Chapter 1: Regarding the End of the World

Wednesday, 16 April, 20XX

“Before the world ends, wanna go on a journey with me?”

My classmate, Nishiyama Yui, asked me this question.

“Why do you wanna go on a journey?” I asked.

“I’ve always wanted to go on a journey with a friend.”

We were sitting in the classroom. Classes had ended for the day. Our classmates were busy with club activities, leaving just us two in the classroom.

A friend.

There was no one else around, so she must be referring to me. It has been a few weeks since we started hanging out like this after school. It was fair to call us friends.

“You wanna skip class to go on a journey?” I asked.

“Yeah, the world is going to end in a year anyway. Haruto, let’s go on a journey.”

“You’re talking about –that– email?”

“That’s right.” She paused and then added, “I can’t wait for the world to end.”

A month ago, everyone received an email.

“The world will end one year from the Effective Date. Please wait for more information.”

The Effective Date was the same date the email appeared in all of our inboxes. January 1, 20XX.

Normally, this kind of email would be disregarded as a prank. Something a junior high student did when he somehow got access to a bunch of email addresses.

But this email was sent to every email address in the world.

From Europe to America to Japan. Even countries with closed off Internet, like China and North Korea received the email.

Rumors had it that our Prime Minister received the same email, even though his private email address was a secret.

Everyone speculated how someone could’ve gotten access to every email address in the world, regardless of country and server location. It would’ve taken a hacker of exceptional talents to pull that off.

In the end, no one claimed responsibility for this email. Governments dismissed it without explaining how someone could achieve such a feat, and the world moved on.

We are easily bored, after all.

“It would be nice if everything would end,” I said with a shrug.

“The world will end in a year from now.” Yui said.

She was smiling, her chestnut eyes contained an unfathomable depth — a deep, dark abyss.

Yui and I both hoped that this email wasn’t prank. That it told the truth.

“Did you reply to that email?” Yui asked.

“No. I thought it was a prank, so I ignored it. But I hope it’s true though.” Then I asked, “Did you reply?”

Yui shook her head.

“Why don’t you try replying?” she asked.

“Some other people wrote back. No one got an answer. That’s probably why people forgot about it. They say it was Russian hacker group who did it.”

Others said it was a Chinese group that did it. Or North Korean. Or somewhere in South America.

The truth was that no one really knew. Whoever did it, left no digital traces.

“Hmm…” Yui put her chin on the table. The afternoon sunlight made her long black hair shine. “How about we both write back? Maybe we will get a reply.”

I chuckled. “It would be funny if we received replies in Russian.

We had nothing to do. And we wanted to avoid going home for as long as we could. There was no harm in killing time like this.

I pulled out my phone and wrote a reply. Yui did the same.

I wrote: “How will the world end?”

We hit the Send button at the same time.

Afterwards, we left school and went home.

Yui gave me a hesitant look before we separated at a fork in the road. I had to go right, she had to go left. We always said goodbye here.

“Haruto…”

“Yeah?”

She looked troubled.

“I don’t wanna go home.”

My parents weren’t home.

“You wanna come over?” I asked. “You can stay the night if you want.”

Yui shook her head. “Thanks, but my dad will kill me if I break curfew.”

We were only high school students. There was nothing I could do for her beyond making an offer. Our world was limited.

If only we were adults.

She turned away, walking down the road, the late afternoon sunlight making her appear achingly lonely.

Thursday, 17 April, 20XX

When I woke up in the morning, I saw that I had received an email.

From that email address.

– Re: Re: Regarding the end of the world –

I asked how the world was going to end a year from the Effective Date.

As far as I knew, I was the only person who ever got a reply. My heart pounded as I opened the email.

The email was written in Japanese. It read: “I’d leave Tokyo right now.”

It didn’t answer my question. It didn’t tell me how the world was going to end.

If civilization collapsed, of course it was a good idea to get out of the city. If social order broke down, it was other human beings who would pose the greatest danger. And Tokyo had more people than other any other place in Japan.

“Why should I leave?” I replied.

Before I could even put my phone down, I received a reply.

“Leave Tokyo as soon as possible. Something will happen soon.”

“Why? What will happen?”

