Minseok didn’t believe in the term “God” like they had billions of years ago. He believed there might have been something, but he didn’t believe that there was some kind of invisible force up in the skies watching the every movement of all people on Earth; it was as simple as that. It was something he had learnt in school a long time ago, about gods. The religions people believed in, the ones that had millions of followers and so much money spent worshipping them it was ridiculous – they were long forgotten, only preserved in ancient books for the sake of learning from old mistakes. God was something people believed in billions of years ago because they could not explain how the nature worked. And even when they realized, they still believed. But science won as religion and the disputes-turned-wars left the world in ruins and the remaining humans had to build it all up from the rubble again. Religions were relics of the past. And they were the humans to live on after. As much as Minseok would like to think so, they did not have souls. Born to live and born to die, as simple as that.

Humankind had been living on earth for billions of years, and if there was a God, he would’ve rescued them, that was Minseok’s opinion. He would have saved the Milky Way from crashing with Andromeda, the inevitable destruction. He would have done something. The life tree that was pictured in so many cultures might not have been the Earth, but the universe. And if it so, the Earth was just a tiny, withering leaf growing on the lowest branch. Minseok wouldn’t deny there wasn’t something out there. He just knew they wouldn’t be saved.

It was four o’clock in the morning, but no one could sleep. Minseok wondered if there was anyone on Earth or other planets in the Milky Way that was sleeping now. Maybe there was, but not as he knew of. How could someone sleep the last three hours of their lives? In three hours Andromeda, their neighbor-galaxy, would crash into the Milky Way. Both galaxies would be completely destroyed in a huge explosion that couldn’t even be scaled, reduced to nothing. The best professors and researchers in the world had already predicted what would happen. First, there was going to be a loud boom. Then nothing for a couple of seconds, like the world had stopped. One would not be able to hear anything, because the loud boom would destroy everyone’s hearing. And in the end, the sky was going to be flaming red, like a sunset, except bigger and redder. It would illuminate the sky like fireworks - the last, beautiful goodbye. And then? Nothing. Everything would be reduced to an empty space, destroyed within milliseconds. There would be no trace of the human existence left. Complete oblivion.

It was simple thoughts Minseok had had since forever. He knew them in and out, as they appeared with even intervals. But there was no need to churn on that now.

Instead, he looked up at the person he treasured more than anything in the world. Luhan. If he was going to die, it seemed like a good end to do it while looking at Luhan.

Minseok sat in the sofa, Luhan in a chair. They were facing each other with a small, brown coffee table in between them, their thoughts reflected in their eyes. Minseok studied Luhan’s features like he didn’t know every little detail already, seeing the same, strong gaze mirrored at himself.

For a couple of moments, they just sat there. Eyes like oceans and thoughts like widespread nebulas, reflections upon their lives and themselves coming and going before they were even fully formed. With any other person, it would have been strange. Minseok would have avoided their stare and wandered off. But with Luhan, that wasn’t the case. They were two halves of a whole, and the invisible, silvery threads that bound them together made it natural. There was this old legend from humankind’s early days about how some god had split humans into two, and left them searching for their other half. If Minseok were to believe any myth, he would want to believe in that one.

If Minseok had been any more poetic, he would have written a poem about Luhan. Maybe a whole book on him. About his smiles, the ones that were the brightest during the summer when they relaxed in the meadows back in Minseok’s hometown as the wind grazed the grass and the sun was just a source of warmth and not their end. About his eyes, deeper than oceans, concealing so much Minseok didn’t know but didn’t care about. The stars that lit up in them when he talked, about he galaxies behind his eyelids and the nebulas that were his thoughts. And the supernovas when the two crashed together, he’d dedicate whole chapters. But all he ever did, was smile and hope he could transfer it all though his actions. To say Minseok had never been a person of many words was wrong, he was just not someone of many spoken words.

Slowly Luhan’s gaze seemed to drift away, but then he blinked and sent Minseok a careful smile. Getting back to reality from exploring the depths of Luhan’s eyes, Minseok made a face before trying to smile back, but he just couldn’t seem to even force one. Luhan tilted his head slightly, looking at him.

“Are you okay?” he asked. Minseok shook his head, almost laughing about the absurdity of the question. He honestly felt like falling apart every second, having a mental breakdown.

“There will be no us in less than three hours. No, I am not okay.” He answered honestly, pressing his lips into thin lines as he tried to hold up his composure. And to think he had always been the rational of the two.

Luhan furred his eyebrows, looking suspiciously at Minseok. The latter hadn’t really said anything one way or another about the happenings to come, but it was unusual to hear him say right out that he wasn’t well. Luhan knew he liked to keep up the image of a composed and unfazed person, but he guessed that when the end was near, being brave didn’t really matter any more. Maybe Minseok thought the same.

So instead, Luhan stood up. He held his hand forward as a silent invitation, nodding his head slightly to the right where the stairs were. “Come with me,” he smiled. “We’ll spend our three last hours in the roof garden, what do you think?”

