Dedicated to Grape-kun

I

[1st]

I wasn't all that surprised or uncomfortable to find myself waking up in a house that wasn't mine. This kind of thing happened, I was visiting a friend or traveling for family vacation, nothing to flip a tit over. The first sign something was wrong was when I put on my shoes and stepped outside to find a small store near me that had not an ounce of English but instead Japanese. This was unusual but I put it off as one of us moving near some local twist on Japanese cuisine. The next problem was when turned to find some joint that I could understand or enjoy only to find more of a language I didn't understand. I blinked a couple of times and looked around me, the people walking about were all Asian, Japanese I would guess if the signs were any indication and moreover some of them had what appeared to be uniforms.

Reacting like any confused individual I turned around and headed back to where I'd come out of. Looking around the place I'd woken up revealed that the house was rather small and more than that, sparse. Spartan was the first phrase that came to mind, though that left when I noticed a TV and laptop plus a few other handy things. Huh, when did I move to Japan?

It was after shaking myself of any remaining drowsiness and stupidity that I started looking into my situation a bit more. Checking my pockets found all the usual stuff I kept, albeit with some changes from the norm. Keychains, little wipe packs for my glasses, and wallet in my left pocket, which included some IDs along with some passes and cash in the form of Yen, though my first name had been changed for some reason. Pocket knife and change in the right.

Breaking out of my early morning daze had revealed that all the foreign characters that had previously meant about as much to me as screams to a deaf person were now perfectly understandable, as I'd discovered browsing the boob tube and seeing multiple channels in Japanese and finding I could easily get what I was seeing and hearing. Checking my phone showed my apps remained the same and checking the laptop showed that it was indeed mine and that I'd been just titting about on YouTube and the like recently, as well as the fact that I'd recently been hired at a local convenience store, all said and done I seemed to be living by myself rather capably for a while now. The question was, what brought me here?

The first day at work had been fine, I'd been one of only two people working that shift and had relatively few customers coming in, an intentional thing it seemed, as the owners -a lovely middle-aged couple named Satoru and Ayame Kouno- figured it'd be best not to overwhelm the newbie, which was fine considering I'd worked retail before, not that they had to know that, though they did say it'd be tougher from tomorrow on. The person working with me was a fidgety teenager by the name of Naoya Hiyama, a second year at the local high school, Fujimi Academy. All around seemingly nice people though Naoya looked ready to jump if someone sneezed too loudly.

I took off my shoes as I entered my house, after leaving work I had taken a few hours to walk around the neighborhood, trying to get a feel for the place; that, along with standing behind a counter for hours even if I didn't really do much while there led to my feet aching quite a bit by the time I arrived. Being a college age adult that hadn't really done much physically or otherwise in the time before finding myself here meant I wasn't really ready for the amount of foot travelling one did in Japan, though I found that it wasn't nearly as bad as it should've been.

I padded over to my bathroom and started the bath up, hoo boy, living here was gonna take some getting used to. Finishing that brought up something, the school Naoya had mentioned when introducing himself, something about that name tickled my brain, I'd never been to Japan or known anyone that had either, much less went to school here.

I racked my brain trying to see what I could recognize it from, a documentary? Don't think I watched one of those recently enough to have it stick. A book? Hadn't read a book with a Japanese setting in a while either, a manga or anime perhaps? Most likely but again I couldn't remember any of those with a Fujimi Academy from recent memory, I hope that didn't mean it was a bad one or something, that was really the only thing I could think of where I'd try to forget anything about it, at least enough to not remember a school, unless it wasn't one of the main locations?

I gave a quick sigh and finished cleaning up before I walked over to my towel, drying off and dressing, it was then that I looked in the mirror. Truth be told, I hadn't really looked in a mirror or seen my reflection all day, never really had a reason to. Trying to be presentable was fine and all but, honestly, while my hair was kind of curly and my longest amount of facial hair amounted to 'barely over prepubescent' at most, neither were enough of a problem at this point to worry about. Other than that, making myself look alright was rather simple and didn't require looking in the mirror.

That said, I saw that the roundness that had followed me throughout life and quite noticeable hunch from around junior high were gone, as well as most of the more obvious blemishes I'd had. Did I have surgery or something before moving here? Had I been on the run and decided to change my appearance before skedaddling away from home? Possible, in both cases though my lack of debt and the fact that I'd kept my real name on all forms of ID said otherwise for the latter, unless I was incompetent of course.

