Chapter 128 - Chapter 111: A Story of Beautiful World
If I think about it, there should have been any number of opportunities to correct my mistakes. But I was frightened by the magnitude of the mistakes I committed and could only turn my eyes away from them. I couldn't do something like facing my mistakes head-on and learning something from them.
This is the result. In the end, I continued to pile up mistakes and went as far as I could go. My mistake was not that I killed people. It was that I abandoned the effort to seek the best result until the end from the beginning and continued to choose only easy paths.
Immediately after seeing the hallucination, the boy left the town where the junior high school was as if escaping. The survivors who had lived in the shelter for several months would have consumed all kinds of food and supplies, and more than anything, the feeling that he wanted to leave the place where he saw that nightmare as soon as possible was strong.
The wound in his stomach had closed and his physical strength was recovering, but his heart was not so. After seeing that hallucination, the boy was forced to recognize the numerous mistakes he had committed. And he couldn't endure the magnitude of those crimes.
Until now, he had been able to escape from the sense of guilt by telling himself he wasn't bad, that everything was unavoidable. However, that magic spell no longer works. The fact that many deaths occurred due to his actions, and the remorse that many of those might have been something that could have been managed somehow, always tormented the boy.
If he hadn't given up early and had continued to seek the best result until the end, wouldn't the number of dead have decreased more? Wouldn't he have been able to avoid performing unnecessary murders?
The movie heroes the boy admired continued to have hope and work hard until the end. And the boy also wanted to become such a human. But what he actually did was only the exact opposite things.
If there is a difficulty, he runs away. Even if there is someone seeking help, he abandons them to prioritize his own safety. To top it off, he can't trust anyone, and when even a little malice is directed at him, he tries to ensure safety by killing everyone. He was no longer a hero, but an existence equivalent to a villain, and the boy despaired at himself.
Like the corpse of that police officer he found at the junior high school, he also considered committing suicide. Since he would spend his days only regretting the mistakes he committed even if he lived anyway, if he died here now, maybe no one would have to become a victim of his foolishness anymore. Besides, even if he lived, hope no longer remains in the world anyway. There is only death, terror, and despair.
But when he actually tried to die and thrust the gun muzzle against his head, he suddenly became unable to pull the trigger. No matter what he said with his mouth or what he thought in his head, his body was honest toward the terror of death. In the end, unable to die by his own hand, yet unable to have hope for living, the boy is driving the car while harboring only feelings of despair and regret.
Since the infected appeared in Japan, nearly a year had already passed. The infected were ingesting nutrition by eating wild animals and were still moving around vigorously.
More than half a year had passed since he continued heading east and east. The boy had already entered the metropolitan area and is now driving on the road along Tokyo Bay. Until now, he had been choosing and proceeding through suburbs with few infected, but that was also near the limit. The supplies in the relatively safe, low-population suburban regions had been consumed by other survivors. Also, because the roads were blocked by rubble from burned-down buildings or bridges and tunnels were destroyed, when he proceeded while bypassing those, he had no choice but to pass through high-population regions.
As he proceeded along the sea, the buildings of Tokyo, lined up like gravestones, looked hazy in the far east. For the boy who lived in the countryside, the opportunities to visit Tokyo were only when he went on trips to his parents' homes or perhaps a junior high school field trip.
Every time he visited Tokyo, he was overwhelmed by the crowds of people wherever he went, but that was no wonder. Over 10 million people lived in Tokyo alone, and if the metropolitan area including neighboring prefectures was included, over 30 million people were living there.
What happened to those people? In regions where population is concentrated, the speed of infection expansion is also fast. Did most get eaten to death by the infected, or did they turn into infected themselves?
Over 10 million infected. In reality, most would have been eaten to death before becoming infected, but even if one thinks that 10% of Tokyo's population became infected, it would be over 1 million. How many of those are still alive now?
Where on earth should I go? While continuing to drive the car aimlessly, the boy thought again of the question he had repeated numerous times. Even after entering the metropolitan area, he hasn't seen a single living human.
He can no longer find meaning or hope in living. The boy was continuing to move only with the desire that he didn't want to die. If food ran out, he moved to another place, and if he was found by the infected, he ran away. As a result of continuing that, he had come all the way to the metropolitan area, far from his birthplace.
No matter where he goes, there is no such thing as a safe place. Will he spend every day just traveling around Japan while continuing to run away from the infected like this forever? The boy thought such a thing while reclining the driver's seat and looking up at the car's ceiling. The sun had already set, and the boy intended to stop the car in the parking lot of a warehouse near the coast and spend the night. In the parking lot, trailers and trucks that had continued to be exposed to the sea breeze and had rust turning on them were stopped here and there.
