Jenny glanced at Fredrinn sideways, her sharp eyes studying his profile with quiet, calculating scrutiny.
His moving words still hung in the air, but her analytical mind was already tearing through the glaring contradiction. Ever since their first encounter, Fredrinn had insisted that he had no memories of his former life—that he had woken up in this apocalyptic wasteland with a completely wiped slate. Furthermore, back at the grocery store’s fortified storage facility, nobody close to him had died. He hadn’t formed any deep bonds with anyone there, nor had he lost a single loved one in front of his eyes.
If that was truly the case... how could he relate to Vivienne’s gut-wrenching loss with such authentic, raw emotion?
His tone hadn’t felt like a rehearsed performance. The heavy, grounding sorrow in his voice was far too genuine, carrying the undeniable weight of lived trauma.
Which led Jenny to an inescapable suspicion: was he actually lying about the amnesia?
The old doubts she had quietly suppressed flared back to life with a vengeance. But this time, Jenny was done with passive speculation. Sitting on her hands and overanalyzing his every word was driving her insane.
She made a firm, unshakeable resolution right then and there. The very second she managed to get some real privacy with him—away from the prying eyes of the group and the suffocating presence of that demon girl—she was going to confront him head-on. She would demand the unvarnished truth about his past and his memories. And in that very same breath, she was going to lay her cards on the table and confess her feelings for him out in the open.
She was ready to strip away the suffocating baggage weighing down her chest and place the burden entirely on his shoulders.
If he rejected her, then so be it; at least she would have taken her shot without regret. And if he refused to come clean and continued to feed her lies, then whatever—she would cut her emotional ties and stop trusting him altogether.
From where Jenny was sitting, taking that leap was a guaranteed win-win.
While Jenny was silently plotting her next move, Vivienne sat frozen in the front passenger seat, staring blindly out the windshield as Fredrinn’s words echoed through her mind.
His comfort was a soothing balm, yet the mere topic inevitably pulled her right back into the waking nightmare of the initial outbreak.
The memories hit her like a physical blow. Hundreds of grotesque, snarling zombies had materialized throughout the lower corridors of Oxford High without a second of warning, tearing through the crowded hallways and devouring students alive.
Pandemonium had erupted in seconds. People panicked, shrieked, and scattered like trapped animals.
Vivienne had been standing at the front of the top-floor classroom, teaching her afternoon literature class. Ash had been sitting in the front row, mid-sentence as he answered a question, when distant screams suddenly echoed up from the stairwell. At the back of the room, several students began to tremble, hyperventilating as the hallway outside shook with frantic, thundering footsteps.
At first, Vivienne had tried to restore order, sternly scolding them for causing an unnecessary disruption. But the words died in her throat when the air turned cold and foul.
It didn’t seem... normal.
And then, the classroom doors burst open.
The monsters flooded in. The students closest to the entrance were dragged to the linoleum floor instantly, their terrified shrieks silenced by spraying crimson. Acting on pure instinct, Ash’s Awakening powers had ignited on the spot. He grabbed Vivienne and a handful of nearby students, charging forward and battering a desperate path through the carnage toward the upper stairwell.
Along the frantic flight, several more survivors had coalesced into their fleeing pack. The fat, balding teacher had joined the stampede, trailing a desperate group of five students behind him.
Vivienne could only watch in paralyzed horror as the absolute worst of human nature revealed itself before her eyes. Terrified teenagers, driven completely mad by primal fear, actively grabbed their own classmates by the collars and shoved them backward into the grasping claws of the horde—sacrificing their friends without hesitation just to buy themselves three extra seconds of life.
A violent shudder ran through Vivienne’s body, forcefully yanking her out of those dark, horrific memories.
Her chest rose and fell in rapid, uneven successions, the thin fabric of her dress straining with every ragged breath. Sitting right beside her, Aadav couldn’t help but let his eyes drift away from the road, stealing a few lingering sneak peeks at the captivating sight of her trembling assets.
A single, dry cough from Fredrinn cut through the cabin, snapping the brown-skinned young man out of his daze. Aadav jumped slightly, hastily gripping the steering wheel and violently swerving to the left, narrowly missing an idle zombie wandering into their lane.
Fredrinn ignored Aadav’s fluster and refocused his attention entirely on the distressed teacher.
"Are you okay?" he asked gently, his tone laced with calm concern.
Before Vivienne could even formulate an answer, the most unexpected voice in the vehicle suddenly chimed in. To everyone’s utter shock—even Fredrinn’s—Rose spoke up.
It wasn’t an outburst driven by petty jealousy, nor was it dripping with her usual territorial spite.
"Vivienne," Rose began, her voice strikingly smooth, articulate, and devoid of the clumsy third-person phrasing she usually defaulted to. "As a human who nearly died by my hands and still didn’t hate me as much as you should have, I must say, you have a good heart. I am tempted to devour it and learn what goodness your personality holds, but apart from that, I suggest you not to weigh yourself down with the worries of other lesser, useless humans."
The words were thoroughly unhinged and horrifying, yet the sheer elegance and tranquil composure with which she delivered them made the statement ten times more unsettling.
Vivienne flinched violently at the casual mention of having her heart torn out and eaten, a chill prickling the back of her neck. Yet, despite the terrifying threat, the strange, rational calm in Rose’s demeanor kept the raw panic from completely overtaking her.
Vivienne swallowed hard, clearing her throat with a strained, awkward cough. "I-I... uhm... Miss Rose... You speak as if you’re not a human yourself..."
Sitting upright on the back bench, Rose offered a delicate, pleasant smile. She tilted her chin up slightly, casting a brief, questioning glance at Fredrinn.
Fredrinn simply gave a casual, indifferent shrug. As long as Rose didn’t go around broadcasting her nature to every random stranger and inciting unnecessary chaos, he couldn’t care less if the people in their inner circle found out what she truly was.
Taking his shrug as permission, Rose turned her gaze back to the front seat, her lips curling into a serene, unapologetic curve.
"Well, Vivienne," Rose stated plainly, her crimson eyes gleaming with ancient calm. "I am a demon. And Fredrinn’s wife."
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