I moved to the driver's seat and watched the unidentified hand that had appeared at the storage room door.
The hand was small. But it wasn't human.
It pushed the storage room door wide open. Then the whole body came into view.
Small. But revolting.
It stood about half my height, with a bloated body, oversized ears, and huge red eyes. Its nose was barely there, and its mouth was tiny — but the tips of its long fingers looked razor sharp.
If there's an ugly end of the monster spectrum, this thing was on it.
I kept watching it move. It came inside and started rummaging through the dark storage room. But it didn't approach the bus. Like the bus simply didn't exist.
It couldn't see me. Or rather — it couldn't see the bus.
*So what about the one that pressed its face against the window earlier? Does it just look like a wall to them?*
That seemed to be exactly it. Once the creature moved out of the headlights' reach, I could barely make it out — but I could hear it tearing through the storage room. Every now and then it would drift over and stand right next to the bus, perfectly still. Like it sensed something was there but couldn't quite see it.
I switched on every light inside the bus. But the bright interior light didn't reach far enough to illuminate the dark storage room. If anything, the glowing cabin made the darkness outside harder to see — like the light was being contained within the bus. The creature didn't react at all.
I raised my hand and clapped once, lightly. Nothing.
I clapped harder, several times in a row.
*Can't hear me either?*
I tried shouting.
"Hey! You ugly little freak!"
My ridiculous outburst didn't reach it.
Finally, I gave the horn a short tap.
*Honk!*
The creature flinched. Then it snapped its gaze toward the source of the sound and glared.
*Okay. Gotta be careful with that.*
So light and noise from inside the bus didn't leak out. Except for the horn.
*Phew.*
The tension drained out of me all at once. As my muscles slowly unclenched, my senses came flooding back — and with them, a sharp, gnawing hunger.
I opened the fridge and grabbed a beer. Pulled out a pack of sausages while I was at it.
*Oh, there's a microwave?*
I took a paring knife from the kitchen drawer and scored the sausages. Started to put them in the microwave, then changed my mind.
I set a pan on the induction burner, drizzled in some oil, and fried them up instead.
I flipped on the ceiling vent fan and the smoke cleared in seconds. The motor was loud, but the creature outside didn't react.
*Will the smell get out?*
As the sausages started sizzling, the creature's behavior shifted. It moved like it was searching for something.
*Ah — so smells do get out. Was the horn just a special case?*
I went over to the control panel and looked for the exterior lights. There were separate buttons for right, rear, and left. I hit the right-side button and the storage room flooded with light.
The creature still didn't react to it. Just kept trashing the place.
These things don't seem to care much about light. The way they move naturally in the dark, they must have some other sense I don't know about.
I turned off the burner and the vent fan, slid the sausages onto a plate, and sat down at the table.
Without taking my eyes off the creature outside, I cracked open the beer and took a long sip.
Cold. Crisp. This is exactly why you drink domestic beer.
I bit into a sausage.
*Oh.*
The juices hit my tongue — savory, salty, with a hint of sweetness underneath. I'd never had a sausage taste like that before.
Just minutes ago I'd been shaking with the fear of dying. And here I was, one beer in, feeling genuinely happy over good food. Was I always this simple?
Maybe that's why the creature outside the window was starting to feel almost... normal. It had terrified me at first. But the longer I watched it, the more the fear faded — replaced by this strange sense that I could actually take it out.
That was a weird thought. *Take it out?* Me? I couldn't even watch a chicken get slaughtered back in the countryside. I'd had to leave the room. And that wasn't even something I'd done myself.
But right now, I genuinely felt like I could do it. More than that — I had a sense of exactly where to strike. Which part to stab, which angle to cut, to drop it instantly.
*Why do I know that?*
*Why does it feel like I already know?*
I rinsed the plate and set it in the sink, then slid the dark glass cover shut. I walked over to the storage room door beside the bedroom — I remembered seeing some tools in there earlier.
I opened it. Inside were a few items that felt both familiar and completely out of place.
A sword — the kind you'd expect from medieval Europe. Mid-length. Not too long, not too short.
A wooden shield, crudely made. Small. It looked flimsy. I wasn't sure how much good it would do.
And a bow, with a quiver. About five arrows inside.
Way too out of place for a camper van's storage room. Maybe for a cosplay enthusiast — but that wasn't exactly Grandpa's style. At least, I didn't think so.
I picked up the sword. The hilt was gold, with a red gemstone set into the pommel.
I turned the blade over and examined it. Both edges were sharp and well-maintained, and the flat of the blade gleamed like a mirror. I could see my own eyes reflected in it.
*Not bad.*
I gripped it with both hands, and something strange stirred inside me.
Confidence. Strength. With no real basis for either.