Stepping out of the bathroom I decided to shelve these thoughts for later, barring the possibility of me being on the run from some government conspiracy or something, I doubted that sleeping would put me in danger. I walked to my room and started to charge my phone before flopping onto my bed. Thankfully rather than a futon, couch or just the floor itself the me that lived here had had the grace and benevolence to get a real bed.

I closed my eyes. Hopefully some of the questions I'd had earlier would be answered in the coming future.

This wasn't good.

The next day at work I'd been busy doing my job, ringing things up, making sure the customers were all good with change and such when three friends came in. The first thing that stood out was their appearances, 2 boys and a girl, the taller one had straight gray hair and brown eyes, a nice face and frame. Not normal but definitely not something to really care about.

Then came the other two, the shorter boy had brown eyes, a lean build and spiky black hair, spiky. Huh. The girl was the shortest of them all, with orange hair that had two prominent bangs and what seemed like small antenna, as well as a figure that I could only assume would result in major back pain, all of them had uniforms on. The fact that none of the adults were all that bothered by the hair color or appearance itself meant this was normal or at least not as out of place as it should have been. Then I heard the name coming from the tallest boys' mouth from the end of his question, "-Takashi?" That made a niggling thought appear in my mind, as if this should have been important, why? It was just his name.

Takashi replied while turning to the girl, "Sounds good, wanna come over too Rei?" That sent a special kind of nausea through my body. Why did these names ring alarms in my head? What was so special about them?

"Excuse me, Vega-san?" A voice asked. I don't think I was gonna get used to that, especially the weird accent with which it was pronounced, for a while; seeing it in games or the like was one thing, hearing it was a totally different matter. I looked over to Naoya and saw him nervously looking at me.

"Hm?" I returned, still trying to puzzle out why these kid's names were bothering me.

"Are you alright? You just stumbled a bit." He looked me over while shuffling a bit. I assured him I was and turned back to the group to see them staring at me. They'd been close enough to the register to see my stumble and were looking at me with varying emotions. Ah, shoot, forgot to greet them. "Welcome," I said, bowing a bit while saying so. They quickly nodded at me and started going to different spots, presumably to get their stuff.

Why did that happen? What was- Oh.

Well, bollocks.

That's why I recognized the names.

The answers I'd received weren't very welcome.

This changes everything.

That's why I'd forgotten the name of the high school.

Generally, I wasn't the kind of person that went for horror, fanservice or not. I wasn't one for things where lots people died in a short amount of time either, but when I did stumble upon one that I would choose to read, I'd push it from my mind after finishing to not dwell on all the negative aspects of the universe so as not to feel bad for people that weren't real. That being said this was a horror manga.

I was in High School of The Dead

Realizing such a thing made my memories of the show flood back into me and I started to panic, so I'd checked the time to see if I was going to be attacked by zombies tomorrow or something. It was October 16th. I started to think about what I'd seen; Takashi and Rei didn't seem to have had their breakup yet as there was no awkwardness or tension. All of them were wearing long sleeved uniforms which meant the winter ones, this supported the fact that yes, the date on my phone wasn't wrong, or at least not completely off. Then there was the fact that they were wearing what looked to be the variations of the same uniform meaning they were all in high school, presumably. If that was true then Takashi and what had to have been Hisashi were first years. Meaning I only had a few months assuming it happened during spring, an assumption since there were cherry blossoms, and that only happened when it was spring right? God, I needed to do some research if I didn't want to die quicker than the extras.

This sucked.

That was an understatement, this was a catastrophe.

I couldn't even tell when things happened, I didn't go to school anymore and I doubt I could apply as a teacher, they had to have standards right? I mean, I guess the ghouls trying to chomp me would be a good indication that everything had gone into the gutter but I'd prefer one that didn't turn me into a side character with a bit of knowledge, thank you very much.

How did I get here? The only possible explanation I could think of was a dream or a ROB. In the case of the former, dying would do me well in getting out of it. In the case of the latter, that was very much not an option, obviously. If this was a ROB I would find my way out of this mess and beat him senseless, or die trying, though that would make my survival of this moot but hey, vengeance is cool, yeah? if this was a dream I was gonna look myself in the mirror when I woke up and punch myself as hard as I could for putting myself through this.

God. This sucked.