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Asuka rolls over in bed to avoid the beam of light ripping her out of a 12-hour slumber. It has been a few weeks since her attempt at the bridge, and she has not left the house. Her room is cold, and the air is stale. Despite already having slept for so long, Asuka keeps her eyes closed in an attempt to ignore the daytime, but she can’t ignore the pressure in her bladder. She waits until it becomes unbearable and slowly removes herself from her nest of blankets. The hoodie she slept in protects her torso from the winter air that seeped in from outside. Her feet touch old, discarded clothes before they find the floor, and the various articles each take their chance to trip her up as she heads for the door.

When she reaches the sink next to the bathroom, Asuka reflexively looks at the mirror covered in flecks of toothpaste meets her own eyes. It’s honestly been a while since she bothered to look at herself, so she is surprised by how much her features seem to have changed. It may be because she is somehow still groggy from her long rest, but her eyes are lined with unfamiliar dark circles, and her face is streaked with the tears from last night. Within a few weeks her hair has grown wildly, sticking out in all directions like an autumn leaf that has been trampled on the ground. Asuka has not done much in the way of taking care of her appearance since….

Grimacing, she looks away, “I should be dead already, what does brushing my hair even matter?” Even if she can’t bring herself to be the reason why. It’s not fair to him, why is she still here when he gave everything up because of her. He dedicated his life to taking care of her and now it’s her fault he’ll never get to really live it. Asuka was so close to graduating from high school. She would have been able to support herself and he could have finally been free. Why did she have to—. Asuka stops and looks down at the faucet. She realizes she has been washing her hands for almost a full minute and stops the water flow. Glaring at herself one more time, she rips her eyes away from the mirror.

It’s been a constant cycle of racing thoughts and berating words directed at herself. She looks around for her phone, not remembering where she put it the night before. In the living room she lifts up fallen pillows and shoves things around before she hears a buzz on what sounds like a hard surface. Following the sound, she checks the kitchen to find it waiting on the kitchen counter. Being in the kitchen reminds her that she has yet to eat anything for the day. Reluctantly, she checks the fridge for scraps. The only remaining items are a mentaiko onigiri and a pack of vitamin jelly from the convenience store. Grabbing the jelly, she returns to the couch to rot for the rest of the day.

She unlocks her phone and the dozens of apps she downloaded the first day she received her phone pop up. She remembers being so excited to receive one after years of being the only one in her class who didn’t have one. She had to beg her brother, Kyo for a long time before he finally gave in and presented it to her on her thirteenth birthday. It was only now that she realized he had been saving up what he could from his wages to be able to afford it. The new understanding taints her idyllic memory and makes her chest feel like it's been blotted with ink. Shaking her head as if it would loosen the thoughts from her head, she goes back to her task. After looking around for a bit, Asuka finally settles on the most reliable time consumer, ChikTak.

Time rolls on as the flicks from video to video that the algorithm decided she would want to see sleeping cats, anime edits, amateur singers trying to make their debut…. She watches every video to the end, trying to absorb as much distraction she can from each new piece of content. They begin to become monotonous until one video breaks her immersion. A girl with sky blue highlights in her hair sits overlayed in front of an online news article. Asuka holds her thumb on the edge of the screen, doubling the speed of the video and listening to the girl speak in a detached stupor.

“—the meteor is projected to enter Earth’s atmosphere around January next year—” the glaze in Asuka’s eyes clear up as the words hit her, and she is now paying full attention as the girl continues her report in a clear, matter-of-fact voice that was typical of these kinds of videos that seems to gloss over the severity of what was being said. “—these experts are saying that due to the size and speed of the asteroid, no matter where hits, the impact is expected to cause either a tsunami that floods every country due to rising sea levels, or an earthquake large enough to cause mass extinction from the violent tremors…”

The video restarts and repeats the same information once more on its own. Asuka is stunned, unable to fully process what she just heard. She checks the time the video was posted, which was about 10 hours before she woke up. Within the comments section of the video, others like her express their doubt, unable to accept such a tragedy. Their disbelief is punctuated by sobbing emojis that decorate each message in a way that makes the whole thing feel like another joke. Scrolling through the log, she finds a few comments that are different from the rest that read along the lines of “we are the new dinosaurs,” or “it’s about damn time.” She begins to find it laughable, “yeah the world might as well just end,” she agrees.

Despite the dire nature of the situation, Asuka tries once to ignore it and scrolls on to the next video. She manages to get a few more videos typical of her regular algorithm but watching that one video leads to more videos like it showing up, all saying the same thing. Still unable to accept it, she decides to do her own research. Switching to a browser app she types "end of the world meteor" into the search engine. Bundles of links have already popped up since just this morning. Each report has the same thing to say— the end is coming. Halfway through one article, she lowers her phone in grim acceptance. Marveling at the irony, a nervous huff of air escapes her throat