“In five minutes, I will run in and lock the door.” Seulgi grins from ear to ear, strengthened through her resolve. She might as well put on a brave face for the very last time.  

 

The other girl’s trepidation reflects through her eyes. She has never seen Joy agitated, worried. It doesn’t suit her. Joy who’s always confident, sharp-tongued, spitting fire. It’s a completely foreign feeling to see her anxious. 

 

Maybe she shouldn’t do it. This world doesn’t need another martyr, doesn’t have room for another dumb sacrificial hero. Joy certainly doesn’t want a blustering saviour. A dead one at that. 

 

Seulgi tries to ignore the lump in . She must be, no, she is fine with her decision. She is tired of irrational fear, of hiding, and paranoia. No other option exists and she can’t think of one. Joy can’t either. The girl is shaking, mind finally arriving at the conclusion Seulgi reached minutes ago. Tugging at her gas mask, Seulgi pulls it off and flings it to the ground, fresh air hitting her lungs. 

 

Now there’s one more thing to do. Seulgi holds out her sketchbook. That wretched, yet beautiful thing.

 

Joy’s hands are trembling, reaching, stretching with discomfort. Fingers twitching. Seulgi steps closer, giving it to her. Makes sure she holds it tightly. 

 

“So don’t worry and win, alright?” Seulgi gestures to her sketchbook. Teeth grinning, eyes crinkled.

 

“Keep it safe for me.” 

 

---

 

It’s a Sunday morning when she picks up her sketchbook and flips through, expecting blank pages. 

 

Seulgi finds herself looking at two cars, one black, the other white. Beasts of steel, crumpled into husks of their former selves. In other words, a car crash. Maybe she had drawn it in her delirium the previous night and it wouldn’t be the first time that happened.

 

She falls back on her bed, listening to the rain pelt her rooftop. There are quite a few errands to run, but the weather urges her to stay inside. Going out is the last thing she wants, but she shouldn’t allow the rain to tell her what to do. 

 

No. She must get it done. She’ll go to the print shop, scan her sketches quickly. Get them all printed, nice and clean. Then she can go home and relax all day. Curl up underneath her blanket. Be a burrito. Binge watch Netflix. Yes, that’s the plan. She wiggles her toes, stretching, motivating herself. Everything will go without a hitch. 

 

And it does. She doesn’t forget her umbrella either. She runs to the shop, sketchbook tucked away, safe in her backpack. Scans her drawings. Prints them. When she leaves, she yells out a goodbye to the owner, thankful for his help, only to hear the familiar patter of rain. 

 

Shaking her head, she opens her umbrella, quickens her pace. The red light stops her and she waits for the signal. Fingers tapping against her leg. She checks her watch. 

 

Oddly enough, it’s comforting to watch the hands strike twelve.

 

Traffic whizzes by, everyone keen on escaping the gloomy weather. Honking, reluctant use of the brake, road rage. The noises fade into the back as Seulgi shifts her weight, foot to foot. Staring at the crossing light. 

 

A sudden screech of tires, loud skidding, wakes her from her reverie. A bang, a crash, multiple cars blaring their horns. She snaps out of it, jumping away from the curb. Heart racing. 

 

There, in the middle of the intersection, are two cars, black and white. They’ve crashed head on, hoods crumpled, windows shattered. Glass shards cover the street. Seulgi hears the faint sound of sirens in the distance. 

 

The hairs on her skin rise, her blood freezing. She knows she should worry about the drivers in the accident, yet that’s not on the forefront of her mind. It’s the cars. She has seen them before.

 

With one hand, she opens the flap of her backpack and pulls out her sketchbook. Flips to a certain page, eyes bulging in amazement. She thought she drew them so how is it possible? The cars, the configuration of the crash scene, are the exact same. The drawing isn’t the most detailed, but anyone could tell it’s a sketch of the car crash. 

