Chapter 45: The Biological Payload

Summer break ended the way it always does, with the crushing realization that freedom is temporary and suffering is eternal.

I sat on the rooftop during lunch, unwrapping my convenience store bento. The plastic crinkled in my hands. The contents looked exactly as depressing as expected. Limp vegetables, mystery meat that might’ve been chicken, rice that had seen better days. Peak cuisine right here. My wallet had cried when I bought it, and my taste buds were about to cry harder.

The rooftop door crashed open behind me.

Ryuuji Kanzaki strolled through like he owned the place, which, given his family’s wealth, he probably could if he wanted. Pristine uniform, perfectly styled hair, that annoyingly genuine smile plastered across his face. Dude radiated main character energy and I hated it.

He spotted me and waved.

“Alfred! Mind if I join you?”

I gestured at the empty space beside me, shoving a bite of sad rice into my mouth. Not like I could stop him anyway. Ryuuji had this talent for being aggressively friendly, the kind of person who didn’t understand the concept of leaving people alone to suffer in peace.

He sat down, setting his lunch beside him with careful precision.

My eyes locked onto it immediately.

That wasn’t a lunch. That was a work of art wrapped in fancy paper. The packaging alone probably cost more than my entire bento. Gold foil edges, embossed logo from some bakery I’d only seen in food magazines. The kind of place where you needed a reservation just to smell the bread.

Ryuuji unwrapped it with the care of someone defusing a bomb.

A Katsu Sando emerged from the paper like a holy relic. Perfectly cut bread, golden edges, the cutlet inside visible through the cross-section. I could see layers. Actual visible layers of premium ingredients. Lettuce so crisp it looked fake. Tomato slices that hadn’t given up on life. And the cutlet itself, breaded to absolute perfection, glistening with what looked like truffle mayo.

Truffle. Mayo.

My convenience store bento suddenly felt like a personal attack from the universe.

“Limited edition from Matsumoto Bakery in Ginza.”

Ryuuji held it up slightly, admiring his prize like a trophy.

“They only make fifty per day. My family’s driver waited in line for three hours.”

Of course he did. Of course Ryuuji’s family had a dedicated driver willing to queue for premium sandwiches. Meanwhile I was eating rice that tasted like cardboard and regret.

I tried focusing on my bento, shoveling another bite into my mouth. Ignore the sandwich. Ignore the truffle mayo. Ignore the way that bread looked softer than my pillow.

Ryuuji took a bite from the corner.

His eyes literally closed in satisfaction. A small sound escaped his throat, something between a sigh and a moan. Dude was experiencing religious enlightenment through bread and meat.

“This is incredible.”

He chewed slowly, savoring every moment like he was in a food anime. The truffle mayo caught the sunlight, gleaming with malicious perfection. I could smell it from here. Rich, earthy, the kind of aroma that made my stomach growl despite being halfway through my garbage-tier lunch.

My gaze drifted back to the sandwich against my will.

Ryuuji noticed. Of course he noticed. Nothing escaped that guy’s awareness.

“Want to try some?”

He held the sandwich toward me, that genuine smile still plastered on his face. No mockery, no superiority, just pure innocent generosity. Which somehow made it worse. I could handle someone being a jerk about their premium food, but Ryuuji’s earnest kindness hit different.

My hand reached out automatically before my brain caught up.

Then the alarms started blaring.

My internal Gamer Brain kicked into maximum overdrive, red alerts flashing across my consciousness like a hacked security system. Warning signs materialized faster than I could process them. Danger detected. Threat level rising. Abort mission immediately.

This was an Indirect Kiss scenario.

The sandwich had touched Ryuuji’s mouth. His lips had made contact with that exact corner, transferring saliva and bacteria and whatever else constituted biological material. If I bit from the same spot, that counted as an Indirect Kiss by every anime and manga metric ever established.

With a dude.

A guy.

The wrong gender for my carefully maintained heterosexual persona.

This was a Flag I absolutely did not want to trigger. My brain pulled up every BL manga panel I’d accidentally seen, every yaoi flag progression chart from forums I’d stumbled across while researching other content. One Indirect Kiss led to prolonged eye contact, which led to accidental hand-touching, which spiraled into emotional confusion and eventual relationship complications.

Hard pass. Delete that route immediately.

But Ryuuji sat there, holding the sandwich out with such genuine kindness. His expression radiated pure friendly energy, zero ulterior motives, just a rich kid wanting to share his premium lunch with someone eating convenience store trash.

Refusing would be rude.

Worse, it would be suspicious. What kind of excuse could I give? “Sorry bro, can’t accept food from you because the Indirect Kiss implications trigger my latent homophobia?” Yeah, that conversation would go great. Super normal response.

My hand closed around the sandwich.

The bread felt impossibly soft against my fingers, like touching a cloud made of carbs. The weight distribution was perfect, professional craftsmanship evident in every aspect. This thing probably cost more than my entire lunch budget for the week.

I brought it closer to my face.

The truffle mayo aroma intensified, flooding my nostrils with umami richness. The cutlet looked even better up close, breading crispy and golden, meat juicy and tender underneath. My mouth watered involuntarily, biological responses overriding psychological concerns.

Just don’t bite the same spot Ryuuji did. Easy solution. Bite from the opposite end, maintain safe distance from any saliva transfer zones, avoid all Flag implications entirely.

