The girls settled onto the sofa and beanbags, some tense, some confused, all staring at Stella as she stood in front of the TV with a gravity that made the room feel smaller.
Stella inhaled once, slow and steady, lifted the remote, and pressed the power button with the solemnity of someone revealing ancient secrets.
The screen flickered to life.
And the opening scene of Barbie of Swan Lake filled the room with sparkles, pastel blues, orchestral music, and a very dramatic Odette turning into a swan.
Everyone froze.
Stella's face went red. Not blush red. Catastrophic red.
"W-wait. Not this."
She fumbled for the remote with the panic of a woman whose entire intimidation factor just imploded. The girls, meanwhile, whispered like gremlins in a church.
Mimi whispered, "Is this her lore."
Midori whispered back, "Peak taste honestly."
Ragna stared at the screen, expression blank but visibly struggling.
Neera exhaled into her palm. "This is deeply off topic."
Nozomi clasped her hands together politely. "It is a lovely film."
Stella finally managed to switch the channel.
Static.
Click.
News rerun.
Click.
Bird documentary.
Click.
A cooking show with someone chopping vegetables too loudly.
Click.
Then she froze.
The screen locked onto something.
A single frame.
Silent.
Cold.
Wrong.
The footage was raw and shaky, recorded by something unmanned. A drone perhaps, or a mounted camera left to observe the end of things. There was no sound except the faint hum of damaged electronics.
The world on the screen was dead.
A blackened landscape stretched far beyond the frame, the ground split and cracked like shattered obsidian. Entire buildings were melted into slumped silhouettes, as if someone had poured fire over a city and let it cool into ruin. Ash drifted through the air in slow motion, moving like ghostly snow.
A river once blue now ran dark and mineral thick, reflecting nothing alive.
Molten glows pulsed in distant fissures.
The sky was a muted red gray, the color of breath held too long.
Neera swallowed hard. "This looks like…"
She couldn't finish.
Ragna leaned forward, elbows on her knees, brows drawn. "The ground is glass."
Mimi hugged her legs to her chest. "Why is everything so quiet."
It was true.
The silence was unnerving.
There were no birds.
No wind.
No people.
Just the soft, eerie hum of a damaged lens watching a world that had burned long before the camera arrived.
Midori whispered, "It feels… wrong."
Nozomi folded her hands tightly, the footage reflecting in her wide eyes. "It feels like the earth stopped breathing."
Stella lowered the remote. Her posture shifted from nervous hostess to someone who carried weight older and heavier than the bunker walls.
The silent footage kept playing, the ruined world drifting across the screen like a slow nightmare.
Neera finally found her voice. Her brows pulled together, logic scrambling for any foothold it could find.
"Why are you showing us an apocalypse show."
Mimi leaned forward, squinting as if zombies might pop out at any second.
"Yeah, like, is this one of those found footage horror things. Do zombies show up."
Stella turned toward them. Something in her posture shifted. Her expression softened, but not in warmth. It softened the way a bridge softens right before it collapses.
"This is not a show," she said quietly.
No one reacted at first. The sentence slid over their minds like water over glass.
She continued, slower now, each word deliberate.
"This is live footage. From the outside world."
Silence.
Then chaos detonated.
Mimi stood up so fast her beanbag flipped. "Say sike right now."
Midori slapped both hands over her mouth and squeaked, "No way. No way. No. Way."
Ragna shook her head firmly, as if she could physically reject the information. "No. Not possible."
Nozomi stared at the screen, expression emptying like someone yanked the floor out from her.
Neera whispered, "This cannot be real."
Stella blinked rapidly, taken aback by the collective meltdown.
"I do not understand. What is sike."
Mimi gestured wildly. "Sike. Like, lie. Joke. Ha ha. Funny."
Midori added, "Like when you fake someone out."
Ragna muttered, "Or say you will do something and then do not."
Stella placed a hand on her head, confused. "So you want me to say that I am joking."
"YES," all five of them said at once.
Stella looked pained. "But I am not joking."
More chaos.
"No, you are capping," Mimi insisted.
Stella frowned. "Capping. What cap. I am not wearing a cap."
Midori shook her head in disbelief. "No, capping means lying."
"I am not lying," Stella repeated, voice soft but strained.
Neera pointed at the TV, her voice rising.