The sky was covered with black clouds, and the outside was engulfed in a darkness where one couldn't even see 10 meters ahead. Inside the pitch-black car, only the luminous paint applied to the hands of the boy's wristwatch was glowing faintly. Recently, his appetite and sleep desire had completely disappeared. If he was eating, he would feel the guilt of being the only one to survive and eating to live from now on. While sleeping, he sees nightmares.
Since seeing that hallucination, everything has gone wrong. Because he says his appetite doesn't well up and he can't sleep, he normally gets hungry and also gets sleepy. Because of that, his physical strength is being shaved away more and more.
Recently, he had come to take cold medicine to sleep even though he wasn't sick. Among cold medicines, there are those that induce sleepiness as a side effect. He was taking those primarily, and only when he took the medicine could he fall asleep without seeing nightmares. Though his body is sluggish when he wakes up, and his fatigue doesn't go away at all.
From where did he go wrong, what should he have done? And what should he do from now on—he is thinking only of those. Even if he tries to distract himself by thinking of fun things or bright things, he doesn't even feel like that. Even if he looks back, fun memories do not float in his head.
Even if he looks back behind him, even if he looks forward, what is spreading is only darkness that continues everywhere. Without even being able to stop on the spot, the boy can only continue to move forward while being frightened by the events that will occur from now on.
"...?"
When he was looking up at the sky where black clouds representing his heart spread through the windshield, he felt as if something moved suddenly in the corner of his vision. In the shadow of a truck loaded with a silver-white container on its bed in the parking lot, it looked like something moved.
He quickly raised his body from the seat and took the submachine gun beside him. He focused on the direction of the truck again, but because it was dark, nothing could be seen. Since a while ago, the moon had been showing its face and hiding it from the gaps in the clouds from time to time, but now it was blocked by clouds and the moonlight wasn't reaching the ground.
He took the night vision device from the pouch of the chest rig he remained wearing and wrapped the headband around his head. His head became heavy all at once, but without minding it, he applied the monocular night vision device to his left eye and turned on the power. The vision of his left eye was dyed green all at once, and the figures of the trucks and trailers lined up in the parking lot, and the warehouse groups standing beyond them, were clearly visible as if it were daytime.
And in that green vision, this time he could clearly confirm the figure of a human peering this way from the shadow of the truck. Although the face couldn't be seen, he could tell at least that they were facing the direction of the wagon the boy was riding in.
They don't seem to be infected. If it were an infected, they wouldn't do something like hiding in something in the first place.
But if that's a human, it will be a troublesome matter. The possibility that that human figure came to this place by chance is low. If survivors, who are few in number, happened to encounter each other with a miraculous probability, there's no way the other side would be aware of the boy's existence. There wouldn't be a possibility of them being a first arrival either. After deciding to spend the night in the warehouse parking lot, he had looked around the surrounding buildings as much as possible and confirmed that no one was there.
If so, that person means they followed the boy. From where? For what purpose?
The boy cursed his own carelessness once again. He always commits some failure at a crucial point. Even if he makes the excuse that fatigue had accumulated, it's after the festival. It cannot be denied that he invited such a situation by neglecting vigilance.
The problem was for what purpose that person had followed after the boy. Did they come to attack, or did they come to seek help?
However, there didn't seem to be time for thinking. While holding the submachine gun, the boy softly opened the driver's seat door and went outside. The human figure started moving from the shadow of the truck and was approaching the boy's wagon at a light run.
He was about to aim the submachine gun toward that human figure, and then lowered the muzzle. Because the rule "Never lay hands first" crossed his head. Because of that, he had just almost died after being shot in the stomach.
But is it really okay not to shoot? The other side might already be ready to do it. If the opponent has a gun, the one who shoots first wins.
Inside the boy's head now, two of himself existed. One is shouting to shoot quickly, that every human other than himself is an enemy. The other is wishing to believe in human goodwill. Which one should he follow to no longer have to regret? To no longer make a mistake?
After hesitating, the boy took a flashlight instead of a gun. Then, he took a large breath in and out, and at the same time as shouting "Who is it!?", he shone the light toward the person who was approaching.
In the intense light that cut through the darkness, there was the figure of a man covering his eyes with his hand while saying "Uwah...!". He apparently hadn't thought in the slightest that the boy would use a night vision device and notice his presence. The figure of the man, who wrapped a black bandana around his forehead and was clad in a thick jumper and work pants, had an unexpected sense of cleanliness, and in his hand, a revolver handgun was gripped.
That's why I told you to shoot quickly. He felt like he heard someone mutter that in his head. At the same time, he heard someone shout "He noticed, shoot!" beyond the darkness, followed by a dazzling muzzle flash scattering the darkness, and the gunshot shaking the air.
With a hyu, a bullet cut through the air, and the metallic sound of it piercing a left-behind vehicle echoed. "Shit...!" the boy spat an abuse that he didn't even know who it was directed at anymore, and pulled the trigger of his counterattack from the shadow of the wagon.