Chapter 26 - 23rd of November: The Smiling Shopping Mall Part two
“Ahahaha! I hit! I hit! Right on the mark!”
Clapping his hands excitedly, he burst into laughter.
He danced around, looking like a mad clown.
“…”
As he looked at the collapsed woman, he remembered something.
It traced back to 13 years ago.
He had still been a student and watched the TV as he ate breakfast.
In the middle of trivial news being played, the “Shimoichi Family Massacre Incident” was reported on a grand scale.
It was an incident where only the boy in the family was left behind while the rest of the family members were stabbed to death.
The man being reported about at that time looked similar to the man now who was holding the knife.
Without a moment’s delay, he headed toward the madly laughing man and fired his submachine gun rapidly.
The sound of the gunfire was restrained by a suppressor.
The bullets should have hit the man.
Should have, that is.
“Woah! How dangerous!”
The man showed off his acrobatics and avoided the gunfire.
“Tsk…”
He couldn’t help but click his tongue.
To think that he would avoid the area he fired to.
He fired without delay, and the man moved to the opposite side of his car.
“What’s your objective?”
He asked while aiming at him.
“I have all sorts of reasons, but the biggest one…”
The man leaped over the car and threw the knife.
“Is to kill, I think!”
“Ugh!?”
The man’s knife pierced his hand.
(To be able to accurately throw the knife here with that posture…)
He aimed and fired for sure, but the man had already gotten into the car, and was about to leave the parking lot.
“Since it’s boring, I’ll go back!”
Raising his voice, he waved his hand and drove away.
It was his utter defeat.
No, since he at least had his life, it was a win.
He rushed over to the woman’s place.
“Hey, are you alive?”
No reply.
The knife coldly pierced her, blood dripping out.
The knife blocked the wound, but there was still a lot of blood.
It wasn’t actually special for people to die.
There had been countless colleagues that had died in front of him until now.
However, this woman was…
“I couldn’t protect you. Sorry.”
It was the first time he regretted not being able to protect someone.
When he had time, he would mourn her death.
Nevertheless, that thought disappeared in the blink of an eye.
Because the woman got up and burst into laughter.
“Ahahahahaha! Hehe! ‘Sorry’ huh… Hyahyahya! My stomach hurts! My stomach hurts!”
Each time she rolled around, the knife hit the ground with a clinking sound.
“You, how…”
“This blood? It’s ketchup! Hehe! These clothes are stab-proof anyway. Bulletproof! Ahahahahaha!”
Thinking about it, that was right.
The knife thrown from that distance wouldn’t cause that much bleeding either.
Besides, it didn’t smell like blood.
After coming here, his anger was at the top, but rather than that…
“Don’t make me worried…”
He was relieved.
He lost the strength in his body.
“Y-y-yeah… Don’t get out of the rhythm…”
The woman scratched her head, embarrassed, and, tilting her head, she looked at him.
“Huh? Did you have that accessory again?”
The woman pointed to the knife coldly piercing his hand.
“It’s the real thing.”
He said, and the woman paled.
“H-hurry and out on bandaid! Bandage! Antiseptic solution! Ambulance! Medic!”
She walked around, unable to settle down as if she had gone crazy, as she looked for clothing.
Watching her appearance, he laughed a little.
In the other direction, the man who had thrown the knife knocked on the glass of the car, looking bored.
The rhythmic knocking sounded somehow cheerful, but if you looked at his face, it was irritated.
“Geez! How boring how boring!”
He avoided the zombies staggering on the road as he drove silently, but because of the irritation, he started killing the zombies by running them over.
To him, killing a zombie wasn’t a big deal.
And if he just wanted to kill, killing a zombie would be fine.
However, he didn’t want to simply kill.
“I want to hear more!”
He liked to hear the last moments of people’s lives.
There are people who scream, who uselessly gasp as they breathe out, there was always something different.
It was the art the instant they disappear; it was the essence of a person, which you couldn’t even hear in music.
The people prone to hysteria would shift the blame from themselves or become violent.
The people who had lived peacefully until now would become dumbfounded.
Thinking that people’s whole lives were comprised at that moment, he could immerse himself in euphoria.
“Hmm~ There should be a lot of people downtown… No, well, maybe only zombies are there~?”
While speaking to himself, he drove the car and assembled the words into a song.
He didn’t have a license, but there weren’t any police officers supervising the roads either.