The One Who Wouldn't Bite
[Should I let you out, too?]
[Hungry! Hungry!]
[Human! Human!]
I had meant to set them free, but they only kept saying the same things, so I shrugged and turned my back.
[Bye.]
I gave the ones still shouting in their shackles a small farewell, then walked on ahead.
The farther I went, the more the jumbled words in my head began to settle into meaning, as naturally as drawing breath. Walk, for instance—that was moving my legs like this, and like this.
[What's this?]
Something enormous blocked the way, and I couldn't go any farther. I tilted my head, reached out, and gave the door a light tap.
Crack—crash!
[Easy?]
For all it had looked solid, one tap of my hand brought the whole thing tumbling down. I couldn't have said how many I smashed through before a new world opened in front of me.
White things drifted across the blue sky. Wisps like smoke cut through the spaces between them. The ground was green, and there was a great deal of it.
[What is this?]
I stood still, thinking and thinking again, when something caught my eye. Wriggle. Wriggle. Something was scurrying busily over the green earth. I drew closer, slowly, and stopped in front of it.
Fur.
It was a ball of fur. It bustled right, then left, then stopped dead and turned toward me. The face that swung my way had two large holes, two small ones, and one that was a little flat.
The ball of fur stared at me for a while, then opened its mouth.
"You're a zombie."
I couldn't understand a single word. I blinked, then greeted the fur ball.
[Hello?]
"……."
[Hello? Hello?]
The more I greeted it, the stranger its expression became.
"What is this thing even saying."
I smiled. Oh—I think I can actually talk to this one!
Chesian.
He was a man with rare violet hair. In the sunlight those curls shifted between plum and purple, an elusive color that never quite settled. Oh my. He really is handsome. It was something he heard wherever he went. Striking. Handsome. Exceptional. Beautiful enough to draw every eye, young or old, man or woman, and the corners of his mouth lifted of their own accord, a face made for smiling. His red eyes, though, were cold past all measure, so that he sometimes seemed a gorgeous flower harboring poison.
"Gruhh?"
Even Chesian, however, could do nothing now but wear a hopelessly foolish look. A zombie kept trying to talk to him. He stared at her blankly for a moment, then lay back down where he had been.
A zombie, talking to me. This has to be a dream.
As if he could deny what was in front of him, he gazed vacantly into the empty air and slowly turned the day over in his mind. For him, it had been almost excessively ordinary. In a way, it might even have been called lucky.
"I might actually have something to look forward to in the experiments."
His body was tired from wandering since early morning, but the fatigue had been worth it. He'd managed to collect zombie specimens in decent condition, and that satisfied him. Test subjects mattered enormously to a man researching how to turn zombies back into humans.
I won't need to catch new ones for a while. The platinum-blonde especially is in good shape. She ought to hold up well under experimentation for some time.
Thinking as much, he had left the laboratory swarming with zombies, meaning only to enjoy the warm afternoon sun.
"Uuh……."
If only that platinum-blonde in good condition had not appeared directly in front of him.
When he first found her standing there, stock-still, his heart had felt as if it were caving in. A zombie materializing out of nowhere was shock enough, but her face was simply too beautiful.
How is anything this pretty.
The moment sunlight struck that abundant platinum hair, it blazed as if it had been waiting. Golden eyes—the most conspicuous mark of a zombie, a feature he usually found only grotesque and horrifying—sparkled in the light with a beauty that made no sense at all. Beautiful or not, lovely or not, she was still a zombie.
The daze lasted only a moment before he snapped back to himself. Certain she would lunge at any second, he dropped into a fighting stance. But she didn't.
"Why isn't she biting?"
This zombie was strange. No matter how much time passed, she only stared, blank and unblinking. And then—
"Uuh?"
"……."
"Grr, uuuuh?"
She seemed to keep trying to communicate.
"What?"
Chesian looked at her as if he couldn't believe his own eyes. Oblivious to whatever he was feeling, the zombie smiled brightly and spoke.
"Grr, grruuh!"
"What is this thing even saying."
Of course he didn't understand a word.
[Hello. Hello!]
In truth, the zombie had been greeting him with all her heart. Chesian, who had caught none of it, had no way of knowing.
"She is a zombie, though……."
When he carefully set a hand on her arm, her temperature was far too cold, her skin extremely pale. Her eyes were the golden eyes of a zombie, and most decisive of all—
"The cause of the infection is obvious."
There was a bite mark on her shoulder.
"So why isn't she attacking?"
