Zombie-Loan Fan Fiction ❯ Death and the Maiden ❯ Chapter 14

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Michiru climbed the stairs at a run then dashed down the hall toward her room. Gotta hurry... Gotta hurry... The boys would be after her soon. She dove into her book-bag for her room key and shoved it in the lock. The lock clicked and the door opened. Michiru threw herself through the door, slammed it closed then turned the lock.
She turned to look for the mini-reaper. "Kurou?" Her breath puffed out before her. The room was freezing. She definitely needed to get the fire started.
The little manikin sat up from the center of her pillow and yawned hugely. Apparently, he'd been asleep. "Um... Yes...?"
Michiru moved to the fireplace and grabbed a paper coated fire-log from the box sitting to the right. "Kurou, have you ever seen a paper zombie?" She tossed the log on the grate then stood to collect the long-necked lighter from the top of her narrow mantle.
Kurou sucked in a sharp breath. "What?"
Michiru knelt to click the lighter to light the fire-log. "With my glasses on they looked like normal, low-level zombies." The corner of the log caught on the third click. "But when I took my glasses off, they were paper shaped like zombies covered in words." She set a couple of wood logs around the fire-log. "Have you seen one of those before?"
Kurou's voice deepened. "Where did you see such a thing?"
Michiru stood up and turned to face the doll-sized reaper. "There was a bunch of them out on the street."
The mini reaper fluttered over to her to grab onto her coat. "You are not to go near those!"
Michiru blinked. "Then you have seen them before?"
The miniature reaper scowled in her face. "Were you chased?"
Michiru frowned and unbuttoned her coat. "No, not at all. It was like I was invisible."
"Good." The small reaper sighed and released her. He floated back over to the bed and plopped down on her pillow. "Do you know who they were targeting?"
Michiru nibbled on her bottom lip. She wasn't sure if she should tell him. After all, Shiba was the one who had Kurou's core.
The small reaper frowned at her, his gaze narrowing. "You do know."
Michiru's heart rate kicked up a notch. "I ran into them completely by accident!" She frowned abruptly. "I think..." Shiba did say something about wanting to ask her a question, and it was pretty obvious that those zombies were after him...
The small reaper folded his hypothetical arms over his barely existent chest. "Tell me who it was." He rolled his eyes. "Though I can pretty much guess."
Michiru blew out a breath and began to take her coat off. The room had warmed considerably. "It was Shiba; Reiichirou Shiba, the guy with your core."
"I figured as much." The small reaper sighed heavily and scrubbed at his mop of red hair. "How many?"
Michiru set her coat on one of the hangers on the pole suspended by hooks on the wall that served as her closet, and frowned. "Zombies? I counted twenty-four." A chilly breeze brushed against the back of Michiru's neck. She turned to look at her windows and noticed that one of them was pushed open. The space was just large enough for a tiny doll-like reaper to get through. No wonder the room was so cold! She walked over to the window, the uneven floorboards creaking under her shoes.
"Did he go after the zombies, or did he abandon them?"
She pulled the window closed then tugged the heavy curtains together to block the draft. "He went straight after them."
"Tell me, what color was his core?"
Michiru frowned. Oh, yeah, the color... "A dark yellow."
"I see." Kurou blew out a heavy sigh. "It's probably only a matter of days now."
She walked back to her bed. "Matter of days...for what?"
The small reaper scowled at her. "Just stay away from that brat from now on." He waved a barely existent hand. "Oh, and you better warn the other brats to avoid him too. He'll go after them for their dark matter, and he won't be able to stop himself."
She frowned in confusion. "Go after them for their dark matter?"
Kurou turned to snarl at her. "They're zombies, did you forget?!"
Michiru winced. She hadn't forgotten. It was just that she didn't quite see them as...
"Anyway..." The doll-like reaper abruptly pointed at her. "You stay the hell away from that brat! That's an order! You hear me?"
Michiru stiffened in shock. "But... But I have to get your core..."
Kurou slashed out with his hypothetical hand. "Forget the core! It's too late for that now!"
What? Michiru's breath caught in her throat. "Too late...?"
The little reaper stood up and turned his back to her. "It's not mine anymore. Consider it gone."
"Gone...?" Pain stabbed through Michiru's heart. What did he mean by gone?
Kurou started pacing back and forth across the bed's coverlet. "I knew that too many of us were operating without partners, but to think they'd even consider..." He shook his tiny head hard. "Argh! What a pain in the ass!"
Panic began to well up in Michiru's heart. "Kurou, please tell me what's going on?"
Kurou blew out a sigh. "It's nothing you need to worry about. Just stay away from the brat and it'll fix itself in a few days."
Michiru waved her hands in confusion. "But your core...?"
Kurou turned to Michiru and shouted. "Forget the damned core! It belongs to that damned brat now!" He turned away to scowl at her headboard. "He's had it too long and it's merged with his soul." He waved his hypothetical hand in dismissal. "In a few days, he'll manifest and it'll all be over."
