Chapter 10: You don’t ask a girl that. Perv!

Thursday, 1 May, 20XX - Part 4

I swallowed. The email came almost immediately after the traffic light incident.

This couldn’t be a coincidence. They must be related. Whoever had the power to hijack every email server and screen in the world, also had the power to control the traffic lights.

I opened the email.

——————————————————————————

Greetings!

I hope this email finds everyone well.

The traffic lights went out at 4pm (GMT+9) as promised. Hopefully this will be enough for everyone to verify the truthfulness of these emails.

As mentioned in the previous emails, the world will end one year from the Effective Date. More information regarding the end of the world will follow in the coming weeks and months. A TV broadcast will also be made for major announcements.

Information regarding the next incident will come on May 8, 20XX.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused.

—————————————————————————

I read the email several times.

I could discern three details from it.

3. The second paragraph of the email gave off an annoyed tone, even though it was written in formal language. If the sender was annoyed that their initial warnings fell on deaf ears, then it was likely that things would get worse soon.

For now, I decided to write a reply. The sender had replied before with vital information, advising me to leave the city, so there is a chance that they might reply again.

I wrote, “Will anything happen between May 1 and May 8?”

I put my phone down.

Just then, Yui came back.

“Sorry for the wait,” she said.

“That took a while, what were you doing in there?”

She looked at me, her eyes wide, her mouth half open. Then her face turned red.

“T-That’s rude! You don’t ask a girl that. Perv!”

“I-I didn’t mean it like that. I was wondering if you were okay.”

“Heee?”

“The lady in the convenience store didn’t give you a hard time, did she?”

“Ah, that’s what you meant. Sorry…” She took a breath. “Uhm…I don’t think she recognized me. Actually, she didn’t even look at me. She was glued to the TV. They were showing a broadcast of what was happening in Tokyo. The old lady said something like, ‘It’s horrible what is going on in Tokyo,’ and I just agreed with her. She talked my ear off about how horrible things are in the city, and that disasters are always worse in the cities because city folk don’t know how to work together.”

“I see.” I let out a sigh of relief. “Did you see the new email?”

“Eh?”

“There is a new email.”

“Oh. I was in the bathroom, so…”

“R-Right.”

It would be impolite of me to ask more.

“A new email came in.” I showed her my phone. Yui took my phone and read the email several times.

“May 8…” she muttered. “That’s one week from now.”

“Yeah.”

“What do you think will happen between now and May 8?” she asked.

“I wrote back, asking if anything will happen.”

“Did they reply?”

“Not yet. I only sent it a few minutes ago.”

Yui put a finger to her chin.

“Haruto, what do you think will happen next in the next couple of days? I mean, what should we do?”

We were two runaway teenagers in a car, just two hours from the city, thanks to that bit of advance information I got from a reply email.

Logically, there will be more people who will leave the city, seeking safety in the countryside. These people will outnumber us. They will be adults with more knowledge, more money and faster cars.

Our tiny headstart was the only advantage we had.

“Things will probably get pretty chaotic in the next couple of days,” I said. “The threat is now credible, so people will be trying to leave the city. They will start panic buying, the shelves will be empty and there will be the impression that there is a food shortage, which will lead to more panic buying.”

“You think people will start panic buying?”

My impression was that panic buying was something that happened in foreign countries. At least that is what we usually saw on the news.

But the truth was that every time there was a tsunami warning, the supermarket shelves here were empty too.

“I think so,” I said. “The panic buying will start out in the cities and spread to the smaller towns and villages. But for now, I don’t think people will steal – yet. General social order will stay for now.”

“Social order?”

“People will still go to work, students will still go to school. The threat is credible, but it will take more than traffic lights for people to abandon society.”

“I see, that makes sense.” Yui was silent for a moment. “I wonder what it will take for people to abandon their day to day lives.”

“I wonder…”

For a while we sat in silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts.

“It will take a lot for Japan to lose its social order,” I said. “We’ve gone through earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires. Natural disasters happen almost every single year. We are used to adversity.”

“I see.” Yui opened her phone. “Look, Haruto. There’s news of people stealing in Europe and America.”

According to social media posts, in some cities in America, looting had already begun. Protestors set cars on fire and broke into stores. If people believed that the government was no longer in control, there was no need to obey the social order.

It seemed, for now, order still existed in Japan. People online joked that such a thing could never happen in Japan, but underneath those words, I sensed a layer of tension.

Japan’s social order will be tested again next week.