Chapter 25: Chapter 25

Ryota’s POV
   Ever since Ryota got to know Tajima-san, his school life got a little bit better. Just a tiny little bit. He’s still getting bullied and extorted by Himura and his gang, and he’s pretty much ignored by his classmates. Sure, the pills he got from Director Bouchard made him stronger physically, but they can never fill up the hole in his heart. Being together with Tajima-san, on the other hand, made Ryota more optimistic. As long as she’s willing to be his friend, he has a feeling that he won’t succumb to despair.

   Tajima-san is unlike any other girl Ryota has seen before. The girls he met so far are pretty but haughty, or plain and quiet, or simple insufferable. The only similarity all these girls share is that all of them think of Ryota nothing more than a small pebble on the roadside. For better or worst, they just ignored him since he’s so unremarkable.

   Not Tajima-san, though. She’s willing to spend time with Ryota even though there’s nothing to gain from it. Naturally, he was being cautious at the beginning. He simply refused to accept the fact that a girl as pretty as Tajima-san wants to spend time with him without a single ulterior motive. As more time has passed, however, he stopped being suspicious and just enjoyed her company. Still, there are times when he felt unsecured.

   “Don’t you feel bored when you’re around me, Tajima-san?” he asked her once.

   “What’s this all of a sudden?” she asked back.

   “Well, all I ever talk about is anime. I don’t know anything about the latest fashion, nor do I know anything about celebrities, and I don’t know the gossips around the school. I’m not tall and doesn’t look handsome. I’m broke-”

   Tajima-san covered his mouth with both her hands.

   “When I let go of your mouth, I want you to stop dissing yourself, okay?” she tells him.

   He slowly nods. Satisfied, she removed her hands.

   “The thing is, I’ve always wanted to talk about anime with someone else. Unfortunately, none of my friends are interested. A few of them are even openly despising people who watches anime. That’s why I was very happy when I finally met a fellow Stardust fan.”

   “But, aren’t you scared that weird rumors about us will spread if you continue to hang out with me?”

   “Not at all. So what if there are people who has opinion about us hangout out? Just let them run their mouth, it’s not like it’ll hurt.”

   “I-I guess not…”

   “I’m glad that you understand. Now, where were we?”

   “I think we were discussing about the Mahou Shoujo animes these days.”

   “Ah, yes. For me…”

   To be honest, Ryota couldn’t care less about rumors between him and Tajima-san being spread either. What he’s really worried is that what Himura might do once he caught wind of it. Not to Ryota, but to Tajima-san. Ryota got used to being beat up, but he can’t stand the sight or even the thought of Himura doing awful things to her. Ryota decides that he’s going to stand up against Himura and end the bullying once and for all.

   When it’s the usual time for Himura and his goons to collect money from Ryota, Ryota takes a deep breath and looks at Himura straight in the eyes.

   “I don’t have any money for you, Himura-kun.” he tells the bully.

   “Are you saying that you lost your source of income again?”

   “No, I do have money, but I don’t plan on giving any of them to you. Not anymore.”

   “...I see. So you’ve decided to stand up against me.”

   Ryota could barely stop himself from flinching and trembling with fear. The Himura right now is being calm and speaks with a normal voice. Anyone who knows him long enough knows that this version of Himura is the most dangerous one. You know you’re somewhat safe if he’s being loud. Once he’s being all quiet, however, it’s a sign that something really bad is going to happen to you.

   “T-That’s right. I’m not going to do as you say anymore.” Ryota stutters out.

   “Hit me then.”

   Ryota stares at Himura with an open mouth.

   “I beg your pardon?”

   “You heard me. You must be pretty confident if you dare to oppose me. Come on, strike a punch right where it hurts. I won’t fight back, and neither will my boys.” Himura invites while jabbing a thumb at his own nose.

   This is it. A golden chance like this wouldn’t come often. If Ryota could make it count, he will never be bullied again. He raises up both his hands and clutch them. He mentally prepares himself to strike his long-time bully.

   Just a few more seconds…and then some more…

   “Just get on with it. You don’t have to be considerate, you know?” Himura says to him.

   Exactly. Even if Ryota has become much stronger, he has no reason to hold back. Himura had gave him a beating more times he can count, this is just one time. It’s going to be fine.

   “I-I’ll do it…”

   “Do it, then. And makes sure it hits.” Himura urges.

   Ryota ended up hesitating some more. What’s going on? Why can’t he do it? Why-

   Smash!

   A punch indeed flew. But it didn’t came from Ryota. Himura was the one who ended up punching Ryota right in the guts. The punch was so strong Ryota bend over and slowly fell to the ground.

   Ryota isn’t in any condition to fight back, but that doesn’t stop Himura. He continued to punch and kick the boy who’s on the ground without showing any mercy. Ryota could do nothing but wince and groan as Himura’s ferocious attacks found their mark again and again.

   By the time Himura finally stopped, Ryota was covered with multiple bruises. The corner of his mouth, along with a few other places, are also bleeding. The only good news is that none of his bones are broken.

