**Earth, Year ******
Humanity now lived beneath neon skies and artificial stars.
Towering megacities stretched endlessly toward the heavens, wrapped in holograms, anti-gravity highways, and colossal steel structures that eclipsed the clouds themselves. Quantum networks bound the planet into a single breathing civilization. Androids, superintelligences, and cybernetic augmentations had become ordinary facets of daily life.
The world was faster. Smarter. More advanced than ever before.
And somewhere within this vast futuristic sprawl—inside an ordinary classroom overlooking the evening skyline—
The sunset bled across Neo-Earth.
Crimson light washed over the horizon, staining the clouds in shades of burning scarlet and molten gold. Its fading glow spilled through the vast classroom windows, painting the empty room in amber and blood.
Classroom 1-A had long since emptied. Students had gone home. Teachers had vanished. Even the distant hum of campus life had faded into silence.
Only one person remained.
At the very back of the room, seated alone atop a desk beside the window, was a girl of impossible beauty.
She was beautiful in the way a wildfire was beautiful: captivating and catastrophic. The kind of beauty that instinctively warned people to look away, yet made doing so impossible.
Gorgeous Pure Red Hair spilled over her shoulders like living flame, each silken strand catching the fading sunlight as though embers smoldered within. Her striking Pure Red Eyes reflected the burning horizon beyond the glass with an unsettling intensity, as though the dying glow had taken residence within her gaze.
One leg swayed absentmindedly beneath the desk. The other rested against the edge of the seat.
She looked relaxed. Comfortable even.
But the atmosphere warping around her told a different story.
"Nihii." The whisper escaped softly from her lips in a Fragile tone. With a touch of Yearning. Yet Painfully affectionate.
Her fingers slowly tightened around her sleeve. Yet only silence answered.
A month had already passed.
Thirty unbearable days without him.
"You idiot."
A dangerous smile curled faintly across her lips. The kind that carried far too much affection to ever be considered sane.
"You disappeared without telling me a thing."
Tap. Tap. Her fingernails struck the desk.
"You know that's unforgivable, right?" The smile deepened. Sweet and Obsessive.
"When you come back..." Rose rested her cheek against her palm. "I'm locking you inside my room for at least three months."
Her crimson eyes narrowed. "No. Forever sounds better."
The fluorescent lights above flickered once. A subtle crimson distortion rippled through the air. Tiny. Almost invisible. Yet enough for reality itself to tense around the sheer weight of her emotions.
Rose leaned back against the window with a soft sigh.
"The sunset looks lonely again." Her eyes remained fixed on the skyline. "Everything feels entirely monotonous without you, my darling husband."
"It's been a month. Thirty days. Seven hundred and twenty hours. I counted every second." A faint pout formed on her lips. "Did you count?"
Silence.
"Of course not. You're off somewhere doing whatever. Without me." Every evening since his disappearance, she had watched the sunset alone. His absence was making her life agonizing.
"I miss you so much that I'm starting to hate everyone and everything." Her voice grew quieter. Becoming vulnerable. Which somehow made the atmosphere infinitely more terrifying.
Crack. A hairline fracture spread soundlessly along the wall beside her.
Rose ignored it.
"You didn't even leave me a message." Crack. "You didn't tell me where you were going." Crack. "You didn't leave a note." The classroom temperature spiked. "You didn't even send a text."
Her fingers slowly curled into fists. "How can you do this to your beloved wife?"
Outside the school building, distant car alarms activated one after another. Rose paid them no mind. Her thoughts were elsewhere. Far away. With him.
"I'm not worried about your well-being." Her voice steadied into matter-of-fact composure. "I know how absolute you are. Don't misunderstand. I'm not upset because I think something happened to you."
A pause. Heavy. Suffocating.
"I'm upset because you left me behind." There was no accusation in her voice. Only a bottomless, aching longing.
Rose slowly buried her face against her knees. "I miss you. I miss you so much it's excruciating to even draw breath without you by my side."
A tremor passed through the windows. A barely noticeable shudder in the glass, yet enough to reveal the terrifying instability masked beneath her composure.
Rose closed her eyes.
Do you know what it feels like? To have the very foundation of your world just vanish—on a random day?
You didn't even kiss me goodbye.
Her lips curled into a dangerous pout. "I should genuinely strangle you for that."
She paused. "...Though you'd probably still look breathtaking while dying." Resting her cheek against her palm, her lovesick eyes glimmered dangerously beneath the darkening sunset.
She began tracing slow circles on the desk with her finger, heaving a long sigh.
"Ah, I can't even manage to stay properly angry at you." A faint smile bloomed on her lips. "Because every time I imagine your face..."
The smile deepened. Hopelessly affectionate. Obsessive beyond reason.
"I just want to hold you instead."
Crack. The desk beneath her hand splintered.
Rose blinked. "Oops."
Outside, the clouds above the city briefly flashed scarlet. And far below—
Humanity unknowingly continued its ordinary evening beneath the ticking apocalypse quietly seated inside Classroom 1-A.
Rose slowly lifted her gaze toward the darkening sky.
"My fire only burns for you, my Nihi."
"And right now..." A slow smile spread across her lips. Beautiful yet terrifying. The expression of a girl standing on the absolute brink of explosion. "it's burning completely out of control."
The windows trembled violently. One by one, the fluorescent lights above burst apart in a shower of sparks. Darkness swallowed the classroom. Only the glowing pure red of Rose's eyes remained visible in the shadows.
Then—her composure shattered. Not into rage. Into something far more unhinged.
"Ahhh! How I want to scream—"
Her voice echoed softly through the darkness. "I want to tear this classroom apart."
A low, grinding vibration shuddered through the entire school building.
"I want to burn this whole stupid planet until the ash spells your name."
"...Maybe you'll feel it wherever you are. You'll feel the heat..."
A lonely whisper slipped from her lips.
"—and think of me."
Her shoulders trembled from something painfully raw.
"Come back." A whisper.
"Come back." Her fingers dug into her sleeves.
"...Please come back to me." Rose's soft voice sounded genuinely close to breaking.
"Otherwise, I swear—if you don't, I'll scour through every reality, every dimension, every crack in existence. And I'll drag you home. To my side."
She breathed softly, trying to steady herself.
"And know this. If someone actually kidnapped you..." Her tone shifted, becoming dangerously gentle. "I'll slaughter them—even if you intentionally allowed it."
Atrocities a typical high school girl should never fathom fell from her lips as if they were simple truths.
"But if you disappeared of your own volition without telling me..." The smile on her face twisted into terrifying sweetness. "then I'll punish you myself, my beloved."
A shiver passed through the atmosphere itself.
Rose swung her legs lazily atop the desk. Beautiful, Adorable yet Catastrophically unstable.
"Fine. You want to play hide-and-seek?"
Her iris narrowed with toxic devotion.
"I'll play."
"But when I find you—and I will find you—you're never leaving my sight again." She paused, letting out a haunting, melodic laugh that betrayed the depths of her possessiveness. "Ever."
Above Neo-Earth, the clouds churned ominously.
Rose rested her chin atop her knees, gazing into the faded sunset. The city lights below awakened one after another, yet the classroom remained dark. Silent. Waiting.
"Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock."
"My beloved."
"A red bomb is ticking. And I'm getting very... very tired of waiting."
"So, hurry home—"
She closed her eyes and whispered into the darkened void.
"...Null..."
"My love."
"My silly."
"My everything." 🌹
The clouds above the city glowed crimson one final time.
And somewhere far away—
A boy with dark-white iris felt the inexplicable urge to shiver.