Day 0 – Entry One
I used to think the world would end in fire.Instead, it ended in quiet.
No sirens. No missile trails. No screaming across the sky. Just a slow fade into stillness—like the planet exhaled and forgot how to breathe back in.
My name is Riku Hanazawa. Sixteen years old.If you're reading this, I'm probably dead. Or maybe I made it. Maybe we did.
Before all this, I was just a high school student with too many books in my backpack and too many "what ifs" in my head. I had a habit of planning for disasters that never came. I knew how to make fire from sticks, how to purify water with charcoal and sand, how to identify edible roots, how to forge a knife from scrap steel. It was my thing—a weird obsession.
My classmates called me "prep boy."I wore the insult like armor. I knew someday it'd mean something.
Now it's the only reason I'm alive.
I'm not tall. Never have I been. Five foot seven, wiry. My arms and legs look thin until I lift something—there's strength in the bones. I've got calloused hands from carving wood and climbing too many trees. Skin's pale from long winters in Tokyo, freckled from hours under the sun on rooftops and riverbanks. I keep my black hair short. More straightforward to wash, faster to dry.
My eyes are a dull brown. Everyone says they look tired, even when I'm wide awake.
I don't smile much. I'm not sure if I ever did.
I came to Minakami Island three days ago on a solo trip. I convinced my parents it was just a summer survival camp. No Wi-Fi, no electricity. Just me, a tarp, tools, and nature. I wasn't supposed to be gone long.
And then the world folded in on itself.
The signal vanished. The air shifted. Birds fell from the sky like someone had cut their strings. My satellite phone lit up with unreadable characters, glitched, and died. Not a nuclear blast. No shockwave. Just stillness and that low-pitched static hum I still hear when everything else is quiet.
I didn't panic.I made tea.
That's how I cope—rituals. Logic.
I took stock. I had:
A Mora survival knife. Carbon steel.
Ferro rod for fire starting.
Compact tarp and paracord.
Water bottle with built-in filter.
Notebook, two pencils.
Field guides—plants, animals, chemistry basics.
My father's old wind-up field radio. Dead silent.
I didn't bring food. That was the point of the trip—to learn to live off the land.
So I started with shelter.
I chose a sloped ridge near the south side of the island. Natural windbreak. Good elevation. Pine and bamboo are around. I laid down a base of dry leaves and layered bamboo poles for the frame, covered the roof with ferns, and then added a tarp.
Every knot I tied made my hands stop shaking.
I didn't sleep the first night. I just lay there listening. To the nothing. To the unfamiliar silence of a planet that lost its rhythm.
Day 1 – Smoke Means I'm Still Here
I built a fire today.
I knew the humidity would be high, so I found pine bark and scraped resin—nature's kerosene. Shaved dry twigs, shaped a small teepee structure. One strike from the ferro rod lit it like magic. The smell of smoke filled the air. Not acrid—comforting. Warm. Human.
That's when I realized I hadn't seen a plane in the sky since the event. No contrails. No buzz of rotors. Even the ocean was still.
Dead still.
My fire cracked through that stillness—a small rebellion.
Day 2 – Something Moved
This morning, I followed a trail through the underbrush. I saw something. It moved fast. Didn't make a sound. Four-legged, low to the ground, but the gait wasn't right for a deer. It was too fluid, as if its joints were reversed.
I left immediately. Marked the tree with a cord notch and backtracked to camp. I don't hunt what I don't understand.
Later, I made a spear—simple in design—with a hardened tip and a reinforced base. I lashed a second knife to a stick as a backup. My body moved calmly, but my chest felt tight all day.
Day 3 – The Dead Boar
I found a carcass near the stream.
It was a boar once. Or close. Its body was bloated, its skin loose, as if it had outgrown itself. Eyes sunken in, tusks spiraled inward. Something had gnawed at it, but nothing I recognized.
I didn't take the meat. I took the bones.Cleaned them in the fire. Split the femur open—marrow inside was black, almost tar-like.
I documented it all in the notebook. Sketched it. Labeled the organs and logged the decay pattern.
Whatever happened to this world, biology hadn't just warped—it had rewritten its own rules.
Day 4 – Pottery
Clay was my therapy today.
I found a deposit near the riverbed. Dug deep and rolled it in my hands until it smoothed. I made a simple bowl, a jar, and a hollow cylinder for a chimney vent.
I fired them in a pit oven I built from stones and bamboo. Lined the inside with charcoal and mud, fanned it with a palm-leaf bellows.
First jar cracked. Second held.
I boiled water in it. Safe water. Mine.
Day 5 – I Saw Light
Night fell. And I saw it.A flicker in the distance.
Not fire. Not lightning.
A pulse. Cold white-blue, like a signal flare from underground. Then it vanished. I'm not sure if it was artificial or something else. I marked its direction: north-northwest.
I won't check it. Not yet.
Day 6 – One Rule
I remembered something my father said during training:
"Don't trust the silence. Nature talks. If it stops talking, something's wrong."
Today, the forest was silent.
I climbed a tree and stayed up there for three hours with a spear across my lap. I didn't blink. I didn't eat.
Nothing happened.
But something was there. Watching. Testing.
That's fine. I can wait too.
Day 7 – This Is Survival Log
It's been one week since the world ended.
I haven't heard another voice. Haven't seen another person. Haven't felt safe for even a second.
But I'm still here.
I've got a fire pit. Two clay jars. A drying rack for fish. A stash of bamboo spears. A bow made from a bent sapling and twine. I've identified twelve edible plant types, six toxic ones—three mutated species, one aquatic, and two land-based.
I don't know what caused the event. I'm not sure if it's still happening.
But I'm documenting everything.
If no one ever finds this, that's fine.
But if someone does...
Know this:We weren't all blind.We weren't all broken.Some of us remembered how to survive.
This is my log.This is my truth.This is survival.