   And then, Ryota felt that his pocket is being ransacked. His wallet is taken away, then tossed to his face after a few seconds.

   “You look somewhat buffer lately. Is that why you think you could take me on? Let me give you a piece of advise, free of charge. A few muscles here and there means crap if you can’t use them when necessary. Now lie down there and think about the mistake you made, you weakling.” Himura tells Ryota with a quiet voice.

   Ryota’s eyes became swollen from the beatings he took. He could barely use them to confirm that the bullies have indeed left. Once he’s sure that he’s alone, he starts to weep.

   As much as he hates Himura, the bully is right. Whenever he was involved in a fight, he was always on the receiving side. He has zero experience in beating someone up. So he has more strength than before, even a few muscles. Some good they did to him. He wants to protect Tajima-san? Who was he trying to kid?

   Ryota slowly gets up and wipes away his tear. Even without a mirror, he could tell that he’s an absolute mess. Thankfully, he’s not hanging out with Tajima-san today since she said that she has to help out her class for the Cultural Festival. At least she doesn’t have to see his pathetic side. He keeps his money-free wallet in his pocket and takes out his phone to look at the time. Good, there’s still lots of them. Enough for him to head to the UCI lab before his parents come back.

   He heads straight to the lab without retrieving his bag at his classroom. He’s so depressed that he doesn’t even care that it might get stolen. All the students and eventually pedestrians that he passed by gave him odd looks. Again, he doesn’t care one bit. They can take pictures of him, laughs at him straight in his face. Anything to make themselves feel better and be glad that they’re not him.

   The moment he’s there, he got the attention of one of the researchers who works there.

   “May I speak to Director Bouchard, please?” he requests.

   The researcher stares at him for a few seconds before finally taking out his phone and calls someone. He made sure to walk away from Ryota before doing it, so Ryota can’t tell what he said to the person on the other side of the phone. Once the researcher is done with the call, he looks at Ryota and nods.

   “The director will be with you shortly.” he informs.

   “Thank you.”

   Director Bouchard looks at Ryota with a shocked expression the moment he saw him.

   “God Lord, what happened to you, Monsieur Ryota? You look much worse than the first time we met each other!” he cries.

   “...Things happened.”

   “Well, let’s see to those wounds. You can tell me while I’m being busy.”

   Ryota follows Director Bouchard to a room with lots of beds. The nurse’s office, maybe. There are multiple doctors and nurses on duty, but Director Bouchard insists on treating Ryota’s wound himself. While that’s going on, he tells the director what had happened just now.

   “You were being too reckless, mon garçon. Your bully is right. You shouldn’t pick a fight if you have zero experience in it.” Director Bouchard tells Ryota once he was done.

   “Yes. I can see that the two of you are right once I’ve calmed down.”

   “Something happened to make you lose your cool, as the young ones say these days, oui? What is it?”

   “Well…”

   Ryota told Director Bouchard about Tajima-san.

   “Ah, so you did it for the girl you love. How romantic.”

   “Um, director? Love is too strong a word.”

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   “Is it really?”

   Ryota doesn’t know the proper way to respond to that, so he chose to be silent.

   “Well, not that I would know anything about it. After all, I myself have never fallen in love.”

   Director Bouchard lets out a laugh. His laughter is somehow even more unnerving than his smile, which is saying something. It’s like someone made a laugh track by combining the cackling of a witch and the barking of a hyena. The only good news is that the laugh didn’t last long.

   “Pardon me. Now, if you want to become strong mentally as well, I can offer you a proposition. Not only that, this suggestion of mine pays even more. More as in three times of what you currently get.”

   That piqued Ryota’s interest in more ways than one.

   “What kind of proposition is it?”

   “Before I elaborate, I should warn you that it is very dangerous. Knowing that, do you still want to go on?”

   “Yes.” Ryota answers without a single hint of hesitation.

   “Bien, bien. Follow me, then.”

   Ryota follows the director to an elevator. Unlike all the other ones that Ryota saw so far, this one needs a retinal scan in order to be used. When they got out, Ryota gets a view of the lab where he has never seen before.

   There are lots of creatures being bound inside metallic cages. Goblins, orcs, and lots of other mythical creatures that Ryota can’t name.

   “In order to make better quality pills, we often use these creatures as part of the experiment.” Director Bouchard explains to the boy.

   Wow, environmental groups will have a field trip if they ever find out about this place.

   “That’s nice and all, but what part do I play in all this?”

   “You see, in order to get better results, we need humans who ate the pills we made to fight the creatures.”

   Suddenly, Ryota is less confident. No wonder the pay is good.

   “I, I see.”

   “It’s not too late to back out, mon amie. What do you say?”

   “I’ll do it.” Ryota decides. “If I got used to fighting these monsters, humans won’t mean a thing to me.”

   Director Bouchard beams. “Bien. Let us begin immediately. Oh, my apologies. Would you like to come back after your wound is slightly healed?”

   Ryota shakes his head. “No. I would like to do it now. If I come back later, I might chicken out. Let me strike while the steel is still hot.”

   “As you wish.”