Like the muscle memory of someone who had used this blade before — some distant day — was waking up inside me.
But it wasn't my memory. It felt more like instinct. Something written into my cells.
Then the bus door slid open on its own.
*Wait — did I accidentally hit something?*
The moment it opened, the creature outside flinched and locked its gaze on the interior.
My eyes met its red ones. So when the door was open, it could see inside.
If this had been me a few hours ago, I would've slammed the door shut and pulled a blanket over my head. But instead, my body was already moving toward the open door.
*Is one beer really doing this to me?*
I felt my grip tighten on the sword. The ugly little creature began slowly moving toward me.
*Can it actually come inside the bus?*
I was genuinely curious. If it could, things were about to get very bad. Even with a sharp blade in my hand, if those claws so much as grazed me — I didn't want to finish that thought.
Should I close the door?
But even as it crept closer, the fear I'd felt before wasn't there. Something had changed.
I raised the sword. Slowly leveled it at the creature. Ready to drive it through its gut, or take its head off — whichever came first.
The creature kept coming. It stopped right at the door. Reached out a hand.
But its grotesque fingers couldn't cross the threshold.
And then, without thinking, I drove the sword forward with everything I had.
The blade punched clean through the creature's throat.
It let out a hideous shriek and convulsed violently. Green liquid sprayed in every direction — but not a single drop made it through the open door. Every bit of it bounced away, like there was an invisible barrier holding it back.
I yanked the sword free. The green fluid coating the blade wiped itself clean the moment it crossed back inside the bus.
*Huh. Nice.*
That was my first kill. Even if the target was a monster, it was still a kill.
But I felt nothing. No guilt. No shock. That was strange. When I was a kid, I'd had nightmares for weeks after watching a chicken get its head cut off at my grandparents' place — and I hadn't even been the one to do it. Just seeing it had been enough to mess me up.
But right now I was watching green fluid pump out of a dying creature with a completely blank expression.
The creature couldn't scream anymore — not with a hole in its throat. It clutched at its neck, collapsed to the ground, thrashed for a moment, and went still.
*Is it dead?*
A few seconds later, its body began to change. It grew faint, like it was dissolving into dust, then scattered in all directions and vanished. In the spot where it had fallen, something was left behind.
It looked like a stone, or maybe an alien eye — something I had no name for. It glowed with a faint green light.
*I feel like I need to take that.*
I walked toward the open door. A little nervous, but my body was already stepping outside.
I crouched and studied the object without touching it. A soft, shifting green glow. The longer I stared, the more it seemed to pull me in.
*Should be fine to pick up, right?*
I had a passing worry about radiation, or poison, or some kind of virus — but my hand was already reaching for it before I'd finished the thought.
Then a small panel on the side of the bus clicked open. It looked like a fuel cap cover. On closer inspection, it was clearly designed to receive something.
The green stone in my hand suddenly started vibrating hard. I startled and dropped it.
And then it just — floated.
It hung in the air for a moment, then shot straight into the fuel port and disappeared. The cover snapped shut.
*What... what just happened?*
I was thrown off, but the answer came to me almost immediately. That was the fuel. Whatever this bus ran on, it wasn't diesel — I'd already suspected that much. I just hadn't expected it to work like this.
I climbed back in and closed the door. Checked the dashboard.
A green bar display. I couldn't remember exactly what it had looked like before, but it seemed like it had gone up by one segment. The bar looked like it could show about ten levels total. It was at three now. Next to it, a word was printed: *Khorca*.
*...Kor-ka?*
I wasn't sure if I was pronouncing it right, but that's what I'd call it.
*Better not waste the Khorca.*
I went back to the table and sat down.
*But why did the door open on its own? Like it was telling me to do something.*
If the door could open without me touching it, the bus must have had some intention behind it.
Maybe this was how it communicated — when it needed me to do something, it would do something like that.
*Can't talk, but it feels alive.*
In the span of a single day, I was already adapting to this. To all of it — the situation, the bus. Even with everything unknown outside, I felt strangely at ease. Like I was re-reading something that had been written into my cells a long time ago.
*Grrrwl.*
One sausage hadn't been nearly enough. I opened the fridge again.
*Huh?*
The sausages I'd taken out earlier were right back where they'd been.
*Infinite refills?*
Seriously? This fridge just... restocked itself? It looked like the default items kept replenishing on their own.
This time I grabbed pork belly. And another beer, already replaced.
*Thanks, Grandpa.*
The world had ended, and somehow I was living better than before.
I swallowed a mouthful of anticipation, laid the pork belly in the pan, and switched on the vent fan.
Then I cracked the beer and looked out the window. Still inside the storage room. I was curious about what was out there. Time to move.
The rich smell of sizzling pork belly drifted out through the vent fan and into the dark.