novelraw Chapter 40 40: Take care of her
Chapter 40 40: Take care of her
After a few hours of sleep, surprisingly deep, considering where he'd passed out, Leon opened his eyes and lay still for a long moment, letting awareness slowly slide back into place. His body ran its own quiet diagnostics, checking whether everything still worked the way it should. The exhaustion, especially the physical kind, accumulated from a full day of fighting, sprinting, and constant tension, had eased. Not vanished, but lightened enough to notice.
He pushed himself up, bracing a palm against the café's cold floor. When he finally got to his feet, he stretched on instinct and grimaced, muscles and joints protesting in unison. Something popped softly. His spine made it very clear that sleeping on hardwood wasn't exactly an ideal recovery plan.
"Sleeping on the floor is garbage, not regeneration," he muttered with a bitter little smile, rolling his shoulders like he could shake off the stiffness.
"Good morning," a flirtatious, almost offensively sweet, voice chimed in.
Leon flinched by reflex, every muscle tightening for a split second. Then he turned his head and saw Valeria perched on the café counter a few meters away, one leg crossed over the other, propped on one hand. She watched him with that small, familiar smile of hers, always just a little unsettling.
In that single glance, everything snapped back into focus. The apocalypse. The system. Beasts. Blood. Decisions you couldn't undo.
This wasn't a dream. Not a hallucination. Not a breakdown.
It was just his life now.
He let out a quiet breath.
"Morning," he answered after a beat, not enthusiastic, more resigned than anything.
Valeria immediately pouted in a way so theatrical it bordered on fake, scrunching her nose like an offended girl.
"I spent the whole night taking care of you, making sure nothing ate you, and you can't even greet me properly," she said in a seductive tone, as if she genuinely expected gratitude.
Leon snorted, shaking his head.
"Stop saying things people could misunderstand. Out of all the beasts out there, the one I'd worry about eating me first is you." Then he looked at her more closely. "Do you even… sleep?"
Valeria lifted an eyebrow at his answer, then smiled slightly, like his question was adorably naive.
"Higher beings don't need sleep to recover," she said calmly. "Sleep is more habit than necessity. Or entertainment. Sometimes it's nice to close your eyes and pretend time is moving slower."
Leon opened his mouth to ask more,
A sharp knock cut through the silence.
He turned toward the café door, and a moment later a familiar voice came from the other side.
"Leon?" Patrycja called. "Natalia and the others want to hand out breakfast. They're asking if they can bring people in here."
He walked over and opened the door. Patrycja stood just outside, short blonde hair slightly messy, eyes still sleepy, but with clear relief in them, the kind you got when the night passed without disaster.
"Sure," Leon said without hesitation. "You can start bringing people in."
Patrycja nodded, tossed him a quick "Thanks," and headed back toward Natalia and the others.
***
The café was big enough to hold close to a hundred people, but it had been designed for quick breaks between classes, not as a cafeteria and shelter for an entire group of survivors. There weren't nearly enough tables and chairs.
So some students sat on the floor, backs against walls and pillars. Others crouched, balancing food on their knees. The lucky few who'd secured actual seats ate in silence, hunched over like drawing attention might get them killed.
Most of them hadn't eaten anything substantial in two days, so once food started moving, it vanished at an alarming speed. There was no talking, no laughter, not even quiet jokes, only a heavy, sticky silence broken by swallowing, the soft crackle of wrappers, and the occasional cough. Everyone ate like stopping for even a second might make things go wrong again.
Leon couldn't stand crowds even in normal life. In a room this tense, packed with raw nerves and unprocessed fear, it was worse. As soon as most of the group settled into the café, he grabbed his breakfast and slipped out into the passage leading toward the basketball court.
He sat on a low ledge, back against the cold wall, eating in silence and letting his thoughts drift.
The situation was, put mildly, bad.
They were cut off from the outside world. No signal. No information. No certainty anyone was coming. And on top of that, they were stranded in the middle of a campus that, somehow, was crawling with zombies and mutated beasts in numbers far worse than what Leon had seen in the city center.
Something about it didn't add up. And the longer he turned it over in his head, the less he liked it.
He ate slowly, almost mechanically, until soft footsteps broke the quiet.
He looked up and saw a girl approaching with obvious hesitation, like every step took extra effort.
Elena Moreau.
Her light-brown hair was tied in a messy ponytail, a few loose strands falling into her face. She held an empty cup, twisting it nervously between her fingers. She stopped in front of him and just… stared, clearly unsure how to begin.
