A Light of Hope

"This world shall know pain."

"..."

A word was dominating my head: 24th of July, 3.26 PM. Yes, the exact time the world was going to end.

A large meteor was falling from the dark sky that covered the globe.

It was huge, so huge that the one that extinguished the dinosaurs was not even close.

I didn't know what to do.

My life was coming to an end.

A "divine punishment", that's what it was, a huge rock was going to put an end to all existences on this damn world, from the futile insects to humans.

No one would escape it, or so I thought.

The comet seems to have totally ignored my country, or rather the whole of Central Europe.

My name is 展敬 Nowak (Tenkei Nowak), I am 17 years old and I am half-Japanese on my mother's side and half-Polish on my father's side.

The question I kept asking myself was why we, Europeans, were spared.

A few hours later it was very hot, there was no wind, exactly since the meteorite had fallen.

I didn't pay much attention to it, not that I was attached to life or anything like that, much less to the people who lived outside this shitty place.

My life is boring, monotonous, what I always do is study, fail exams, repeat.

I don't think the death of all those people, which are around 6.5 billion, was too traumatic.

Eventually, certain human scum had to go.

"Tenkei, will you take this garbage out, please?" asked my mother, in a stiff tone.

"Sure... mom," as always I obeyed without thinking too much about it, it's much easier to just do it rather than complain, my brother always did that instead.

I took out the trash and noticed my father coming back from the supermarket with his bag emptier than usual.

"There's no more water."

"What? What do you mean?" I asked.

"It's gone, it's not there anymore."

"Explain yourself, for fuck's sake!"

"It's too hard to explain, Tenkei."

I didn't believe what I was hearing, so I wanted to go check it out with my own eyes.

The supermarket wasn't very far away, it shouldn't have taken me more than a 5-minute walk.

I arrived and rushed in.

"Hey, don't run!"

"Sorry!"

I arrived at the refrigerator section, and, not only had the water disappeared from the bottles making them empty, the refrigerators were off, the lights as well, and all the food was dried out as if it had gotten too much sun.

I don't know what this all means, was that due to the meteorite? I assume so, I don't think there is any other explanation. But why don't people notice?

Or maybe, like me, they're all noticing a little at a time.

Shit! What's going to happen?

They all think the meteorite only did the damage with the impact, as the few people who lived at the borders who were saved explain.

How do I know the number of dead people?! Easy, math.

In Europe there are about 450 million people, then subtracting them from the world population of about 7 billion (or so I remember) we arrive at an approximate result of 6.5 billion dead.

Numbers aside, what seems to be divine punishment, is for real, in every sense.

Not only a large number of humans had been killed, but even important resources such as water, electricity, and even fire had disappeared.

Without thinking too much about it, I decided to return home and live out the last few days of my life reading the last volumes of my favorite manga, "The Strange Adventures of JeJe."

On the way home, however, I tripped over a strange rock, which wouldn't come off the road, although not very large (it wasn't bigger than my hand).

As I was about to kick it away, I noticed that in the center of it shone a bright yellow light, like the warm light of the latest lamps.

I picked it up and all of a sudden it disappeared, but feeling something strange in my chest, I took off my shirt and checked.

Part of it went in, while a piece came out, I think it is attached to the heart, so I did not want to try to remove it.

I felt like it was another part of the body, with its muscles, voluntary.

But what would happen if I tried to use that muscle?

I left the urban part of the city and went to the Hoffs neighborhood, the abandoned neighborhood where my grandparents, who died a few years ago, lived.

I decided to try it out in this area, trying not to bump into anyone, even though it would most likely be a useless alien stone spilled from the meteorite.

I set in action the muscle and immediately felt a wave of heat rise from the "stone" to my head.

I looked at the windows of the abandoned houses and noticed from my reflection that the sclera of my eyes had turned black and both the pupil and the iris had taken on the same yellowish color as the center of the stone.

My hands immediately began to form a kind of yellow lightning bolt that did not affect me in any way.

I was beginning to understand.

"So that's what happened, the energies were all sucked up and turned into scattered stones all over central Europe? (the only area saved)."

It had to be, there was no other explanation.

"But then, the water is still there! In the form of a stone of course; I need to look for it," I said to myself.

Fortunately, the stone seemed to be attracted towards something, "maybe just the nearest stone," I thought.

Even so, it might have been very far away, since even a small part of England, as the rumors go, was saved.

Besides, it was very tiring to use this stone, I had only generated a little lightning by operating the electricity stone, but I was already tired, let alone using it to restore power globally.

I didn't even want to think about how long it would take to find the water one, to save the remaining humans.

"However, we have two days, and I could use my father's electric car since I found the stone," or, as I decided to call it, the "kamien "*.

*from Polish, stone

I didn't even know if I would be able to get there in time, since I didn't know the exact location of the water kamien, and humans on average can last up to 3 days without hydrating.

So I returned home and without hesitation asked my father for the car, without explaining anything to him about the stone.

