It was bright and bleak because of the sunlight being filtered through clouds that were threatening to rain. The trees were bare of petals or at least becoming bare as another rosy petal fell to an unmoving breeze, to a ring around the massive black trunk.
It was all coming to pieces; everywhere else was shattering, and everywhere here was trembling.
Invisible to everyone else at the time but herself and him, Watanuki walks through the unmoving mass of people with despair lining his coat.
His shoes drag slightly, his eyes wary of the shadows he spies on the ground, and a nervous slide of his fingers pushing his glasses up brings attention to a wrinkle between his eyes that is being seen more and more often, Yuuko notes. She pours a glass as he pauses to grab the newspaper delivered and forgotten in her mailbox.
The rosy liquid sloshes into another glass as the door to her shop opens.
Dramatics and comical humor aside, he did not know how it could get worse.
Watanuki looks aside from outside, from what was so far past his comprehension, turning to the sliding door with a lunar print that is already open, turning to Yuuko. His two eyes are two different colors with the same burning conviction.
Greeting exempt, Watanuki softly speaks, "Yuuko, it's all falling apart…what can I do?"
She realizes that he's come a long way, actually believing that he can do something to stop this from happening. It's enough to make her pause as she takes another swig of alcohol that burns.
She avoids his question. "This…is inevitable. Did you pick up the newspaper today?"
"Don't give me that 'hitsuzen' crap!" Golden and blue, the epitome of his unique situation, are suddenly lively and angered by Yuuko's dispassionate red. It scares him that she's quiet, professional, and practically Victorian in her resignation.
"Everything starts moving towards the end as soon as it begins; we only have the luck of being there when it happens."
"This is not 'luck'!" he exclaims, taking the glass out of her hand and slamming it onto the table, before slapping down a newspaper. "It was my birthday a while ago! There was a carrot cake! Himawari and Doumeki and Mokona and you ambushed me at the park to eat it all! Doumeki stole my share! I haven't come here in a while to catch up on schoolwork!"
The newspaper smells like crisp ink and cheap paper, and in capital letters underneath the newspaper's name, off to the side proclaims—
"– how long has it been the beginning of May?"
—May 1st, 2008.
"Three days."
"It's been three days of people that don't move, of ghosts and monsters that have been keeping me penned in my apartment. I was trapped. Doumeki came over after the first May 1st and the second was used trying to figure out how far this reaches."
"How far does this reach?"
"We don't know — every time we walk outside of the city we wake up at the beginning of the day."
"hmm." She stares at a point on the floor.
"That's all? What is happening?!"
"Oh, that?" Yuuko bitterly smiles, "There are many names of it, one to match every religion, every culture, and every world." She spares a breath in reaching for her glass so rudely clattering with the table a moment before, before breathing out two words.
"The apocalypse."