"Honestly, we were just as surprised as you were."

There's a tightness around his wrists, slowly pulling his awareness to the surface as the words trickle in.

"The huge asteroids that are classified as those "dino-killers" are pretty easy to find and track with the technology we have now; however, those little guys like the one that blew up above the moon yesterday are really hard to spot with even our best telescopes. We're essentially trying to find a bus in such a vast area of space that it makes our planet look like a water droplet.

Above Yoshiya's head, his hands are bound by something almost smooth except for the loose fibers that cause itches across the skin of his wrists.

"For such a "little" guy, it certainly caused quite a big explosion."

At the sound of a second voice, he opens his eyes, and darkness blurs into an off-white ceiling. Craning his neck up to stare at his bound hands, Yoshiya takes in the sight of a blue neon rope stretched across his skin. He doesn't move, barely even breathes as he just gapes at the impossibility above his head.

"Well, that wasn't really what you'd call a traditional explosion. Not all asteroids are big hunks of rock. There's a lot of them that are essentially gravel and dust piles, barely held together by their own gravity. When one of them hits a larger body that doesn't have an atmosphere to burn them up too fast, they can create what are basically these huge debris clouds."

The world is soft, silky, and warm beneath him. He might be lying on a bed except his, he knows, is firmer than this and doesn't smell like flowers. So, he isn't in his own bed—He isn't tied up on his own bed, and yet the panic that should be there is smothered by confusion over the words that continue to wash over him.

"For a dust cloud, it was pretty dark according to some of these images."

"Well, based on the preliminary analysis that we're running, we're thinking that the asteroid mostly consisted of carbon, essentially a flying ball of dusty coal."

The words are coming from two voices. That much he can gather, but it doesn't make sense, doesn't fit what's happening to him now. Slowly, he turns to look towards the direction that they're coming from.

"This is just crazy. One of those blink and you'll miss it type of events."

"I know, right. I'm honestly a bit jealous of all those backyard Russian and Japanese astronomers who got to see the impact in real time."

The glow of a computer screen frames the head of a girl. Her hair falls over the back of her chair as she leans back. The voices continue to reach out from the desktop's speakers, but they blur out of Yoshiya's focus as he stares straight at the person across the room.

"Kaori?" He manages to ease out.

The girl in the chair jerks before twisting to look back. The back of the chair she sits in rises up like a wall between them as she leans away from it and from him. Her dark eyes are wide when she meets his stare. For a single moment, they both just look at each other with unease. Yet, something Kaori sees causes her to sag as if in relief until she's leaning over the flimsy separation between them.

"Kaori? What's..." The question trails off because Yoshiya's not sure what he should even be asking.

"Hey Yoshiya, your...you're awake now right?" Her voice wobbles with relief.

"Uh, yeah." Yoshiya watches her hand tremble against the chair's top edge that it grasps. "I think so..." Maybe he isn't really awake. Because being tied up on Kaori's bed (it smells like her he finally realizes) like this doesn't seem like something that could actually happen. So, yeah, he's dreaming that he's tied up on Kaori's bed. That has to be it.

"I...Kaori, why am I tied up in your bed?" Since this is a dream, he can ask off-the-wall, awkward questions.

"I wasn't sure if you were turning into a zombie or something, so Dad said that we should tie you up just in case." She states.

"What? Why would I be turning into a zombie?" So this is one of those dreams then, the ones with some coherent structure around an impossible scenario.

"Because of last night...Do you remember what happened last night?" Her voice lowers to a near whisper while her face pales.

When the Moon swallowed up the night.

The memories surface like when one awakens from slumber, but despite their peaceful drift into Yoshiya's awareness, his heart clenches.

The arms of his school outfit are wrinkled and stiff against the goosebumps along his arm, and his knees ache from where they hit the ground last night.

"What," His voice cracks. "What the hell happened?"

He was almost crushed. Almost disappeared between the concrete and metal of a skyscraper that decided to float instead of fall down upon him.

"I don't know...I just found you wandering around last night after that video you posted." Kaori's voice reaches him, drawing his attention away from the mental images of high-rises being sliced in half. She's continues watching him from her chair with a face still too pale.

The cellphone was in his hands last night; it's camera staring down on him as he sobbed his good byes.

