▶ end of the game || intro
“It's a very unfortunate thing, but today the world is going to end."
Four minutes ago, a solemn-sounding voice on the radio had said this.
Four minutes ago, the world had devolved into utter chaos.
Four minutes ago, the girl had begun to run.
“Turn right here! There's only one minute left...!" a tinny voice cries through her headphones. Legs pumping, heart racing, hair flying, the girl rushes down the street, dodging people and debris. A crash resounds behind her as a building collapses, and the screaming around her increases in volume. The hill on the horizon grows larger and larger, and the voice piping through her headphones grows increasingly frantic. "Hurry up!" it shouts. "There's someone that you have to meet, isn't there?!”
She reaches the bottom of the hill. The voice and the sounds around her fade out, and everything turns to black.
The blackness is interrupted by a series of flashing white letters. “TO ADVANCE TO THE NEXT LEVEL, INPUT TWO COINS”, the screen informs the player. Its light beams softly onto the face of a disgruntled Takane Enomoto, standing in front of a console in the corner of the Kairos arcade.
Removing her hands from the joystick and buttons that control the girl on the screen, she quickly checks the pockets of her sweater—her hurried search turns up nothing. With no other options left, Takane glowers unpleasantly at the screen as it flashes “3... 2... 1... GAME OVER.”
"How annoying," the young woman grumbles, and turns away from the game console. Slinging her messenger bag over her shoulder, she loses herself in thoughts of the next level, turns around, and bumps right into someone who had been standing behind her.
"Oh, were you going to play that?" she asks, gesturing to the now-silent machine.
