The kiss doesn't happen in a church.
It doesn't happen in a palace.
It happens behind a collapsing newsstand in Florence, while the rain tries to remember how to fall properly.
Tralalero's hands are still shaking.
She hasn't slept since she returned from the Score.
Lirilì's hair is tangled with ash. Her voice still cracks with leftover music.
They are cold. Wet. Terrified.
And finally—
alone.
"We don't have to," whispers Tralalero."We can run. Let the world die some other way."
"You're stupid," Lirilì says softly."You are the other way."
The moment builds like a chord held too long.
Fingertips brush.
Tralalero leans forward.
So does Lirilì.
Lips meet—
And the sky screams.
Rome collapses.
Not metaphorically. The Vatican splits in two.The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel peels open like burnt paper, revealing stars that should not be there.
The moon stops moving.
Clocks globally skip one second forward. Then two back.Then refuse to agree on what "time" even is.
A thousand popes blink into existence. All scream. All vanish.
In Florence, the kiss is interrupted—
—not by a person.
By the Score itself.
It manifests in the rain, the cobblestones, the walls. The city sings against them. An aria of refusal.
"Not yet," says a choir of thunder.
The kiss ends in a breathless break, not a finish.
Tralalero collapses.
Lirilì bleeds from the nose.
They are torn apart by the city itself — hurled across rooftops like ragdolls made of hymnals.
The kiss almost killed them.
And they know now:
The next one will.
Meanwhile…
Chimpanzini Bananini screams inside a confessional booth.
"I REMEMBER WHAT I TRADED!"
A priest peeks in.
"What was it, my son?"
"I TRADED THE MEMORY OF MY REASONS!"
He holds the glass banana in one hand. A real one in the other.
He is weeping.
He whispers:
"If they kiss again… I think I become God. Or I die. Or I was never born."
Elsewhere:
Ballerina Cappuccina tears pages from her own prophecy-ballet.
Tung Tung Sahur finishes building the Resonant Guillotine.
Capuchino Assassino opens his eyes in the catacombs, whispering only:
"Send me to the kiss."
The prophecy shifts.
It once said:
When they kiss, the world ends.
Now it says:
When they kiss again… the world chooses.