The bed creaks as he jerks in his bindings. Yoshiya can't handle this, being bound and unable to move. He can't breathe as his fear surges out of his throat in a shapeless yelp as the rope bites into his wrists. He needs to get free. Needs to sit up or stand or run—

The rope loosens from around his wrists as warm fingers brush against his skin. He rips his hands free and surges up, only to hunch over onto himself as he hyperventilates.

He should be dead. How is he not dead?

"It's okay. Shh, it's okay, you're okay." A hand gently touches his shoulder as another brushes against the top of his head for just a moment before withdrawing away.

The fear sputters in his chest. This isn't the crumbling streets of Shinjuku. He's in Kaori's room, on top of her bed as she stands right beside him. Her hand remains steady on his shaking shoulder. She's so close even though she just admitted to being worried about him turning into a zombie.

"Oh my god. What's happening?" He looks up at her while her free hand clenches against her chest. "Why did you think you think I was a zombie?"

"There was a lot of blood coming out of your nose and you were kind of shuffling, no, you definitely were shuffling around before I ran into you." Despite the tremble that goes through her hand, her words come out strong and clear. "You weren't chanting brains or anything, but you kept moaning about the moon all the way home, so..." She shrugs. "It seemed possible. I mean, all the cops were acting totally brainwashed/braindead and...it just made sense with how mucked up everything was."

"Made sense?" His voice wobbles.

Kaori frowns as her gaze drifts from him. "More like was one of the worst things that could happen, so of course it was happening."

Yoshiya looks down at his shaking hands.

"Yeah, that makes sense."

********

It takes over an hour of nervous chattering on both their parts before they quiet down and simply sit together on Kaori's bed. She's leaning against his shoulder and he stares at the computer screen that has gone dark and hides the paused video from his view. Neither of them really know where to go from here. The panic of the moment has faded to a worn anxiousness. Something should be done, but Yoshiya isn't sure on what he should be doing.

Ordinarily, when one's city is destroyed by a natural—or unnatural—disaster, there's a list of obvious actions to take, such as funnel with everybody else into the nearest evacuation or storm shelter. Or hide under the bed and pray that you don't die.

Right now though, there isn't anything he can do except stew over what Kaori had discovered while he was...out of it. Not that it wasn't weird enough that the city was totally undamaged when she found him or that nobody's running through the streets like the world nearly ended last night. Instead, the amateur and professional astronomer online communities are clamoring over a cool dark patch that had appeared on the moon at the same time as the Incident.

According to the web articles that Kaori found when she first started surfing the internet and waiting for her zombified friend to maybe wake up, the sight was obviously from people not cleaning their telescopes properly. Silly them, if only they had upkept their telescopes as well as the professional and government-supported organizations like NASA and JAXA, then they wouldn't have seen anything at all.

The video's asteroid impact explanation (supported by NASA which had apparently seen the whole thing regardless of what those strange internet rumors were saying) had appeared only in the last hour or so when it became apparent that around half the world having a simultaneous telescope failure was a tad unlikely. It's hard to tell whether the changing story was from the weirdness that affected the minds of the policemen last night just creeping over the minds of people across the globe or if it is a sign of governments scrambling to find a good enough cover story to prevent mass panic. Either way, Yoshiya isn't sure which he really prefers.

Kaori hadn't been able to offer much of an opinion, not with the exhaustion finally catching up to her and causing her to quietly tuck herself against Yoshiya's side like she is now. He hadn't said anything else about last night since then. If the dark smudges staining her eyelids are anything to go by, Kaori needs to sleep even if it's only for a little bit, and he's not going to rile her up again with talks over global catastrophes that he himself would rather avoid thinking about.

"Dad called your parents this morning. Said you fell asleep while I was tutoring you last night and he felt bad about waking you up and sending you home." Kaori starts to speak again due to the fact that apparently the nervous chattering of earlier isn't quite out of her system yet.

Well, at least his mother won't be angry at him when he gets home since it was another adult that was irresponsible and not him.

"They acted like they didn't even notice you didn't come home last night, like those cops didn't really get that people shouldn't just be passed out on the streets."

And his relief goes right out Kaori's bedroom window and smashes onto the streets below. This thing, whatever it is, got to his parents too.

