While I’m moved by her maturity, the princess rubs her forehead and nose as she quietly mutters, “Y-You certainly pack quite the punch, though…”

“Ah! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

She does remember! And vividly at that!

“My ‘purification’ was painfully intense as well… I believe the strength you put behind it increased significantly since the first time.”

“I’m not apologizing to you, Lex.” I glare daggers at him and he guiltily looks away.

The princess glances from me to Lex and says, “You seem like good friends.”

“Not in particular,” I flatly declare.

“L-Lady Mizuha!” Lex turns a pair of imploring eyes on me.

It’s not like I’ve said anything bad. I mean—

“We only just met several hours ago…”

“You did? I was completely under the impression you had spent far more time together.”

It’s true that I no longer hold back around Lex. Mostly because he has a few screws loose. He’s undeniably a serious and good guy, too, though.

“Lex, can you introduce us?”

“Yes, Your Highness!” Lex introduces me per the princess’s orders. “There is nothing to hide here, for the Goddess has sent this fair maiden to save our world as the holy—”

“Okay, stop right there.”

“Is something the matter, Lady Mizuha?”

“Yes! Don’t give me that look like you’ve done nothing wrong. You were about to say a word that starts with pr, weren’t you?”

“Yes, m’lady. Next would be ie, then st, finally followed by—” Lex says, giving hints in order, to which the princess cheerfully raises her right hand.

“I know the answer! Does that not spell priestess?!”

“Correct!”

“Hey! How did this turn into a spelling bee?! And she even got the right answer!”

The princess is all for Lex’s games. My head is killing me. I get the feeling I’m going to be introduced as the holy priestess to every person I purify as long as I’m traveling with Lex. Maybe I should just let him stay as a zombie forever? Of course, that’s just a joke. It’s only a joke…

“Lex likes to call me that, but I’m not someone so important as a priestess.”

“I understand, Lady Mizuha. We shall leave it at that.”

She seems to have accepted my opinion because she caught on to how I’m feeling. It makes me wonder if she really understands… You know what, I don’t think she does. She’s smiling away like she’s in on a secret. This has gotta be one of those times when someone thinks they just have to play along! I have to set it straight right now!

I open my mouth to say something, when violent winds carrying a black fog hit me smack in the face. Surprise wins out at first because of how abruptly it happens, but then revulsion almost suffocates me once I realize how bizarre that fog is. The lukewarm wind feels like someone’s hands running over my skin. I shudder as all the hair on my body stands up. Disgusting. Creepy.

The wind blows by in a matter of seconds. The thick fog rushes past us at lightning speed. The sickening sensation I felt a second ago is gone.

“Wh-What was that?!” I shout, and I hear a thud right behind me. I look toward the sound and find the princess has fallen on her bottom. “A-Are you all right?!”

“Lady Mizuha… Yes, I am all right. Thank you.”

She must’ve been affected by the black fog. It made me feel nauseated, too, but not bad enough to knock me to the ground. But that’s me. Princess Cia is still a child. She may be mature for her age, but it makes sense she couldn’t endure the overwhelming fear brought with the wind.

“Please be quiet.” Lex touches his index finger to his lips as he grimly locks his eyes on what’s ahead of us.

“What’s gotten into you all of a sudden?”

“Can’t you hear it?”

I incline my head to the side. I don’t hear anything that sounds out of the ordinary. Following Lex’s lead, I look ahead while straining my ears, and I pick up on a faint noise. It sounds like the commotion out on a school field. The sound grows louder with the passage of time.

“…What is that sound?”

“Ladies, hurry and hide over there!” Lex points to the trees beside the road. Seeing how panicked he is tells me this is no ordinary situation. I step forward to move where he pointed but then stop when I see the princess still sitting on the ground.

“Princess!”

The situation being what it is, I think she’ll forgive me being a little rough with her. With that in mind, I tug on the princess’s hand and head for cover behind the trees. Per Lex’s advice, I hide with my back pressed against the largest tree in the vicinity. Lex hides elsewhere because the princess and I take up a lot of space together.

Not long after we hide, the noises I’d been hearing sound closer than ever. It’s the rumbling, pounding sound of lots of feet chaotically stomping and dragging across the ground to the chorus of “Bwah bwah.” That proves it—zombies are here. In droves.

I took shelter without knowing why, but now I want to know what in the zombie apocalypse is going on now. Maybe this is a case of curiosity overcoming fear. I carefully peek around the big tree trunk for a look at the road.

