[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/h5xf31C.png[/img][/center][hr][i][b]//Day 0 | Location:[/b] Kuroshio Community Bus[/i]

It had been an ordinary day, for as ordinary a day as a monsoon could have been.

The bus, more crowded than normal owing to the unpleasant weather, thrummed with conversation and action. The Ito twins went over English flash cards together, fumbling over any word that was longer than three syllables. Yuudai, buzzcut already dried, teased Tsubasa over the perm that her hair always became in weather like this. Ayano, as always, fussed over the bags beneath Fujita’s eyes, her chidings much too affectionate for Kumi on the seat behind the couple, who turned up the volume on her smartphone higher but failed to realize that her headphones were unplugged. Hana leaned against Maki as the two went over their mock exam scores together, muted whispers belying the gravity of their academic situation, while Daisuke and Yuki swayed with the bus, challenging each other in a duel of core strength. Perhaps it would have been a duel for the ages, if Mayumi hadn’t marched past to get to her usual seat in the rear, where she could watch the happenings and goings of her peers. Others kept to themselves, flipping through their smartphones or going over their study notes. The day had been ordinary, and the day would be busy.

No one thought much of it then, when the bus driver, the sixty-three year old Fuchizaki Takechi, let out a strange sound. Barely any of them even heard him, in truth, so wrapped up as they were with the future that was encroaching upon them.
But none of them could ignore the light that swallowed them up one second after.

…

Disorientation. Discombobulation.

As if their guts were being rearranged, as if they were plummeting down a spiral staircase. As if they were detritus in the ocean, scrambled by incomprehensible undertow. They were sublimated by the light, atomized and categorized, abstracted into concepts of egos and attributes, before stitched together in patchwork mosaics. In one instant, they felt themselves amongst individual grains of sand, and the next, they hurtled through eons and galaxies, grasping onto the substance of stars!

And at the apex of that impossible high, they crashed. Dragged down by gravity, their substance funneled into the thread of a meteor’s tail as they twisted and twisted and dropped and struck! Bound into flesh once more, trapped in entropic decay, their stomachs churning, their brains aching, every blood cell rushing through their veins possessed with a frigid cold or a searing heat, their senses stirred to frenzy by mismatched stimuli for an eternity and an instant!

Then, they felt the ground beneath them [i]stop[/i], and felt themselves launched forth by inertia, the first [i]real[/i] force that had been applied to their body since the light.

Some caught themselves on poles or seats, whether with their heads, hands, or chest. Others found themselves sprawled to the ground or upon each other. A lucky few had braced themselves and only ended up crushed a hard surface. A terrific crash sounded in that same instant, the bus’s windshield fracturing like a spider’s web, and then…silence.

The engine rumbled still, but now that old junker’s rattling was accompanied by the blaring of the bus’s horns, over and over and over again, each screech driving another nail in their addled minds. Groans sounded aplenty, none of the students willing to get up yet. A nausea overcame their thoughts, breakfast bubbling with bile to crawl up their esophagus.

But you. You could smell it.

The heady, intoxicating stench of gasoline, leaking out from ruptured fuel lines.

That was how accidents went, right? A terrible crash, followed by a slow-motion [i][b]explosion[/b][/i].