*Ophelia's Point of View*
Waking up felt less like opening my eyes and more like a crash. My body jerked, my heart racing as if I were still falling, waiting for the floor to give way. For a few long seconds, I just stared at the ceiling. I traced the jagged cracks in the plaster, wondering if they had spread while I was asleep.
The air was thick and smelled of dust and old blood. Despite the chaos of the world ending, I still had the usual and very annoying need to find a restroom. It was a strange realization that the building had collapsed and all but my body still followed its usual routine.
My joints popped as I stood up, the sound echoing too loudly in the empty room. When I stepped out into the hallway, the mood had completely changed. The screaming and crying from earlier that morning were gone. In their place was a quiet, busy energy that felt even more unsettling.
Under the flickering emergency lights, students moved with a robotic kind of focus. They spoke in low, hushed voices. It reminded me of a beehive trying to rebuild itself after a disaster. Mr. Davies' plan had turned everyone into workers, all of them clinging to the hope that following orders would keep them safe.
I felt like just a spectator watching them. As I moved past the crowd of gray hoodies and tired faces, I couldn't help but wonder how long this organized calm would last before things fell apart again.
"Oh, Ophelia's awake!" The voice sliced through the quiet, making me jump. My heart did a painful little stutter. I turned to see a figure emerging from the dim light of the corridor.
It was Martin. He was a classmate I'd barely exchanged two words with all semester, but now he looked like a shadow of his former self. His skin had a sickly, grayish tint under the buzzing fluorescent lights, and his eyes were sunken. Despite the exhaustion etched into his face, he offered me a weary, trembling smile as he pressed a small bundle into my hands.
"Here," he whispered, his voice raspy. "The canteen run was... successful. Mostly. We had to scramble, but we got enough for everyone to have a bit."
I looked down at the items, a lukewarm water bottle, a hotdog-filled waffle wrapped in crinkled parchment, and two small packs of cookies.
In the middle of this nightmare, they had managed to secure a food. It was a miracle, really. But as my fingers closed around the warm waffle, a cynical chill settled in my chest. I knew how this story played out.
Today, everyone would call the students who went to the canteen heroes. But tomorrow? Or the day after? When the food ran out and the water turned bitter, these same people would turn into predators. They would look for someone to blame for their hunger.
That was exactly why I refused to volunteer. That was why I kept my... learned skill because I couldn't even used it when both my friends sacrificed themselves for me, I intend to bury it deep it like a shameful secret.
Besides, I had already paid the highest price for trying to sacrifice myself for being such a coward. My two best friends were gone, their laughter silenced forever because I thought I could make a difference. I wasn't going to repeat that mistake. From now on, I was going to be a ghost— someone who walked among the living but never truly touched them.
"Thanks, Martin," I muttered, keeping my eyes fixed on the floor.
"Sure thing, Ophelia. Just... eat up. We need our strength," he said, patting my shoulder briefly before heading back toward the others.
I made a quick, lonely trip to the facilities, the sound of my own footsteps echoing like gunshots in the empty hallway. When I returned to our designated classroom, the air felt a little warmer. Three of my classmates were huddled in a small circle on the dusty floor. Myrah, Sarah, and Martin. They looked small and fragile in the corner of the large, ruined room.
"Sit with us, Ophelia," Myrah said, patting the floor beside her. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but she managed a small, inviting gesture.
I sank down next to her and took a small bite of the waffle. It tasted somehow nice?
Martin let out a long, ragged sigh that seemed to vibrate in the small room. "Shocking doesn't even cover it, does it? One minute we're worrying about the math midterms, and the next..."
"At least we got our food," Sarah cut in, her voice pitched too high, trembling like a plucked string. "Right? Small victories."
No one replied. We were all thinking the same thing, how long can a small victory last?
"This is so depressing," Sarah whispered, her bravado snapping instantly.
"Yeah," Myrah added, picking at the corner of a cookie wrapper. "I didn't imagine it would be like this. In the movies, there's always a soundtrack. There's always someone who knows exactly what to do. Here, it's just... quiet."
The silence that followed was suffocating, broken only by the rhythmic sound of chewing and the heavy, synchronized breathing of four people who were terrified to look each other in the eye.