"Manifest...?" Michiru felt the blood leave her face. "You're saying that Shiba's going to become a...reaper?"
Kurou sighed heavily. "Yes."
Michiru really didn't want to ask, but she kind of needed to know. "And those paper zombies?"
Kurou shrugged. "Training tools for new reapers. Though in this case, it's probably being used to feed his core to bring him up to power for manifestation." He turned to face her. "The dark matter they carry is highly concentrated, so you keep far away from them. Understood?"
Michiru nodded quickly. Her heart felt like a lump of lead in her chest. She had failed. She had failed to keep her promise. Her eyes began to water and tears began to slip out. "I'm sorry."
Kurou rolled his one visible eye and scowled. "For what?"
Michiru sucked in a breath in an attempt to keep her voice steady. "I p-promised to g-get it b-back; your core."
Kurou blew out a sigh then walked across the coverlet to her side. "Fledgling, you are."
Michiru looked at Kurou with watery eyes. "But you just said...?"
A minor explosion of dark power went off beside her and a strong hand wrapped in cloth and leather settled on her shoulder. Kurou frowned at her with his lovely face uncovered. "Yes, that core is gone, but you're helping me grow a new one."
Michiru looked up from the circle of his arms. "I-I am?"
He pulled her close to whisper against her ear. "And in the most pleasant way imaginable."
He means with s- Michiru's face heated ferociously. "Oh..."
Bam! Bam! Bam! Heavy thuds slammed against her door. "Yo, Gopher! You gonna eat, or what?"
With a soft poof of black feathers that swiftly dissolved, Kurou returned to the size of a doll. "Damned interruptions." He sighed heavily then turned to her. "Go eat."
Michiru turned to frown at the little reaper. "And you?"
The small manikin waved a barely existent hand. "Already did."
Michiru blinked. He did? Well, she was kind of late and Koyomi was known to set out a bowl for him if Michiru missed a meal. Unfortunately, this also meant that she'd have to face the dining room inquisition all by herself.
Chika banged on the door again. "Are you alive in there, Gopher?"
"Yes, yes...!" Michiru rose and went to the door. "Coming, Chika...!" She unlocked the door and opened it.
A scowling Chika and a glowering Shito towered over her.
With a feeling of utter doom, she swallowed hard, stepped out into the hall, and closed her door quietly behind her.
With the boys playing escort, Michiru's walk to the dining room was silent, but the air was thick with tension. Michiru wanted to say something, anything, to break the tension, but was afraid that saying anything at all would trigger an interrogation she wasn't prepared for.
What was she going to tell them? Well, she had to tell them about Shiba. There was no way around it, especially if he was only days away from becoming a reaper. However, that didn't mean she had to tell them everything; such as that she'd actually spoken to him - and that he had her phone number.
~ ZL ~
In the small run-down dining room Michiru sat down at the trestle table with a bowl of beef stew Koyomi had kept warm in the oven for her.
Directly across from her, Shiba and Chika drew out chairs and sat down with near identical scowls.
Shito's scowl melted into a pleasant smile. "So...?"
Her first spoonful half-way to her open mouth, Michiru blinked at him. "Eh?"
Still scowling, Chika crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. "Where were you?"
Michiru's mouth snapped closed and her brow twitched in annoyance. It was impolite to eat while someone was talking, but if she set her bowl aside, she'd end up rushing to answer all their questions before her dinner got cold. This often resulted in revealing far more than she wanted to, and a cold dinner. They'd played this game one too many times with her already.
Michiru shoved the spoon in her mouth and chewed. It was impolite to eat while someone was talking, but it was also impolite to interrupt someone with questions while they were eating.
Chika and Shito blinked, apparently surprised.
Shito recovered the quickest, his wine red eyes narrowing, but his smile returned. "You've gotten quite...willful lately, Miss Kita."
Michiru blinked. If that was meant to be an insult, it was rather...mild by Shito's usual standards. He normally went straight to death-threats.
Chika's lips curled into a smirk. "You're not...hiding something from us, are you?"
The small hairs on the back of Michiru's neck and all down her arms lifted in alarm. She swallowed her mouthful, but it had a hard time going down her suddenly tight throat.
The loud bang of a soup ladle smacking a counter-top erupted from the kitchen area. "That's enough, you two...!" Koyomi bared her white teeth and glared from the other side of the long counter, her eyes glowing blue with male Yomi's annoyance. "Let the kid eat, damn it! She can talk to you after she's done."
Chika exchanged an annoyed glance with Shito, but the silver-haired teenager waved a long lanky hand in Koyomi's direction. "Yeah, yeah... Fine, fine... We'll let her eat first."
Koyomi smiled sweetly. "Good, then you can both help me with the dishes while she eats!"
Chika promptly blew a gasket. He leapt to his feat and shouted, "WHAT?!"
Shito scowled, but rose from his chair. He grabbed onto Chika's shirt collar and dragged the silver-haired boy into the kitchen area while dodging Chika's swinging fists and kicking feet.
Michiru was glad for the temporary reprieve. She needed time to think on what she'd say and how she'd say it.
