved what supplies she could into a tattered backpack—cans, bottles, batteries, anything useful. Every second wasted meant the dead outside pressed closer. The glass groaned under their weight.
She turned back to him. “Get up.”
He didn’t. He only clutched the small body tighter, his nails digging into his palms, shaking his head violently. “I-I can’t—”
Kurara’s patience snapped. She grabbed his arm and yanked, hard enough to nearly topple him over. “You can. Unless you’d rather feed yourself to them for nothing.”
He resisted, dragging his heels, his sobbing low and strangled. “I can’t leave him… I promised I wouldn’t…”
The undead were pressing harder now, their hands smearing dark streaks across the glass. Kurara’s jaw clenched. How utterly infuriating. How annoying. Why was she even wasting time with him?
Yet she didn’t let go.
Something in his desperation echoed in her chest, unwelcome but sharp. She knew that hollow look, that refusal to accept reality because once you did—once you let go—there was nothing left.
“Listen,” she said harshly, leaning down close, her voice cutting but quieter now. “He’s gone. You stay, you join him. And I’m not dying with you. Understand?”
His eyes burned red, wide with grief and fury, but the words cracked through the haze. He trembled, his body sagging under the truth. Slowly, painfully, he loosened his grip on the child’s frame. His fingers hovered as if one last touch might keep him alive again, before finally slipping away.
Kurara didn’t give him the chance to collapse again. She hooked her arm under his and dragged him up, half-carrying, half-forcing him toward the back exit. Supplies rattled in her bag with every step.
The glass shattered behind them.
The moment they burst out the back door, the night air cut cold against their skin. The groans of the horde swelled behind them, dragging feet and broken moans spilling into the alley. Kurara’s grip on her blade stayed tight, and her gun still latched at the holster. She didn’t fire. Bullets were for survival, not waste.
The boy stumbled at first, half-dragged by her, his legs shaking from grief more than fear. But then—when the first bony hand scraped his shoulder, when the glass-shard teeth nearly grazed his neck—adrenaline ripped through him like fire.
He bolted.
Faster than her. Faster than anyone should run with a stomach so empty and limbs so ragged. His eyes were wide, his face twisted with raw terror, and he tore past her as if survival alone was suddenly worth the world.
“Tch—idiot!” Kurara lunged forward, catching his collar just as he nearly sprinted past the camouflaged barricade of her base. She yanked him back hard, slamming him against the wall just as the dead spilled into the street behind them.
The barricade shut, steel and wood grinding into place. Silence followed, only their breaths filling the cramped safehouse. Kurara let him go, her chest rising and falling, the mask’s ghoulish expression fixed in a sneer.
“What the hell was that?!” Her voice was sharp, cutting, dripping with the tone she once used as an heiress scolding servants. “I risk my neck to drag you out, and you think you can just—bolt ahead like some brainless mutt?!”
The boy staggered, leaning against the wall, still panting. His glassy red eyes snapped to her, glinting with exhaustion and anger. “What, you’d rather I stayed behind and slowed you down? You’re welcome—I lived.”
Kurara’s fists clenched at her sides. “You lived because of me, you arrogant fool!”
He laughed—dry, bitter, breathless. “Then maybe you should’ve left me. Would’ve saved you the trouble.”
Her teeth ground together beneath the mask. Infuriating. Absolutely infuriating. She had dragged him from the jaws of death, and he dared talk back?
Kurara stepped closer, towering despite being smaller, her voice a low snarl. “Don’t test me. The only reason you’re still breathing is because I decided you’d be useful. Don’t make me regret it.”
The boy met her glare with his own, trembling but unyielding. “Then stop acting like I asked you to save me.”
For a moment, silence stretched between them—just the rasp of their breathing, the thud of blood still pounding in their ears.
Kurara’s nails dug into her gloves. Why? Why did she put up with this stubborn, reckless, loud-mouthed nobody?
Because, she realized with an uncomfortable twist in her chest, he was the first living person she’d spoken to in weeks.