I couldn't stand it. I stood up and walked over to my bag, retrieving the thermal lunchbox I'd carried through the collapse. I hadn't even opened it.
"I haven't eaten my lunch yet," I said, my voice sounding strange in the quiet room. "It's a bento. My mom helped me pack it this morning. It's still fresh."
I knelt back down and clicked open the latches. The aroma hit us like a memory of a different life. It was a three-layer bento, meticulously arranged. The top layer held gold-and-yellow egg rolls nestled against a crisp salad of lettuce, avocado, and cherry tomatoes. The middle layer was the heart of it: two thick slices of tonkatsu drizzled in savory sauce, alongside stir-fried adobo studded with pearly quail eggs. At the bottom, a dense bed of white rice.
"I always pack a lot," I said, my voice catching. I took a sharp breath to steady myself. "Because my... my best friends... they always loved my cooking."
Myrah's eyes went wide, her hands clapped over her mouth. "Wait! Is this the famous bento? Ophelia, I've heard about this! One of my friends told me your best friends used to brag about your adobo constantly."
For a second, the ecstatic look on their faces made the ruins around us disappear.
"Thank you for the food!" they chanted in a ragged, bittersweet unison, and the feast began.
"Oh my god," Martin mumbled, his eyes closing as he swallowed a piece of the egg roll. "This is incredible. And the adobo... Ophelia, the quail eggs are perfect."
"Dhid shou meyk dish?" Sarah asked, her cheeks bulging with tonkatsu. However I still managed to understand her.
"Not all of it," I admitted, a ghost of a smile touching my lips. "I help my mother every morning. It's our routine."
"That's so sweet," Myrah sighed, but the light in the room shifted again.
The mood in the room shifted so fast it was dizzying. One moment, we were eating, the next, Sarah froze. Her chopsticks hovered inches from her mouth, and the silence returned, heavier than before. A single, fat tear tracked a clean line through the dust on her cheek before falling, disappearing into the white rice.
"It's so depressing," she whispered, her voice breaking into a soft, jagged sob. "That we're only getting to taste something this delish... now."
"Sarah, please," Myrah said, reaching out to rest a hand on her friend's trembling arm. Her voice was thick with concern, the kind of tone you use for someone standing on the edge of a ledge.
"No, it's just— it's too much," Sarah cried, her shoulders shaking with the effort of holding back a full-blown breakdown. She looked up at us, her eyes red and swimming. "Is the food actually this delicious? Or am I just realizing that everything tastes much better when you're afraid that it might be your last meal?"
The question hung in the air, uncomfortably honest.
"It's really that delicious," Myrah insisted. Her voice was firm, an anchor intended to keep us from drifting back into the dark. "Ophelia is just a secret master chef. That's all it is, Sarah. Focus on the taste."
Suddenly, Martin let out a short, sharp bark of a laugh. The sound was so unexpected, we all flinched, turning to stare at him in shock. He was doubled over, his forehead nearly touching his knees.
"I'm sorry," he gasped, wiping his eyes with the back of a grime-streaked hand. The laughter bubbled up out of him, desperate and hysterical. "I'm so sorry. I don't even know what I'm feeling anymore. I woke up today wanting to be miserable— I wanted to just sit in a corner and cry until the ceiling fell on me. But watching you guys have a philosophical crisis over a lunchbox while the world literally ends... it's so absurd. It's so stupidly funny."
Myrah let out a hesitant, high-pitched giggle. Then Sarah, still wiping tears from her face, snorted through her nose. Finally, a small, genuine laugh escaped me, too.
It wasn't the kind of laughter you hear at a party. It was just a jagged, human sound— the sound of people who were exhausted and broken but still alive. For a few seconds, the bento box wasn't just food but a small, flavored shield we were using to ward off the end of the world.
"I guess experiencing the apocalypse gives us a weird sense of humor," Sarah sniffled, taking another bite of the adobo.
I just smiled and watched them eat.
When the bento was empty, they insisted on washing it with the last of the spare water. I told them it didn't matter that a clean lunchbox was a trivial thing now, but they won't listen. In a world that had lost its order, they were desperate to keep this one small thing tidy.