[ 11:19 a.m.]
There's blood on the tiles outside the canteen.
Not ketchup.
Not paint.
Real blood. The kind that soaks through your socks if you stand too close.
I don't move. Neither does Palm.
Students are screaming, tripping over each other. A little girl is crying next to a broken cotton candy stick.
One of the volunteers tries to calm her—until something tackles him from behind.
It's another one.
Same look: bloated veins, discolored skin, twitchy like a puppet with bad strings.
I feel the shift.
The moment when fun becomes fear.
And fear becomes real.
[11:22 a.m.]
Teachers are yelling.
"Stay inside!"
"Lock the buildings!"
"Call the hospital!"
"NO ONE LEAVES!"
The clown is crying.
She takes off her wig and throws it.
Principal Panadda is frozen near the stage, still holding the mic, repeating,
📣: "Security, please report to the front entrance. Security—hello? Hello!?"
No one answers.
[11:24 a.m.]
Palm tugs my arm.
"Win, we have to go—come on!"
We rush back into the building. The doors slam shut behind us.
The echo sounds like a coffin closing.
We're not the only ones.
Around 15 students stumble in — crying, shaking, bleeding from small cuts. Some are strangers. Some are people I've ignored for years.
"Is this a drill?" someone mutters.
"Some horror-themed fair thing?"
"Where are the teachers—"
"I saw one of them eat a kid," another says, whispering like if she says it too loud, it'll make it real.
[11:30 a.m.]
That's when Lin speaks.
She's in our class. Always sitting near the window.
She kneels beside a girl who's been bit on the arm and tightens her hoodie into a makeshift tourniquet.
"Anyone else bitten?" she asks calmly.
Someone points to a junior boy.
His leg is already shaking unnaturally.
Lin looks up and says what no one wants to hear.
"We can't let him stay."
[11:32 a.m.]
Arguments start.
Screaming. Crying.
Palm grips my hand.
I don't shake him off this time.
I'm not thinking about homework.
Or my university entrance exam.
Or how much I hate mornings.
I'm thinking about her.
Kao.
She's standing near the window.
Still watching.
Like this is a show, and she already knows the ending.
[11:35 a.m.]
The boy who was bitten starts shaking.
Foaming at the mouth. His leg bends the wrong way.
And then—
He charges.
[11:36 a.m.]
We push desks. Someone grabs a broom. Lin yells, "Don't let him bite anyone else!"
It's chaos.
I freeze for half a second — just one — and then something in my brain kicks on.
I grab a chair and slam it across the boy's back.
Once. Twice.
He doesn't even feel it.
Palm throws his entire weight into him.
They both fall.
I scream his name.
And that's when Kao moves.
With precise, robotic calm, she picks up a broken mop handle and drives it through the zombie's eye.
Everyone stops.
Even the corpse.
She looks at the body, then at us.
And simply says:
"This isn't the last."