"So, students turn to page 47...." The teacher's voice echoed across the classroom. Every student obeyed and turned their page. But Ryu's eyes were elsewhere.
He sat at the corner of the classroom, staring at the scenery outside.
'It's been so many years since I last attended a class,' he thought, a faint smile tugging at his lips.
Beside him Sarah quietly adjusted her books. She glanced at him once, her eyes curious, before pretending to follow along with the lesson. Ryu caught her presence out of the corner of his eye but kept silent, lost in his own thoughts.
'Reincarnation..huh..' he wondered. The thought had been haunting him since the morning he woke up in this body.
His fingers tapped lightly on the desk as he tried to focus back on the class.
But something strange caught his eye out of the window.
A man was walking on the school grounds, but something was wrong. His movement was uneven or, in a way, weird. And his head hung low.
Ryu's brow furrowed.
'What's with that guy?'
None of the other students seemed to notice. They were busy with their lesson.
But suddenly, the man stopped moving. And then it ran after the nearest woman passing by and lunged at her. The woman, initially surprised, started screaming.
"What the-"
Before he could complete his word, he started hearing the strange voices of screaming and grunts.
He saw people running down below everywhere, shouting and begging for help as they tried to run from the people running after them.
Ryu saw that one of the pretty girls tripped and fell forward.
"Watch out".
Ryu shouted, but it was already too late. One of the mindless people, with its bloody mouth, caught the young girl and lunged at her. HE bit down on her leg, making the girl cry and scream with terror in her eyes.
"Help me," she screamed, but there was no one to help her. As everyone was running, no one bothered to help before she got away from the beast.
After some time, she stood up staggeringly and started chasing the people, same like the rest of the bloody people.
"No way… this can't be real."
Ryu's complexion turned pale. His breath caught in his throat.
"…Z-Zombies?" he muttered in disbelief, his silver eyes wide as he clutched the railing of the window.
Though he was not a fan of horror movies, he could identify that they were zombies.
But it was real. All around him, chaos spread like wildfire. People were being dragged down, their cries cut short. Flesh torn. Blood spraying. Every victim that fell soon staggered back up, eyes empty, mouths dripping red. And then they, too, joined the hunt.
Ryu backed away slowly, his body trembling. His mind screamed at him to run, but his legs refused to move.
His mind was denying the reality as if all were dreams. Before his mind could process all these things, chaos erupted in the class as one of the students bit one of the boys present.
"What-"
"Alex, what are you doing?"
Ryu's eyes widened as Alex his classmate a second ago now looked more like a beast. Blood dripping from his mouth, his eyes blank, he lunged again at the fallen teacher. The teacher's cries were cut short as more students stumbled back in horror.
"W-What's happening?!" someone shouted.
Another boy tried to pull Alex away, but before he knew it, sharp teeth sank into his arm. His scream echoed through the room, and within moments, he too collapsed… only to rise again, lifeless and groaning.
Some of them are scared to start running out of the classroom. But the moment they went outside..
"AHHH!!!"
"SAVE ME"
"SOMEONE HELP"
The unlucky ones who had run into the hall didn't last long either. Ryu could hear the chaos outside—their voices turning into screams of terror, then suddenly stopping, followed by sickening growls.
Blood spread across the white floor tiles. Students tripped over bags, pushing each other just to survive.
The classroom that had been noisy with laughter and chatter just moments ago turned into pure madness.
And while this chaos was happening, Ryu was hiding inside the closet in the classroom. His whole body was trembling with terror.
'Why?.. Why is this happening to me?'
Ryu hugged his knees inside the dark closet, trying not to make a sound. His breath came out ragged, too loud for his own comfort, so he pressed a hand over his mouth. Sweat dripped down his forehead as the screams outside grew fainter, replaced by low groans and the sound of footsteps dragging on the floor.
Bang!
Something slammed against a desk nearby, making the closet door rattle. Ryu's heart nearly leapt out of his chest. He bit down on his lip, praying they wouldn't hear him.
Through the thin crack of the closet door, he could see the classroom. A girl he recognised—one of his classmates—was crawling on the floor, her leg bleeding. She didn't get far before one of the zombies pounced on her. Her cries echoed for a moment before they were silenced.
Ryu shut his eyes tightly, the sound of tearing flesh making his stomach twist.
'I don't want this… I don't want to die here.'
Though he had said earlier that he didn't care whether he lived or died, when facing true death now, all those words felt like a lie.
The smell of blood, the sound of screams, and the cries of his classmates burned into his mind. The pain he imagined he would feel if they found him… he didn't even want to think about it.
His hands clutched his mouth tighter, tears stinging his eyes. He wasn't ready for this. He wasn't ready to die.
Outside the closet, footsteps dragged slowly across the room. Low growls mixed with wet chewing noises. Something heavy fell with a thud, making the door tremble slightly.
Ryu's heart pounded so loud he was afraid they'd hear it.
'I don't want to die… Not like this…'
His mind screamed inside, the survival instinct stronger than anything else.