I watch Shun fall to his knees, suddenly weak and helpless, but the very next second it strikes him that I exist and stuff and he immediately half-crawl-half-clambers over to my side, wild concern in his soft brown eyes. I'm happy to see that he's no longer half-transparent and shimmery.

"Tomomi? Are you okay? What did they do to you?"

I stare, almost incredulous. Shouldn't this be my line?

This is exactly why nice, selfless people make me cry. Like, this guy had  been through god knows what when hooked to that goddamn machine andhad just finished a pretty rough fight with our now dead principal and yet the first thing out of his mouth is to check if I'm okay.

I'm old-fashioned like that. Truly good people gets me every time.

Shun seems horrified when I start crying. Some guys are like that. A girl starts crying and they don't know what to do with themselves anymore. He pats my back awkwardly, whispering comforting words, which only make me sob harder. And then I hug him. I'm not one to go around hugging crushes because that's freaking embarrassing but I'd say in this situation pretty much anything can be excused. I could start jamming to SMAP songs while standing on my head and Shun wouldn't bat an eyelash.

Okay, maybe not, that would be going a bit too far.

He lets me hug him, and even hugs back a little. And then he asks if I'mall right again. Not out of politeness, I can tell that he really wants an answer.

"I'm fine as can be. Are you all right?" I demand.

Shun looks surprised, like he hasn't even considered his own well-being until now. Which is perfectly possible considering how selfless he is.

Good people, they're the bane of my existence.

"I'm okay, I guess," he finally says with a smile. His lips curl up at the sides like a cat. Funny, all these years and I haven't noticed until now. "A bit hungry though, haven't eaten for—what is it? A week?"

"Less than one day, precisely," I tell him.

"Oh. It felt much longer than that. Let's go get something to eat, shall we?" Shun says, standing up, but I pull him back down again.

"We aren't going anywhere," I explain hastily. "It's night and the cafeteria isn't open, but that's not the point. The point is—"

"—the horde outside, yeah?" Shun finishes for me.

Part of me is screaming my crush finished my sentence for me how cool is that but the other part of me is thankfully at least somewhat more alert.

"How do you know?" I ask, alarmed.

"Uh..."Shun scratches his head. "It's gonna take some time to explain. I bet Mrs. Sato's got food in her office. We can lock ourselves inside then talk?"

I nod, numbly. Perhaps I should have been somewhat worried because if the whole school is no longer themselves there's no reason why Shun shouldn't have transformed into something else as well, but my gut says it's fine, and I trust my gut. I've had all those years of experience observing Shun like a lovesick puppy from afar after all, so I reason that if anything is off I should be able to sense it like the cute beagles who sniff out weed at the airport.

Right now, nothing seems off. We're back to the eerily quiet corridor, with the weird humming of the machines. But I'm not as scared as I were before; Shun is beside me now and at least this is one thing I can be sure of, one concrete thing that I can believe in.

We don't move too fast, and Shun keeps the gun cocked in front of him, just in case any other crazy teacher happens to leap out from a corner and attack us. I had taken Mr. Yamada's knife, but I had stashed it into a jacket pocket (good thing I have huge pockets)because the odds of me accidentally harming myself is greater than me achieving anything useful with it.

But nothing, or no one, jumps out, and we arrive at Mrs. Sato's office with no problem. As soon as we shut the door, Shun kneels down beside Mrs. Sato's desk and reaches into one drawer, yanking out a huge stash of chocolate chip cookies. He happily rips one pack open and begins to munch on them.

Alarm bells echo all around in my head. How did he know there were cookies in there?

I back towards the door. This isn't right. So not right. What did I do by unhooking Shun? Is his mind okay? Why does he know things he isn't supposed to know? Have I released a monster?

"What?" Shun asks, noticing me backing away.

"Y-you...you..." I point at the cookies, not sure what to say. I'm scared out of my wits.

"Want some?" Shun suggests, offering a half-empty packet.

My mind is a blank. What do you say to your crush who is no longer what he used to be when he offers you cookies that aren't even his?

A part of me says stab him in the face. Another part of me says don't do that, it's Shun, you can't stab him in the face. And yet another part of me says hey why not take his offer, chocolate chip cookies are delicious.

Shun finally realizes that I'm scared of him (no duh, I bet he reads me like a book), and hurries to calm me down. "No, no no no it's not what you think, I can explain—" he places the cookies on the desk. And draws out the gun. And tosses it to me.

Ooh!I have a gun! It's shiny!

"Now can you trust me?"

I grip the gun tight and nod slowly. "I just want to know why you know about the horde outside. And where the cookies are. You're not supposed to know any of these things."

Shun is looking down, playing with the flashdisk on Mrs. Sato's desk. Not a lot of people use flashdisks these days anymore, now that we have cloud storage—but then Mrs. Sato is probably the kind who doesn't keep up with the times.

Shun spins the flashdisk around two fingers and looks at me. His eyes are sincere, clear, as usual. I can't believe I didn't trust him just moments ago.

I know, I swing from trusting to not trusting in a span of seconds but in my defense anyone would be paranoid in this situation. And this is Shun I'm talking about so I either trust him really hard or distrust him really hard. No in-betweens.

"A flashdisk. Harddrive. That's what they used me as. Most likely the poor coma dude too," he says slowly.

I have no idea what he's talking about.

Shun looks like he has no idea how to explain it either. He looks frustrated for a moment, and bites into another cookie. I take one too.

"How about you just start from the beginning?"