Chapter Text
The friendly horns bounced through the morning air, slightly scratchy from the sound of the old vinyl record on the turntable. The smooth sound of the music carried airily as Yuuri Katsuki, age 23, stretched. He’d just finished setting up his solar still for the day, and picked some small tomatoes. The cucumbers and lettuce looked like they were coming in well, and the rudimentary cage he’d built around his strawberries seemed to have kept out any hungry scavengers so far, so hopefully they would grow to maturity soon.
I’ve got you, under my skin/ I’ve got you deep in the heart of me/ So deep in my heart/ that you’re really a part of me/ I’ve got you under my skin.
Cole Porter’s voice trilled in the quiet, sunny air. It made everything seem oddly idyllic. If one wasn’t aware of the current state of things, they could be forgiven for thinking that the former IT consultant was enjoying a nice holiday, tending to an urban garden. Maybe that it was a general hobby, or the result of concerns about local eating and carbon footprints, and that he would bring some of the extra fruits and vegetables to his coworkers on Monday morning once the weekend was over.
The truth, however, was that the concept of weekends, Monday mornings and coworkers had long ceased to be relevant. Yuuri had no idea what day of the week it was, and hadn’t really bothered taking any of that into account anymore. At first, he’d desperately tried to but as he settled in his new routine he no longer cared about constructs like time and dates. In a sense, the man supposed it was a little bit liberating but part of him missed the sense of structure that came with his previous life.
The World’s End Holiday had changed a lot of things.
For reasons Yuuri Katsuki could not understand, it had started one bright, blue, Tuesday morning. He’d been living his daily habitus: shaving his face after he’d stepped out of the shower, brushing his teeth, eating a slice of toast with marmalade downed with instant coffee, getting ready for the daily commute to the big box computer and technology store at which he worked. His black work pants had been pressed the night before, along with a crisp, white, short sleeved button up and a black tie, the uniform for everyone who worked at the IT desk, fixing electronics and computers that customers brought in. Usually, it meant clearing them of particularly nasty viruses and malware that they’d gotten whilst browsing less than savoury websites, or perhaps it was replacing broken components. They occasionally got the confused grandmother begging them to help her operate the new tablet their grandchild had gotten them for Christmas and get onto the new-fangled-webzones they were talking about. Yuuri genuinely enjoyed the task, it was somewhat rote, but it was safe. However, that Tuesday morning seemed… different.
He’d stepped out of his apartment only to find that the large screens splayed along the sides of the skyscrapers and buildings that usually played advertisements or short news announcements were blank, with a simple green timer counting down. He’d frowned, asking one of the commuters next to him if she knew what that clock meant, if it was some sort of city wide advertising campaign. She looked at him as if he was crazy, saying that the screen was simply showing an advertisement for a men’s cologne.
That day had continued to be strange, with every monitor, television, smartphone, and tablet in the store displaying the same thing. A digital stopwatch, bright green on a black background counting down from what had been 24 hours but was now closer to 22 hours. It wasn’t just the store displays, either, everything the customers brought in would display that timer. Even Yuuri’s own smart watch and phone could only show the one thing, regardless of whether it was even on or if he’d factory reset them.
And no matter what, no one else acknowledged the timers. Around noon (or what Yuuri thought was noon, since he had no way of checking the time), his supervisor Celestino had placed a warm hand on his shoulder, giving him a sympathetic smile. His brown eyes looked at him with the same expression one would give a child who was talking nonsense, a gentle pitying glance.
“You should go home Yuuri. Take a holiday for a few days, the pressure is getting to you. You’re a good employee, and I really appreciate your dedication to the job but the stress seems to be making you on edge. You haven’t used any of your vacation days since you started working here 3 years ago, please rest.” The older man had implored.
The suggestion had been said in a warm, concerned tone but worded in a way that implied that it was less friendly suggestion and more direct order. So, he had gone back to his apartment, trying desperately to wrap his head around just what was happening. Maybe Celestino was right and all this was a stress based hallucination. He tried to turn on the news, but found that he couldn’t get anything other than that damn clock to show on the screen. Same with his game consoles, his own computer and the microwave.
