Normal. Regular. Ordinary. Common. Usual. Standard. Typical.

Those were subjective words, weren't they? What is normal for one person might not be so for another one and so on. Then, just who got to decide what the "norm" is? Who decides what is right and what is wrong, what is accepted and what is rejected? Just because one person says it, it doesn't mean it's true. Just because another person denies it, it doesn't mean it isn't.

Inside a dark bedroom, a youth sat legs crossed on the carpet. Illuminated by nothing but the flashing lights of his television screen, the shapes of two characters trading blows amid flashy light effects reflected on the surface of his black-rimmed glasses. The audio from the device was set so low that the sound of frantic button presses on a controller managed to overwhelm both it and the light rain falling outside his home.

The slouching young man wore only a pair of blue shorts and a plain gray t-shirt, his curly brown hair was a tangled mess and there were dark bags under his hazel eyes. But that was alright, he felt. After all, who didn't have bags under their eyes in this day and age?

Finally reducing the other character's health bar to empty, the teenager let out a sly smile. Between one match and the other, he glanced left toward his desk without turning his head from the screen.

[04:47 AM], read the digital alarm clock.

Yep, I've done it again. He thought, letting out a sigh. He didn't bother to try and remember how many hours he'd spent in that position. Legs crossed, back slouched, elbows resting on his thighs and hands glued to a controller.

As soon as the name of his next opponent came out and it was Korean, he left the match and quit the game. He wasn't even gonna bother anymore. With a small groan, he let himself fall on his back and stretched his legs, and then just laid there for a while before rummaging around the floor for his phone without getting up.

Once the small black device had been procured, he brought it over his face and unlocked it with his top-secret, high-security code (his birthday) and immediately headed to his favorite text messaging app.

[Yuzu-chin]

"Haru-taaan, are you up?(^ω^)"

He wouldn't expect any of his other contacts to answer at this hour, but Haru-tan was always reliable. And soon enough, his hopes were rewarded by the typing… prompt appearing on his screen.

[Haru-tan]

"Guess I am now, you bozo… what do you want? ( ̄ー ̄;)ゞ "

The teenager smiled, Haru-tan was reliable as usual.

[Yuzu-chin]

"Etooooo… I can't sleep right now… help me pwese ( ≧▽^)) "

[Haru-tan]

"Slip on something and break your neck for all I care, I have to work today, bugger off.
( ︶︿︶)_╭∩╮"

The teenager smiled, Haru-tan was gentle and helpful as usual.

[Yuzu-chin]

"Come ooon, don't be like that! Will I see you at Comiket this year...?"

[Haru-tan]

"Dunno… The gf has me on a leash lately. I'll try to slip away if I can but no promises."

Haru-tan was one of his internet friends. A college student a couple of years older than he was, but he was cool and classy, the sort of guy that looked like he had his life together pretty well. But he lived all the way down in Tokyo, so they only ever saw each other and the rest a couple of times every year.

[Yuzu-chin]

"See!? I told you 3D Women were evil! Yuzuru-chan would never do this to you!"

[Haru-tan]

"She's just the girl from a pervy doujin you like."

[Yuzu-chin]

"YOU TAKE THAT BACK RIGHT NOW, YOU UNCULTURED SWINE."

And just like that, Haru-tan's status changed to offline and the young man -now with a strangely elevated heart rate- was left all alone with his thoughts once again. Finally feeling exhausted, he turned around and started crawling to his bed. Another glance at his alarm clock revealed that he had enough time to get around 4 hours of sleep, which was typically enough to survive until he got back home.

Dragging himself up his bed and letting his body relax, the young man took his glasses off and placed them on his nightstand. The world around him suddenly grew quiet, with only the soothing sound of the continuing rain outside to carry him off into dream(less)land.

As he was drifting off, he reminded himself that today was clear browser history day.


Yo, welcome to this story of mine. You might know me from around here, or not, but either way here we are. I'm a person of many ideas but rarely ever do I find one that just sits well and feels right, this happens to be one of those few.

I draw some inspiration from multiple sources, but this is mostly your vanilla HOTD experience with a twist or two… or more. So it takes place in Japan, we have standard Undead/Infection rules, a high school setting and some degree of "anime-y" content. Safe to say things won't get "exiting" (if you know what i mean) until at least a handful of chapters in, though. You know, just to have time to set everything/everyone up at least a bit.

The short prologue above was a brief introduction for my own character, Saito Yuzuki.

Not much else to say really. I hope you give this a chance.

You'll find the OC Form in my profile page, I tried to make it as painless as possible.

DA' RULES/and info i guess-

1. Firstly, ask me any questions you have before getting too far into your form. It's better to be safe than sorry.

2. The story takes place in a medium-sized city in Japan, known as Akeno City. It is a port town in the Ibaraki Prefecture, a pretty average city by most accounts.

3. As mentioned before, the story centers around the students of Asagi High School, one of the three high schools in the city. It is pretty much the "middle-range" school, so there feasibly are students from all sorts of backgrounds in attendance.

4. When I say that anime-y content is included, I fully mean it. I'm all for quirky and unique characters that maybe wouldn't fit in your standard high school setting. As long as it's not WAY too out of place, I can probably work it it. Like, my own character is openly otaku/gamer/pervert and despises all "3D Women". I redirect you back to rule #1 once again, it's better to ask me about a concept and work it out with me. There's no superpowers or superhuman abilities though.

5. Please make sure you fill out the form clearly.

6. When sending your characters, label your PM as "No Way Out OC: [character's name]" for ease of organization.

7. Subs will probably be open for the remainder of March + some extra days. So give or take around a Month at most.

8. There will be the issue of Foreign characters when it comes to me. That is, any character that is not Japanese will be more heavily evaluated than the rest. This is a story set in Japan and not in one of the major cities, the possibility for more than one foreign student being at the school is extremely low and that's something I pay a lot of mind to.