I waited for one minute, then five, then almost an hour. No reply came.

I had a look online. No one else seemed to have gotten a reply. Or those who did get a reply decided to stay quiet about it.

If I chose to believe this reply email, then it was a better idea to stay quiet about it. If the world was truly going to end, then information like this was worth more than gold.

But there was one person I had to share this with.

My heart beat with excitement as I walked to school.

When I got to the classroom, Yui’s desk was empty.

Which was strange, because she was almost always early. People on morning duty said that Yui was already at her desk before even they arrived.

Our homeroom teacher came into the classroom. First period started. Yui didn’t come to school that day.

Friday, 18 April, 20XX

Yui still did not come to school.

I didn’t have her LINE, nor did anyone in our class have a way to contact her. They asked me if I could call her, but I could only shake my head.

“That’s weird,” Chisato said. “You and Nishiyama hang out all the time.”

“Yeah.” We never exchanged LINE IDs or phone numbers. That topic never came up, even though we hung out a lot.

“I hope Nishiyama is okay,” Chisato said.

Chisato was someone I had known since kindergarten. We were friends, but we hadn’t hung out much the past year. After middle school, we had found different social circles. Besides, we grew up together. We’d always be friends, even if we didn’t spend much time together anymore.

At the end of the day, our homeroom teacher asked, “Can someone bring the worksheets to Nishiyama?”

I was the only one who volunteered to go. It seemed that Yui wasn’t close to anyone in our class except me.

Come to think of it, I didn’t know where Yui lived – and neither did any of our classmates. Our homeroom teacher had to go back to the faculty office to pull her address from the registration files.

I turned left at the fork in the road where we usually said goodbye. Walking down the road, I realized that it was my first time in this part of town. It was quiet and peaceful, a residential area like any other. Even though we were in Tokyo, it felt like a completely different world. It took an hour and a half to get to Shinjuku. We barely lived in Tokyo at all. It had been over a year since I visited the city.

It took another twenty minutes to arrive at her house. I had no idea that she had to walk this far from the fork in the road.

I rang the bell, but no one answered. I rang again.

Did Yui leave the house? Were her parents not home? Maybe she had to go to the hospital?

Just before I was about put the envelope of worksheets in the mailbox, did someone open the door.

“Haruto!”

It was Yui who opened the door.

“Yu – “ My words got stuck in my throat. She was covered in bruises. One of her eyes was swollen.

“I’m here to give you the worksheets. From yesterday and today.”

“Thanks! But how did you know where I lived?”

“Sensei told me. No one knew where you lived, so he had to look it up.”

“I see.”

I swallowed. I decided to ask her.

“What happened to you?”

“Ah…”

She averted her eyes.

“Nothing really.”

It seemed that she didn’t want to talk about her wounds.

“I got a reply. From the email that said the world would end.”

“Really?!” Her eyes shone. Well, one eye at least.

I was about tell her more when a voice from inside the house interrupted us.

“Yui! Who is it?! Tell them to go away!”

She gave me an uneasy look. She didn’t look like she wanted to go back inside.

“Do you want to come to my house?” I asked. “You can say it’s for a class assignment.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again.

“S-Sorry, Haruto. I have to go. Thanks for bringing the worksheets.”

She bowed and closed the door.

So the rumors were true.

Ever since Yui transferred to our school last year, there had been rumors that she was being abused at home. Some of our classmates saw her walking outside on weekends with her parents, and according to them, she looked really tense.

It seemed that whenever she got beat up by her parents, especially when her face got hit and it was impossible to hide, she would be forced to stay home from school.

The teachers probably knew about her situation, but decided to turn a blind eye.

So that is why she always preferred to stay at school for as long as possible.

Saturday, 19 April, 20XX - Part 1

The doorbell woke me up.

I looked at my phone. It was 3am.

Outside, it was raining. Thunder roared.

Who the hell was ringing the door at this time?

I ignored it, but whoever was outside the door continued to ring the bell. They clearly weren’t going to go away.

I went downstairs and opened the door.

Yui was standing there, soaking wet.

“Heh-heh…I’ve decided to come for a sleepover – if it’s not too much trouble.”