Third person POV
And then, Shu, Nato, and their squad are now trekking the streets of Minato City, while Nato was okay on Shu joining their mission so suddenly, and Shu didn't disclose the reason why. The outside was, as usual, wrecked and chaotic, and zombies were roaming everywhere. The sky was blue, and the weather was pretty sunny but not hot since it was autumn in its apex. Hayate was assigned to a different squad in another part of Tokyo. As they walked through the ruined street, Shu was muttering Protestant Spanish and Catalan prayers for his safety.
Catalan was one of his secondary languages since his late mother's relatives are from Spain's Catalonia.
And now, as Shu and his group remained vigilant, one zombie-infected soldier, clad in a blood-soaked and ruined, black SWAT tactical uniform complete with a broken helmet, aimed its sniper rifle from the rooftop of a 7-story building, aiming at them. Shu felt that and looked at it, only to be surprised quickly with alert. He knew that it was the right situation to test his serum of temporary saving. And then, the zombie growled and pulled the trigger, and Shu pushed aside Nato, taking the shot for him. "Ah!"
As Shu collapsed to the sidewalk, Nato and the others saw that and were shocked, before looking at the zombie sniper.
"Shu!" Mara and Martha sobbed.
"Fire!" Nato immediately barked to his squad.
His squad did so, and Nato, Mara, and Martha rushed to Shu's aid.
Shu is now down on the dirty sidewalk in pain but wasn't screaming or even groaning loudly.
"Hang on!" Nato said to him while covering his wound with a thick towel.
But then, as the serum freezes the wound, Shu had a short dream: he was in SAO, on the 60th floor. Kirito was beside him, curious on who he was. "Hello?" he asked. "What's with the red and grey camouflage gear? That's cool."
Shu sat down and admitted, without any tears and just a remorseful face, his crimes against Gen.
Kirito was shocked; he doesn't know that.
And when Shu admitted to using his On the Brink of Death serum to survive lethal attacks to cleanse himself psychologically, Kirito suggested to him, "Maybe you shouldn't do that. You had to learn to forgive yourself."
Shu snapped, for it tasted like easy medicine.
He stood up and yelled at him with a sharp Spanish accent, "¡No! You don't get how much I suffered!"
He bolted away crying, prompting Kirito to run after him.
Kirito managed to hold his shoulder, only for Shu to shove him on the grass.
"Leave me alone, you unsympathetic idiot!" Shu screamed as Kirito struck the digital grass with a dull thud.
"Oww…why…?" Kirito groaned. "I was just trying to help you…"
But then, the atmosphere dropped below 1 degree, and Shu's Atonement Oni materialized beside Shu, holding a syringe containing the zombie virus and pointing it into his neck.
"Leave him to his penance, brat," it growled at Kirito. "He needs the pain to be cleansed."
Because of that, Kirito raised his hands in surrender. "Okay, go on. I am sorry for offending you. I won't stop you."
The dream shattered.
Shu gasped for air and woke up back to the wreckage of the real world; his wound was healed but left some blood dripping from his tactical vest. Nato, Mara, and others, as well as Ichiro Hamada, Gen's teenage ninja assassin, were stunned that he was okay. "Are you okay?" Enmei asked Shu.
And as he gets up, Shu responded, "It's fine…it's fine…I'll be fine, Nato-san, Ichiro-san…"
"What? But you had been shot!" one of Nato's squad members responded frantically.
Nato couldn't believe that Shu would say that while he was technically in pain.
And then, Shu's pain was eliminated, and Shu stood up while his wound was now bleeding mildly. The zombie sniper soldier had been taken down and had fallen off the rooftop and struck the ground with a groan and a thud over 10 minutes ago. Nato and others were shocked to see that Shu had stood up with a wound that was still bleeding like a fine person.