Soon, the group arrived in front of the row of prefabricated houses. What looked short at first glance turned out to stretch nearly fifty or sixty meters, and there were clear signs of activity in each room.
"Hey! Get up! All of you, up now! The sun's already up and you lazy women are still sleeping?"
A guard walked straight to the first unit and began pounding on the door without any courtesy. After a long while, the door creaked open and a disheveled young woman poked her head out, bleary-eyed.
Seeing who it was, she complained, "Captain Eguchi, what are you doing? There's still more than an hour before our shift. Can't we just get some rest?"
"Like hell this is the old world! You still dreaming about nine-to-five jobs? Cut the crap and start registering these fine folks! I'm warning you, if you're too slow, I'll file a complaint and get your food rations docked!"
He barked orders without pause, then shoved the door open before she could reply. A few startled screams rang out inside, but the guard only laughed.
"Why scream? It's your own fault for walking around half-naked! Get moving, the more people see you like this, the more you're losing out!"
Chaos ensued. Ten minutes passed before Sosuke Kitahara was finally invited into the room by Captain Eguchi.
Inside, four or five women were hurriedly straightening out blankets spread across the floor. A slightly older woman shoved her bedding into a cabinet, flipped her shoulder-length hair, and scowled at Eguchi.
"Seriously, Eguchi-chan, could you be any slimier? Always looking for excuses to peep at us. You want to marry one of us, but you're afraid of the cost. If you're just looking for a one-night fling, you can forget it. There are plenty of hot guys in the city. Why would we settle for someone like you?"
"Now, now, don't flatter those pretty boys too much. Do they even know which end of the gun the bullet comes out of? Only real men like me, who clawed their way through mountains of corpses, are worth anything now. Good looks don't feed you."
Eguchi slumped into a chair with a grin. He waggled his brows at the older woman. "Hey, can't you bring that dowry price down a bit? Three hundred kilos of rice is too steep."
"Go to hell. Bargaining now? Back in the day, I was the prettiest nurse in our hospital. I had more suitors than I could count. If I weren't in this godforsaken situation, you think I'd go for just three hundred kilos? If my father and brother found out I sold myself so cheap, they'd throw a fit."
She glared, hands on hips. The woman looked to be around twenty-seven or twenty-eight, attractive enough to live up to her reputation as the hospital's top beauty. In this post-apocalyptic world, marrying for rice was no longer absurd it was survival.
"Captain Eguchi, you've already got two wives and you're still trying to rope in our big sister? You sure you can afford it?"
The young woman from earlier walked over with a stack of forms.
Haruno Yukinoshita raised a brow. "Two wives? Since when did our country allow polygamy?"
"Country? What country?" the girl said, rolling her eyes. "You must've just come from outside. This new policy started half a month ago. Too many men die every time we go scavenging, so we need to boost the population, right?"
"And it's not even mandatory. It's all voluntary. If you don't want to, no one's forcing you."
Haruno was left speechless by the girl's casual tone. She glanced at her sister Yukino, brow furrowing, but said nothing more. In her mind, she was already planning to look for their parents once they entered the city if they were still alive.
The girl, clearly a supporter of polygamy, tossed the forms onto a desk and booted up a nearby computer.
"You know the rules, Eguchi. Once a woman is married, she can't work in the department anymore. Your pregnant wife already eats like a horse. Can you really afford a third?"
"Of course she eats a lot she's pregnant. But if your sister married me, I wouldn't let her starve, would I?" Eguchi scratched his head irritably and waved dismissively. "Forget it, enough talk. My friends are waiting. Let's get the formalities done."
"We've been swamped these last few days. Just yesterday, we processed over three thousand people. We burned through eight laptop batteries. I thought we'd finally get a break, but nooo. Here we go again," the girl sighed. Still, she looked more resigned than annoyed, and politely gestured toward Sosuke.
"Handsome, come here. I need your name, age, former occupation, and any special skills. Then we'll take a photo to upload to our system."
"Photos too?" Yukino's eyes lit up with curiosity. She looked around. The others all seemed surprisingly eager. The word "photo" stirred up nostalgic feelings after more than a month on the run, it was a glimpse of normalcy.
"Ladies, please come to this side. We'll need to lift your clothing slightly to check for any injuries."
Another girl clapped her hands and two others brought over a folding screen to separate the genders. She then pulled on white gloves and began conducting physical inspections on the women.
Half an hour later, everyone had completed their checkups and registration. Each was issued a stamped identification pass.
At last, the older woman exhaled and looked at Sosuke, who seemed to be the leader.
"You're not allowed to enter the city yet. You'll have to wait here for at least eight hours to confirm there's no infection. Or, if you pay two kilos of rice or equivalent, I can do a blood test for you."
"But didn't we just finish the inspection? Why a blood test too?" Utaha Kasumigaoka asked, suspiciously.
The woman seemed used to the question. She patiently explained, "There are places we can't check publicly, and the virus is mutating. Some people don't even know they're infected. Last week, a guy entered the city, transformed into a zombie, and caused a huge mess. This new regulation was just issued a few days ago. You guys have bad timing, that's all."