Crowbar Nurse Chapter 2

“Argh, Sera this time?! This isn’t some sort of web novel! What is happening in here?!”

Barrelling into the room was an unbelievably handsome guy.
By “unbelievable”, I meant it quite literally. He was unrealistically handsome.

“… huh? Kiryū?!”

I was just as shocked seeing him as he was seeing me… that’s because he’s definitely a fictional character.

Kiryū Sōichirō.
The most popular character from the hit dating sim released in 2014 on social media platforms, Rainbow Dreams High School☆Fantasia.

His brown eyes, black hair, and a soft smile gives off a clean-cut look. When combined with his calm demeanor, it made for a perfect young mastermind character like him.
Kiryū would act as your mentor, guiding the player along with hints and tips. Because he helps the player perhaps a little too much, he would always come out on top of the character popularity rankings.

… but he was a secret unlockable love interest.

In other words, Kiryū is only unlocked after clearing all other routes first.

Players would begrudgingly clear characters they weren’t interested in to finally get the chance to date him… well, not that this really matters though.

“Hey, stop s.p.a.cing out! I’ll explain everything later, but first, we gotta shake off these zombies!”

Kiryū lifted me up by the shoulders right as he shouted at me.
He sure is strong in real life, I thought to myself.

“Can you move?”
“Mm… I’m really sleepy, so… maybe?”
“You shoulda gone to bed earlier last night! Oh, whatever, just hide behind me!”
“Uh… okay!

I was shocked when I first saw him, but now I was stunned at how he spoke to me.
It was completely wrong.
The Kiryū I knew was soft-spoken and perceptive. But this guy was snappy, if not brusque.

Weird. It’s as if it were someone else in Kiryū’s body…

—hmm?

—wait, zombies?

“… whaaaaaaaat?!”

Just as I screamed out loud, Kiryū grabbed a crowbar lying nearby and then struck a zombie with it.

Blood splattered down onto the ground… along with various other fluids.

A single swing of the crowbar was enough to silent any groaning zombie.
He then kicked the dead-again zombies aside to create a path before forcefully grabbing my wrist and das.h.i.+ng through the door.

—his hand was so warm.

I had questioned whether this Kiryū was a figment of my imagination, but the warmth of his hand seemed to prove otherwise. And even though I realized I was in a dire situation, his warmth was comforting.

He seems so used to fighting. Wait, was Kiryū a bad boy-type character?

We ran through the door together as I questioned my memory of the game.
The familiar nurses’ station should be just on the other side… except, it wasn’t. Instead, my eyes opened wide as I found an unfamiliar alley in a busy, cloudy part of town.

…! No, I recognize this! I’ve been here before!

“—run!”

He grabbed my wrist and started running before I even had a chance to reply.

“H-Hold on!”

I hadn’t been eating or sleeping nearly enough. I might actually die if I suddenly broke into a full sprint…! Or so I thought, but I actually felt quite agile.

… huh?

In fact, I felt great running. It’s as if the exhaustion I felt until were but mere lies.

Strange… I don’t feel tired at all. No way I’ve had enough sleep to feel this good…

That’s so weird. Was I in the afterlife? I confusedly scanned my surroundings while running.

A narrow alleyway. Worn-out walls.

The buildings are so decrepit, they made me wonder whether they were still structurally sound.

Countless air conditioning units and broken gutters were dangling on the side of them.

I instinctively looked over my shoulder and realized that there were zombies staggering—or rather, scurrying—and chasing us. It probably wouldn’t take more than ten seconds for them to catch up to me if I had stopped running right now.

No surprise that one hit with the crowbar wasn’t enough to take them down… we probably have to do something about them though…

Even though I still didn’t have any idea of what was going on, I knew that we definitely didn’t have the time to sit and think unless we killed the zombies first.
I looked at my surroundings once more as I tried to calm myself down.

—I have definitely been here before.

I… remember seeing this area on a map before.

… we’re in a game…

Realizing the truth sent s.h.i.+vers down my spine.
The streets and the area around it were just how I remembered… we’re in a level of Deadman’s Conflict 3.
The 1998 game was a j.a.panese cla.s.sic in which the player has to slay hordes of zombies while trying to escape from the infected Confi City.

“Downtown”.

This was the first stage of Deadman’s Conflict 3.
The graphics look a lot better, but otherwise it was the same. The door to Uptown should be just a little farther ahead.