"Wait. What about your dad?" Kaori had told Yoshiya that after she dragged him halfway to her apartment that she had managed to get a hold of her father on his cell. To say that he had been a bit panicked to wake up to his daughter trapezing through the streets at night and needing help bringing her zombified classmate home was a bit of an understatement.

The fact that he still went to work this morning and left her alone is something that Yoshiya still can't quite grasp.

"I think, maybe it was because he was sleeping." Kaori's attention shifts from the opposite wall to meet Yoshiya's stare. "I was sleeping too before the sirens woke me up and I'm not," she waves a hand at her head, "brainwashed or anything. Maybe you had to be awake for that or something."

"But I'm not brainwashed." The look she gives him causes him to stutter. "Not right now, I'm okay and remembering the, the..."

The moon presses down upon the world.

"The thing. I remember the thing and I am very freaked out about it."

Kaori's grip remains solid on his trembling hand. "Yeah, I can feel that." She admits.

They fall into silence again. Both of their gazes fixed now on the dark computer screen across the room from them.

"We should see if...anyone else remembered." Kaori's words prickle in Yoshiya's ears.

"How? By googling 'the end of the world by giant moon' again. Wouldn't that just bring up the same stuff as earlier." Yoshiya stares at the screen as if its darkness will rush forward and swallow them.

"Maybe," Kaori responds slowly, "we could just check on the video. You know, see if it has any weird comments or anything. There might be someone else like us on there."

They sit in silence for a moment. The bed feels nice and soft and safe under Yoshiya while the desk crouches in the shadows across the room.

"Okay." Sweat prickles the back of Yoshiya's neck but he still stands up. He might feel safer just hiding out over here but Kaori isn't the type to just sit around and do nothing. She never has been. So, waiting around and not finding out what they can would drive her up the wall just as walking forward towards whatever awaits them makes his skin crawl.

Kaori's hand remains clasped to his as she follows him to the computer. It doesn't take more than a few minutes before the screen glows up at them, the astronomer and news reporter frozen in time.

"So, are we going to use your Youtube channel, or—"

"I don't have a Youtube channel." Yoshiya states grimly as he closes the news video and accesses Kaori's history.

"Oh, okay that's...That's not okay. It's creepy." They both stare at the random lettering that make up the username of Yoshiya's nonexistent profile.

Time stretches as he clicks on the video thumbnail and then the pause button before scrolling down. He can't watch this right now. Maybe later to see if his memory does match up with what actually happened, but not when he's still aches from whatever happened last night. But not when the residual fear trembles through his limbs.

Ay_Al3ks: Whoa! Those effects were awesome!!! Where'd you film this!!!

J224: Whoah. Awesome.

XeponVenekalLucifer: I'p Voinv Ho Rill Cou

PCoftheAbyss: Dude, what kind of camera were you using?! I want it!! 

"What is that?" Kaori points at the comment made less than a half hour ago. The indecipherable English letters glare out at them from among the kanji-laden sparks of enthusiasm. It isn't English though, Yoshiya knows that much despite his current mediocre understanding of the language. Yet, it seems familiar, like he should know what it means but doesn't quite grasp it.

A wisp of pain shifts behind his eyes.

"Maybe it's German or something." He copies XeponVenekalLucifer's words and pasts them into a separate search bar. It's nothing. Youtube is an international site so of course a foreigner's going to eventually stumble across his video. That doesn't mean that whatever that person is saying is any different than the other commentators.

Nothing shows up on a general Google search nor does the translator spit out any understandable answer. It's almost like those words don't exist in another language.

"Yeah, you know, it's probably just some troll typing random made up crap and messing with people on the internet." Kaori's voice wavers as Yoshiya continues to fail to pull up anything. The pain behind his eyes slithers backwards further into his head as he searches to see if there's a different free translator that they could use. He tries each single word of the odd comment on its own, but still nothing useful comes up.

The words continue to glare up at them as he stares back. They mean something. Something important, but the meaning slips through Yoshiya's understanding as the ache within his head spreads into his sinuses.

"Yoshiya!" Kaori's voice, frightened and high, draws his attention away from the words and back into a better awareness of himself.

He doesn't have to bring his hand up to feel it, but he does so anyway. When Yoshiya pulls away his finger from where it brushed against his nose, he stares silently at the single drop of blood beaded on his skin.