Chapter 15 - Recommendation To Clean Up
The door to the conference room opened, and three people came back.
First off was feeling a peace of mind.
The mood inside the room relaxed.
For someone to die from the beginning would probably lower everyone’s morale considerably.
Tooru was really glad that they came back alive.
“We closed the gates.”
Takumi said.
“Thank you very much.”
Tooru sincerely thanked them from the bottom of his heart.
And then, everyone began to say their thanks.
Tooru thought that, although it wasn’t enough for sleeping and eating together from now on, they had at least established a sense of unity.
Estimating when everyone would finish giving their gratitude, Tooru spoke up.
“Then, I think we should move to cleaning up the inside of the school. This school is, students and teachers combined, about 1000 people. Subtracting the people who escaped to the suburbs, those who were absent, and those who didn’t turn into zombies, I think it will end on 800 people. We here, myself included, are 15 people. We will be using this conference room as the base for the time being, and with one person who can’t fight with two people who can fight, we will guard it.”
Hearing “people who can’t fight”, three people from the back raised their hands after a moment.
They were Miu, Sakura, and Hazuki.
“Then, this defense for this place is…”
Daiki raised his hand.
His great physical power might really be fitting for defense.
Furthermore, if Daiki joined the cleaning up, Tooru had a feeling like that would be an outrageous mistake.
“Then, one person is Daiki. And the other is…”
Rei raised his hand.
He wasn’t a person who would go out to a fight himself.
If anything, he gave off the feeling of not being able to kill even an insect.
To kill a person who once was probably impossible for his mentality.
“Then, Rei. In that case, the remaining 10 people will do the cleaning up.”
“Which means, it’s fine to send eighty flying by myself? How simple!”
Kazuma said cheerfully.
However, eighty for one person was probably impossible.
He was too unrealistic.
The weapons will likely break, and he should be out of stamina.
It was probably alright to say that it was impossible to knock down eighty as well.
“I don’t think we will be able to take down all of them. We will reduce them to a certain degree and then continue tomorrow. As long as we play music, they shouldn’t come here. Then, let’s split into teams.”
“Teams?”
Ryu raised a question.
“Exactly. After the night has grown cold, we will want blankets. Food is needed as well. Wasn’t there an emergency use storehouse?”
Ryu remembered after being told that.
There was a large storehouse in the inner part of the staff room.
If they opened the door with dial padlocks, there should be clothing and food for emergencies.
“One team will clean up, and another will go and take supplies from the storehouse and bring them to the conference room.”
After Tooru ended speaking, they started deciding on the teams.
“Supply procurement team: Tooru Saejima Jun Haiga Kazuma Aso Tsubasa Honma
Cleaning up team: Takumi Toudou Shinji Shouda Yuuki Miyoshi Ryu Kaneda Seji Honda”
He filled out the teams on the whiteboard.
The fighting power of the cleaning up team was strong, but Tooru thought he had equally divided on the whole.
“Then, let’s take a weapon each and go. Please don’t overdo it. Let all of the members here return.”
Tooru said, and everyone nodded strongly.
“Then, the cleaning up team will head off first.”
Takumi opened the door.
The cleaning up team also acted somewhat like decoys.
Having them attracting the zombies would make it easier for the supply procurement team to carry the supplies.
The back of the last person, Seiji, disappeared on the other side of the door.
“Then, let’s go.”
He prompted the members behind him.
Everyone was carrying their various weapons.
Bats, kitchen knives, drilling punches, and so on.
It was too unreasonable to deal with eighty zombies.
They had to procure weapons somewhere as well, was what Tooru thought as he opened the door.
The remaining five people.
Among them, Rei was being tormented with guilt.
(They are definitely thinking that I’m worthless, right…)
Rei had a tall stature.
But despite that, he didn’t join the cleaning up to fight but stayed here in safety instead.
Tsubasa, who looked less able to fight, still went to clean up.
He felt like the eyes from the surroundings stung.
It hurt.
To escape from that pain, he slightly shook his body.
“Everyone went, huh…”
Daiki muttered.
“I wonder if they will be fine…”
Sakura said uneasily.
Her expression and tone of voice were disguised as unease.
“It will be fine! I, myself, believe in them after all!”
Hazuki said cheerfully.
Her cheerful expression was the opposite of Sakura’s.
Rather…
“Asagiri, you use self1 in first person, right...”
He regretted it as soon as he had said it.
What was he saying…
Was he stupid?
He was stupid.
“Hmm… Now that you mention it, that’s right.”
He was relieved for now since she had answered.
If she hadn’t answered, his mind would have broken down.
He sat in the corner, grasping his knees.
“I use self in first person too!”
“I, myself, use self too! How similar!”
It was an endless noise of “self”.
Why did these special people using myself gather together…
No, it was better that it wasn’t “Su2”.
It wouldn’t be funny if everyone said “Su”.
Perhaps a conversation wouldn’t even be made.
Being surprised to have the leisure to be thinking that, he was frightened by the scene he meekly imagined.
- Unfortunately, this is lost in translation. "Myself" is called "jibun" in Japanese. It doesn’t specify any pronoun and can therefore mean “myself”, “yourself”, “herself”, etc. Here, Rei notices that Hazumi Asagiri uses it when referring to herself, which I translated as "I, myself". As I have seen, "jibun" is mostly used when speaking about other people and rarely yourself, and that's what Rei commented on. ↑
- As I have understood it, it’s used in relation to danger and seriousness. ↑