A smack on Natalia’s cheek made her scream. She was oblivious about how Cjay intended to gently tap her cheek, but ended up smacking her a little too hard because of his poor coordination skills as a zombie.

Panicking, she scrambled up on her bed and looked around before she saw a pair of thighs beside her bed. Her gaze slowly dragged up from the thighs to a clothed body until she saw Cjay’s stern face.

“You sleep like a log,” he glared at her.

Natalia blinked. For some reason, she could see much clearly than before. By looking at Cjay’s face, she could easily make out the fine lines and cracks of the skin on his grayish face. She could also see the little lines in the rich brown lens of his eyes and the reddishness on their each corner. It must be because she had a more decent meal earlier, past midnight.

During the midnight, she waited for Cjay to finish his ‘midnight snack.’ He left quite a few pieces of meat in the freezer, so Natalia looked for another container where she can put them in. She found a small box, a blue and white colored cooler ice box, and kept all the left-over meat in there before heading back to her room. The meats were still fresh, not yet twenty-four hours cold, so Natalia had to hide the ice box in a cabinet below the sink of her bedroom’s own adjacent bathroom. The wait for the meat to be cold enough to eat took her an hour or two, making her hit the sack pretty late.

She did not just sleep late, but for the longest time, she felt full and satisfied which inspired her to sleep deeply. So deep that she overslept!

Natalia took the blanket off her and put her feet down on the other side of the bed, her back on Cjay. “Is there somewhere you’ve got to be?” she asked him while putting on her flipflops.

“I want to jog,” Cjay placed a hand on his hip, so that he can stand properly. “But how can I do that if I can’t get out of this palace without you?”

She glanced at him over her right shoulder and widened her eyes at him. “Malacañang is so big! If you can’t wait for me to accompany you, then you should just jog in here! Run around this house! Climb up and down the stairs!”

“Trying to be funny, huh?” he scoffed. “Take a bath already! You stink!” Cjay turned away and headed to the door.

“You smell worse, zombie!” she retorted as she quickly sprang on her feet and rummaged her cabinet full of clothes that were bought yesterday by the president for her.

A few minutes later and Cjay was already jogging at the garden in Malacañang’s backyard. Natalia watched him stagger in a loop around the yard. She could not decide if she should laugh at the weird way he jogged because a part of her wanted to cuss him for forcing her to jog with him. Because even if she finally got a decent meal of human meat this past midnight, she still hadn’t recovered her full strength yet! As a result, she couldn’t keep up with him! Worse, she wasn’t just jogging but also carrying a drawstring bag that contained Cjay’s bottled water, towel, cell phone, and extra T-shirt!

As she watched Cjay, she kept her combination of awe and disbelief to herself. It was hard to believe that the zombie she was assisting was already far ahead from her! He looked funny though with his arm slinging and his legs staggering as he ran, like a lanky bamboo against a whirlwhind or a glow stick being waved violently on a concert. What she was seeing was enough evidence that being a zombie compromised his motor skills and coordination. But, oh boy, he was quick. His pace was so otherworldly, it made her give up. Natalia stopped in the middle of their jog and put her hands on her knees as she catches her breath.

“Natalia!” Cjay called from afar while still jogging, facing forward.

‘Does he have eyes on his back? How did he know that I stopped jogging?’

She waved a hand at him. “Wait!” Then she weakly put down her hand and swallowed more air through her mouth until her breathing stabled. “Wait for me!”

Natalia’s shaky hands were on her knees again. Her eyes shone when she had a realization. ‘Wait. Does this mean, zombies can rely on their sense of smell alone in order for them to track other people’s movements? Is that how he figured out that I stopped jogging?’

Cjay finally turned his head to look at her. He did not stop jogging, just snobbishly clucked his tongue and muttered, “Wimp.” Then he returned his eyes to the front.

In spite of calling her a wimp under his breath, Natalia’s sharp ears managed to pick up Cjay’s insult. Her irritation at that arrogant zombie drove her to make a run for it in an attempt to catch up with him. Unfortunately, she only reached him when he was already standing under the shade of a leafy mango tree. Its leaves were so thick that the sunlight barely made it past the gaps between them. When a gentle breeze blows, that’s when yellow spotlights of sunlight manage to dot the grassy ground around the foot of the tree.

Cjay did some stretching again, the same routine that he did earlier before he jogged. When he saw her approaching, he put down his hands and placed them on his hips.

“You’re taking too long! The sweat on my back is already drying up!” he whined.

Natalia coughed a little, having another shortness of breath for running this time. “You’re too loud! When will you stop yapping?” She stopped beside him, pulled out a towel from the drawstring bag and offered it at him. “There you go!”

