How and when

"Sigh, I guess I'll just have to show you then. Maybe you can trust me more after seeing this" Fablo let out a long sigh before suddenly picking up his bat and placing it above his arm.

Edward was still fumbling with his thoughts to form something meaningful when his eyes suddenly widened, he was shocked by Fablo's next action and what followed next.

.....

Drip! Drip!! Drip!!!

Edward watched watched with wide eyes as Fablo cut his arm with the nails poking through his bat and green blood poured out from the wounds and dropped on the floor but before Fablo could bleed too much, Edward's eyes trembled because he saw the wounds closing up at a speed that was not slower than his.

Only ten seconds passed and the wounds on Fablo's arms had all healed completely without leaving a single scar or trace of any injury behind, all that remained were the green bloodstains on his skin. Also, only now did Edward notice that Fablo's skin looked slightly delicate like Edward's skin after he woke up back then despite his huge build. Edward had not thought much of this in the past, he did not even notice it to begin with!

"You…y-you are also" Edward stuttered as he pointed a finger at Fablo's arm with wide eyes.

Fablo smirked again at Edward's expression.

'Look who got shocked instead' he laughed inwardly.

"Yeah, I'm just like you. Umm, how do I say this? Do you have a name for people like us? Hmm, I guess you don't. You probably haven't become like this for long and don't know much about it, you probably would not have frozen back then. So, let's just call it that we are… half-zombies? Yeah, make sense" Fablo wondered aloud and then nodded in agreement to his words without waiting for Edward's opinion.

'So, that's how it is'

Edward thought to himself as he gradually began to calm down but the shock was still in his heart.

"What are you still standing there for? Still think I'm going to try and kill you?" Fablo clicked his tongue at Edward who was still standing a few meters away from him in a defensive stance.

Edward quickly reacted to his words and found a place to sit so he could rest. Although the injuries from the fight just now had healed up and he looked all new aside from his ruined clothes, the pain and exhaustion still lingered. He was only immune to the zombie virus, he did not have pain resistance ability.

"So, care to tell me a few things while we are resting?" Fablo looked towards Edward and asked.

Edward only raised an eyebrow, signifying that he did not know what he wanted to hear.

"Firstly, how did this happen to you?" Fablo had to specify things before Edward began to speak.

He told him of how he had been caught by the female zombie and clearly died, only to wake up after an unknown amount of time or days had passed. Unlike last time when he had tried to not appear suspicious and had lied to them, Edward was rather honest this time and the only part that he did not mention was of him biting the zombie out of resentment. He had somehow forgotten this part because he was already on the verge of losing consciousness back then, so he was currently unable to recall it.

"Hmm, no wonder I felt that the story you told us back then had some loopholes in it. So this was actually what happened, it must have been a very painful experience" Fablo said with a sad sigh and sympathized with Edward.

He suddenly stopped sighing and stared at Edward with an intense gaze that made Edward shift, he felt uncomfortable under Fablo's gaze.

"Then back then, at the store…that was you fighting that huge zombie?" Fablo asked in a doubtful voice. Although he felt it was impossible, he had a hunch that he might be right.

Edward looked back at Fablo for a while before slowly nodding, he only hesitated for a while before deciding to come clean. After all, they were both in the same boat and Fablo could not use any of these against him.

Fablo gasped when he saw Edward nod, this was even more shocking than finding out that Edward was a half-zombie like him.

"How were you even able to do that? I could not even see both of you clearly, you were both too fast and extremely powerful too. Honestly, you don't look anything like back then. How do I say this, hmm…you are too weak to convince someone that the person fighting the zombie back then was you" Fablo said in a surprised voice.

Edward felt kind of hurt about the last part of his words but he knew that Fablo was not lying, he indeed was too weak to be able to kill such a zombie; he did not even know how the fight played out.

" Umm, I did not actually fight the zombie myself. The last thing I remembered was passing out after the zombie punched a hole through my stomach, it's possible I wasn't the one fighting it too" Edward said with an embarrassed laugh but his mind was thinking about something else.

'Could it be that I became so powerful after passing out? I remember something calling out to me from within me, could that be the zombie side of me?' Edward thought inwardly but he had no way of verifying it for the time being.

"Hmm, sounds reasonable because I've never received such a power boost and you should have been able to take care of every zombie we encountered if you were able to kill such a zombie" Fablo agreed with Edward's analysis.

After all, he was practically the same as Edward but he knew that he would die if he tried to get involved in the fight back at the store where Edward had found them.

After talking a bit about Edward, Fablo began to talk about himself and how he became like this.

Similar to Edward, he had also got bitten but his situation was more similar to Luca's case because he had been surrounded by a bunch of coworkers who were also security guards like him. He had tried to resist them and fought relentlessly, even using his teeth when his limbs turned weak but he was unable to do anything in the end and his vision slowly fell into darkness.