Shun has shown me with a quick sketch what to cut and what to press to deactivate the machine that is giving my classmates literal nightmares. I pick up a pair of scissors from Mrs. Sato's desk—it'snot like she will miss it anyway, considering how to do what I have to do I kind of have to... uh... hurt Mrs. Sato.

No regrets, however. She deserves that.

We arrive at the big door on the first floor, the one thing that is keeping us safe from the sleepwalking horde. And here we are, ready to open it. Very stupid move if you ask me, but then staying in the building and waiting it out doesn't seem any smarter.

"Ready?"Shun says, smiling at me. He is positively grinning by now. I know how much he loves running and can understand that he's probably really excited to have a footrace with the mindless walkers out there but I still wish he would at least have the common sense to be somewhat worried about his own safety.

Shun senses my discomfort and quickly assures me, like the hopelessly optimistic imbecile he is, that everything will be fine. I look down.

Everything is not fine.

"Oh, you got your elega?" Shun says suddenly, motioning at my instrument, which happens to be poking out of my jacket pocket. I have left it there without thinking after unsuccessfully trying to wake the rest of my class with it.

I nod. It is small and lightweight when in its compact mode, so it won't be affecting my speed at all.

To my surprise, Shun asks, "Can I have it?"

"Huh? But can you play—"

"I can't, at all, but I bet I can make enough noise with this thing that those dudes outside will all come after me," he says cheerfully.

Exactly the thing I don't want. Nice.

"Just teach me how to make sounds with it, yeah?" he pleads.

I sigh and whip out the elega to its full length, and tap a random spot with my finger. I know it better than the back of my hand and it responds, making a shrill screech like an electric guitar that is played by some shitty musician who doesn't know any better.

"Cool," Shun says, taking the elega into his hands and trying to reproduce the sound I just made. But the elega is sensitive to the tiniest difference in pressure and position so instead emits a sweet, high-pitched E minor note of a piccolo.

"Good enough," Shun decides. "Okay, I go first, and as soon as most of these guys start following me, you run. Whatever happens, don't look back. After you turn off the machine our classmates should have returned to normal, eh? Find them, wake them, tell them what's going on, make sure there's no after effects—"

I listen to his instructions, but can't help notice that he neglects to mention one thing.

I turn off the machine. I find our classmates. But what about you?

I can feel the finality in Shun's words. He knows that there's no way he can survive being chased by some fifty autopiloted teachers and upperclassmen. Who have hatchets and tasers and other weapons. Shun does have a gun, but it's not like he could bring himself to shoot the innocent, mindless horde. He might be able to divert their attention, distract them, but to evade them for more than a couple of minutes—that would be wishful thinking.

I want to tell him no, don't do it, we can just sit here and wait a bit and see if some better solution comes up, but he looks so excited with his determined eyes twinkling like that. I've known Shun for a long time and what I've learned from it is that having a chance to do heroic stuff makes him happy.

It doesn't make me happy, but at this point my happiness really doesn't matter anymore. So I let him have his wish, pretend to be unworried and completely trusting in his high-speed walker-evasion abilities, and ask, "Okay, after I get our classmates, then what? What do we do next?"

Shun laughs. "After you get them? Well tell them I'm kind of pursued by dozens of zombie people and come save me of course!"

So he's willing to admit he won't make it. This guy isn't entirely hopeless.

I want to tell Shun to reconsider, to tell him that we'll never reach him in time, to tell him all the ten thousand things I've been feeling for him since grade school, but his hand is already on theknob and my heart is hammering like the battle of Helm's Deep and my eyes sting like someone has thrown vinegar in them and I can hear the footsteps of the teachers and upperclassmen outside, soft, purposeful, rhythmic footsteps, climaxing in my head in a brilliant and utterly horrifying crescendo.

And then the door opens and Shun interrupts the music in my brain by slamming his fingers all over my precious elega (dammit Shun you're not supposed to play the poor thing that way), creating a nightmarish mix of French horns, bass guitars, erhus and samisen. He laughs as the horde follows him like the pied piper (except in the piper's case the kids are walking much slower),and I try to imprint the laugh in my brain as the very last sound I'll ever hear from my crush of like ten years.

The horde leaves. A few mill around, but I know they'll never get me; they're the slower ones who aren't quite aware of their surroundings.

And I run.

–

I run, and run, and never turn back. Shun told me not to turn back no matter what happens, and if this is his last wish there's no way I'm not going to obey it.

Even when I hear the sound of the elega abruptly stop (which is a relief actually, despite all of Shun's merits he's definitely not musical), I do not turn back.

I do not turn back as I run, panting like a famished horse, into our dorm building. I do not turn back as I jog down the stairs, cursing my legs for not being long enough to take them two at a time. I do not turn back as I stop before the basement door, suddenly very aware of what I have to do next.

Mrs. Sato is inside it. Mrs. Sato, teacher of Mindhacking Basics. Mrs. Sato, who has acted so kind and motherly to me. She is controlling the machine which is in turn controlling my classmates, so she has to go.

I don't want to kill her, of course. Even after what she made Shun go through, I can't kill her. I don't even want to hurt her. But it seems that to do what I'm supposed to do, I have to.

I grip the butcher knife I obtained from Mr. Yamada's body tightly, and edge near the door, all the while knowing that I should not hesitate; there is no time to waste.

As the door creaks open, I hold my breath, brain spinning twice as fast trying to come up with an appropriate next move as if this were a chess game and Mrs. Sato was my opponent, sirens blaring in my head and making those horrible whirring sounds that make my head churn—

But the room is empty. Mrs. Sato is not here.

I feel almost exhausted all of a sudden, perhaps an aftermath of my adrenaline rush. The instruments in my head let out disappointed whooshing sounds.

But the machine is there. And the closer I get, the harder my head hurts.

It feels like the kind of pain I have during sleepless nights—in fact,that's what it is. I now know why my headache was so severe tonight, just a couple of hours before. It was because of this machine. While it invades my classmates' heads and hacks their minds, all it does to me, the non-anomaly who just isn't susceptible to the machine's waves, is give me a headache.

My head buzzes like a thousand bees are in it having a dance-off and sharing sapporo beer. I can barely advance, I realize, for every step gets heavier and my vision blurs and unblurs and fuzzes up like TVs with bad signal during typhoon days. I have to crawl on all fours before finally reaching the machine.

I can barely open my eyes by now. The pain is piercing, like nothing I've ever felt before. If giving birth is the most painful thing ever in the world then I guess it feels like my head is giving birth.

Haha. Very funny.

I try to remember what Shun had told me, what wires to cut, what buttons to press. It takes strenuous effort to even lift my arm, to even touch and hold the button. I then use up like half of my energy just trying to fit my fingers into the scissors' holes.

If this goes on any longer, I'm going to explode, I think. It's like being flattened by a train. It's like being ground in a blender.It's like—

And then with a defeated sigh the machine quiets, and the pain is gone. I am suddenly surrounded by empty, completely empty silence.

It takes me a minute or two to get my bearings. I realize that I'm lying on the ground, gasping like I've just held my breath for five minutes, and my hair is all wet from sweat. Ew.

But it is not the time to worry about this now. The others. I have to get to the others.

I don't know where I get the strength from, but I break into running again.