Day one: nothing.
Day two: nothing.
Day three: He had almost given up. He was sitting in the study, staring at the screen, a can of cold beans in his hand. The post had zero likes, zero comments, zero shares. He was talking to the void.
And then the notification appeared.
1 new comment on your post.
His heart stopped. He clicked.
The comment was from a profile name he didn't recognize: Yuki Tanaka. The profile picture showed a young woman with dark hair and a shy smile, standing in front of a temple. The comment was brief:
"Hey. I'm also still alive. I'm alone. Where are you?"
Leo stared at the screen for a full minute. Then he typed back, his fingers trembling:
"UK. Near London. You?"
The reply came within seconds:
"Japan. Near Tokyo. My name is Yuki."
He wrote back: "Leo."
And then, because he didn't know what else to say: "I thought I was the only one."
Her response: "Me too. I've been searching for days. You're the first sign of life I've found."
They talked for hours. Then days. Then weeks.
The connection was slow the internet was dying by degrees, servers failing one by one but it held. They learned each other's stories. Yuki had been a graphic designer, living alone in a small apartment, struggling with depression and loneliness. She had survived because she'd been in a subway station when the meteorites hit the concrete roof had held, while the rest of the city above had been obliterated. She had emerged to find nothing but rubble and silence.
She had spent a month alone before posting on Facebook, just as Leo had. She had been about to give up.
Leo told her everything. The computer. The eighteen-hour days. The failed YouTube channel, the AdSense pennies, the Shopify disaster. The Black Ram. The father who called him coward. The room above the laundromat. The decade of trying and failing and trying again.
She didn't laugh. She didn't judge. She said: "I understand. I was trying too. Just... to survive. To be someone."
He asked her: "What do we do now?"
She took a long time to reply. When the message came, it was simple:
"We find each other."