Zombies are walking this way as I suspected. But the number is leaps and bounds beyond what I expected. There aren’t just ten or twenty. Fifty? …No, it looks closer to a hundred. It’s the end of the line for us if that horde finds us. I have to touch them to purify them, and I don’t have that many hands!

I suddenly feel my right hand shaking. I’m in a hellish situation, so it’s not wrong for me to be scared. Or so I tell myself, until I realize the shaking is coming from the princess, not me. She had peeked out at the road as well. The shock had been too much for her; her face is paler than a sheet, and she’s shaking harder than the vibrations in the ground.

“Don’t worry. I’m here with you.” My subconscious awareness of being older has me instinctively embrace the princess from behind with both arms. I drop all formalities and hug her close. I’m worried I’ve angered her, but that concern seems unnecessary. The princess leans into me as if reassured by my actions.

I wonder if this is what it would’ve been like if I had had a sister. Now’s not the time for such delusions, but I can’t help myself. The princess’s petite frame fits perfectly in my arms. She’s comforting to hug. Plus, in spite of having been a stinky zombie until not too long ago, she smells sweet like vanilla. Is this princess power?

Thus, the zombie horde begins to pass by us while I’m enjoying my hug with the princess. I was worried sick about what would happen when they got closer, but we can survive without incident if they keep going on their merry way like this. All thanks to Lex for quickly noticing them coming.

Giving him silent thanks, I glance at Lex. Just then, the tree he’s hiding behind creaks. It must have been rotten on the inside as well. The tree makes more cracking sounds and snaps in half.

It falls on the ground with a loud KA-BAM! The zombie horde swivels toward him as one and all cry out “BWAH!” as if it’s a call to battle. Or maybe a dinner bell in this case?

Lex turns toward me with a tense face. “I-I deeply apologize…!”

“STUPID LEX!”

It’s because of Lex that the zombie horde hadn’t noticed us up until now. I’m grateful for that—I am—but it doesn’t mean much if they find us in the end anyway!

The fallen tree has drawn the zombies’ attention to us already. They single-mindedly lurch our way like a bloodhound on the trail. They move at only a brisk walk, but the sheer number of them is what makes it plenty intimidating.

“Run away first, ladies!”

“What about you, Lex?!”

“I will follow right behind you after I slow them down!”

“Sl-Slow them down?! Did you forget you got reinfected doing that earlier?!”

“Please fret not. There are a plethora of ways to get by now that I know not to touch them.” Lex draws a real long sword from the sheath at his waist, and something sharp gleams in his eyes.

“H-Hey! D-Don’t tell me you’re going to cut them with that?!”

Right now, they’re deadly zombies, but there’s a chance they can return to human if I purify them. We shouldn’t kill them if we can avoid it. Lex should know that more than anyone. I sure hope his brains didn’t fry some more after being reinfected!

My fears are proved wrong when Lex runs toward not the zombies but the gigantic tree growing beside the road. He drops his knees and swings his sword sideways in a flash of steel. He slices right through the trunk close to the ground, separating the top half from the bottom. Groaning, the giant tree falls across the road.

“Wow…”

I don’t care how good you are with the sword—it shouldn’t be possible to slice through a tree trunk bigger than the human waist. At least, it’s not possible in the world I come from. This is surreal in every sense of the word.

“Lex is the best swordsman in all of Grantz,” the princess explains as I stand there dumbfounded.

“He’s that amazing of a person…?”

“He does lack in a few areas because he is so serious, which is the one blot on his character.”

“That blot on his character utterly offsets the good.”

I can’t stop from replaying in my mind the scene of Lex courageously taking on the zombie only to be stupidly reinfected. It’s going to be pretty difficult to erase this image without something making a bigger impression on me. While it didn’t do the trick, his splitting the massive tree in half was pretty awesome.

While the princess and I are chatting, Lex is going around knocking the trees down onto the road. Thanks to his efforts, the zombie horde’s forward progress has been drastically slowed, though they haven’t completely stopped in their tracks. Some of the horde are walking the long way around the downed trees, while others are sluggishly climbing over them, all the while steadily closing in on us.

“Right, this isn’t the time to be casually watching… Can you run, Princess?”

“Y-Yes!” The princess nods, her expression frantic.

I take her hand and break into a run in the opposite direction of the zombies.

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