Darkness was my last thought.

I don"t know how much time pa.s.sed until I woke up.

...Less than a minute.

Well, that"s good. If someone was in a fainted state for over 2 minutes, that was serious, and the usual time to return to consciousness was about 20 seconds after all.

Basically, I wasn"t going to die.

I wondered why I had fainted.

Blood phobia? No, I wasn"t afraid of blood.

Any other phobia?

Not that I can think of.

I held my hands together in front of me.

Cold and clammy. Not my usual state. I usually had a warm body temperature.

Looking around, I was back in my office, placed on the sofa.

The school didn"t have a nurse"s office. There were no cases of injuries that couldn"t be taken care of with the "universal" water ability.

And if the injury was serious, the hospital was near.

n.o.body was in my office, but I could certainly hear voices outside.

It was some of the teachers scolding kids.

...Well, I"ll let them do their job.

I was allowed to go home earlier and the culprits properly apologized to me.

It was by accident, so I didn"t feel mad.

And I was alright. There was no pain. I didn"t even know why I fainted.

When I got home, Yu Ge was in the kitchen.

"Ge, you"re home already?"

"I heard you fainted. The people in my office persuaded me to go home."

He continued, "I made braised pork. It doesn"t have lots of fatty parts, just how you like it."

I smiled. Yu Ge was too good.

"Thanks, Yu Ge, are you staying home for the whole day? Or do you have to go back?"

"Nope, I get to stay home all day!" Yu Ge had a rare bout of cheer.

We ate while talking about our daily lives. I complained and made it sound funny while Yu Ge laughed and listened.

It was so nice to see Yu Ge happy.

After we ate, we trained.

It was something we hadn"t done for a long time.

"...I think I"ve got some flab coming on..."

"You should train more often. Only occasionally training your powers isn"t good. Your body also needs to be trained, but regularly."

Yu Ge still trained regularly... He woke up early, trained, went to work, returned home, rested, and then repeat.

"I got it. Sigh, Yu Ge I"m so jealous of your body. It"s amazing that you"ve got a heck of a body. But since you hide it with clothes n.o.body knows..."

Yu Ge threw a punch at me, "What are you getting at? You"re just a little shorter than me. And you"re not considered short. Besides, you look more masculine. I won"t look like a man until several years later. But here you are already looking slightly grown-up."

"I"m talking about abs and muscles! And yes, I"m also talking about your height. 180 is considered tall, but I"m still shorter than you or Jing Ge."

"Hm, well, Ge was always that way. But his personality wasn"t like this in my past life, it was more overbearing and optimistic, but he was really strong back then as well. Xiao Bing from my past life can"t compare to the present Xiao Bing... Sigh, the difference is just too big..."

Yu Ge didn"t talk about me.

Of course, I had died early in his previous life. He might"ve felt awkward about it, or either he didn"t know what to say about me.

But I was curious, so I asked, "Was my personality different?"

"...yes."

"How so?"

"You weren"t this narcissistic for one."

Oof.

"You were an introvert. Very. Also, you were bullied in the past. Although it was stopped early, you still had trauma afterward. And when you became a hacker, you didn"t bring companies down like in your previous years, but you did do petty dealings. You were very withdrawn and cautious."

"What?! I can"t imagine myself that way! And me, bullied? That"s impossible!"

"You were also sweet and very caring towards us even during hard times. You were still best friends with Xiao Bing. But you two were very gentle people. Nothing like the brash kids today."

Yu Ge swung and kicked and I barely dodged.

He was getting faster and a series of jabs came at me.

"You aren"t as fast as before," he commented.

...A critical hit right where it hurt.

To try to distract him, I asked, "What about you, Yu Ge? What were you like?"

"...I was very different. Stupid."

I stopped for a second out of shock and was kicked down.

"...Sigh, get up," he held out his hand.

"Wait! What do you mean by stupid?!"

We resumed our duel.

Yu Ge stayed silent for quite a few minutes before speaking.

"I was foolish. I was rash. I thought I knew everything and was mature. Even when the zombie apocalypse happened, I thought I was irreplaceable. I was a water ability user, so the team valued me. There were other water ability users of course, but I had the looks so everyone liked me. Also, Ge was powerful, so our family was liked. I got too full of myself. My s.p.a.ce ability was never revealed because I thought I was special and kept it all to myself. That got more people suspicious of me instead. And then not long after, when I was busy and Ge out fighting, Xiao Bing was sold away. Our parents still had cared about her a little, but they got lots of benefits from a nearby safe city in exchange."

"...Hahaha, but I was secretly glad. Glad that they didn"t sell me. I felt so guilty, but also proud. Then when I was pushed into the zombie horde while everyone ran, I knew, I wasn"t important. I was just a resource. I could be replaced. Why did I think I was ever that important?"

"Even now, I feel so foolish and regret so many decisions I made in this life."

"I could"ve warned our parents so that our family could have stayed together. I could have fixed so many other events."

"Everyday, I think: I got a second chance, but it"s been wasted."

"This life is a chance to redeem everything. But I"ve made so many mistakes, so many petty decisions, just to keep my pride and ideals."

Listening to Yu Ge talk like this was pretty sad, but I was still focused on the battle because he wasn"t giving any ground.

The training ended soon and we washed up.

