The sun was setting over Asterion City, painting the buildings orange. In the large windows you could see the light splitting into seven colors—or at least that was what Thomas counted: red, orange, yellow, violet, indigo, green, and blue. That moment of calm, when the asphalt begins to cool and murmurs drift through the air carrying the smell of soup, was always his favorite time of day.
He usually sat on the wooden bench outside the shop door and, facing the sunset, read.
He returned to the pages of Childhood's End, intending to continue reading, but from inside came a familiar shout.
"Toto!"
Thomas sighed as he stood up. His boss, Robert, was smiling behind the counter. At nearly two meters tall, with gladiator-sized arms, he was holding a bag that looked tiny in his hands.
"Toto, last delivery before you head home."
"I already told you I don't like it when you call me that."
Robert burst into a deafening laugh.
"Sorry, Toto. Won't happen again."
Thomas grabbed the small bag, annoyed.
"Reading those old books again?"
Thomas glanced at the spine of the book in his other hand. Its paperback cover was torn and faded—it really was old—but it had been one of his father's favorite books.
Robert went on.
"You've got to stop reading that stuff and enjoy life more, Toto. Get some friends, a girlfriend, maybe—"
"What are you saying!"
From a door behind the counter, Robert's daughter Sunny appeared. She was seventeen, the same age as Thomas. The three of them had known each other for a few years.
"Thomas is a geek, Dad. Accept it. And geeks don't have girlfriends or friends."
Thomas gave her an ironic smile, and she returned it the same way. Even though the boy's mind seemed to have no time for certain things, he couldn't deny that she was beautiful. Clear eyes, enormous golden braids—sometimes he even dared to notice the scent of her skin. Immediately Thomas would feel ashamed inside, and his face would turn a telltale color.
"I prefer the worlds in books to yours."
The boy said this as he slipped Childhood's End into his backpack.
Robert and Sunny exchanged a look, not entirely sure what he meant. Thomas politely told them good night and stepped outside.
Outside, he placed the delivery bag into the basket of his bicycle. Just as he was about to leave, Sunny ran out of the shop.
She stopped in front of him, smiling with a conspiratorial expression Thomas already knew.
"No way."
Thomas said it before she even spoke.
But Sunny smiled even wider—if that was possible—and tilted her head slightly to emphasize the gesture. Thomas thought she looked like a psychopath.
"I said no. And that face is terrifying."
"Please, Thomas. Give me a ride."
She was irresistibly attractive. And he was, definitely, weak.
"Get on."
Almost every afternoon, when Thomas rode home after work, Sunny climbed onto the back of his bicycle and forced him to take her along. They crossed the city center well into the evening, and Sunny enjoyed it every time as if it were the first.
The spectacle of neon lights, the cars, couples walking hand in hand, solitary figures sitting in bars, the smell of the night, the city breeze. She would spread her arms and imagine she was flying.
Thomas loved watching her like that.
Sunny was always arrogant, cold, distant—but that moment, that tiny ritual that began with her making faces until he let her climb onto the bicycle, was secretly one of the happiest moments of Thomas's day.
After a few minutes, the center was left behind and the night seemed to fall all at once.
"Where are we?" Sunny asked.
"It's the address your father sent me. Where I'm supposed to deliver the order."
They both looked around.
It was a gray neighborhood, where neon lights turned into yellow streetlamps and the scent of perfume from passersby turned into sewer smell.
They got off the bicycle to find the house number.
"All that hatred you have for the world… is it because of your father?"
Sunny asked the question out of nowhere, as casually as someone asking the time.
Thomas was surprised but didn't answer. Just then, escaping the discomfort, he found the house.
"Here it is."
They rang the doorbell and waited.
One minute.
Two.
Sunny lit a cigarette.
"What are you doing? I told you not to smoke."
"You're not my father. Boring."
"Your father would kill you if he found out."
Sunny took a short drag. The smoke drifted out slowly, drawing a gray spiral that should have fallen apart in the air.
But it didn't.
Thomas watched it for a moment, thinking it was an illusion from fatigue, or from the sunset that still seemed to float in his eyes.
"Sunny…"
She didn't answer. She was staring at the smoke.
The gray thread was still there.
Too still.
Thomas raised his hand and waved it in front of the cigarette. The smoke didn't move.
Then they realized something else.
The street was empty.
Not empty the way it is when the last bus passes late at night. Empty in a different way, as if someone had taken the sound of the neighborhood and carried it somewhere else.
The yellow streetlamps were still on.
But they didn't flicker.
Sunny dropped the cigarette. It fell slowly, as if the ground were farther away than they remembered.
"That's impossible," Thomas said.
Sunny shook her head, still staring at the frozen air.
"No," she murmured. "It hasn't even been ten years."
And then the sirens began to sound.