From Mathew’s protector and savior to an angry girlfriend questioning her boyfriend about the events of the last night.

The change that Nadia went through in the span of mere seconds was immense.

‘Damn.’ Mathew swallowed his saliva, not sure how to approach the topic. ‘I knew it would come to this, but how the hell am I supposed to tell her?’ he thought.

Mathew averted his eyes to the side, pointing his right hand towards the girls a bit further away.

“It’s Daria and Leila,” the young man explained obediently. He then lowered his head before Nadia’s stormy gaze. “I met them while trying to reach the bottom floor. The two of them helped me a lot while clearing the zombies out of our way.”

Mathew was only a single instant away from kowtowing on the ground, with no care for all the blood and filth that covered it.

“Isthatit?” Nadia’s doubtful reply merged into a single word.

She dropped the stone from her hand to the ground and then rested her fists on her hips. One of Nadia’s eyebrows went up as her left foot started to tap against the floor.

‘Wait a second, did we change genres or something?’ Mathew stumbled to his feet. ‘Wasn’t this supposed to be an apocalypse?’ he thought, feeling weak in his knees.

The exhaustion of all the fights finally caught up to the young man.

And just in that last fight, the strain that he put his body under…

‘This is going to suck like fuck!’ Mathew thought, feeling how his body weighted forward, his head on a crash course with one of the random piles of rubble.

“Mat!” Nadia’s disposition changed in a mere instant.

She leaped forward, grabbing Mathew by his shoulders. Just in time to save the young man’s head from striking a sharp bolt of a broken concrete reinforcement.

“Ah…” Mathew gasped for the air, somehow regaining the reins over his flesh. He jerked upwards, hoping to regain his stability…

The feeling of Nadia’s skin rubbing against his threw Mathew’s senses into disarray.

As a long-time close friend, he considered skinship with Nadia as something normal.

No, something casual yet essential.

And over the course of the last events, Mathew desperately lacked the mindest that simply hugging Nadia would put him in.

“I’m sorry it took me so long,” Nadia muttered as she rubbed her hands against the back of Mat’s head.

The young man’s head was stuck in the sweet opening of Nadia’s cleavage. Yet, for some reason, even the drops of blood that dirtied her skin didn’t stop Matt from melting under the heat of the girl’s skin.

“Wait, what the hell?” Leila stepped forward. “Who the hell are you?” she asked, keeping her machete in her hand.

“Calm down,” Daria raised her hand to stop her friend before turning her eyes towards the couple. “It’s like he said, I’m Daria, and this is Leila. We cooperated with Mathew to survive.”

Nadia only threw a single glance at the girls before turning her eyes back to the top of Matt’s head. She then lowered her eyelids and rested her head on top of Matt’s.

“I’m so fucking glad you are okay,” Mathew uttered, all the air escaping from his lungs as his body plummeted.

Every fiber of his being was on fire. Every strain of his muscles was overstressed beyond any reason. Even his bones were on the verge of shattering under a single breath of wind.

‘Fuck…’ the young man thought, unable to move a muscle.

“God damn it,” Nadia muttered as she reaffirmed her grasp over Mathew’s body. She then sharply raised her head and looked around.

“You two,” Nadia raised her voice as she threw a cold stare toward Matt’s companions. “Go and fetch the two rats that are waiting in the southern alley,” Nadia ordered before throwing a kick and decimating the nearest zombie.

Despite how long the events appeared to them, they all took place in a short span of time. And now, the window where they were free not to care about the zombies… was now closing.

All the fighting definitely attracted a lot of zombie attention. And even with the boss monsters now gone, Mathew was in no shape to participate in such a fight.

“What are you going to do?” Daria asked as she stepped forward and started to clear the path for the couple.

“Where are you taking him?” Leila posed a different question, her eyes still hostile.

“To somewhere safe, he needs to rest,” Nadia replied without the slightest care in the world as she made her way towards one of the school’s wards.

It was a nearly autonomous area designed for the use of a company that sponsored the school. There, excelling students would usually kickstart their careers by going through the real-life practice of the craft.

Or that was the idea behind that place, now long abandoned and closed off due to the bankruptcy of the said company.

And now it stood. An empty area in the corner of the school’s ground floor. Cleared out from all furniture, left to rot until someone would actually buy it out.

And now, Nadia kicked the blocked doors open before pulling Mathew’s lifeless body inside.

She couldn’t care less about those two girls or the couple that she brought with herself. Right now, the entire world shrunk into the feeble body of Nadia’s beloved.

Nadia laid Mat’s body down on the floor, resting his back against the thick, concrete wall of the compartment.

She then kneeled by his side and brought two of her fingers to the side of Mathew’s neck, checking for his pulse.

‘Ugh,’ Mathew protested in his thoughts, feeling as if the tips of Nadia’s fingers turned into red-hot drills.

“You always have to end up in a lot of trouble, don’t you?” Nadia asked in a weak voice. Worry filled her eyes as she moved her hand and caressed Mathew’s pained face.

“Nadia…” Mathew managed to utter a small whisper, his body slowly but surely regenerating. And now that Nadia was there to take care of him…

Unable to part away from Mat now that they had reunited, Nadia hugged him tightly. Yet, as time went on, she started to curl up. And soon, she ended up practically wrapping herself all over Mat’s tired flesh.

“I will be okay,” Mathew muttered, desperate to calm the girl’s worries.

‘As great as it feels to get pampered like that,’ he thought, only to mentally shake his head.

Mathew then focused all his might, all his willpower, on raising his right hand.

And with this heroic effort, he gently patted Nadia’s back.

“It will be all right,” he whispered.

That was the utmost limit of what energy Mathew had left. But it was more than enough to make Nadia freeze.

“Matty,” she muttered, raising her teary face above Mathew’s eyes. She then brought her hand up and caressed his cheek while looking him deeply in the eyes.

‘Damn,’ Mathew thought, stunned by how the lights of Nadia’s eyes glistered through the tears hanging right below.

There was little to no light in the place, yet Nadia’s lips somehow got to shine with their own charming light.

‘That’s right,’ Mathew suddenly thought, a momentary wake-up call shaking him awake. ‘In the end, we never did it,’ he thought, suddenly becoming heavily self-aware.

But there was little Mathew could do. With his body still on the brink of a total collapse, he became a subject, not the force.

Nadia’s lips got closer. Her breath basked Mathew’s face with a delicate aroma and filled his nose with the taste of the girl’s air.

And then, Nadia’s lips gently fell down on Mathew’s.