With towels around our shoulders and upper bodies bare, we rested on the couches in the living room with gla.s.ses of milk. It was sort of a tradition. Kinda. Xiao Bing didn"t do this of course.

I asked more questions about the past life.

Yu Ge described his journey.

And as I listened, I realized, Yu Ge wasn"t foolish back then, he just didn"t realize what could have been done.

Even if he was full of himself, at least he isn"t like that now.

"...Hey, bro, the mood"s too boring. We have the whole house to ourselves so why don"t we do... that?"

"Hm... well, it"s been a long time. Sure."

"Yeah! Xiao Bing"s out till tomorrow so let"s do it!"

By "it" we mean our random singing and dancing sessions.

After Jing Ge became an idol, Yu Ge and I watched all his MVs. We even went to all of his concerts. Xiao Bing was busy, so she couldn"t partic.i.p.ate with us.

Yu Ge and I thought it would be a fun idea to do the same dance routine as Jing Ge. Yu Ge had said that it was also beneficial as a new way of training. It did help in dodging more practically, so in a way, it was training.

I had thought it was embarra.s.sing to do it in front of Xiao Bing, Yu Ge too, so we did our dance sessions when she was out.

A program, specially made by yours truly, had a.n.a.lyzed almost every dance. Every dance beside square dancing...

It had been a long time since I was with Yu Ge like this, not worrying about things, and able to relax properly. After Yu Ge ran off to America, the household was a mess, and even after he came back, there was an unspeakable barrier.

What was originally Ge"s mistake had transferred onto being something against me and Xiao Bing.

I don"t blame Ge though. He found his own family. And Yu Ge is also happy for them. So, all turned out well, but it was still awkward sometimes.

Back to the Dance session, we were finding it easier to move around, so it was less fun. But with the Demon mode, where everything was sped up and mixed up randomly, we were able to enjoy the challenge.

Finally, we got to the special stage, Dance off, where we had to get a perfect score on a completely new dance after watching it once. To top it off, singing wasn"t required, but it would give a generous amount of bonus points.

So, here we were, having fun, laughing, and joking around. Only I got to see this side of Yu Ge usually, and I felt that he was closest to me.

I mean, Xiao Bing is our sister, we can"t say certain stuff to her and we understand things differently. And she"s the only girl and last child of our family, so she"s spoiled.

...I"m spoiled too, but she"s even more spoiled ok!

And, for Jing Ge, of course, Yu Ge is close to him, but they always have a serious or calm atmosphere where there"s some talk going on. It"s a very good relationship, one like between two old friends.

But me, I"m the one who gets to be spoiled and have fun with Yu Ge. He plays with me, I play with him. We have a great relationship going on! And so far, he"s opened up to me the most. And I"ve also opened up to him the most. So ours is the true brother-in-arms relationship.

Um, getting off track here, anyways, the dance-off was soon over and we were commenting on each other"s moves as well as trying to think of a way for the idol game.

"What about having expressions on point and making the whole thing rise in difficulty by levels? And singing and ch.o.r.eography can be added on in later stages!" Yu Ge exclaimed.

Such a great idea, how could I have not thought of it before!

"Ok, I"ll make it like this! But first, I need a snack. Yu Ge, make me something?"

"I"ve already prepared pineapple buns. But I was planning to pack you that tomorrow..."

"It doesn"t matter, let"s eat some now. Or else, if I take it to school, I"m sure some rascals will try to steal some off of me." I scowled thinking about the group that came by my office just to hollow out my food storage.

Yu Ge laughed and went into the kitchen.

I was thinking of which codes to use for the facial expression identification part of the game when Yu Ge placed a platter of fluffy bread.

"Mmm, just right! Super fluffy and not too sweet, just the right texture and taste!"

"You"re praising me too much. But I"m still wondering why you fainted. With your physique, it shouldn"t be easy to knock you out... Maybe it"s because of stress or being tired?"

"Who knows?" I sighed.

After finishing our portions of the midnight snack, we were prepared to go to sleep.

In the middle of brushing our teeth, a call came to Yu Ge"s core device.

I looked at it and commented garbledly, "If says gard free of vuh resuch centuh."(It says guard 3 of the research center)

Yu Ge quickly finished brushing his teeth and connected the call.

"What"s wrong?" he asked.

"Chief, something wrong with zombie #37. It"s not on a rampage, actually, exactly the opposite. It started to calm down and collapsed and stayed still for several hours. The researchers told me to contact you if anything happened. Just a few minutes ago, zombie #37 got up and started talking!"

Yu Ge frowned.

"It"s still in its own room right?"

"Yes."

"Can you make out what it"s saying?"

"It"s saying something like... um, actually, it seems to be telling a story!"

"A story?"

"Yes, it"s telling of a lonely boy who got sweeped into a dark organization! It"s quite interesting really."

"I see, are there any notable qualities about zombie #37?"

"Chief, I believe you"re the one who brought it in actually! Checking the reports on its cell door, the zombie was named Zhang Xing."

"...Alright, I"ll go check it out. Thank you for notifying me."

"No problem chief!"

The call ended.

Knowing that I was right by to listen in on the call, Yu Ge looked at me.

"Do you want to come along?"

"..."

What should I do? Take this chance to not have the past left behind or to go and see what had happened to Zhang Xing?

"I-I want to go see."

Some might call me weak. But I wanted to see him again.

Just one more time.

That"s all.