The roads here twist and turn like a maze. It sure makes it difficult for beginners…

I remember how tough it was all those years ago where I would be lost in these streets while being chased by zombies and ultimately being eaten over and over and over again.
But perhaps thanks to that, the layout of this town had been deeply burned into my memory…

… hmm? Hey, hold on, you can’t go this way…

I blinked at the path before me. The road ahead splits into three… and the middle path that Kiryū headed towards was the wrong way. I panicked and yanked at his hand to stop him.

“—whoa, hey! What’s wrong?!”

He looked down at me in confusion.

“We gotta hurry, or else the zombies—”
“That way is a dead end, my dea—err, Kiryū!”
“What?!”
“I-It… it’s this way!”

I pulled Kiryū towards the left path as I told him which way we should go.

“Wha—but isn’t that way the dead end? I can’t help but feel we shouldn’t go where it’s clearly marked ‘KEEP OUT’, y’know…?”
“Normally, it’s only open after you complete the second week in game! We’ll… rip through the tape!”
“What?! Rip through it?!”

If this were a game then there would be no way to get past the black and yellow tape with “KEEP OUT” written in big, Helvetica letters.
This path is locked until after the second week is finished. The tape doesn’t budge no matter how much the player cuts or runs into it.

“Hyaaa!”

But seeing how we’re not bound by the rules that the protagonist should be, I easily torn down the tape.

“Just who are…”

Kiryū blankly stared at me but now’s not the time to care about that.
It took me five seconds to take down the tape before we could hurry on through.

—I haven’t touched a single game in this past six months.

All I did after getting home was either check social media or pa.s.s out. But… my body remembered. Deadman’s Conflict 3 is second nature to me.

“But Sera, we can’t open windows in this world.”
“Windows are another story!”

A large window was on the wall right beside us. I hooked my fingers on the frame and pulled on it, but it did no more than jostling it.
It’s a little weird how he addressed me as “Sera”, but that’s not important right now.
Neither pus.h.i.+ng nor pulling the window had any effect so I resorted to borrowing Kiryū’s crowbar and smashed away at the window.
… crowbars are heavier than I imagined.

“Aaaaargh!”
“… you some sort of runaway gorilla or something…?

I ignored Kiryū’s comment on how I’m swinging at the window.
I sure am glad to have played all these zombie games and have researched all the strategies.
Having been swamped by work for the past half year, the gamer didn’t get to unleash all the knowledge I stored for future use, until now!

“Can we really go through this?!”
“Yes, we can! Just be careful of the broken gla.s.s!”

We crawled through the window and into the room, and if my memory serves me right… there it was!
The corpse of an old man (which I couldn’t smell in a game unlike now) sat on a dining chair and in his hand was his a.s.sault rifle with unlimited ammo!

It tough enough to pry it out of his hand, but the old man suddenly turned into a zombie as well. I delivered a swift kick to his head before sending bullet in his brain. It was an instant kill.
It’s not like I did it because I’m actually that savage in real life. The protagonist had to do the same thing else he gets eaten by the old man.

… I never knew rifles were this heavy either.

“Tch, still alive, huh? Why don’t you stay dead already!”
“… what in the world are you…”

Kiryū was dumbfounded after seeing me like that and muttered to himself again, but I didn’t have the time to respond. The zombies should have almost caught up to us by now.

“… c.r.a.p! The d.a.m.n zombies are here already!”

I flashed a smirk just as he shrieked out. Just as I expected, the zombies were here.

“Don’t worry… the old man’s dead for good but let me clean up the rest of them!”

My skirt fluttered as I whipped around.
The zombies came crawling and lumbering to meet my machine gun.

—blam blam blam!

The sound of gunfire masked the sound of the zombie falling over after being shot between the eyes.
Not only did I flip the fire selector switch to burst, but by also going for headshots, I should get double the points. I acquire my next target and fired. And at the next zombie. And the next one…

“Just what kind of creature is she…?”

Kiryū seemed to be taken aback at how casually I’m slaying these zombies. He stood there with a with his mouth wide open.

“You can’t hold back when dealing with zombies, Kiryū. They’re tougher than you might think.
They will pretend they’re dead and then ambush when you’re not expecting it… they’re sneaky b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, eh?!”

I kicked each zombie as I said that to make sure none of them were feigning death.

“When the zombies in this game don’t bleed after keeling over, that means they’re just faking it. Then when you walk close to them, they’ll get you and bite your legs. Be careful about that, okay?”

Right after I felt like I cleared this area, I came back to my senses.

“…”

Then, Kiryū—who was standing there speechless—and I looked at each other.

“…”
“…”
“… umm, uhh, Kiryū! We’re good now! We’re safe!”

Kiryū could only fake a smile as he stared wide eyed at me as I switched back from the gamer me to being a proper human being.

: // /ch002/ //