Level Up in Highschool of the Dead

On a Friday evening, Joshua's smartphone started ringing while playing the Littleroot Town theme from Pokemon Ruby. After a few seconds of enjoying the ringtone, Joshua saved the code he was working on his PC and answered the call.

"Hey Greg, whazaaaaaaa?" Joshua spoke in their usual way.

"Whazaaa' my ass! Where are you? We had said 19:30, it's 19:40 already!", Greg said annoyed.

"OH NO! My bad man, I kinda got in the zone while coding and forgot about the time. I'm going right now!", Joshua responded a bit ashamed of losing track of his surroundings, as a person with ADHD getting hyper-focused on something for hours is something that happens just once every few weeks or even months.

After he said that another voice spoke through the call.

"Come already! I'm hungry!", the voice was from his other best friend Carl.

"OK, OK, I'm going. Bye", said Joshua before cutting the call. He then went to grab his keys, his wallet and phone and got out. He didn't need to tell anyone that he was going out as his parents had passed away in a plane crash and now he lived alone.

As the pizza place was rather close to his apartment, he went walking while looking at the people walking by getting there 15 minutes later.

"Finally! I'm starving!", Carl said before Joshua sat down. Looking for the waiter and raising his hand he called, "Hey, Champion! I'll have 2 large pizzas, the first is half chicken with cream cheese and half jerked beef, and the second one is half four cheeses and half shredded pepperoni with chili."

"We won't want soda, it's bad for our health", Greg said sagely.

The other two nodded in accord while the waiter had a face that said, 'Shouldn't the pizza be bad for your health too?'

After eating plenty and spending a few hours having fun, Joshua and his friends walked cheerfully on the sidewalk. While joking around and talking about the seasonal anime, Joshua started to tune out of the conversation and think about his life. 

Greg and Carl have been his friends since childhood, he met each of them in different places at different times but in a strange turn of events the three of them got really into anime and weeb culture and their bond became even stronger through the years.

When he was 16 his parents died in a plane crash while traveling, leaving him alone. He had his relatives who were good to him but it would never be the same. At 18 he left his aunt's house to live alone, at that time he already had a job coding a few simple websites for local companies which helped him to maintain himself. His friends were always there for him through thick and thin and he was truly grateful for that.

Greg was a perpetually chubby guy, not due to a lack of exercise, quite the opposite actually—he worked in furniture delivery, spending each day moving heavy items. On the other hand, Carl followed in his father's footsteps and became a mechanic, establishing his workshop by the age of 20. Meanwhile, Joshua, fueled by his love for computers since childhood, learned programming and now freelances while pursuing a degree in law at college.

"I'm telling you, man, it's white and gold!", Carl exclaimed about some meme they saw on the internet about a dress that had people confused if it was black and blue or white and gold.

"Black and blue is the only answer, and I can't understand how you fix cars with such crappy eyes," Joshua responded heatedly.

 As the discussion progressed, Greg tired of this already, spoke:

"Whatever man, leaving that behind, so what is your favorite ecchi anime?"

Carl immediately declared his love for Highschool DxD, while Greg chose Ikkitousen. Without hesitation, Joshua exclaimed, "Highschool of the Dead!"

Greg replied, "Yeah, I figured you'd say that, especially since you have the full-color deluxe collection of all released volumes. By the way, was it ever released anywhere beyond Brazil?"

"I don't know, it was really hard to get it and at the time it was something expensive to me. It's too bad it'll never have a proper ending," Joshua responded.

"Not like Japanese authors know how to make endings anyway.", Greg said sarcastically.

Carl added solemnly, "F in the chat for the author," making a praying gesture with his hands and closing his eyes, while Greg imitated the gesture.

Suddenly, Joshua noticed a dark silhouette approaching rapidly along the street from the corner of his eye. Time appeared to slow down as he realized that the dark figure was a speeding car with its lights off, heading directly towards them on the sidewalk after not stopping at the crossroads.

There was no time to shout, but Joshua acted instinctively.

He exerted all his strength to push Greg and Carl away from him and further ahead onto the sidewalk. Unfortunately, this prevented him from avoiding the uncontrolled car colliding with him. The impact was so sudden and forceful that Joshua didn't even have time to feel pain. However, in his mind, he had one final thought, as if his consciousness sought to divert attention from the impending reality of his imminent demise:

"Was that car white or grey?"

And then he lost consciousness.