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We always proved how far apart we were in silent ways. If you were at the center of the commotion, lying in the back seat of a rattling school retreat bus sharing earphones with friends, I was the child banging my head against the window, blankly counting bus stop signs for the umpteenth time. The world we shared was only the narrow air inside that bus, and even that never reached out toward one another.

　

Perhaps that was why. Sometimes I wished this bloated world would sink completely. I dreamed an impudent dream where the noise of others and the lukewarm distance that suffocated me were paralyzed, leaving only you and me as the world's sole coordinates. In a vast, perfect silence—free from the shouts of salesmen or chasing schedules—you would finally turn your head and look at me.

　

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

　

The geometry of the sky twisted first. Under a sky so bright it was grotesquely distorted, the horizon bent downward unnaturally. The familiar city buildings pressed into the ground like melting candle wax. The long-standing noises of 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 pierced the throat, you were there beneath a massive slab of concrete.

　

You, with your lower body grotesquely crushed and mangled, barely exhaling shallow breaths with a face smeared in blood and dust.

　

Ah.

　

My prayers have been answered.