"Hah..." Letting out a sigh, Victor leaned against the railing of bridge that overlooked the busy A100 road.
The sound of the cars howling as they passed under the bridge and the frigid cold of the evening made his eyes heavy as he ran his fingers through his messy hair. Clutched tightly in his hand was the degree and the award of distinction that he had gained after his graduation. He held them casually, like ordinary trinkets.
However, despite earning the highest possible award, there was a feeling of emptiness plaguing him. It was the same numbness he felt after every victory that came to him too easily.
"The winter wind cuts past my skin, but it doesn't reach me. A tired heart, curious for trouble yet too numb to seek it, watches the world below for a reason, or without one...
Hah... I am still bad at it."
"Won't you go home, Victor?"
As he spoke to himself, his words completely drowned out by the uproar caused by the cars driving by, he heard the faintest sliver of a voice. His nerves that were pulled taut suddenly eased and without looking back, he fiddled with the award in his hand.
"Don't you have a flight to catch up to, Grace?" Victor retorted, as he left his hunched state over the railing and faced the source of the feminine voice. His frame was tall and lean. He had an average face with long brown hair on top and crystal-clear green eyes.
The female in question—Grace—flinched a little when he took her name but took a few clipping steps regardless as her heels chipped against the metallic floor of the bridge. She bent down, a little warily, and placed her accolades on the ground before leaning over the railing.
"I do." She replied, her pale-grey eyes reflecting the yellow, white and red of the incoming and outgoing traffic. "I just felt like coming here. I guessed you would be here as well."
"That is impulsive, even for you." Victor's tone was flat as he copied grace and hunched over the railing. The award and degree were still in his massive hands.
"How would you know if this is too impulsive for me?" Grace scoffed as the wind tousled her honey-blonde hair against her face. Frowning, she removed the soft band from her wrist and used it to tie her hair up in a ponytail.
"True, I would not know. I can merely guess." Victor looked into the distance; his gaze fixed on nothing in particular. The entire world was a blur, and so were fragments of his life that played in front of him like a movie he was no longer interested in.
"Mhm... so? Why are you still here? Don't you need to go home?" Grace looked at him from the corner of her eyes.
Victor turned his head towards Grace and stared at her. At this distance, she could see how clear his gaze was. After a moment of her staring into his eyes, she casted them away and looked down, however, Victor kept staring at her.
She let out a little scoff. "Classic... you try to intimidate people when you don't want to answer." She matched his gaze again, this time firmly.
Victor's lips curved into a little smile. "Do you think I can intimidate you?"
"Sometimes."
The two of them fell into silence. While he did expect others to receive this reply, he never assumed that Grace would reply in the same fashion. In a sense, it irritated him, but at the same time, it made him feel an odd sensation.
Seeing Victor non-responsive, as always, Grace took the initiative and pulled her gaze back. There was a certain nerve-wracking feeling while staring at Victor which made her body shake. She turned slightly to lean against the railing, but this time instead of facing away, she was facing Victor.
"You still haven't answered," Grace noted, her voice steady against the wind, which had an icy, metallic tang. "Why are you here? Why not celebrate the distinction? I mean, this number of grades and distinctions is almost unheard of in the entire history of this university. And it has been around for more than a hundred years, so that's something."
Victor, who had been lazily tracing the engraved script on his degree scroll with a thumbnail, lifted his eyes. "The celebration is a formality. An agreement we make with society that effort equals satisfaction. And I am not here to confide myself my tradition. So, the question is this, Grace, why rush home to find an empty room waiting to congratulate an empty feeling?"
He spoke with in a low, languid manner. It was the sound of a man who found even articulating his malaise too taxing.
"'Curious for trouble yet too numb to seek it.'"
"A fair critique of poor poetry," he conceded. At that moment, Grace's eyes widened a little as she saw Victor smile a little. It was devoid of immediate joy. "You remembered my poem."
"You're too arrogantly humble." Grace scoffed and got a little closer.
"I have to be in your presence. You're annoyingly perceptive." Victor admitted.
Grace didn't react to the praise, simply observing the quick, vanishing gesture of his smile. "I have nothing to lose while playing into your games, Victor." She said and then went silent. "Well, anyways, I have a flight back to Stockholm in a while... I wanted to see you, but..."
Victor cleared his throat. "Don't you live in Trosa?"
"I do, but it is a village, as I have told you many times before. We don't have an airport there."
"You have?" Victor's tone was devoid of ridicule. "Well, anyways, congratulations on your admission to the university. I am assuming you will be leaving for the US after you visit your parents back home?"
"Mhmm...yes, I am done here. My future is secured, and I have cleaned up my past now."
"Cleanup, hmm?" Victor murmured. "That includes the rather earnest boy, doesn't it? The one who bought you that ridiculous string of pearls last Christmas."
"Max." Grace supplied the name blandly, looking back at the stream of yellow headlights blurring under the bridge. "He tried hard."
"He is a tolerable man."
"I appreciated whatever he did," she corrected him sharply. "There's a difference. He was attentive. And to be frank, reasonably proficient in the one area of commitment he was required for. In bed."
Victor stopped fiddling with the award that was the symbol of his facile victory. He did not look at her.
Grace chuckled. It was a dry sound of amusement and resignation. "Classic, Victor. The only thing that gets a reaction from you is the mention of pure, unexamined human biology. You almost looked human for a second."
He cleared his throat, pushing the wave of unwelcomed emotions back down into the reservoir of his numbness. "I am a human. And my reaction was purely attributed to me finding your words comical."