Even the fucking microwave.
He gave up and went back to bed, figuring that whatever it was, someone would sort it out. Unfortunately, no one had, and things had only proceeded to get stranger. He woke up the next day at a time he wasn’t sure about, not worrying about it because he was still on his involuntary holiday. He tried to turn on his phone, only to get a flashing 00:00:00:00. Surely enough, everything showed the same flashing green numbers, accompanied with the text WORLD’S END. HAPPY HOLIDAY.
Was this some kind of strange malware?
Maybe it was a stupid prank and he was on a Candid Camera type program. He would go to work anyway, figuring that if it was the former they would need him there in order to manage the throngs of confused people wondering why their devices refused to do anything but wish them a happy holiday. He threw on his work clothes from the day before, messily tightening his tie in a loose Windsor knot as he ran out of the apartment onto the street.
And that was when things got… even stranger somehow. The city streets were entirely bare, none of the typical hustling and bustling crowds were around. No one was milling around and the storefronts were vacant, everything was silent and every single vehicle on the streets was eerily still. Everything seemed as though it had been dropped in the middle of whatever it was it was doing, as though someone had suddenly hit the pause button and then proceeded to chroma key every human being out of the picture. For the next few days he’d ran around screaming and calling out, trying to find any trace of human life, only to be met with deafening silence and stillness.
For whatever reason, for whatever unknown reason, the moment that clock hit zero Yuuri Katsuki was entirely alone.
He eventually started to get used to the solitude, figuring out how to fend for himself in a vaguely satisfactory manner. He had set up a small vegetable and fruit garden, and had a few hens in a homemade coop. His solar stills would produce a sufficient amount of potable water and he had figured out that even though most electronics were simply useless and flashed the same WORLD’S END. HAPPY HOLIDAY. message, there was still a steady supply of electricity to power a turntable on which he played vinyl records, space heater and his hotplate. Generally, he was content, but quite lonely…
He stretched back, looking at the sprawling blue sky. Ever since the World’s End Holiday, the sky was endlessly clear and bright, with sparse fluffy white clouds floating along during the day, and bright shining stars twinkling in the endless dark expanse at night. The air had always been pleasantly temperate, not too warm nor too cold, even when the sun had set.
Just an endless string of lovely early summer days.
I would sacrifice anything come what might/ For the sake of having you near / In spite of a warning voice that comes in the night/ And repeats, how it yells in my ear
Yuuri decided he would go for another walk. He’d taken to walking pretty much every day, just in the vain hope that something would be different from the days that proceeded it. Despite everything, it all vaguely blended together in a long string of lazy summer vacation afternoons. Before the World’s End Holiday, Yuuri had been a vaguely sedentary person, going to work pretty much every day and then coming back home, watching a few hours of Netflix, indulging in a few raids in his favourite MMORPGs, played a few matches of his favourite online team shooters before getting his clothes ready for the next day. On the rare occasions that he had time off, he would do much of the same, escaping from the daily stresses in his games and television shows.
But now he had more free time than he knew what to do with, but he couldn’t fall back on his old habits. So, he improvised, picking up books at the library (with the intention of returning them if things went back to normal), borrowing old LPs from the record store and thrift shop, gathering seeds from the local garden supply store and tinkering with various old devices to see what he could make with them. He grabbed his heavy metal walking stick, throwing on his backpack with a few protein bars, the tomatoes he’d picked and a canteen of water. He tucked a large hunting knife in his belt before wandering away from the apartment complex.
The walking stick and knife had been safety measures in case any animals wanted to take a big chunk out of his leg. Although he’d never run into a person, he’d crossed paths quite often with the local flora and fauna. There were the normal critters who inhabited urban centres, stray dogs and cats, raccoons, pigeons, that sort of thing, but there were also the hungry exotic beasts that had somehow broken out of the local zoo. He almost had a heart attack the first time he saw a mountain lion chewing on the mangled carcass of… well, something Yuuri didn’t recognise. Ever since, he brought along the heavy metal cane and a hunting knife he got from a sports goods store.