Minseok nodded, agreeing with Luhan’s suggestion. “That sounds great,” he replied, and together they went up to the roof.

The roof garden was the most beautiful place in the whole galaxy, if you asked Minseok. Forget about the ice rings of Saturn or any star. The roof garden was much closer, yet it felt so free and far away from the city that zoomed past beneath them. What were beautiful sights if you couldn’t observe them up close? Minseok really didn’t want to find out how close he could get to a star before he burnt into ashes.

In the night floating lanterns automatically in the garden and moonflowers lit up with a silvery light, giving light to dark corners. Minseok and Luhan were living on a cliff above a busy city, but a sound-canceling system took away all the noises they didn’t want to hear. As they went up Minseok looked out at the city, its lights lighting up everything around it. He could faintly hear some music, probably rather close to where they were. Some people seemed to spend their last night partying. Minseok couldn’t pretend he liked their decision, but it was their lives, and he decided not to judge them. Maybe partying occupied them, so they didn’t need to think about the oncoming nothingness. People had many ways to overcome fear – Minseok’s just so happened to be Luhan.

Together they lay down in the grass, hand in hand. Neither of them uttered as much as a word as they did so, it just came automatically like the million times before. A little silence is what they both seemed to want now, just having the presence of the other there.

Minseok didn’t know how much time passed. He just looked up at the stars, wondering exactly what was going on in the solar system right then. Not that it mattered, because everything was going to be lost either way.

Billions of years of information gone in one second. Minseok wondered why humankind would obtain so much information, only to see it get lost. They probably didn’t see the oncoming destruction. The information they did collect hadn’t helped them so far either way. As of then they could only travel within their own solar system, not to other solar systems and not to other galaxies. If so, they could have escaped.

“Luhan?” Minseok whispered while still looking at the night sky, after what felt like an eternity. He couldn’t see any stars as the light pollution erased any traces of it, but seeing the vast darkness was still overwhelming yet somehow comforting.

“Yes, is it something?” Luhan replied under his breath. He sounded lost in thoughts, but his voice sobered up as soon as he heard Minseok.

“If you could go back to the 21st century, what would you change?” Minseok. He had no idea where the question came from, or why he wanted to know. He just did.

Luhan stayed quiet for a while, thinking about it. “I would give them a book over all that we know of today. Maybe then, they would come up with something that could’ve saved us today.” He sounded so carefree while saying it; like it was just another day and he would wake up tomorrow just fine.

“How…” Minseok muttered. “How can you sound so calm?” finally he turned head and looked at Luhan, just to find the other doing just the same.

The latter smiled. “Hm… how do I explain this? Well, I just think it’s better to enjoy the time we have left, rather than worry about what’s going to happen. Because it will happen either way, and it won’t change just because we worry about it, right?”

Minseok nodded. He couldn’t really say he understood what Luhan meant by his words, but he still appreciated it. All that was on his mind was how he would never be able to see, feel, or be with Luhan again. He didn’t care about the world or places or things. He cared about Luhan, and the fact that they would never be again.

Then he asked how much the clock currently was, and Luhan replied that it was 05:30. One and a half hour left.

So Minseok decided to take the younger’s words to his heart instead, and used his last hours to talk about everything and nothing with him. And the book about the constellations in Luhan’s words and the galaxies in his mind only grew longer by the second.

Minseok wondered where he went when he died. Was it like an endless sleep? Every religion had a specific opinion about death and where you go after it. The Greeks believed one either went to Elysium, The fields of Asphodel of the fields of Damnation. The Christians believed someone either came to Heaven or Hell. The Hindus believed you were reincarnated. It was a thousand different versions to it. Maybe it wasn’t something up there, only… silence. Like cutting off music in an empty room. No personality, no memories, no ‘me’. Only white silence.

The clock was ticking. One hour. Half an hour. And Minseok and Luhan spent all their time talking, their voices floating out in the silence. Ten minutes.

One minute.

Thirty seconds. Perfectly timed as the clock turned seven a.m., Minseok heard a loud boom. Then silence. He looked at Luhan as the moment was finally there, what they had waited for but not actually wrapped their minds around was going to happen. He felt something trickle out from his ears and seeing Luhan, he realized it was blood from their destroyed hearing-system. But he didn’t mind, because in that moment, he didn’t feel any pain from it.

“I love you,” he said, but he couldn’t hear anything.

“I love you,” Luhan mouthed back.

Then the flaming sky. Then nothing.

Maybe it was time to believe in something. Maybe it was time to believe in a higher power, taking Minseok as its own. Everyone believed in technology, and the few religious were laughed at. But what if the religious had been right? What if they had souls, going to Heaven or Hell or whatever.

Or maybe his death was just a dream. Maybe he could imagine whatever he wanted after death, for eternity. Then at least, Minseok would know what to imagine. Luhan and himself. Forever.

And he would use his whole afterlife writing books about the universe in Luhan’s eyes.