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We always had a silent way of proving just how far apart we were. Back in our school days, if you were at the center of the rowdy kids sharing earphones in the back seat of a rattling retreat bus, I was the one bumping my head against the window, blankly counting the bus stop signs for the nth time. The only world we shared was the cramped air inside that bus, and even that never reached out toward one another.

　

Perhaps that was why. Sometimes, I wished this bloated world would just sink away. I dreamed an impudent dream where the noise of others and the lukewarm distance stifling me would all be paralyzed, leaving only you and me as the sole coordinates of the world. In a vast, perfect silence where there were no shouting salesmen or chasing schedules, you would finally turn your head and look at me.

　

Truly, I never imagined a day like this would come.

　

The geometry of the sky twisted first. Under a sky so blinding it was grotesquely distorted, the horizon bent down unnaturally. The familiar city buildings were pressed into the ground like melting candle wax. The long-standing noises built by humanity were absorbed into a momentary, tearing scream, then submerged in a cruel, vivid silence as if it were all a lie. The apocalypse was less a destruction and more a massive, overwhelming detention.

　

I crawled through the world turned to ash amidst the scorching heat. In the middle of the ruins, where the smell of rotting corpses and hot dust stung the throat, you were there under a massive slab of concrete.

　

You, with your lower body grotesquely crushed and mangled, barely breathing with a face covered in blood and dust.

　

Ah.

　

My prayers have been answered.