~ ZL ~
Michiru wiped her lips with a cloth napkin, looked at the boys once again sitting across from her, and said the most relevant part of what she knew.
Chika lunged to his feet and shouted. "Shiba's gonna be a...what?!" His alarmed shout ended on an ear-splitting shriek that rattled the windows.
Michiru winced. With the way Chika's voice could climb so impossibly high, sometimes she really wondered if he was actually done with puberty.
Sitting at the table next to him, Shito's eyes widened. "No fucking way..."
Michiru bit down on her bottom lip and clenched her hands together in her lap. "That's what Mr. Kurou says, and it's supposed to happen sometime in the next couple of days. Um, which is why Mr. Kurou says you should stay away from him." She looked away. "Because he'll attack you." Her throat tightened. "For your dark matter." The way she had attacked Shito. She glanced at the Chinese boy briefly.
Shito frowned. "Then you took so long to get here...?"
Michiru forced herself to hold their gazes. "Because I saw Shiba on the street killing zombies." It was the truth, just not all of it. She thought about telling them about the paper zombies, but wasn't sure if she should. After all, that was a reaper matter, and it wasn't as if they could see the difference the way she could. It was also possible that killing a few of them might actually count financially.
That was, if the zombies appearing on Yuuta's program were the paper zombies.
Chika raised his fist. "Oi! That bastard is the one cutting into our profits?!"
Shito wine-red eyes narrowed. "And you ran straight to your room to talk to the reaper about this, why?"
Michiru nibbled on her bottom lip, but didn't lower her gaze. She'd expected this question from Shito. The Chinese prince always asked the uncomfortable questions. "Because Shiba's core, or rather Mr. Kurou's core, looked funny; the color was off." Also truth, but again, not the whole truth.
Chika blinked. "Off...?"
Michiru nodded. "It was originally violet. Now it's yellow. Mr. Kurou says that it's because the core has merged with Shiba's soul. That's how he knew that Shiba was going to become a reaper soon."
Chika flopped back down into his wooden chair. It creaked ominously. He rubbed his face with both hands. "Bloody fucking hell... The one reaper was bad enough, but Shiba as a reaper...? God damn it...!"
Shito's jaw tightened. "You're forgetting that Michiru will eventually be a reaper too."
Michiru shook her head. "I won't be a reaper for a while yet. It won't happen until I die."
Chika threw out his arms. "FUCK! Can I get drunk now?"
Shito slanted his gaze toward Chika. "You're still under legal age."
Chika rolled his gaze toward Shito. "I don't care if I'm underage. I need to get blitzed to deal with all this."
Koyomi yelled out from the kitchen area. "You're not touching my Fanta!"
Chika yelled back toward the kitchen. "The only one who gets drunk on Fanta is you, Koyomi!"
It was one of the odder idiosyncrasies surrounding Koyomi. Besides harboring a second soul that could hear the dead; a male soul, Koyomi actually got drunk on a certain brand of non-alcoholic drink that wasn't even carbonated. Michiru often wondered if the super-high sugar content had anything to do with it.
Michiru rose from her chair to deliver her bowl to Koyomi for washing. "I'm going to go take a bath."
Shito lifted his nose and looked away. "The girls have the showers today. We get the bath."
Michiru rolled her eyes. "Fine, then I'll go take a shower."
Chika rose from his chair, the legs scraping across the floorboards with a hideous screech. "I'm gonna go to the corner and get some beer from the vending machines. They don't care if I'm underage."
Shito shrugged. "Suit yourself, but no drinking until after tonight's work."
Chika frowned down at Shito. "Fine, fine... You want any? Not that I'm paying for yours."
Shito sneered up at Chika. "I don't drink beer."
Chika glared. "What? Beer not good enough for you?"
Shito's snorted. "Why would I want to drink something that tastes so damned foul?"
Chika rolled his eyes. "Look, you..." He set one hand on his jutting hip. "Nobody drinks beer for its taste. They drink it to get drunk."
Michiru rolled her eyes and quietly walked to the door of the dining hall.
Shito called out to her. "Miss Kita, make sure to dry your hair thoroughly, and dress warm; wear slacks for tonight's work. It's going to go below freezing tonight."
Michiru looked back with a smile. "Okay."
Chika pointed a finger at her. "And a heavy sweater under your coat too! You're useless to us if you get sick!"
Shito smacked the back of Chika's head hard. "Idiot."
Chika flinched and hissed in pain. "What the fuck is your problem?!"
Michiru sighed and stepped out of the dining room to head for her room. She wondered if getting drunk might not be all that bad an idea. It would be an easy way to just not think for a little while.
Unfortunately, being passed out drunk was also a quick way to die if the dorm was attacked, which had happened before - last year, in fact. She smiled sourly. Unless of course, you were already dead and a zombie. Actually, it wasn't so much that the guys couldn't die, they could. It just took a lot more effort to kill them than it did to kill her.
Michiru rolled her eyes. "Mou... Being an ordinary person is such a pain sometimes!"