Jin’s POV
   It was the middle of the day, and school is far from over. However, Jin has received a backup request from Sergeant Wakaba.

   “A large group of undead have appeared at the city of Tokyo. We need your help right away!” the message sent by Sergeant Wakaba wrote.

   Jin wastes no time in sending his clone to Tokyo. Through the ears of the clone, he could already hear the mayhem way before it reaches the city.

   As Sergeant Wakaba has mentioned, there are moving corpses everywhere, and none of them are corpses of humans. There are zombies of wolves, bears, even other humanoids like trolls, bugbears, and orcs. The good news is that all of them are moving very slowly. The bad news is that there are a lot of them. Jin counted more than a thousand of them.

   For the human’s side, there are mere hundreds of police and soldiers combined together. They even brought out tanks, but three out of five of them have been wrecked. The police are using weapons with mostly low firepower like pistols, handguns and shotguns. As for the soldiers, they have assault rifles, grenades and a few RPG. There are so many undead around they don’t even have to aim before they shoot.

   Jin starts by scanning the area with the Eye of Truth. As he has expected, all these undead are being resurrected and controlled by a single necromancer. Through the spell, Jin can see that each and every one of the undead have a thin thread hanging from the top of their head. The thread is connected to the hands of a single corpse, or to be more precise, a necromancer that’s pretending to be a corpse in order to avoid being singled out and killed. How sneaky.

   Then again, Jin is the sneakier one. He controls the clone to aim its left index finger at the necromancer and fires a tiny needle made of ice. The needles pierces the necromancer’s head successfully. It happened so fast that he or she moved for a few more seconds before finally collapsing. At the death of the one controlling them, the corpses fall to the ground and rot away. With the threat finally gone, the soldiers let out waves and waves of cheer. Jin wonders why none of the police officers joined in.

   He makes the clone lands right next to the necromancer and takes a good look. He looks like an ogre with half of its face rotted away. If Jin didn’t use the Eye of Truth, he could never tell that this was the necromancer.

   “Thank you for you hard work, Silver Wolf.” a voice came from behind the clone.

   Jin makes his clone turn around. He sees a middle-aged policeman who’s wearing a bullet-proof vest and holding a shotgun. If he remembers correctly, this man’s name is Yamasaki Masahiro, and his rank is Captain.

   “Thank you for your hard work too, captain. That said, how did you know it was me who finished things off?” Jin asks Captain Yamasaki through the mouth of his clone.

   “I just do. Call it the intuition of a police officer.”

   “I see. Are there any casualties from this battle?”

   “We have at least twelve heavily-wounded on our side, but the none of the injuries are fatal. We also have personnels having light wounds reaching the hundreds. However, the wounds are nothing too serious either.” the captain reports.

   Jin looks around the place. Other than the damaged tanks, quite a lot of cars and other vehicles are wrecked beyond repair. Some of the place are also on fire.

   “That’s good to hear. I’m sorry for not being here earlier.”

   “Please, there’s no need for you to apologize. If you didn’t drop by when you did, the damage caused would have been much worse. Once again, thank you for your help.”

   The captain salutes at him gratefully. The salute started a chain reaction whereby everyone present salute at Jin. Seeing all these people being this grateful to him gives him a weird feeling when he’s being treated like a criminal by majority of the public.

   “You’re welcome, captain.” is all he could say.

   “This is a bit sudden, but would you like to have dinner at my house later?” Captain Yamasaki invites out of the blue.

   “That… is indeed sudden.”

   “My apologies. Did you already have other plans in mind?”

   “Well, not really. Since you bothered to invite me, I shall accept it.”

   “Splendid. Here is the address to my home. We usually have our dinner around 7, so please drop by around that time. You can come earlier if you want.”

   “Will do, sir.”

   The image of Nyri suddenly appears inside Jin’s head.

   “If it’s not too much trouble, is it okay for you to prepare a meal for one more person?”

   “Not a problem. The more the merrier they say. My wife always love having lots of guests coming over.”

   “Thank you. I’ll make sure to go to your house later. See you later, captain.”

   “Yes. See you later.”

   With that parting word, Jin made the clone disappear.

   There isn’t much things to do to prepare for the Cultural Festival today. At least, not for Jin and the rest of the kitchen crew, so he excused himself to leave early again. When he got back, Nyri is watching the television. He told her about the dinner invite, and that he has agreed to go.

   “You’re actually going to have a meal at a stranger’s house? You?” Nyri asks him.

   “I couldn’t find any excuse to refuse, so I had to accept it. Besides, he was probably planning to use this dinner as an excuse to ascertain my character. I guess I should humor him.”

   “Well, I don’t mind as long as there’s free food.”

   “There’s just one thing. I can’t bring you outside without having people calling the cops on me once every few steps we take, so you’ll have to teleport to the house once I’m inside.”

   “Sure. I can do that.”

   Jin left his apartment an hour earlier to get a fruit basket from one of the many fruit stalls inside the shopping district. After he got one, he opens up his GPS and heads to Captain Yamasaki’s house.

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