The day the world ended was a quiet one like any other. Having lived through Second Impact, Mari was used to grandiose events, like the sea rising through the streets of London in an unrelenting advance, or the sky rippling red and purple and all the colors in between. It was a turquoise sort of green on the day the world ended, the kind that made Mari's heart ache for home.
Second Impact had come with fanfare, namely the howling of water as it surged over the man-made river boundaries, erasing the landmarks that man had so callously seeded across the earth. London was in an uproar, her inhabitants trying to flee the city, or at least get to higher ground. Mari watched it all unfold from the roof of her apartment complex along with several neighbors and three cats that had followed her on the way up the moldering staircase.
Four years later, only one of those cats remained. She welcomed Mari home from classes with a purr as she darted under her legs, a greeting and a demand for food wrapped up in a single sound. Mari set her bag aside and laughed. "Just a minute, Princess," she said. "Missed me, huh?" Princess purred again and followed Mari into the kitchen, lashing her tail from side to side. "Let's see. Food for you, tea for me- what's this?"
Mari looked over at the answering machine, a white chunk of plastic wedged between the radio and the wall. Its light, normally dark, was a slow pulsing green. It hadn't ever been that color for as long as Mari could recall. She only gave her phone number to classmates with whom she'd landed group work, and ensured they called only when she was around to answer. This light was unusual. It was wrong, and it should've been a sign that everything was beginning to unravel. But Mari just pushed her glasses higher up her nose, set Princess' food on the ground, and walked over.
The green light kept blinking. On-off, in time with Mari's steps. Her fingers skated over the unfamiliar surface, fumbling about for the playback button. "You have one message," the machine recited.
Mari wasn't sure what she expected. It could be a telemarketer, asking about one thing or another. It could be a classmate, asking to borrow some notes for a day they'd missed. Or maybe it was neither of these, and it was someone who'd begged her number off a friend to try and talk to her.
She was not expecting silence. Hushed static echoed from the answering machine, occasionally interrupted by the rustle of someone moving near the phone. It stretched on, longer than a moment, and with each second that passed Mari's curiosity turned into flat annoyance. She jabbed at the machine with her hand, stopping herself when at last a familiar voice came from the speaker.
It was a voice she hadn't heard in many years.
"Mari," said Kyoko's voice, and Mari barely held herself back from replying. She watched the answering machine with wide eyes, but the recording was silent again. She tapped the device, wondering if something was making it skip.
"Mari, it's Yui."
And then it was Mari's heart skipping, her knees suddenly too delicate to hold her up. Six years' worth of repressed emotions threatened to topple her composure and knock her to the floor. The machine crackled, and in the broken jumble of noise there was the audible sound of a nose being blown. Mari reached for the buttons, her mind already filling in the gaps with a hundred scenarios of her own. She did not need Kyoko to tell her anything. But those three words had numbed her mind; her fingers were sluggish and stiff, and they fell short.
Kyoko's voice echoed like a rumble of thunder in the stillness of the apartment. "She's dead." And again she said it, so Mari had to acknowledge it and couldn't just pass it off as a trick played by her ears. "Yui's dead."
The world had ended. Mari felt her legs give, but the floor was so impossibly far away; everything was. Kyoko was elsewhere, suffering from the same agony, one that spanned continents. Mari fell, back slamming against the cabinets, legs folding and crumpling beneath her. Kyoko had to be wrong. Yui Ikari couldn't be dead. There was too much youthful joy in her smile, so much life in her everyday motions of breathing and blinking. To say Yui was dead was like saying the sun had ceased to shine, but Kyoko was sobbing in the recording, and so Mari turned her head to look out the window.
The last bits of the sunset shone and peeked through the tilted blinds. Mari squinted into the sunlight, seeking out the fading streaks of color in the sky. The turquoise green was rapidly graying, turning into a darker shade of blue to match the glint in Mari's eyes. Somewhere, Kyoko was speaking. "I'm sorry, Mari. I thought you should know."
The machine clicked. The automated voice asked if she would like to save the message. Mari sat, her weight supported by the tiled floor and the cabinets. If they weren't there, Mari was sure she would fall forever through the ground, in search of the empty hollow in the earth that Yui's body must occupy.
Outside the sun dipped behind the high-rises and the cranes building them, turning them into shadows in a dark expanse dotted by light. From the unlit interior of Mari's apartment, they could be candles set adrift on the swollen Thames, each one a memory of Yui offered for someone, anyone, to take away.
London became a blur of golden lights as Mari shoved her hand under her glasses- the ones that had once been Yui's- and wiped her eyes. Behind her the answering machine clicked and repeated itself, and repeated itself as Mari watched the city become a glittering sea- one that she, alone in the shadowed darkness of her apartment, refused to join.