"Co-corpse smell?"
Komachi was so terrified that the teacup in her hand trembled, her face turning deathly pale: "I-impossible! Brother is just... just..."
"Just experiencing irreversible biomass necrosis."
Darius cruelly cut her off, turned around, and wrote several large words on the blackboard—[Zombification Process].
"Coming home late at night, cloudy eye whites, avoiding bright light, language function decline, and a body carrying the scent of rotten earth." The chalk in Darius's hand tapped the blackboard with hard tap-tap-tap sounds, chalk dust falling. "Komachi, this isn't rebellious puberty. These are classic early symptoms of T-Virus infection."
Yukino closed her paperback and spoke coldly: "Darius-kun, that's just ordinary fatigue plus Hikigaya-kun's eyes that are already fundamentally rotten anyway. Besides, what you call the earth smell might be because he fell somewhere..."
"Naive."
Without turning around, Darius drew a messy human silhouette on the blackboard with an arrow pointing directly at the heart.
"Viruses never know logic. Stage one: Incubation period, manifests as social isolation. Stage two: Necrosis period, manifests as 'dead fish eyes' and abnormal body odor. Stage three..."
He drew a large red X on the silhouette's head.
"Predation period. At that time, your brother will no longer be 'Hikigaya Hachiman', but a walking predator with the codename 'H-8000'."
Komachi's mouth fell open. The brother-complex logic she took pride in completely collapsed before Darius's closed chaos theory. Unconsciously, she grasped at the only lifeline: "Bu-but where did this virus come from? Brother doesn't go anywhere except school and home!"
"You're asking the key point." Darius turned quickly, his gaze sharp. "Who is Patient Zero? Try to remember carefully, has he recently made contact with any 'Abnormal Individuals'?"
"Abnormal..." Komachi wracked her brain. "Ah! A few days ago I saw him talking with a female student in class... that person had purple hair, fierce gaze, looked like a delinquent girl..."
"Purple hair color variation, aggressive gaze." Darius's eyes flashed. "Is she also the type who sleeps during the day and goes out at night?"
"Eh? How did you know? I heard that Senpai named Kawasaki Saki often comes home late at night..."
"Closed logic chain."
Darius wrote the name [Kawasaki Saki] on the blackboard, circled it, then drew a rough line to the name [Hikigaya Hachiman].
"There is only one truth. Kawasaki Saki is the first infection source. She was infected with the virus at an underground biochemical laboratory in Chiba and brought it to Sobu High." Darius threw down his chalk, dusting off his hands with a chilling tone. "If the infection source is not immediately cut off, all of Chiba will become a wasteland."
The club room fell into deadly silence.
Komachi's worldview shook: Brother's strangeness + delinquent girl + coming home late = Resident Evil? Although it sounded completely unreasonable, why did it feel so convincing coming from this person's mouth?!
"Th-then what should we do?" Komachi asked with a trembling voice.
"Conventional quarantine is no longer effective. We must launch an active attack."
Darius looked around, passing over Yukino who was sighing while holding her forehead (Logistics Command), and finally settling on Yui who was listening with an innocent face.
"It is hereby announced, 'SCP Sobu High Branch Special Cleansing Operation' officially begins."
"Eh? Eh? Are we going to fight?" Yui raised her hand enthusiastically. "I'll join! Although I don't understand, it feels cool!"
"Rejected, you are the frontline assault unit."
Darius ignored her protest, stepped in front of her, and grabbed the paper bag emitting an unpleasant aroma near the girl's feet. The bag's mouth opened, the indescribable burnt smell mixed with the sharp odor of synthetic chemicals instantly filled the room, even Yukino frowned and stepped back half a step.
"Weapons Queen." Darius pulled out an unidentified object from the bag—something as black as charcoal that didn't reflect light at all—weighing it in his hand with a solemn expression. "Your weapons depot is now requisitioned for mission purposes."
"Ah! Those are my cookies..."
"No, these are anti-matter tactical grenades."
Darius cut off Yui's defense, pointing at the charcoal: "High-density carbonization shell, containing destroyer poison sufficient to annihilate the taste sense of carbon-based creatures. One bag of this stock is enough to suppress early-stage infection."
Yui was stunned for two seconds, then puffed out her chest with pride from who knows where: "Hehe... so my cookies are that amazing? Then use them, Commander! At home there's still some tha... ah no, there's still backup ammunition!"
Yukino watched the absurd scene before her, feeling her temples throbbing intensely.
One person suffering from terminal-stage chūnibyō, one person too innocent, plus one brother-complex who had just been brainwashed.
"I refuse to participate in this farce." She stood coldly.
"Yukinoshita, you're responsible for remote intelligence support." Darius had already put the 'grenades' in his pocket, opening the club room door wide, his back looking full of determination like a soldier departing for the battlefield. "Unless you want to see your club members devoured by zombies."
Outside the door, the sunset was blood red.
A siege against the "Delinquent Girl Zombie" was about to begin absurdly under the darkness of Chiba night.