An awkward silence settled in.
Leon lasted maybe a few seconds before deciding that even for him, this was getting irritating. And even with an introvert's soul, he started the conversation.
"Thanks for yesterday," he said calmly. "For the backpack. Must've been rough running with that on."
Elena blinked, like she hadn't expected him to speak first, then quickly shook her head.
"N-no… it wasn't that bad," she said quietly. "I'm glad I could help."
Silence again, just as awkward as before.
Elena drew a deep breath, like she was gathering herself, then looked Leon straight in the eyes.
"I… I want to fight too."
Leon raised his eyebrows, genuinely surprised. For a moment he studied her more carefully, like he was trying to make those words fit the person standing in front of him.
"That's… a pretty good decision," he said at last. "Fighting means you can get stronger, and in times like this that could really help you survive. They'll probably be choosing teams to go outside today. You can volunteer with Natalia or Adam."
Her face brightened, real, visible excitement.
"In that case… if you wouldn't mind…" she began carefully. "I'd like to go with you."
Leon frowned almost immediately and shook his head.
"No."
The hope on her face died as quickly as it had appeared. She lowered her gaze, fingers tightening around the cup.
Leon sighed softly.
"It's not, " he started, about to explain...
Footsteps again.
He turned and saw Natalia walking toward them with Marek and Adam. All three wore serious, drawn expressions, and that alone was enough to tell Leon something was wrong.
He stood up from the ledge, cutting the conversation off with Elena, and looked at them closely.
"Something happen?" he asked bluntly.
The way they exchanged looks only confirmed it, breakfast had been nothing but a brief pause before the next problem.
Natalia held his gaze for a moment, as if deciding where to even start. Then she let out a short breath and went straight to it.
"We have a problem," she said matter-of-factly. "Right now, about twenty students have high fevers. Another thirty are at least coming down with something. If we don't get medicine soon, this can spiral fast."
Leon's brow tightened. His mind immediately filled in the missing pieces, people spending the night in cold, damp places, hiding for hours, no real food, no sleep, constant stress and fear stripping their bodies down faster than any virus could. Colds and fevers were almost inevitable.
But the scale hit harder than he expected.
Nearly half of them were sick.
Leon didn't function well in groups. He didn't like crowds. He avoided emotional conversations whenever possible. But he wasn't indifferent, and he sure as hell wasn't cruel. He knew that if they didn't get medicine quickly, some people simply wouldn't get back up. Especially now, in a world where even a "minor" infection could become a death sentence.
He stood without a word, reaching into his backpack for his daggers and instinctively checking they were still there.
"What are you going to do?" Adam asked, watching him carefully.
Leon answered calmly, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"Yesterday I said I'm going alone. That hasn't changed. Getting to the male dorms, then over to the female dorms, rescuing people and collecting clothes, that's a job for a bigger group, like your four. While you do that, I'll go to the pharmacy for medicine."
"Alone?" Natalia cut in immediately, clearly displeased. "You seriously plan to go alone, with what's out there? Those beasts, everything we've already seen? It's better if we form teams and move together."
She didn't like Leon, anyone could see that. But she didn't want him dying pointlessly. He was still human, and more importantly, he had the nerve to fight and strength you couldn't ignore, especially after what she'd seen yesterday. That was exactly why she insisted he not move alone: logically, a solo run in this world wasn't much different from handing your life over to death.
Leon listened without interrupting. Then he smiled a little, not mocking, more like calm stubbornness.
"Thanks for meaning well," he said. "But you really don't have to worry about my safety. I'll be fine."
He turned toward the exit, then remembered something. He stopped, went back to his backpack, pulled out the purple scroll, and tossed it toward Elena. She caught it on instinct, clearly not even sure what it was.
"Could be useful," Leon said flatly.
Then he looked at Marek, his voice turning a shade colder.
"That girl wanted to fight. Take care of her. Don't let her die in the first skirmish."
At Leon's words, all three looked toward the ponytailed girl again. Elena stiffened under the attention, clutching the scroll tighter, suddenly uncomfortable with so many eyes on her.
Leon didn't wait for a response. He headed for the exit, and as he passed through the doorway, he added more quietly, almost to himself, but still loud enough that Valeria nearby could hear.
"I'm not dying in the jaws of some zombie or mutated animal… at least not before I find my family."
The door closed softly behind him, leaving the group in a mix of unease, helplessness, and something they'd hate to call faith, that this one stubborn, strange boy really would come back with medicine.