I Allow You to Hug Me Wearing Ian's Face

Echoes.

All the different echoes of the past thousand years reverberated beside his ears.

First came thunder. And unimaginable, massive tremors. It was the sound of continents shaking and oceans boiling. Storms swept across heaven and earth; even when the entire research institute sank underground, it could not stop the thunder unleashed as tsunamis battered mountains. Most people met death amid confusion and despair. Perhaps that was a mercy, for such swift death held no pain, nor did it require them to face the suffocating reality after the end of the world.

Then came sobbing. The survivors had luckily preserved their lives before the sudden disaster, but there was too much else they had failed to preserve: family and friends, elders and juniors, superiors and subordinates, conversations between passersby on the streets, branches of roadside ornamental trees swaying in the wind, and meetings with friends promised on street corners. All the ordinary things that made up life had vanished. All that remained were scattered whimpers and sobs in the fierce winds after destruction.

Then came the questioning. Why us? Why had disaster descended? Why had all this happened? Why were the finest people the ones who died? Why had someone as useless as me survived?

Beyond the sheer luck of surviving, those who remained alive would occasionally find such bewildered or furious questions rising from the depths of their hearts. They felt their own powerlessness deeply—the pain of living was worse than death, because they understood that they alone could never reach the beautiful ending after surviving a desperate situation in a story. Civilization would surely be lost in their hands. They would be the first to step into tragedy, and so they would rather others had survived in their place.

But in the end, there was silence.

No matter