The artificial rain falling lightly in the school corridors was getting rid of any remnants of the previous fires. However, wreckage and debris was still scattered everywhere - dead bodies of students and teachers included. We arrived at the doors of the cafeteria, only to find it blocked by a pile of corpses. I glanced at the other two for any ideas, but they were too busy looking at the obstacle in front of us. In an instant, I knew what they were thinking of and it was not pleasant at all.

“You can’t be serious―” I started to say, but my sentence was immediately cut off.
“It’s the only way, if we want to survive.” Luhan interrupted, pulling his sleeves up and wrapping a handkerchief around his nose. In front, Lay was already grabbing a hold of an unmoving girl all covered in severe burns and wounds, ignoring the fact that she was dead. Was he used to these sorts of things? Or was he just adapting to the situation?

Uncomfortable with such an act, I opened my mouth to protest but closed it again. He was right. If I wanted to continue on living and not die in such a place, then I would have to do something. Holding my breath, I slowly inched towards the pile and began doing the same thing as the others. It was hard work and the corpses were quite heavy and grotesque to look at, but we finally succeeded in the end.

Luhan pushed open the wooden doors and the three of us were immediately blasted with the smell of rotten, burning flesh, causing us to gag. Gasping for fresh air, I hurried over to the closed windows and frantically pulled them open, sighing in relief. Alright, so what next? Glancing around the cafeteria, I could only see more dead bodies and upturned tables, chairs and whatnot. None of our friends were in here, so we would have to go somewhere else.
I turned around to find Lay rummaging through cardboard boxes behind the counter, and stuffing what seemed to be packets and tins of food into his backpack.

Confused by what he was doing, I took a step towards him but Luhan beat me to it. “What do you think you’re doing?!” Luhan burst out, grabbing him by the shoulder and forcing him to look up.
“Well if we want to live, we obviously need food.” Lay responded without hesitation, shrugging off Luhan’s hands and resuming filling his bag with food. He did have a point though. And since the school was in such a state, I doubted anyone was going to complain about a few missing things. Except Lay took a lot of stuff, so it was more than a few.

Luhan gave him an exasperated but wordless look and stalked out of the cafeteria, leaving us to hurry after so as to not lose sight of him. After half an hour of wandering through classrooms and corridors, we stopped to have a rest and I took out my map of the school. Somehow, it hadn’t been destroyed during the explosion. According to my map, we were now in the science area and judging from the large acidic stains on the floor, I assumed this was the place where the explosives were made.

But by whom though?

Frowning, I took a gulp of water as I tried to think about the possibilities. Terrorists were a likely choice, but using such powerful explosives was just crossing the line. I was suddenly interrupted by a loud scream from one of the science labs and I sprang right up. That voice… I recognised it as Tao’s.
It seemed like Lay and Luhan had recognised it as his as well, so the three of us ran in the direction of where the scream came from. Flinging open the door, I dashed inside the lab to see Tao staring into the eyes of a cloaked person wearing a black and white masquerade mask. Normally, I would’ve laughed at such a sight and just slapped Tao on the back for being a scaredy-cat. And I would’ve done so too, if it weren’t for the gleaming knife in the masked man’s hand. Tao was in trouble and if I didn’t do anything right now, he would die.

Dying had never been on my mind before, but in a situation like this, I realised everything was possible. He could die, I could die, and Luhan and Lay could die.
Gritting my teeth, I lunged at the mysterious person.