Once Mei finally calmed down, she slowly pulled back with a slight blush dusting her cheeks. But out of sheer embarrassment, her eyes naturally wandered to her surroundings. Her face sobered up instantly as she was dragged back to the brutal reality of what had happened here.
Even though Haru's presence strangely put her at ease, it didn't change the fact that they were in an intensely dangerous situation. If a horde of zombies suddenly appeared and surrounded them, it would be all over.
She had watched her fair share of zombie apocalypse movies in her free time, so she knew the danger of being bitten carried a horrifyingly high risk, namely, turning into one of them.
"I'm sorry for showing you such a pathetic sight," Mei said apologetically, wiping away the remaining tears clinging to the corners of her eyes.
She couldn't bring herself to voice how deeply relieved she was to see him alive and well after the nightmare she had just fought through to find him. It was already embarrassing enough that he had caught her in such a vulnerable state for the second time, the first being up on the rooftop.
"It's nothing. Your reaction is completely normal given the circumstances."
He spoke dismissively, though his actual thoughts were far more analytical. Seeing the corruptive Honkai mark on her wrist made him wonder if her baseline physiology was robust enough to resist full-blown corruption. After all, he didn't bear any such marks himself.
Even so, total resistance was unlikely. He knew for a fact that only individuals with unusually high Honkai adaptability could ultimately awaken as a Herrscher. And Mei was supposed to be one of them.
Which left one plausible explanation.
Given his working theory that the outbreak had been artificially engineered by Cocolia behind the scenes, it was safe to assume she had specifically targeted Mei, using her as the epicenter of the catastrophe.
However, something had gone wrong with the process, otherwise, Mei would have lost her mind, shed her humanity at last, and transformed into a full Herrscher on the spot.
If that had actually happened, he would have been vaporized the instant he approached her. More importantly, she wouldn't have needed any rescuing at all.
So, getting saddled with only a minor trace of Honkai corruption was, ironically, the best-case scenario.
"No... I think it's entirely my fault that this happened. Do you remember? It all started right there in that classroom."
Even if the person herself felt that surviving wasn't anything to celebrate, it was typical of Mei to carry that guilt. Just like Kiana, she was fundamentally kind and overly responsible. Lacking the full picture, she could only measure the disaster against her own perceived role in it.
Even if he wanted to, Haru couldn't explain everything to her right now. Doing so would probably just sound like hollow consoling, and she wouldn't believe him anyway.
The smartest play was to set the heavy philosophical questions aside and focus entirely on immediate survival. That meant...
"We can talk about that later. What we need to do right now is find a secure place to shelter for the night. The sky looks overcast, but judging by the angle of the sunlight barely peeking through the clouds, I'd say we only have a couple of hours before sunset," he said calmly.
If the outbreak had truly overrun Nagazora City the way it did in the game, finding a temporary safehouse before dark was a matter of life and death. Wandering around out in the open was practically begging to be cornered by a wandering horde.
"I... Okay."
Taking one more look at the apocalyptic wasteland around them was enough to validate every word he said.
With that, the two of them quietly walked side by side as they departed the academy grounds, or what was left of them. Because the Honkai eruption, localized as it was, had detonated right in the heart of the academy, the devastation was absolute.
To Haru, everything still felt uncomfortably surreal, despite having lived in this world for close to two weeks now.
Yet, the wrecked car smashed halfway through a storefront, the half-eaten meals left sitting on restaurant tables, and the erratic corpses shambling through the streets made it painfully difficult to maintain that sense of detachment.
It all felt so absurdly fictional that Haru almost lost himself to the feeling of playing a video game.
But as laughable as his mental detachment was, the cold sweat trailing down his cheek and the dull ache of hunger and thirst gnawing at his stomach were violently real.
"Do you think you can handle it, Mei?"
Haru glanced to his side. Mei was gripping a wooden katana they had scavenged from a local store. He had initially suggested she grab a crowbar instead, but she had shaken her head, explaining that she actually had some background in swordsmanship.
'I thought she only started learning martial arts after arriving at St. Freya High? News to me,' he thought.
He carried a weapon of his own, of course. While it wasn't as utterly devastating as Vordt's Great Hammer, a sturdy aluminum baseball bat still delivered more than enough blunt-force trauma for street sweepers.
At first, he had worried he was accidentally playing Kiana's role by adopting a bat as his signature weapon. Fortunately, his last name wasn't Kaslana, and his hair was the color of the dried blood currently smeared across the barrel after he'd caved in a few zombie skulls.
If anything, he just hope he won't suffer the same fate as every red-haired characters in this world, which can be count on one hand.
"N-No... I'm honestly terrified. But I have to do this. I have to put them out of their misery. It's... it's the least I can do."
Her grip on the wooden hilt tightened until her knuckles turned white. Fear still lingered in her indigo eyes, but her expression slowly morphed into quiet resolve as she forced herself to look past the horrors framing their path.
Being terrified was one thing; cowering and pretending the nightmare wasn't real was another.
"...Alright. Just stay sharp. If things get too dangerous, I'll step in immediately, so don't worry about hurting yourself."
Haru picked up a small rock from the ground and tossed it a short distance away. The sharp clatter instantly drew the attention of a nearby zombie, which began dragging its shattered leg toward the point of impact.
Mei took a few deep, stabilizing breaths, her trembling hands slowly firming up until her posture settled into a steady, practiced rhythm.
When the zombie paused, having lost track of the noise, Haru tapped the asphalt with his bat to re-engage its aggro.
As the creature lurched toward them, Mei widened her stance, locked her eyes on her target, and unleashed the heaviest downward swing she could muster.
Bam!