0.2) Julian Everhart, The Butterfly

“Go home and be good to your loved ones,” the professor said, concluding his final lecture.

At the very back of the lecture hall, Julian Everhart watched as the professor lowered his head with his arms outstretched onto the podium. And perhaps out of a want to process how many people had listened to the professor’s heartfelt farewell, Julian looked around the quiet hall.

There were about nine total students. Julian assumed they had all been listening; these students had shown up to the lecture despite the looming news of the apocalypse, perhaps wanting to pretend that nothing had changed. Everyone there must have been thirsty for some positivity.

But today marked the end of that illusion of normalcy, for this was the final lecture that any professor would hold until the end of the world–there just weren't enough students that showed up to these lectures. And besides, most of the professors were never there because they liked teaching–they did it to feed their family. So to believe these professors would rather continue teaching instead of spending their remaining days with their family was simply asinine.

Julian packed his laptop into his bag and put on his wireless earbuds. Perhaps he, too, had come to the lecture pretending that everything was the same as before. But it wasn’t.

It had been almost a year since it was reported that the universe was collapsing once more. At first, most people brushed it off, thinking that it would take a long time for the end to arrive. But ever since three weeks ago, the collapse was accelerating even faster than before, as if a dam had broken and the universe itself was flooding. It felt to him as if some unknown force desperately wanted to destroy the broken world and start anew.

So it had been a few weeks since everyone understood that the end was nigh. Everyone knew. While a part of him believed that a miracle could happen once more like during The First Skyfall, his heart was slowly accepting that it was irrational to believe that something would change. These were the final weeks of his life, and he felt that he was finally being forced to confront the way he had lived.

What had he contributed to the world? Like many others, he had spent many years admiring heroes and influencers, but it seemed that he had never taken a true step towards becoming something more. He stayed the same, being a regular teenager. Perhaps he was even less than regular, because he had never really spent time doing anything meaningful for the people he knew. He would only leave his room when he needed to, spending most of his free time dreaming about other worlds until the time came to finish his homework in a hurry. He knew more facts about fiction than about the people he encountered daily.

But sure, he tried to be nice to people. Sure, he held the door for the person leaving behind him. Still, it seemed to him that these were just ways for him to cope with the fact that he would never sacrifice anything for anyone. What had he really done that proved that he had cared for anyone besides himself? Perhaps his inaction proved his true nature.

Julian tugged on the strap of his backpack as he walked to the exit of the lecture hall. When he looked back at the podium, he realized that the professor had already left. And a part of him felt guilty, knowing that none of the students had reciprocated the empathy the professor had shown them. Just another person he couldn’t help, thanks to his tendency to stay stuck in his own head.

After walking alone for seven or so minutes under a blue sky, he finally reached the bus stop. As he waited, taking turns cycling through his music and YouTube shorts, he eventually sighed and took his earbuds off. There was nothing on his phone that could make him feel better.

The world was ending. No amount of feel-good music, videos, or anything at all, could make him feel better about what was happening. At least not right now.

He put his phone back into his pocket and decided to look around his environment instead. He had taken this world for granted all this time; was he really going to continue doing that, knowing that it will all be taken away in a few weeks?

And by chance–which he later considered to be luck–he turned his head and saw a man collapsed in a dark alleyway, far behind the bus stop he stood under.

It was the end of the world, yet there were still people like that on the streets. Perhaps to such people, the world was ending every single day–nothing about their life had changed.

And maybe, at the end of the world, nothing had changed about himself, either. Perhaps even as the world ended, he would neglect another person on the street.

Then an unbidden voice whispered in his head: just another person I didn’t save.

Julian blinked, then sighed. He inhaled deeply, then exhaled, muttering his first spoken word that day.

“... Dammit.”

Was there nothing he could do? Was there anything he could give that person? The world was ending and he couldn’t do anything about it, yes, but was he so useless that he couldn’t help a single person, even in the smallest way?

He lowered himself to his knees and opened his backpack. A textbook, a laptop, a binder; things that no longer mattered to him. As he was about to stop digging, his hand touched a plastic wrap. After a brief pause caused by his inability to recall what it was, he thrust his hand deeper and pulled out a plastic wrap containing a croissant he had purchased a few days back. Just another blessing he had taken for granted.

He walked to the entrance of the alleyway and stopped, looking in. A part of him was afraid: he had never done such a thing before. What if the person turned out to be a creep? What if he didn’t want help? Wait, what if he only took cash?

After a few seconds of hesitation and a quickened heart rate, he eventually laughed to himself. “Yeah, well, it’s the end of the world. Who cares?”

After quietly looking into the alleyway for a few more moments, Julian Everhart found the courage to try and make a small difference in this dying world.