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Reiko might have done better to get directions to a different room, in a different dorm, because it wasn't often that Alexander was actually in his own room. But she had managed to luck out, today, or maybe it was the zomboil's luck considering the treat he was about to receive, two if one counted getting to see somebody who he hadn't seen since the exchange program to the horsemen islands a treat.

Which he did.

He was just shoving assorted necessities into a backpack. Mostly clothes, really, and a couple of books. His feet kicked through the torn papers, dirty clothes, and garbage strewn about his floor as he shuffled around, frowning lightly to himself as he tried to think if he was forgetting anything. The rap on his door had his frown fading, however, and his eyebrows lifting in surprise. Really, he almost never had company arriving to his room. He hastily zipped up the bag that he held by one strap before slinging it over a shoulder and making his way to the door, turning the handle, and swinging it open.

He could only really stand and stare with one visible, pale grey eye at the figure now in front of him. He recognized this ghoul. He hadn't seen her or heard from her in months, but he knew her.

"Reiko?" His face split into a warm grin.

Alexander wasted no time now that his initial shock was over in shuffling closer to the ghoul and wrapping his arms around her for a quick hug, though he tried to keep in mind that she seemed like the rather shy sort and might not be the hugging type. As quickly as it was initiated, it ended, and he took a step back from her, still grinning happily.

"It's good to see you too! Are you...here visiting or...?" His pale eye brightened as the realization set in that she might actually be enrolled at the academy now! How cool would that have been? At the mention of her having brought something, his gaze dropped down to the box in her hands, and he suddenly leaned down a little and breathed in, eyelids closing.

Mmmmmmmmm fooooooooood. Reiko may have just jumped up rather high on the friendship totem pole. He straightened up a bit and held his hand out to accept the gift. "Thanks! But you didn't have to do that..." When she continued on, he just gave a small head shake a shrug.

"To the library to return a couple of books, then I was thinking of heading to the maul to....well, return my uniform, probably, unless I by some miracle still have a job." Having been MIA for about a month now with no real explanation why to give to his boss, he was pretty sure that still having a job was a pipe dream.

"You're welcome to tag along though?" He might have sounded awfully hopeful. He really did prefer company to being alone.

Alex just grinned all the more at the affirmation that his friend had been accepted to the academy, and continued to do so when she asked if something had happened to make him lose his job. He reached up to run fingers through his hair as his smile faded with the hand not occupied by the bento box, revealing the empty eye socket, his sudden joy at the ghouls enrollment soured by memories best left buried and forgotten, and thoughts that now that she was here, actually here, she too might end up facing horrible and traumatizing things.

Unless the hunters really had been beaten back. Unless Alex's sacrifice along with the other undead students had actually been worth something.

"It's..it's a really long story." His eye took on a bit of a pained look. "I can...explain as much as possible on our walk to the library and the maul?" She, at least, knew about hunters. That would help.

But before they could leave he needed to find somewhere to put his box of treats, and it wouldn't really do to bring it with him, despite the rumbling in his stomach that protested he should. He backed up into his room again and opened the closet door before placing the box on the top shelf, hopefully well out of reach of an nosy minipets. He then shuffled forwards again, reaching behind him for the handle and pulling it shut so that they stood out in the chilly, underground, undead dorm hallway. He offered her a smile, though it was in no way as cheerful or enthused as before. He really didn't like talking about what had happened, dreading the feelings that went along with the memories. But she was a student at Amityville now. She really should at least know what had recently occurred.

"Come on then." He nodded back towards the end of the hallway, towards the stairs that led back up to the floor with the main entrance way, and turned to shuffle along, hands finding their way into his pockets as he slouched along.

Alexander didn't really relish the thought of speaking about any of it, if he were being completely honest with himself. Still, he supposed if nothing else he would rather she heard what had happened from him, instead of via the rumor mill. He wasn't sure quite where to start, however. "Did you make it to Fright Night? Not that it's important or anything, but it helps with the timeline." He smiled, a little sadly, as he continued to trudge along, breaking the sudden silence between them just as they neared the stairs.

"It was after that, while we were cleaning up the festival grounds, that weird things started to happen. Do you....were you there, when that ghoul turned to statue, on the horseman islands? She was inflicted with something called insanity...." He thought he recalled that Reiko had been present for that bit of fun, but it seemed like so long ago now, and since then so many things had happened.

"Anyways, this insanity it...did something, here. Well, not here exactly, but in a place near here. The haunted house. It's...I don't know how to explain it, really, I mean..it's just a haunted house. Students became monsters like the ghoul on the island had been, completely infected, attacking their friends. Friends of mine were turned, one by one, all of my closest friends..." He had started his steady ascent up the stairs, careful not to snag his skeletal toes on anything and end up stumbling, but he stopped talking, closing his eye for a second, reliving the nightmare of having each of his friends stripped away from him by the fog.

"I'm sure at some point, almost everyone was turned." He shook his head, sadly. "I somehow managed to not end up like that...not at that time, at least." No, what he had become later had been much worse.

He went silent now, giving Reiko a chance to process everything he had said, or to let her ask questions, if she had any she wanted to ask.

Alexander nodded, frowning in thought to himself, wondering what to tell and what to leave out. What was too personal for him to want to get into right now. Certainly he wasn't going to mention Yin asking him to kill him after he'd managed to turn the other boil back into himself. He'd been reliving that moment everyday since he'd gotten back in his memories, and would not willingly set himself down that path again.

He might have started a little when she asked how he had survived, and he turned his face towards her as they moved along towards the buildings exit, having reached the top of the stairs. "I...I didn't..." His voice was low, quiet, and he shrugged his backpack which had begun to slide down back up onto his shoulder.

"The fog held a lot of strange apparitions. Eventually though, I came to a set of stairs going downwards. At the bottom, more fog, and hunters, and other students. Everyone seemed to be back to normal...well, for the most part. All of my friends appeared as themselves again...."

He cleared his throat. They'd gotten to the door and he shuffled forward to hold it open for her, letting her exit first before he continued. The pumpkin sun was high in the sky, but the days were shortening and the nights becoming longer so he knew in a just a few hours it would be dark again. He slipped outside and began his steady trudge towards the school.

"There was a teacher, she had apparently died last year, in the haunted house. I didn't know her, didn't really know the story except that it involved hunters and insanity in some way. She was there, in his big behemoth like form. We had to fight against her, but when she was beaten back...well, that's when the fog took finally got a hold of me but..." He shuddered, this memory was somehow the worst of them all.

"It turned me into a weapon. A hunters weapon. And I was used to attack my friends, and people I loved....it was horrible." His voice had dulled as he tried to keep himself numb to the rising emotion, to the nausea that threatened to return whenever he thought too much about what happened.

"It's okay though. Eventually somebody cured me."

He reached up a hand to rub at his face. At least he had gotten through the worst of it?