On a July summer day that was disgustingly clear and bright, trees and shrubs stretched their branches through the gaps in buildings like they were waking up. Baby greens struggled to see the light, pushing through the soft flesh of humans strewn across the roadside.

...I never imagined the 'Blue Marble' would literally be covered in such lush, green vegetation.

Anyway, even a well-kept house has at least one crumpled page in a book, and even a canvas filled perfectly with green has invisible cracks. We were those empty holes.

Unlike the others who had become mere nutrients, we bickered and struggled just to maintain our pathetic scrap of intellect. Thinking back, perhaps that brain—which used to be spent debating whether sweet and sour pork should be dipped or smothered in sauce—would have been more nutritious as fertilizer for the plants.

Still, seeing the lumps of flesh on the roadside letting out meaningless groans and trembling in agony made my skin crawl, and I struggled to escape the clutches of the plant roots.

The sight, where the complementary colors of red and green were diluted and mixed, was a carnage that made me want to vomit up the remains of the canned food I ate three days ago. Whenever I felt the presence of a demonic hand reaching out, we held onto each other with all our might and ran toward the gray, toward the darkness.

But as those plants took root in tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of brains, did they develop a mind of their own? Or was it just the fate that had been slowly reaching for us? Eventually, in the season thick with the scent of green summer, we were surrounded by the masters of this era.

Fine, we held out long enough. It will be painful enough to make torture seem better, but if I'm with you, who jumped through the threshold of life and death with me, won't we finally become one now? I'm more logical, so I'll be the head, and since you're the type to act first, you can be the body. I turned my head slightly, trying to calm the surging waves of emotion as I looked at you—

Click.

A cold, chilling muzzle—a relic of the old world that no longer fit this place, so different from the leaves warmed by the sunlight—was pointed at your own head.

Wait, what? Huh? No, where did that gun come from, and why are you putting it to your temple... No way. You're not, right? Don't tell me you just don't want to be consumed by the plants... Haha. Ha... You piece of shit?!

In that moment, your lips flickered—

'Sorry—'

Bang!

Like the rising of a short curtain on a play where we were the leads, the cheerful sound of a gunshot flew into my ears.

Simultaneously, with a wet thud, a hot liquid smelling of fishy iron splattered onto my face and trickled down, pronouncing your death.

Wow—this is the absolute worst.