“Why are you giving me that?” He bowed down his head so that he could pull up his T-shirt before turning his back on her. “Wipe the sweat off my back.”

“My goodness,” Natalia groaned. “What a baby.” She looked up to the sky. Her view was blocked by the tree’s leaves yet she still asked for mercy to the skies above.

He looked at her over his shoulder. “You complain too much for an assistant. I am not being a baby, by the way. I just can’t reach my back, okay?” Cjay scoffed. “You see how entitled people become when their job just landed effortlessly on their lap?”

“Oh, I am sorry, sir. I forgot that only you are allowed to have it easier than everyone else in Citadel,” she muttered sarcastically while starting to wipe the sweat that filmed and shone on Cjay’s gray-skinned back. ‘What a loud-mouthed zombie. He thinks he knows a lot. Does he really think I wanted to assist an arrogant, unsightly monster like him? Sure, I am starting to like having a job, but I will never warm up to the idea of working for him! So annoying!’

“Be careful!” he commented grumpily about how she hurriedly wiped off his sweat. “You might peel off my skin!”

To avoid peeling off his skin, Natalia decided to gently dab the towel on his back. She noticed that his decaying, ashy gray-colored skin becomes reddish when wet with sweat. Natalia confusedly raised her eyes to peer a little at Cjay’s face.

“Do zombies really sweat?”

“What are you wiping off then, if that doesn’t look like sweat to you?” Mr. Grumpy replied, followed by a hiss. He winced, obviously trying to hide his flinching from her but her improved eye vision caught sight of it.

The zombie was so grumpy, Natalia didn’t want to feel even just a tiny pinch of pity for him, but when she noticed how pained he was, she just could not let it pass. “Does it hurt when you’re sweating?”

Cjay did not answer.

“You’re the one who’s in this terrible condition, and yet you have the audacity to be this grumpy,” she murmured, making sure that only she would hear it.

“Everytime I sweat,” Cjay explained a minute later, “my skin dries up. It becomes so flaky until they are scaly enough to easily peel off on its own. And that’s bad, because losing more skin will expose more of my flesh. My doctors say that zombies are as good as a corpse already, so it means they can’t regenerate their hair or skin or flesh anymore. I’m basically chipping away . . . like your blue sofa in your stinking apartment.”

Natalia’s mind got stuck on what Cjay said about getting his flesh exposed. In her fantasies, she could see his pale rust-colored flesh with their fibers tightened and made icy cold by death. She could visualize them sliced and served with his cold organs on separate serving plates as an entrée on a dining table. She could see Cjay’s laing heart, Cjay’s adobong heart . . .

The scrumptious smell made Natalia close her eyes while smiling so sweetly. It was as if she was dreaming a fairy tale.

‘Don’t drool, Natalia . . .’ she thought, smiling at the thought of Cjay’s bones turned into a bulalo. Her lips slowly and erotically sucking the bone, its marrow, and its soup . . .

“That’s why, I do not let my sweat dry on my skin,” Cjay continued, unaware of Natalia’s fantasizing. “And you’re right. When I sweat, it hurts. It feels like someone put a salt, vinegar, or an alcohol to an open wound. Do you know that feeling?”

Natalia nodded when Cjay glanced at her without him knowing that with her eyes closed, she was still in a different world created by her own imagination. He didn’t know that she was actually nodding because in her mind, she was approving the savory taste of her imaginary meal. She was still in that place in her mind where she could not barely choose which dish made of Cjay’s corpse would she put on her plate next, so she decided to stuff everything in one plate. At the same time, that’s when she accidentally dabbed the towel too hard against Cjay’s skin.

“That’s how painful—ah!” He immediately cut off his scream and shot daggers at her.

Meanwhile, his scream snapped her back to reality.

“Get it together, Natalia!” he blurted at her, snatching away the towel from her hand.

“What now? You’re going to blame this on me? You chose this pain, okay? Because whose idea is it to jog and get all sweaty, huh?”

“If I don’t exercise, it will be harder for me to control my body. You’ve seen how I jog, my body leans in awkward angles. I’m staggering. So don’t judge me!” Cjay grimaced as he gave her back the towel. “It still fucking hurts. There’s still some sweat on my back. Wipe it off.”

Once she was done wiping off his sweat, Cjay took charge in dabbing the sweat off from the rest of his body. Next, he put on a new T-shirt before they sat at the foot of the mango tree. It was still early in the morning, so the tree’s shade was still cool and relaxing. The whole scenery made Natalia feel calm—the green plants that surrounded them, the soft, green grass that blanketed the most of the back yard’ grounds dotted by dancing sunlight, and the fallen leaves that scattered all over the place after being gently poked by the breeze.