"It's ok, although I doubt you'll be able to use it," he replied.

After all, I'm a minor...

I took some food with me, not sure if it would be enough, but it wasn't going to be a long trip.

Without further hesitation, I started the car, generating a jolt of electricity directly from the charging tube.

It started.

I wasn't too surprised; this kamien was probably something divine, so such a machine wasn't a problem for it, but it was for me.

Compared to the first time, I felt less tired, but still, I would have struggled to continue like this for hours.

Nevertheless, I decided to leave, head held high, I had nothing left to lose, my life was boring as it was.

"..."

"Hey, l-i-s-t-e-n?" said a strange person.

I didn't know why but I was seeing everything blurry.

"Are you all-r-i-g-h-t?"

"..."

"How did you get into this accident, Tenkei?"

How did this person know my name?

"..."

I could feel myself starting to recover.

" H-Hey, come on, let's get you up."

"t-thank you," I said with a very weak voice.

" No problem, however, I immediately noticed the stone on your chest, luckily you weren't hurt much, but your clothes were torn and I realized that you have that stone too."

I turned to her and noticed that she was my childhood friend, Emmy Mancker. She lived on the border of Poland and Germany, we used to play together a lot when we were kids in the playground near my house because she moved there sometimes, because she had relatives in Poland.

She is not very tall, in fact, she is short compared to me. I'm about 5'8", and she's 5'5". She's very pretty, she has dyed red hair, great blue eyes, a slim body, and.... well, pretty big boobs. I mean, she's the woman of dreams and she's the same age as me.
After all that commotion, I straightened up and she handed me a bottle of water, I drank it.

"A-wait what!?" I yelled, spitting out all the water.

She had just given me water to drink, no fucking way!

It had disappeared! She might have the kamien of water! No, impossible, my kamien still seems to be attracted to another stone.

"Ahahah"

"Does this look like a time to laugh?! I almost risked my life!"

"Ahah, I forgot to explain it to you."

"What?!"

"One of the most important German senators, Lothur Weber, found the water stone."

"Ahh, and so what kamien do you have?"

"Kamien? Is that what you guys call it?"

"You guys!? I'm probably the only one in Poland who knows of its existence!"

"Kamien, huh? Well then we can say that I have the kamien of wind, that's how I healed your wounds, I can also change the wind at will, inserting more oxygen, or what I want, I think you too with yours can do things like that."

"But the air is still there, how is that possible..."

"I tell you again, my kamien has the essence of wind, not air."

"I see" I replied

"Well, now that you've recovered a bit, how about we head over to the Senator? He is distributing immense amounts of water and, in a few hours, with our help, the water should get to all the places that have been saved"

"Yes, no problem, but...how exactly do we get there? My father's car is out of commission, and there are very few electric cars here."

"Maybe you didn't notice, but you've come a long way anyway, we're right next to my house, in the German borders!"

"Oh God, but how many hours has it been?" I asked in a surprised tone.

"About 2 hours and 30 minutes, after all, we're not too far away."

"Ohh, but so how do we get there!" I asked again as I tried to hold myself up.

"Don't worry, Senator Weber is not too far from here, he should be in Frankfurt on Oder. And we'll bike there, we can reach the speed of a car by using my wind kamien by having it propel us."

"Wow, great."

She had to be much smarter than me, she must have had a perfect school life for sure.

"I know what you're thinking."

"..."

"I mean, at least give me some feedback."

"..." I didn't understand what she was trying to tell me.

"You've been staring at my boobs for a while now."

My face instantly turned red, I didn't think she noticed I was staring at them.

"Well, think of it as some special thanks, and see if you can give me some feedback."

"......"

I was too embarrassed to answer her. And then a thank you for what? I didn't understand.

"At least be happier!"

"Now you're getting mad at me too?!"

"It would only be kinder to give me a review..."

I didn't think a perfect woman like her had such fetishes.

"C-certainly, a feedback--!"

What am I supposed to tell her? I haven't spoken to her in years, I don't want to seem rude.

Uhh...

"Well," I began, "you have a nice body."

"That wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear you say, but thank you, you can rest now."

How strange, I didn't remember her like that.

Well, people change, besides, I wonder if she's still a virgin.

Ahahah, no kidding, a magnificent girl like her, a virgin at 17?! Impossible. She must have had a model boyfriend...

I envy him...

Strange thoughts aside, I decided to sleep, cuddled up to her, it was a dream come true.

In no time at all, we found ourselves in Frankfurt (Oder).

And it was here that we finally reunited with most of the European population, many people were waiting for us, apparently, they knew about kamien too.

"Only in Poland do they not know?", I asked Emmy.

"Actually no, there are people from all over Europe here, even some from Spain, Italy, France."

I see.

Past the main street, we paused for a moment.

That's where I saw the huge senator's palace. It seemed to touch the sky, or maybe it was the clouds that were too low...

But it left me speechless, you only see things like that in anime.

End of chapter 1.