"It was supposed to sound comical." Grace pushed off the railing entirely and walked two steps towards him, closing the distance of their suspended dialogue. She stopped right at his side. "I'm leaving, Victor. And I know, with absolute certainty, that Max is not the man who can remain steadfast for a year or two across a continent. And I also know I never loved him enough to tolerate the inevitable pain of his eventual infidelity. Why invite trouble, why allow yourself to feel something remotely close to being hurt, when you can preempt the corrosive impact of attachment?"
"Poetic, but sure, whatever. It's your life, no need to overexplain it to me."
"Victor..."
"You can leave now." Victor's heavy voice sounded clearly in Grace's ears. It was almost as if the entire world had grown silent. "I do not wish to be a part of your pre-emptive cleanup. Whatever it was, it was in the past. It shouldn't be a detriment in the present, and definitely not in the future."
A rather disappointed look appeared on Grace's face. "Oh Victor... you always misunderstand me."
"I understand your words perfectly, Grace. You are building walls despite the absence of any potential siege, and I simply refuse to be characterized as the external threat you are preemptively defending against. You don't need to justify your decisions, calculated or otherwise, to me. You are leaving because you choose to move toward a future, not because you are running from a hypothetical man or preemptive hurt."
"And you, Victor? Are you here because you are choosing a future, or because you are simply refusing the past and the present?"
Victor stared at her blankly. He once again became that silent man that Grace could not decide whether to be attracted to or be repulsed.
"Alright," she sighed. "This is going nowhere. Let's... forget the heavy questions for a moment." Her voice softened as a fragile smile graced her face. She turned back toward the traffic, gripping the railing with lightly trembling fingers.
Victor wanted to leave but ended up mimicking her. For some reason his legs felt heavy.
"Victor."
He hummed in acknowledgment.
"What perfume are you wearing?"
The question was sudden and tonally absurd in the current moment. Victor's lips twitched. He could tell that it was exactly the sort of dissonance Grace often used when cornered emotionally.
"You're wearing Endless Love." Victor didn't reply to her question.
"I—what? How do you even know that?"
"It's strong enough to compete with diesel fumes."
"Are you sure you just don't remember it from a girl in your bed?"
Victor's eyebrow twitched. "No."
Grace scoffed, shoving her hands into her coat pockets. "Fine. I'll consider that a compliment then." She shot him a sideways glance. "And you absolutely dodged my question."
"You asked a question?"
"You are exhausting."
"So I've been told."
The wind howled again, harsher this time as a burst of headlights painted their silhouettes against the guardrail.
"You know... for someone who pretends everything rolls off him, you feel far too deeply." Grace's gaze lingered on him, on the tension locked in his shoulders and the subtle rigidity of his jaw. Then, she stepped closer. "You're here because the future you envisioned is not within your grasp."
Close enough that the scent of her perfume became really strong.
"Victor," she said again, more quietly this time. "Look at me."
And look, he did, slowly, as though each degree of movement cost him something. Grace felt her breath hitch. For there was no tenderness in his eyes, save for an icy cold clarity. A deep, crystalline clarity that was, in some strange way, more intimate than any warmth he could have offered.
"I am not chasing a specific future," Victor said, "I stand where I stand."
Grace inhaled, steadying herself. "Then let me rephrase." She tilted her head. "Do you want me to stay for a while... or do you want me to leave?"
Suddenly, a wave of heat washed over the two of them. It wasn't the heat of embarrassment or something that stemmed from emotions, no, it was much more...tangible.
Grace suddenly stiffened. "Victor... did you feel—"
"Yes." Victor replied calmly, but inside him was a storm of confusion. If it was just him who was feeling this ripping sensation, then he could've attributed it to some unknown disease, but since Grace was feeling it as well, Victor couldn't help but feel uneasy.
Suddenly, Grace reached out and touched Victor's arm, gripping it tightly. A horror-struck, almost hysterical look appeared on her face as she saw at his arm—or rather, through it.
"What—what is this? Victor, what is happening to you?" She whispered breathlessly.
Victor stared at her with eye that had widened for a fraction of an inch. "You too... I don't know what's happening."
The tips of Grace's fingers turned translucent, the faint outlines of her knuckles and bones losing coherence as though her body were being redrafted in brittle charcoal and erased line by line. Victor looked down at his own hand. The parchment of the degree scroll was beginning to show the steel plating of the bridge through it.
His own disappearance didn't faze him as much as he instinctively reached out for her but his palm slipped through her wrist as though she were fading smoke.
"Victor—" She reached for him again. Her voice was half-choked by rising terror. "Victor, don't—don't just stand there—please—"
Once again, on instinct, Victor leapt towards her. Grace tried once more to touch him, her fingers sweeping through the fading shape of his forearm, desperate to feel even the illusion of tangibility. "I can't—" her breath caught, "I can't even—Victor, look at me—"
"I am."
The world around them dimmed at the edges, as if the bridge, the traffic, the roaring night were being pushed behind a pane of darkened glass. The lights bled, sound dulled and their colors drained to silvers and fading whites.
"Victor—"
She reached again—
—and her fingertips dissolved into the air before they could even pass through him.
Victor's form disintegrated next, pieces of him blurring into transparency as the crisp line of his jaw, the dull shine of his hair and the cold green of his eyes bled into nothing.
Both of them slipped into full transparency.
However, it was not just the two of them. Across every meridian, in a single, devastating moment, half of all humanity had simply vanished. Whatever cosmic or catastrophic hand had swept this clean, its story would be referred to as the Zero Day, the absolute end of the world's 'now,' forever branding it the darkest hour in history.