Most animals were quite content to leave him alone though, and he did the same. The only exception had been the fat, black hens that he’d found in the library one morning. They’d been fairly docile, and they seemed happy that someone was willing to shelter them in a warm dry place and feed them a mix of grains and insects gleaned from the local pet store. He named them Celestino and Phichit, even if he knew they were female, after two of his former coworkers.
He frowned, still wondering what happened to everybody. Had they been raptured, or abducted by aliens, or vaporised within an instant? There were simply no traces that they’d ever roamed the streets: no abandoned clothes, no shoes strewn about, no Hiroshima-esque shadows.
Just silence and stillness.
He wandered absentmindedly down a street, lined with large leafy trees which splayed out into a green canopy above him. The little houses in the residential quarter were small and pleasantly painted in bright, happy colours. Their lawns were, however, quite overgrown and it was clear that the signs of disuse were starting to settle on the lawn furniture. He kicked a child’s soccer ball down the street, watching the white and black orb roll a fair distance. He turned on his Sony Walkman, electing to play a tape in order to buffer the eerie uncanny feeling of the quiet road. Best of the Classic Crooners picked up with You’re Nobody Until Somebody Loves You. The smoothness of the chill horn section and vocals blended with the atmosphere in a surreal way, but it made Yuuri feel slightly less alone to hear another person’s voice, even if it was just ol’ Dean Martin on a vaguely low fi cassette tape.
He focused on the middle distance, vaguely disappointed. He didn’t know why he expected anything…
The world still is the same, you never change it/ As sure as the stars shine above/ You're nobody til somebody loves you/ So find yourself somebody to love
He continued slowly down the street when suddenly he heard a noise from behind him. A voice spoke hoarsely, a human voice that most definitely not Dean Martin, Cole Porter or any of the Great Crooners. Yuuri stopped dead in his tracks as Dean Martin warbled on, blissfully unaware that the world had seemingly come to an end, continuing into Ain't It a Kick in the Head.
Rather than soft crooning however, the real voice spoke in a harsh tone, almost a whisper, in a language Yuuri did not recognise. He turned around slowly, wishing he hadn’t as he the man gave a sharp yell as he did. He was face to face with the barrel of a handgun. A nervous sweat immediately pearled at his hairline, creeping down his spine slowly.
“Ты человек?”
I've got sunshine enough to spread/ It's just like the fella said/ Tell me quick ain't love like a kick in the head?
The man barked his question again, in a European language of some sort, perhaps Ukrainian or Russian. Beyond the gloved hand holding the gun was a tall, muscular figure. His silver hair gleamed in the sun, fanning behind him like a halo and falling to his shoulders. His pale blue eyes were intense, boring into Yuuri’s with a fervency Yuuri was previously unfamiliar with.
“I'm sorry, I don’t understand…” Yuuri answered, slowly raising his hands, dropping the metal walking stick to his side. He smiled weakly, trying to make sure he came across as the least threatening human ever (because, deep down, he was).
“Ты человек? Speak English? You human?” The man asked again, cocking his head forward as he spoke.
“Ah, yes. I speak English.” Yuuri responded, thankful that there was some way of bridging the linguistic gap. He hadn’t even realised that he’d instinctively responded in Japanese, it was his default language for muttering to himself and, well, recently he’d been doing that a lot. “Yes, I’m a human. My name is Yuuri Katsuki. What about you?”
The man lowered his gun, still keeping those pale blue eyes fixed on Yuuri’s face, unflinchingly staring into his eyes, “Viktor Nikiforov…”
“Have you met anyone else?” Yuuri asked hopefully, realising now that the danger was gone that he was actually talking to another person for the first time in months, “I haven’t, except for you…”
Viktor shook his head, “I’m afraid we are alone. At least, alone together…”
I couldn't feel any better or I'd be sick/ Tell me quick, oh, ain't love a kick?/ Tell me quick, ain't love a kick in the head?