Chesian propped his chin on his hand and studied her. She still showed no intention of attacking. She only stared at him, blank as ever.
Weird.
Telling himself this zombie was truly strange, he turned his head toward the laboratory without thinking, and horror struck him at once.
"A hole?"
The entrance had been blown wide open. Well, a zombie was hardly going to open a door like a person and stroll out. The one small mercy was that he had bound the others in cuffs and shackles, so they couldn't follow.
What is she.
He had never seen a zombie with intelligence, nor one with monstrous strength. The laboratory door in particular had been reinforced with layer upon layer of iron, precisely so nothing inside could burst out.
And she punched straight through it.
She had smashed the door to pieces. His shock at that strength lasted only a moment before the memory of everything he had suffered to build it came flooding back, and his mind went blank.
When am I supposed to fix that…….
The laboratory he had raised through every hardship imaginable was ruined. The fact left him hollow, and utterly speechless. The zombie, meanwhile, seemed to have no notion of what he was thinking. With a perfectly innocent face, she was fiddling with her own hair.
Clap.
A sound came from her palms. As if she had discovered something, she opened her eyes wide and stared at her own hands for a long while. Then she began to clap.
"You making fun of me?"
The culprit who had destroyed the laboratory door was clapping and grinning. He could hardly believe it.
Clap, clap.
"Hey."
Clap, clap.
"Quiet."
Long platinum hair a tangled mess, she went on clapping and looking at him. The sight was so much like teasing that irritation flared, and Chesian seized both her hands.
"I said stop."
The moment his fingers closed around her wrists, she started as if surprised and opened her eyes round.
"Kuu?"
Then she stole glances at him, gauging his mood. Faced with those wide golden eyes, Chesian pressed his mouth into a hard line.
The way this zombie acts—she isn't a zombie at all. She's like a child.
Even now, wrists caught, she only looked at him. She didn't attack. An ordinary zombie would already have bitten the hand holding her.
"Bite."
"Uuu?"
"Go on. Bite."
And look at her now. He brought his hand right up to her mouth as if daring her, and she only tilted her head. There was no intention of attacking in her at all. Chesian let out a heavy sigh and put on a grave face.
"What am I supposed to do with you."
It seemed he had picked up a harmless zombie.
Wrists still held, the zombie wiggled her fingers, then quietly studied Chesian's serious face, over and over.
"Shee, sheee."
And now she was smiling.
She seems too human.
Chesian looked at her face from close enough that their noses nearly touched, then jerked his head away.
"I'm losing it. Get a grip."
A zombie, looking cute. Had he finally gone mad?
"I have experiments to run."
The work he normally did was simple in its cruelty: administer various reagents to zombies and watch how they reacted. The ones he injected suffered, or they died.
"And I'm supposed to experiment on this?"
Looking into those pure eyes—eyes that knew nothing—left his heart unsettled. The zombie in front of him seemed as innocent as a child. Innocent enough that he couldn't even bring himself to think of researching her.
He was hesitating, at a loss, when a sharp pain lanced through his wrist and tore a cry out of him.
"Ah—!"
He jerked his head up. Somehow the zombie had already slipped free of the wrist he'd been holding and was leisurely flexing her own.
What is that strength?
Chesian stared blankly at the tingling joint. The pain had felt like striking rock. It was no illusion—the reddened skin looked ready to bruise.
Toddler-level, maybe, but there's intelligence, and monstrous strength on top of it. This thing is a full-blown variant.
He frowned. She seemed only to have tapped him, and yet the pain was tremendous. He wrapped the aching wrist in his other hand.
Hurts like hell.
As he kept rubbing it, the zombie watched in silence for a while. Then she did something strange.
"What are you—"
She snatched his wrist. Caught off guard, he couldn't hide his alarm at having his hand seized—and at the same time a flicker of worry rose.
Is she going to bite? Hit me?
Unlike that light tap, if she brought her hand down in earnest, the wrist might break outright. Whether or not she knew what he was thinking, she only held him there with an innocent face.
Pat, pat.
"……Huh?"
Pat, pat, pat.
"……."
Just as he had done a moment ago, she began to knead his wrist in soft little presses. Her hands were far too cold. But—
She's trying not to use her strength.
She did her best to touch him gently, and whenever she pressed too hard by accident, she glanced up to check his face. In that moment Chesian was so dumbfounded he laughed before he could stop himself. The zombie saw it.
"……Hee."
"You laughing?"
"Shihi……."
"Something funny?"
She folded her eyes into crescents and burst out laughing.