The night on the hill of Shinjuku passed without a single word from the three of them. After vaulting the chain-link fence around Hanazono High School and breaking through the rusted rooftop door, their physical exhaustion and accumulated mental burdens made Renjiro, Daiki, and Kazuki fall instantly into a deep sleep.
Behind the massive water tank that had served as their secret headquarters since their school days, the three of them sprawled across an old foam sofa and a dingy mattress left behind by a sports club that had been abandoned for years. The cold night air pricking their skin couldn't disturb their peaceful sleep in the slightest.
Outside, along the city streets stretching beneath the hill, police-car sirens, the thunderous crashes of vehicle collisions, and hysterical screams echoed back and forth throughout the night. But to the three young men asleep on the school rooftop, all that noise was nothing more than a passing breeze swallowed by the depths of their dreams. They were completely unaware that beneath the darkness of night, the social order they knew was collapsing and rotting from the inside.
Warm morning sunlight slowly crept up from the eastern horizon, scattering golden light through the gaps in the rooftop's surrounding fence at Hanazono High School.
Renjiro Tachibana was the first to wake. The tousle-haired young man lazily stretched on the sofa, yawning so widely that his jaw gave a faint pop. He ruffled his increasingly disheveled black hair, rubbed both eyes that felt heavy, then let out a long breath. His face wore the unmistakable look of someone who had just woken from a deep sleep—his awareness not yet fully gathered, his eyelids stiffly narrowed, and his blank gaze fixed on the morning sky.
Still in his socks, Renjiro walked casually toward the rooftop's iron safety railing, his steps slightly unsteady on the concrete floor. His intentions were simple: enjoy the fresh morning air, stretch his stiff muscles, and figure out where they could get a cheap breakfast to fill their stomachs.
But the moment Renjiro placed both hands on the railing and cast his eyes down the hill of Shinjuku, all the sleepiness in his head evaporated.
The view below was nothing like an ordinary morning in Tokyo. There were no orderly lines of city buses, no groups of suited office workers hurrying across intersections, and none of the organized bustle of urban life.
Instead, spread out before Renjiro's eyes was a horrifying expanse of chaos.
Thick pillars of black smoke rose high into the sky from several corners of the district, signaling massive fires left unattended. On the main road below the hill, dozens of cars had crashed into one another in a chain reaction, ending up strewn haphazardly across the roadway. Storefront windows lay shattered, several utility poles had fallen onto vehicles, and patches of dried blood stained the asphalt of the deserted streets.
In several alleys and at various intersections, Renjiro caught sight of human figures moving with grotesque, horrifying physiques. Their bodies had swollen far beyond normal human proportions, their clothes torn apart by rigid, bulging muscles. Thick, dark fur two to three centimeters long sprouted along their arms and legs, as well as across their cheeks and jaws, mingling with gaping, rotting wounds at the spots where they had been bitten before changing. The figures moved slowly, dragging their feet, but whenever they saw panicked civilians, they suddenly leaped and sprinted at abnormal speed, pouncing on their victims and knocking them onto the asphalt.
Renjiro rubbed his eyes repeatedly with his palms, thinking his vision was acting up because he hadn't had his morning coffee yet. He squinted, staring down at the scene with a deeply furrowed brow and an innocent expression mixed with disgust.
"Why do people get weirder every day?" Renjiro remarked casually, his raspy, just-woke-up voice breaking the rooftop's silence.
Daiki Murata, who apparently had been standing silently on the left side of the railing for several minutes, stiffly shook his head. The two-toned-haired young man's face was as pale as a corpse, his eyes wide as he stared at the destruction of the city below.
"No... something's wrong, Ren," Daiki replied in a soft, trembling voice. His throat felt incredibly dry.
Meanwhile, Kazuki Endo, who had been sitting on the mattress while fiddling with his phone, stepped closer with an unusually serious, troubled expression. The relaxed look he'd worn while chewing bread the previous afternoon was gone.
"Looks like the news we saw yesterday afternoon was real..." Kazuki said quietly, his voice deep. "...Something is seriously wrong with this city."