"This footage could be edited. It could be manipulated. It could be fake."
Ragna nodded sharply. "Yes. A simulation. Movie effects."
Nozomi whispered, "A trick. Some elaborate prank."
Mimi snapped her fingers. "Reality TV. Viral marketing. Something."
Midori nodded intensely. "Yeah, girl, this is CGI. I refuse to believe the world looks like burnt lasagna."
Stella looked around at each of them, eyes widening, confusion knitting her brow.
"This is not fake," she said softly.
Five pairs of eyes refused to believe her.
Ragna shot to her feet so fast the beanbag behind her shifted. Her hands curled into fists, her jaw tight with something harsher than fear.
"I am done with this bullshit," she snapped. "I am leaving."
Mimi followed instantly, her own panic rising to match Ragna's heat.
"Yeah. Same. I am not doing apocalypse lore today."
Neera rose next, stiff and pale, still clinging to logic like a lifeline snapping one thread at a time.
"This cannot be real. We need to leave and reset our assumptions."
Midori scrambled up, nodding rapidly.
"Yeah, yeah, let us just go home and pretend this was a really weird tour."
Even Nozomi hesitated only for a heartbeat before rising, bowing her head slightly toward Stella.
"I am sorry, but we need to go. Our families are waiting."
Stella lifted a hand as if to reach for them.
"Please, wait, you do not understand yet, you are in danger if you go outside, you cannot-"
But they were already moving.
Sets of footsteps echoed sharply across the stone, cutting off Stella's words. Mimi yanked the heavy door open with more strength than she meant to, the hinges screaming in protest. Ragna was already halfway through before Stella could try again.
"Please," Stella said quietly, but the plea barely reached their backs.
The door slammed shut behind them.
The hallway swallowed them in dim light and cold air, the warmth of the bunker fading as they marched toward the narrow tunnel entrance.
None of them spoke at first. The silence pressed around them like damp cloth, heavy and suffocating. Only when they reached the cramped crawlspace did the words start to spill.
Mimi crawled first, muttering through the claustrophobic dark.
"This is ridiculous. She is messing with us. That footage was probably edited on some fancy software."
Ragna's voice, close behind her, was sharp and trembling.
"She expects us to believe the entire world is dead. As if we would not notice. As if we would not hear something."
Neera crawled next, breath uneven.
"Apocalyptic destruction of that scale is impossible without warning signs. There are no scientific indicators of an event like that."
Midori puffed out her cheeks in frustration.
"Exactly. We would know if the earth was cooked. Someone would tweet about it."
Nozomi followed last, quiet but not calm.
"Stella did not look like she was lying. But she could be mistaken. Or confused. Or showing us something old."
The tunnel narrowed, their voices echoing off stone. The dark felt tighter than before.
They reached the rusted rungs.
Mimi gripped the first one, still shaking slightly.
"Okay. Up we go. Back to reality."
Ragna grabbed the rung below her, testing the strength.
"Yes. Back to reality."
Neera swallowed and placed her foot on the ladder.
"We will see sunlight and everything will make sense again."
Midori nodded, whispering to herself for courage.
"Sunlight. Grass. Trees. No melted buildings. Obviously."
Nozomi exhaled softly, hands trembling.
"I hope so."
Mimi pushed the trapdoor open first, expecting moonlight or at least the familiar glow of streetlamps.
What hit her instead was air so thick and chemical she gagged.
She stumbled out of the hole, coughing hard, pulling her shirt up over her nose like a makeshift mask.
Ragna climbed out next and immediately doubled over, hacking as the acrid smell burned the back of her throat.
Neera followed, eyes watering at once, gasping sharply as if her lungs were being scraped from the inside.
Midori crawled out wheezing, clutching her collar over her mouth.
Nozomi emerged last, already shaking, tears springing to her eyes from the sting of the atmosphere.
They all stood there, half bent, half choking, trying to breathe through fabric.
Then they looked up.
And froze.
The world was unrecognizable.
The grassy playground was gone.
The swing set was gone.
The trees, the benches, the soft twilight they remembered were gone.
In their place stretched blackened earth, cracked open like shattered mirrors.
The sky above was heavy with ash.
Melted metal twisted where buildings had once stood.
Soot drifted like sickly snow.
