Volume 1 - Chapter 1: The Beginning of the End

[April 14 – 9:42 AM]

My bowl of cereal, which I was stirring, was filling the whole house with the flavor of coffee. The field and the flowers were quite interesting. The cows were the most enthusing thing in the village every summer.

Since I did not finish my school work, my parents did not allow me to go out of my room in the evenings; this is why I settled with the room being my play area. It was with their honking, chirping of birds, and the sun casting long shadows across the pavement. Just another morning.

I barely glanced at the TV. The usual morning news played—a mix of weather

forecasts, political scandals, and feel-good human interest stories. Nothing worth paying attention to.

At least, until the broadcast was interrupted.

The Global Space Agency has a request for you, from the GSA, backing the action to be taken.

Something about the tone in the announcer’s voice made my stomach tighten. It wasn’t the usual exaggerated news hype. This was different.

The screen flashed, and in a room, the man in the dark suit stood at a podium with the GSA logo on it. His face had anemic pallor, he felt the bulge under the surface of his hands as if he were in dire need of holding on to the podium.

The fact is that at 3:15 AM UTC the systems for which the monitoring of near-Earth asteroid confirmed the onboard shuttle from the position of the space shuttle with the official designation of the AX-1999 is headed directly for a collision with the Earth.

I was stuck, spoon suspended in front of my mouth.

"Impact is estimated to occur in precisely 364 days." A dull ringing filled my ears.

"Due to the asteroid’s size and velocity, current calculations indicate that this will be an extinction-level event. There is… no feasible way to stop it."

Dead silence.

The only sounds were coming from the TV and the refrigerator. We all froze.

Then the spoon slipped through my fingers and hit the bowl. The milk splashed on the table. I didn't even care. Because they were telling very serious information.

"We advise all governments and citizens to prepare accordingly." Prepare? For what?

For the end of everything?

---

[April 14 – 10:30 AM]

Almost everyone no longer went to work. It felt like the entire world has frozen. I was on the couch watching the TV screen. The news anchor was still speaking, but my

mind was elsewhere. Every channel had the same story, repeating the same impossible truth.

I gazed over at Mom. She was all tensed up sitting in the armchair. Her phone was so firmly kept in her hands that the knuckles turned white.

My sister, the little Aiko, had turned, started hugging a stuffed rabbit to her chest, warmed up next to her.

Dad, standing by the window, his arms crossed, his jaw clenched, said, "'Maybe they’re wrong,' Mom said finally." Her voice was shaky, as if saying it out loud made it less true.

Dad didn’t answer.

I swallowed hard. "So… what do we do?"

No one had an answer.

---

[April 14 – 11:15 AM]

The first thing people did was panic.

The stores were the first to collapse. By the time I finally stepped outside, supermarkets had been picked clean—shelves stripped bare, carts abandoned in the aisles. People fought over bottled water, canned food, even stupid things like batteries and instant noodles.

I saw a man grab another by the collar, shouting something about rationing. A woman cried as someone ripped a bag of rice from her hands.

It wasn’t even one day after the announcement, and people were already losing it.

I pulled my hoodie tighter around me and

walked faster.

When I got back home, Mom had locked the doors.

"We need to stay inside," she whispered, eyes darting between me and Dad. "People are getting desperate."

Dad just nodded, his face unreadable.

I went to my room. Laid down. I was spending some time thinking and gazing at the ceiling.

This was a time when I had my first experience of thinking about it as a sky-fall-like incident.

[April 15 – 2:00 AM]

Suddenly alarms disturbed my sleep. For a split second I was sure it was all a dream. But I then heard the sound of the gunshots.

I turned on the bed, my heart racing so fast it was hard to breathe.

Looking through the window, I saw a faint orange halo in the distance. The fire. The gas station on the corner was in flames.

The gas station down the street was burning. Shadows moved in the streets—people running, looting.

As I stumbled stumblingly outside my space, I almost crash into Dad in the hallway.

"Stay inside," he barked at me, his voice shaking from distress, and he had a baseball bat velvet in his hands, his knuckles squeezing really hard against its handle.

Mom was sitting on the edge of the couch,

holding Aiko close. The TV was still on, showing footage of riots across the country. Police sirens. People breaking into stores.

"How did it fall apart this fast?" I muttered.

Dad didn’t answer.

Outside, another gunshot rang out.

Aiko whimpered and buried her face in Mom’s shoulder.

I clenched my fists. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not yet. Not this fast.

[April 16 – 6:45 PM]

By the second day, the government finally stepped in.

The Prime Minister addressed the nation, trying to reassure people, but his voice shook. A national emergency was declared. Police and military forces were deployed to restore order. A new set of laws was issued—curfews, rationing,

restricted travel.

But the damage had already begun.

People weren’t just panicking about food and water. They were panicking about what came next.

But isn't that the real puzzle you wanted to solve?

What do you do when you know the world is ending?

Do you keep working? Do you go to school? Do you just pretend everything’s normal?

Or do you stop?

Do you quit your job? Tell your boss to go to hell?

Do you confess to the person you love?

Do you give up?

I sat on my bed, scrolling through social media. Half of the posts were theories—desperate ideas about how to stop the asteroid. The other half were people talking about what they wanted to do

before the end.

"Bucket List Challenge—What’s the #1 thing you want to do before we all die?"

A video popped up. A girl, maybe my age, staring straight into the camera.

"If I only have a year left, I want to fall in love."

A scene from this horror movie came into my mind with the main characters in their room where they were trying to overcome their fears and grow their relationship as they were learning about one another

I didn’t know why that hit me harder than everything else.

Maybe because, deep down, I wanted the same thing.