Shiratori Haruto

“M-Mom…” I said as I looked into the scared and shocked eyes of my mom and they looked at me.

“AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!”

I turned my head front, and so did my mom. One of the apes was down the other two, and the other two were biting his face. I looked at them as one of them raised his head up from the one down with its fangs filled with brown skin shreds colored with red dark patches. “C’mon, Haruto, there’s no time to waste,” She said as she stepped towards me and grabbed my left arm from her right hand, which had red nail-polish. “We needa go,” She worriedly said and turned to her left, the other side of the fight. “You come too, son.” She pulled me, but I didn’t budge. She stopped, and turned her head back at me. “We can continue the fight someday else, Haruto. Life is more impor—”

“Mom…” Haruto said as he looked at her seriously. “I’ve already ended the fight on my end. I… I needa get this thing done right now behind us.”

She tilted her eyes a little up at the beasts fighting behind us, and then she turned her eyes back at me. “W-What’s going on? What’s all this?” I opened my mouth to reply, but I could not find any words, so after a moment, I closed my mouth again. “W-What is going on in the whole village, Haruto?” She asked again, her voice a little up this time.

“I…” I had my head tilted a little down. Then, I turned my head up and looked in her eyes again. “Even I don’t know right now. But we… we’re just somehow tryna save everyone and everything.”

“D-Did you… two… did this?” She slowly asked.

I turned my head right at Itsuki, who was looking at me all this time. He then turned his head at my mom and said, “I-It’s my fault, miss, so-somehow, we—”

“It’s our fault, mom,” He corrected. “Or more or less, it’s us who’re caught in this trap.”

“Come with me, you two,” She said as she turned at Itsuki. “The army will be here anytime soon. They will manage. I don’t know what you did, but… I guess you’ve had enough too.”

I clenched my right hand, and then unclenched it. I got Itsuki’s right arm, and looked at him seriously. “Let’s go with mom.”

Itsuki looked into my expressionless serious eyes, and then nodded. My mom then nodded and turned backward again. She started to run, and we started to follow too. The beasts still fought behind us and the shops were being broken as the one on the ground suddenly punched the one on his left and that one stepped back on one of the shops, just about to fall on the ground. It then quickly pushed the ground with his left hand, and punched the other one with his right arm. It stepped back, and the third one stood up on his legs again. He moved his left hand on the neck of the second one and grabbed his neck. “AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!” That scream of anger and rage scared us as I let the hand of Itsuki go and he turned his head back at the fight. He looked at the beast in the center screaming on top of his lungs and the second one trying to get off the hand of the first one as he had his head turned up and he was unable to breathe. The electric poles fell down on the ground and the shops had now caught fire and what stood in the middle of all that destruction was a beast fighting its own kind.

“AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!”

***

Isekai’d

Written by Dhruv Pabreja

***

Takemura Itsuki

My shoes still patter on the ground repetitively as we ran on the empty street lined with empty shops and open cars in the middle of the road. On the footpath on our right too, some people were running for their lives. I looked at them, and then turned my head backward. The middle one was still punching the third one as the second one on his right was lying on the ground. I thought, “Maybe it will end once they kill each other, and once we kill the last one, the most powerful one of them all.”

“How did it happen?” Haruto’s mom asked us as she ran in front of me.

“We were just playing some kind of game, and they just appeared outta nowhere from that game,” Haruto replied in his serious voice.

“It might be a coincidence, because I’ve never seen things coming out of some kind of game,” She replied.

“You’ve also never seen things like these in your whole life, have you?” I replied as I ran.

“Mm-hmm,” She nodded, and we kept running.

We ran for a while, and there was an unsettling silence between all of us. Haruto then broke the silence, “Mom, I guess we should run on the footpath on our right.”

“Why?”

“It’d help us run faster. I’ve heard that on footpa—”

“Okay,” She suddenly replied and she started tilting her line a little to the footpath, and watching her, I too turned a little to my right. I stepped on the footpath, and then his mom followed as she ran in front of us, and Haruto too with her got on the footpath. There were some other people running in the front of us. Haruto then quickly held my right arm and then pushed me to our right. I noticed that there was a narrow little lane on our right just some steps away. We both ran to that, and as it reached us, we instantly and quietly turned right inside the lane and ran away inside. Haruto’s mom kept on running on the footpath, without looking behind at us.