Kazuki held out his phone, which was still picking up the remnants of a slow internet signal. On the screen was a summary of an official news article published by the national media before the mass-broadcasting system completely collapsed.
The three of them huddled together, reading the written report word by word:
> **[NATIONAL MEDIA SPECIAL REPORT] STRANDED ON ANTIMATERIA SOCOTRA ISLAND, OCEANIC NEXUS LOGISTICS CREW CARRIES MYSTERIOUS INFECTION OUTBREAK** > > *...The multinational cargo ship owned by Oceanic Nexus Logistics, which was reported missing two weeks ago, has finally run aground off the coast of Socotra Island due to severe damage to its emergency engines. Of the ship's total crew of forty-five, only two crew members managed to save themselves by using an automatic emergency motorized lifeboat toward the waters of Yokohama Port.* > > *According to preliminary testimony from the surviving crew, the entire expedition team aboard the main vessel was attacked by specimens of an unknown organism after landing in the island's interior. The organism triggered extreme biological mutation: the patients' bodies grew significantly larger than their original proportions and developed thick fur two to three centimeters long along their arms, legs, and faces.* > > *The second surviving crew member, evacuated at Yokohama Port yesterday afternoon, confirmed that the pathogen spreads through bites and bodily fluids. Infected victims experience rapid tissue decay at the site of the wound before changing, loss of higher brain function, and an extreme increase in physical aggression. Authorities urge the public not to approach Yokohama Port or the surrounding districts...*
"So... the people biting each other in yesterday afternoon's broadcast weren't some media stunt?" Daiki rasped. The hand holding his empty Zippo lighter trembled unconsciously. "That man on the pier really turned into a monster..."
Renjiro stood frozen in place. His mind struggled to process the reality that yesterday's bad feeling and everyone's fear had turned out to be more than cheap hysteria. The city where they had grown up was now on the verge of total collapse.
Before any of them could speak again, the three phones held by Kazuki, Daiki, and Renjiro suddenly vibrated and screamed in unison.
*BZZZZ! BZZZZ! BZZZZ!*
The national emergency alert alarm blared from the phones' tiny speakers, breaking the morning silence with an ear-piercing noise. A blood-red pop-up banner filled all three phone screens, displaying an official warning from the Ministry of Defense:
> 🚨 **HIGH-LEVEL MILITARY EMERGENCY** 🚨 > > **The Central Government has declared a Level I Emergency National Biohazard Quarantine throughout Japan.** > > **1. All civilians are INSTRUCTED TO TAKE SHELTER IMMEDIATELY INDOORS OR IN A PROTECTED LOCATION and lock all entrances.** > **2. The Military Defense Forces and Riot Control Units are being deployed to establish a total containment line.** > **3. STRICTLY PROHIBITED: approaching public areas, stations, or individuals displaying symptoms of physical infection.** > **4. Electricity, clean water, and cellular communications will undergo rolling outages for emergency-response purposes.**
The phones' crackling siren slowly faded, leaving behind a terrifying silence that once again crept across the rooftop of Hanazono High School.
Daiki swallowed with difficulty. "Martial law... This really is the apocalypse, isn't it?"
Kazuki turned off his phone's screen, which had begun to dim as its battery ran out. "If they shut down the communications network and the military closes the streets... we're trapped here."
Yet amid the fear and despair engulfing his two friends, Renjiro slowly raised his head. The tousle-haired young man stared at the pillars of black smoke burning across the sky over Tokyo.
In the rigid society that had always viewed the three of them as troubled delinquents, those boring social rules no longer applied. Money, academic titles, and the rigid norms that had once judged their existence had collapsed in a single night.
Slowly but surely, a thin, cold grin spread across the corner of Renjiro Tachibana's lips. The sleepiness had vanished from his eyes, replaced by a flash of wild instinct and physical toughness ready to be tested in this new world.
"Looks like..." Renjiro whispered, his voice steady and cold, "...the world we wished for yesterday has really arrived."