What used to be the park was now a sheet of scorched mineral glass.
Ragna whispered into her sleeve, voice trembling, "No. No. This cannot be real."
Neera shook her head violently, eyes darting everywhere, searching for something normal. "There is no way we missed signs of this. This is not possible. This is not logical."
Mimi clung to Midori's wrist, her voice cracking. "Say it is a prank. Please. Please tell me this is a prank."
Midori's knees wobbled. "Someone tell me this is a movie set. I do not care how fake that sounds. Please."
Nozomi backed up until her heel hit broken glass. Her breath hitched as she looked around slowly, as if hoping the world would snap back into place by sheer will.
"This looks exactly like the footage. Exactly."
Each one of them slipped through different stages of grief all at once.
Mimi snapped first.
Denial shot through her like electricity.
"No. No no no. This is CGI. This is a prank. This is a TikTok prank. Someone is going to jump out and yell gotcha. They better."
Her voice cracked.
"Please. Someone tell me this is fake."
Ragna's denial twisted into anger, sharp and fragile.
"This is impossible. We were here. We were literally here. Grass does not evaporate in an hour."
She pointed at the ruined horizon with shaking hands.
"This. Is. Fake. I refuse to believe this is real. I refuse."
Her voice wavered on the last word.
Neera staggered forward, the logical part of her brain crashing like a computer error.
"This cannot happen without seismic readings. Without global alerts. Without satellite warnings. Without news. Without anything."
Her breath hitched.
"There is no scientific pathway for this level of destruction to occur in such a small time frame. This does not fit any model. This is statistically impossible. This is a hallucination. It must be. Please let it be."
Her voice cracked into a whisper.
"Please."
Midori pressed both hands to her head, eyes wide and swimming.
"But we were just eating cookies. We were swinging. We were laughing. The park was fine. The city was fine. Everything was fine."
Her breath came in sharp hiccups.
"This cannot be real. This cannot be real. Please tell me we fell asleep in the beanbags. Please."
Nozomi backed away slowly, shaking so hard her knees buckled.
"No. The world cannot end. It cannot. Our families. Our homes. The shrine. Everything. Everything cannot be gone. Please tell me it is still there. Please tell me this is a dream."
Tears spilled down her cheeks as she whispered,
"Please let me wake up."
Their voices tangled together in disbelief, fear, denial, bargaining, panic.
A chorus of grief against a world that no longer existed.
The silence of the ruined sky swallowed their words.
Behind them, soft footsteps approached.
"It was not a lie."
Stella stood at the edge of the trapdoor, pastel hair stirring in the toxic wind, her eyes shimmering with her own grief.
She did not reach for them.
She did not try to stop their reactions.
She simply stood there, shoulders trembling faintly, letting them break as they needed to.
Stella stepped closer, slowly and carefully, as if approaching frightened animals. Her voice was barely above a whisper.
"Come back inside. The air is not safe."
None of them resisted when she gently guided them toward the open trapdoor. The world outside felt too big and too wrong to stand in any longer. One by one they descended, slower than before, heavy with shock.
When they emerged into the sanctuary again, they did not sit so much as collapse.
Mimi dropped onto a beanbag without a sound.
Ragna sat rigidly on the sofa, fists clenched so tight her knuckles had gone white.
Neera sank onto the rug, her legs folding beneath her as if her entire system had shut down.
Midori curled up on one side of the couch, eyes unfocused.
Nozomi knelt on the floor beside the low table, hands trembling in her lap.
The room felt too quiet.
Too still.
Too real.
A long moment passed before soft footsteps returned.
Stella reappeared, carrying a tray with five glasses of ice water. The glasses clinked gently against each other, the only sound in the silent room. She placed the tray on the table and handed each girl a glass with careful, deliberate kindness.
No one spoke.
Mimi did not joke.
Midori did not smile.
Ragna did not scowl.
Neera did not reason.
Nozomi did not bow.
Even their breathing had quieted, shallow and uneven.
Stella sat in front of them, hands folded, waiting.
Letting them exist in their shock without pushing.
It was Nozomi who finally broke the silence.
Her voice cracked, soft and trembling.
"Please... What is going on...?"
The room seemed to hold its breath.
Stella lowered her eyes, her expression filled with a sorrow too deep to name.
And then she answered.