Rika Endou

364 Days

Once, Rika had been so full of ambition, a flame burning brighter than most. A prodigy. She was driven by the need to prove herself, to show that she was more than just another face in the crowd. She had the knowledge, the passion, the hunger to push further than anyone else. Her future had seemed so bright, especially with Sayo at her side. A future built on brilliance, partnership, and hope.

But now, that future felt like a cruel joke.

The television hummed in the background, its flickering screen cycling through the same bleak news over and over again. Rika sat motionless on the couch, her gaze locked onto the screen but not truly seeing it. The words passed through her ears, hollow and repetitive. The moon is drawing closer. Scientists estimate one year until total impact, a full collision with the Earth. The government urges citizens to-

One year.

That was all they had left.

The world would burn. The oceans would rise. The skies would choke on fire and ash. Every single effort humanity had made, every civilization that was built over millennia, it would all be gone.

And Rika, once a scientist who believed in the impossible, could do nothing.

Her fingers curled around the handle of a half-empty coffee mug, the liquid long since gone cold. She hadn’t even realized she was still holding it. How long had she been sitting here? How many hours had passed since she last moved?

How foolish.

If Sayo were here- no, she should have gone with Sayo.

The thought pressed against her skull like a dull headache. Sayo had given up on this place. She had asked Rika to leave with her, to abandon the apartment and travel with her like they always said they would, one day after they succeeded. But Rika stayed, clinging to the last remnants of a dream she wasn’t sure she even believed in anymore.

Years Ago

They had met in university, drawn together by mutual brilliance and a shared hunger for discovery. Their peers called them "insufferable geniuses," the professors called them "prodigies." Rika and Sayo? They called themselves the future.

"If they don’t want to change the world, we’ll do it for them," Sayo had said once, her voice brimming with arrogance as she hunched over a whiteboard full of equations. "Let them waste their time. We’ll make history."

Rika had believed in her. She had believed in their work. The late nights, the endless coffee-fueled discussions, the frustration when experiments failed—all of it was worth it because they were doing something. They were going somewhere.

"Do you ever think about what comes next?" Rika had asked one night, their small dorm lab illuminated only by the glow of their computers.

"What do you mean?" Sayo didn’t even look up from her notes.

"Like, after we finish our work. After we make history." Rika leaned back in her chair, staring at the ceiling. "What if we actually change the world? What if we reach the peak of everything? What then?"

Sayo had scoffed, rolling her eyes. "Then we enjoy life. We’ll be the rich bums we always wanted to be."

That was the kind of person Sayo had always been, striving towards the one goal. And believe it or not, that goal seemed really nice to Rika as well.

Present

Her future wasn’t supposed to be like this.

She had dedicated her life to the impossible, pushing the boundaries of science and discovery with Sayo by her side. They had spent sleepless nights in their shared lab, poring over theories, chasing ideas that others had abandoned as unrealistic. They had always been the kind of people who refused to accept limitations.

Yet here she was, powerless against the ticking clock of the universe itself.

Rika exhaled, dragging herself up from the couch. Her movements were sluggish, as if gravity had grown heavier in the last year. She waded through the mess of her apartment—empty coffee cups, crumpled notes, books stacked haphazardly on every available surface. It wasn’t always like this. She used to keep things neat, precise, everything in its proper place.

Now, there was no reason to.

She reached the kitchen, where a cluttered mess of papers and notebooks covered the counters. The same equations, the same frantic scribbles, rewritten and crossed out again and again. None of it led anywhere. None of it mattered. Even if she somehow managed to calculate a way to prevent the impact, it wouldn’t change the fact that there wasn’t enough time to act on it.

Still…

Still, she refused to stop.

That was just who she was. A candle burning bright until the wick burnt out.

She reached for one of the notebooks, flipping through pages filled with half-finished thoughts. The handwriting became more erratic the deeper she went, the desperation bleeding through in the jagged lines of ink. Somewhere along the way, her notes had stopped being about solutions and had started becoming letters. To herself, to Sayo, to a future that wouldn’t exist.

Her thumb brushed over one particular entry.

"Sayo, if you’re reading this, it means I’ve run out of time. We all did, but I’ve run out of chances. I don’t want you to remember me like this. I don’t want to be another scientist who died chasing a dead dream. But I don’t know how to be anything else."

She slammed the notebook shut.

The suffocating silence of the apartment pressed against her like a weight.

She had always been good at keeping herself together. She had always been the strong one, the relentless one. The one who never cried, never faltered, never showed weakness. She had seen people break under the pressure: colleagues, mentors, even Sayo once. But Rika had kept going, because if she stopped, who else would?

But now, there was no “going” anywhere. There was only waiting.

The thought sent a sharp jolt of frustration through her.

No.

She refused to just wait.

Her hands gripped the edges of the counter, her breath shaky but steadying. She couldn’t let it end like this. If the world was going to crumble, she wasn’t going to sit around and watch it happen. She didn’t know what she could do yet—but she would find something. Anything.

Because she wasn’t ready to let go.

Not yet.

Not ever.