Utaha had always believed herself to be a strong person. No matter how great the difficulty, she felt she could overcome it alone.
But it was not until April 5 that she realized she was also just a simple, ordinary girl—someone who could feel fear, helplessness, and a longing for someone to be by her side.
The people around her disappeared.
The people at her school disappeared.
The people of all Tokyo disappeared.
She was abandoned. In the entire world, only she remained.
For two days, she did her best to suppress the negative emotions in her heart, searching for clues that others might still exist, until on the night of the 7th she discovered an online message left by an exchange student named "Yusuke Haizaki" on the 5th.
So there was someone else in this world besides her.
She smiled. She was happy.
Because she was not alone.
She sent emails and made phone calls, contacting him with anticipation, yet all of it sank without a trace, with no reply at all.
The hope that had surged up shattered in an instant, leaving only panic and loneliness behind.
At one point, she even felt that suicide might be easier.
With the entire world reduced to just her, what meaning was there in continuing to live? Rather than dying alone in pain sometime in the future, abandoned and helpless, she might as well end it now.
But choosing death also required great courage, and she still had not resolved herself to die.
The accumulated mental pressure, physical and emotional exhaustion, and roller-coaster-like emotional swings eventually caused her to fall asleep, until she was awakened by the vibration of her phone.
The incoming number was one she would never forget.
He was there. He had not disappeared.
But after the joy came worry.
Out of a beautiful woman's instinctive concern and vigilance toward men, she chose to temporarily delay real-life contact with this unfamiliar male.
People may long for solitude, but they would never truly want to be the only one left.
As a novelist, she stayed at home, often stayed up late, and did not frequently interact with others, but in reality, she still maintained connections with people.
She was still part of human society.
Using the man's initiative in contacting her as a trigger, and judging by the content of their conversations, she planned to decide whether to meet him in person. However, the result was that the man never contacted her proactively again from beginning to end.
Faced with such an outcome, she made a sulking, stubborn decision to live alone.
But who would have known that an earthquake would occur, burying her beneath collapsed rubble. Fear of death and anxiety toward the darkness constantly eroded her spirit.
She desperately wished for someone to rescue her. She wanted to live. She wanted to keep living.
And in the end, just as the last remnants of hope in her heart, Haizaki appeared and rescued her from beneath the ruins.
She thanked him, and because of being saved, she developed goodwill toward him. Even so, she did not want his purpose to be merely her body.
Two months of life in Wuhua City gradually allowed her to escape the shadow of "human disappearance" and the stress trauma caused by the earthquake.
Aside from occasionally missing her parents, classmates, and those she had once known, she no longer thought about death.
Until… Haizaki erupted in anger at her over the matter of the hard drive.
It was the first time she had seen that gentle man possess an angry side.
The first time she had seen that calm man display dissatisfaction.
All along, he had been silently bearing enormous pressure alone, yet she had taken it for granted.
Utaha understood that even without the hard drive incident, Haizaki would eventually erupt. If not in one year, then two years, five years—until one day, the emotions he had suppressed would burst forth.
And during the subsequent cold war, Haizaki informed her that he would be "going away for five days."
What surfaced in her mind was the thought that Haizaki would leave and never return—that he would abandon her.
But in the end, he did come back, only…
His cold attitude on the night he returned instantly ignited the immense mental pressure she had been suppressing, causing her to collapse.
It was her fault. She knew she was wrong, and she wanted to apologize. She just wanted to find a suitable opportunity to express her apology. But why did it have to turn out like this?
Over the following five days, she did her best to adjust her emotions, planning to wait until she had completely calmed down before properly talking with Haizaki, apologizing to him, and expressing her remorse.
Before fully stabilizing her mindset, Utaha decided to temporarily avoid encountering Haizaki, so as to prevent unnecessary conflicts caused by her still-unstable emotions.
But deep down, she also understood that she was still hesitant about taking the initiative. It was not that she could not do it, but that she was conflicted by her own reserve and pride.
Useless reserve and pride.
That was how she evaluated it.
Yet even though they were useless, it was precisely this reserve and pride that prevented her from actively breaking the stalemate and changing their current relationship.
This made her increasingly gloomy and irritable.
Her previously smooth writing was affected as well, falling into writer's block.
She could not write what she wanted. She deleted and rewrote, rewrote and deleted. None of today's words satisfied her.
"Is it nine already?"
The clock showed that it was already 9:00 p.m.
Utaha left her room and went to the first floor, planning to casually find something to eat to fill her stomach.
"He hasn't come back yet?"
Although they had been in a cold war for half a month, she still had a rough understanding of Haizaki's daily departure and return times.
Over three months, he had never returned to the villa later than nine o'clock at night.
The panic in her heart surfaced once more.
"I shouldn't think like that. It's probably just an accident…"
Utaha chewed slowly, deliberately slowing down her eating.
Although she herself knew she was deceiving herself, she just wanted to wait for that man to return.
Ten o'clock.
Eleven o'clock.
Haizaki still had not returned.
During that time, she even knocked on Haizaki's door with a heart full of tension. If he were inside, she would definitely take the initiative to apologize to him.
But the room remained silent for a long time. He was not in his room.
Fear and loneliness once again invaded the girl's heart.
Had something happened to Haizaki?
Or was it that… Haizaki had abandoned her?
Even at the very first moment the thought arose, she threw that possibility out of her mind.
"Crackle—"
The living room lights flickered twice before going out completely. Utaha was startled and went to the nearest switch, only to find that the living room lights could not be turned on.
"Maybe the living room light is broken."
She groped her way to the kitchen, only to find that the kitchen lights also would not turn on, including the lights in the first-floor storage room.
The power was out.
The diesel generator had malfunctioned.
What should she do?
At this moment, she once again realized that everything crucial to survival had been handled by Haizaki.
Now that a power outage had occurred late at night, aside from panic, her mind was completely blank, unable to think of any feasible solution.
She only wanted that man to come back quickly.
If he could come back, she would apologize.
Really—she would be the one to apologize first.
...