Volume 3 – Chapter 2: What the Silence Took

The sun was up, but the whole thing felt wrong.

Sunlight poured over the rooftops, brushing against the edges of buildings and gliding across the forsaken streets, casting long absurd shadows. This feeling should have been an embrace of warmth-a reassurance. The morning light was always a promise for the earth.

But now, it felt empty.

An artificiality.

Something akin to stage lighting switched off after the show ends.

Kaito stood at the fringe of the pavement with his arms clasped tightly over himself. He was not cold; he was feeling something much darker-something nameless. It was as if silence were painting this world-a kind of eerie silence that swallowed the ominous void.

The neighborhood looked perfect.

No fires.

No crumbling houses.

No corpses.

Just... still.

No bird songs. No wind roughing it through the trees. The trees were still swaying.

Oh, the paradox.

As if nature had just stopped working under the rules they knew.

Rika had settled beside him, almost whispering, "Everything is fake... just an act."

He turned his head towards her.

The sky looks the same," she said, but I don't feel like we are under it anymore."

Kaito did not answer.

Neither panic nor fear; it was something far older. Maybe it was grief, but deeper still: like standing at a wake where the body is unknown to you, and now you really don't know whether someone died; you only know that something is not quite right.

The door creaked open behind them, and Rika's father stepped out.

"I checked the generator again. There seem to be no faults."

Kaito turned to stare at him. "So, what is wrong with electric supply?"

"Beats me," the man said. "It is as if something outside is sucking up all the power. Something like the grid is there, but is not allowed to work."

It was a stretch, but maybe there was some sense in whatever it was he was saying.

Next, Kaito's mother appeared, clutching a pretty shortwave radio, sputtering with static interference.

"The cities are silent," she concluded in a whisper. "No broadcasts. No news. Just dead air."

"How is that possible?" Rika asked. "There must be somebody-somewhere."

"Maybe," Mom said. "Maybe, they are not talking."

Or maybe they can't.

They made their way in silence along the street, avoiding tiny fissures in the pavement which had not existed before. Kaito counted seven street lamps bent along just two blocks. Not broken-bent. As if something enormous passed above, leaving no indication other than the distortion.

Air vibrated faintly. Not a sound, really. More like pressurized static under one's skin. Each step dragged heavier than before, as if gravity had decided to deepen the pull.

Time hummed differently. He just knew that.

Suddenly, he stopped and looked up.

The clouds twirled in perfect, symmetrical spirals. Someone had dragged a brush across the sky and unattended the pattern. The clouds carried some unnatural essence. Not wrong, precisely; simply a little too calculated.

Rika had spotted it also.

"They are watching," she said.

Kaito was stiff. "Who?"

"But whatever did this is not done," she replied. "I don't know. It has not ended yet." He was quite far gone, though the phrase echoed in his mind like some sort of drumbeat. They passed the school where they used to go and where they had pursued their studies. The gate was torn open but not by hands. The metal was melted, twisted outward. The rain did not come, yet all windows had been covered inside every classroom with condensation. Rika's breath hitched. "Kaito..." 

He turned and saw where she was pointing. A child's bag. Plopped squarely in the middle of the road. Unopened. Unattended. Just as if someone set it down and evaporated. Not stolen. Not dropped. Left. Intentionally.

 They didn't move toward it. Some things were meant to touch not. By the time they returned to the house, no one was speaking anymore. Not from being exhausted, but because too many questions remained unanswered. 

They collected their souls to the living room: six people, hearts still beating, lungs still inhaling and exhaling... yet not one of those felt alive the way they would have felt just days before. Rika finally sank public policy flaws and buried her face with both hands. "What are we supposed to do?" Kaito did not reply. No one did.

 Because no one has written a guidebook for this. They had prepared for disaster. Stocked food. learned routes. Studied weather patterns, electromagnetic surges, possible solar anomalies.. But they had not prepared for this. For a world which refused to die... ...but no longer allowed them to live. 

Rika looked up, her face pale. "What if we're not supposed to survive this time?" Kaito's voice came low. "We're not surviving. We're waiting." She stared at him. "Waiting for what?" He didn't know. But something deep inside told him that they hadn't seen the worst yet. That night, as they lay in bed again, neither of them slept. Because sleep belonged to a world that made sense. And this one no longer did.