Cjay drank water from his thermal tumbler.

“So, what does your assistant do? I mean, what do I do in this job aside from carrying stuffs and wiping the sweat off your back for you?” Natalia asked while sitting with her arms crossed and resting on top of her folded knees. The drawstring bag was still on her back.

“Didn’t Dad give you any briefing about that?” he side-eyed at her while capping his tumbler.

“He gave me some instructions, but it’ll be much better if you tell me your expectations for an assistant. I work for you, remember? And you’re the one who knows your schedules better.”

He let out a groan. “Damn it! I always repeat my schedules and routines to every new assistant that I get! It’s getting so tiring repeating stuff!” Cjay looked up at the leaves that roofed over their heads. The glowing shape of sunlight that passed through each gap of the leaves painted his grayish face like a mosaic. Cjay haven’t put on his makeup yet, making him look very different from the jeans model that Natalia saw on the billboard previously. At this moment, his face was grayish with a few lines and flaking skin here and there. For some reason, he looked more alive without the makeup. Maybe he looked more alive because he was looking like his real self, making her believe that what’s real looked more alive . . .

“Do you use formalin?” Natalia asked out of the blue.

“What?” Cjay gaped at her, scandalized. He could have jumped in shock too if only his body wasn’t dead and heavy.

“Calm your ass, Cjay. I just asked because as far as I know funeral parlors use formalin to slow down the body’s decay.”

‘Formalin is also a delicious seasoning for us . . .’

“Are you crazy? Why would I ingest formalin? Do you want me to completely die?”

“I don’t know! Aren’t you already . . . dead? Your doctors said you’re as good as a corpse now, right??” she shrugged as she took the drawstring bag off her back and began checking its contents, pretending to be busy so that she can focus on her thoughts. ‘It’s confirmed. Cjay doesn’t have formalin in his body. He’s not going to be that delicious when I eat him then.’

Natalia stole a glance at him only to be surprised by him catching her and staring back into her eyes. Worse, a smirk formed at the corner of his lips, bothering her to no end. It was as if he read her mind, even when she was certain zombies couldn’t do that. She was so certain because for her, a zombie is equal to ‘brain dead.’

“About my schedule,” he said, still holding his sexy smirk and stare into her eyes, “I can’t tell you anything about that yet. I haven’t accepted new projects these past few weeks because I didn’t have a new assistant then. But later, I’ll call my manager, tell him that I already have an assistant and ask him if there’s a new project for me.” He stood up. “That’s when you’ll know my schedule.”

Natalia closed the bag, carried it on her back, and hurriedly followed Cjay.

“As for my routines,” he continued, “every morning, I wake up at five to exercise, then I have my breakfast next—”

‘Breakfast! Then, it means, I will have some time to myself! I still have some left over meat in my cooler! I’ll eat them while Cjay’s busy!’

“—and obviously, that will be your free time. So, do what you want. Go crazy. Then after an hour, come back for me.”

“Come back, because?” she glanced at him as they walked side by side.

“Because after I eat, I’m going to Galeria.”

“Galeria? The zombie museum?”

He nodded.

“Do you always go there?”

He nodded again as a response.

“Why?”

“What why?” He finally turned his head to look at her. His eyebrows furrowed as if she said something offensive again. “I’m a zombie! Of course, I have to study everything about being a zombie, and also the timeline of the outbreak and the virus’ progression.”

She was filled with puzzlement. ‘Zombie is studying? So, does that mean, he’s not that brain dead after all?’

He was ignoring the way his jet black hair strands kiss his forehead and eyelashes, like the ocean water teasing the shore by sliding back and forth to it. If Natalia would ignore his attitude for a minute, he looked rather handsome with his high bridged yet somehow large nose and his interest of looking back on the zombie virus epidemic’s history to study it. She was starting to wonder already why he seemed to have fallen into a deep thinking ever since he mentioned about going to Galeria.

Natalia cocked her head to the side, still observing him with her eyes as they walked slowly. ‘Wow. This zombie can really think. He’s not as brain dead as I thought.’

Her thoughts were interrupted when something cold on her arm made her step away from him. She looked down and saw that he was handing her his thermal tumbler so, she held it. Cjay was the first one to withdraw his hand. Then, he looked forward with faraway eyes.

Natalia adjusted the drawstring bag so that it would slip under her arm and make its way to the front of her stomach. Her long hair curtained the sides of her face as she looked down, opened the bag, and put the thermal tumbler back in it.