My teeth sank into the exact corner Ryuuji had bitten.

Brain autopilot had betrayed me. Muscle memory executed the most efficient bite path without consulting higher consciousness. By the time my awareness caught up, I was already chewing, truffle mayo coating my tongue with rich earthy perfection.

The flavor hit like a truck.

Buttery bread dissolved against my palate. The cutlet crunched perfectly, releasing juices that mixed with the truffle mayo in this symphony of premium ingredients. Tomato added brightness, lettuce provided textural contrast, everything working in harmony like a professional orchestra.

This was what rich people ate. This was the life I’d been missing.

I swallowed.

The food traveled down my throat, and something shifted.

A chill crawled across my skin, starting at the base of my neck and spreading outward like frost creeping across glass. My body temperature dropped several degrees in an instant. The rooftop suddenly felt colder, the breeze sharper, the sunlight dimmer.

Something was wrong.

My eyes scanned the courtyard below automatically, seeking the source of this sudden dread. Students milled around during lunch break, forming their usual groups, living their normal lives. Everything looked standard, routine, completely ordinary.

Then I saw them.

Elizabeth and Seda stood at the far edge of the courtyard, partially hidden behind the equipment shed. They weren’t moving. Weren’t talking. Just staring upward with laser focus, their gazes locked onto something with frightening intensity.

Not at me.

At the sandwich.

Their eyes had gone completely dead, like someone had reached inside their skulls and flipped the “humanity” switch to off. No emotion registered on their faces. No anger, no jealousy, no concern. Just empty, hollow observation, the kind of stare you’d give a specimen under glass right before dissecting it.

Elizabeth’s hands hung at her sides, fingers twitching slightly. Seda’s jaw was clenched so tight I could see the muscle definition from up here. Both of them radiated this aura of barely contained something, like pressure building behind a dam seconds before catastrophic failure.

My phone vibrated in my pocket.

The sensation jolted through my body like an electric shock. I fumbled for the device, nearly dropping it twice before getting a solid grip. The screen lit up, displaying a notification that made my blood run cold.

《CRITICAL ALERT: UNAUTHORIZED DNA INJECTION DETECTED》

The text glowed red against the black background, pulsing with urgency. More text scrolled beneath it, each line worse than the last.

《FOREIGN BIOLOGICAL MATERIAL IDENTIFIED》

《SYSTEM INTEGRITY COMPROMISED》

《QUARANTINE PROTOCOLS RECOMMENDED》

《GENETIC SEQUENCE ANALYSIS IN PROGRESS》

My brain struggled to process the information, trying to connect dots that didn’t want to connect. DNA injection? Foreign biological material? What kind of hygiene nightmare had I just participated in?

The sandwich sat on the paper beside Ryuuji, suddenly looking less like premium food and more like a biological weapon. Had it been contaminated? Was there some kind of food poisoning outbreak I hadn’t heard about? Did truffle mayo carry rare diseases?

My gaze snapped back to Elizabeth and Seda.

They hadn’t moved. Still frozen in that observation pose, staring at the sandwich like bomb technicians analyzing an explosive device. Their dead-eyed intensity suggested they knew something I didn’t, possessed information that would explain this nightmare scenario currently unfolding.

Were they worried about me getting sick? Did they know something about the food’s safety? Was this some kind of contamination issue they’d detected through whatever insane monitoring system they had running?

Another notification lit up my screen.

《CONTAMINATION VECTOR: ORAL TRANSFER》

《SOURCE IDENTIFIED: SECONDARY CONTACT》

《DECONTAMINATION REQUIRED IMMEDIATELY》

My stomach dropped into my shoes, then kept falling through the rooftop into some subterranean level of dread I didn’t know existed. Oral transfer meant mouth-to-mouth contact, which meant the Indirect Kiss thing wasn’t just some anime trope, it was an actual biological hazard situation.

I’d just contaminated myself with Ryuuji’s saliva.

And somehow, impossibly, Elizabeth and Seda knew about it within seconds of it happening, watching from across the courtyard with the intensity of scientists observing a plague outbreak in real-time.

Ryuuji continued eating his sandwich, completely oblivious to the crisis unfolding around him.

“Good, right? That truffle mayo is imported from France.”

His cheerful voice felt disconnected from reality, like audio from a different scene playing over the wrong footage. He smiled that genuine smile, happy to have shared something he enjoyed, unaware that he’d apparently just become a biological terrorist.

My phone buzzed again, another alert demanding attention.

《PRIORITY OVERRIDE: RETURN TO BASE IMMEDIATELY》

《EMERGENCY PROTOCOLS ACTIVATED》

《FAILURE TO COMPLY WILL RESULT IN PENALTY》

The courtyard below showed movement now. Elizabeth and Seda turned away from their observation point, walking back toward the school building with synchronized precision. Their movements looked mechanical, predetermined, like they’d already mapped out every step before taking it.

They weren’t panicking. Weren’t rushing. Just moving with terrifying purpose, the kind of calm that preceded surgical strikes and calculated responses.

I looked at the sandwich, then at Ryuuji, then back at my phone’s glowing warnings.

This wasn’t about food poisoning or hygiene concerns.

This was something else entirely, something my brain refused to fully comprehend because accepting the implications would mean confronting a reality far worse than any indirect kiss flag.

The truffle mayo suddenly tasted like impending doom in my mouth.