 

Groaning emits from the black car and Seulgi turns her attention back to the crash scene. A hand stretches through the window, followed by a torso, and eventually the whole body. The figure crawls on the ground, painstakingly slow. Desperately clutching a fractured flip phone. Eyes fluttering listlessly, arms give way, slumping down.

 

Seulgi wants to help. She wants to move, to rush to the injured boy, but she doesn’t. She’s rooted to the ground, frozen, slightly dazed. 

 

Her mind warns her, preventing her from running onto the street. Something is about to happen. 

 

Spluttering coughs and the driver of the white car stumbles out from the wreckage. Legs unsteady, wobbling. Long unkempt black hair shielding her face. She’s relatively unscathed, compared to the boy. 

 

Dark eyes meet Seulgi, daring her to come closer. Like a caged, cornered animal. A step. Two steps. The girl seizes the flip phone and breaks into a run, back turned, fleeing into a narrow alley. 

 

---

   

More drawings appear. All in pencil, one for every page. She recognizes each one, she sees them in her life. They’re events or hints of them, almost as if they’re warning her. A basketball, keys on the ground, stolen wallets. She was hit by a stray basketball, lost her keys, and her wallet full of coupons was stolen. And it all happened on the same day. Seulgi has never thought of herself as having bad luck, but that day was something else.

 

The sketches appear before the events happen, sometimes shifting before her eyes, as if to say the future is always changing. Seulgi thinks she has it figured out. Three drawings per day, each corresponding to a specific time. Noon, sunset, and midnight. 

 

Obviously, she doesn’t tell anyone about it. Not that she had anyone to tell. The sketchbook is more of an amusing trick to her, something like entertainment for her eyes only. So she continues with her life, going about it normally. The drawings are a benign addition to her life and nothing seems to be off at the moment.  

 

Except there’s the car crash. Its circumstances are odd, the details surrounding it are peculiar. She sees it reported on the news, hears about it on the radio. A young male, 25, of Asian descent, pronounced dead when the ambulance arrived. The coroners are still working on the cause of death. 

 

Everyone is asking questions. Didn’t he die because of the car crash? Isn’t it just that simple? The medical examiners are puzzled, finding no sign of impact on his body. He also had no history of heart problems. Nothing. Nothing, but scratches, shallow scars on his body. 

 

---

 

Seulgi isn’t surprised when another girl sits down at 12 pm, grabs her cup, and downs her precious coffee in a single gulp. A girl with long black hair, prominent bags under her eyes, pale dry lips. 

 

The same girl from the car crash. 

 

“ing Tim Hortons coffee. Why do you drink that ?” A glare is thrown her way, along with a smartphone onto the table. Screen glowing, phone unlocked. Seulgi stays silent, annoyed. She didn’t ask for a reminder of her financial situation as a broke student. 

 

“Look at you, all nice and relaxed. It won’t be that way for long,” the tired girl grumbles. Ruffling her hair, scratching the crown of her head, she sighs. Throws her arms to the side, leaves them dangling, and slouches further down her chair. 

 

“You’re a diary owner?” Seulgi frowns, confused from the question. A diary? She hasn’t had one since she was seven. 

 

“A what?” 

 

“A diary. A phone. A scroll. Paper. Whatever.”

 

“I’m sorry, but I don’t understand. And you just drank all of my cheap coffee!”

 

“The coffee was awful so I just did you a favour. Listen, Seulgi. I don’t have any time to spare. I know you can predict the future with the sketchbook in your bag.” Joy’s stare sends her squirming in her seat. The girl is spot on.

 

“Can you see into the future too?” 

 

“Why else would I ask you? Give me your number.” Joy snorts, pointing to her phone. Hesitantly, Seulgi picks it up and inputs her contact information. Something tells her to trust Joy. 

 

“You done? Let’s go, this place will explode in 10 minutes.”

 

“What?” Seulgi exclaims. Joy stands, stretching her arms behind her back. 

 

“Stop asking so many questions. Stay here if you want to be blown to bits.” The other girl runs out, boosted by caffeine. Seulgi has to sprint to catch up. 

 

“What about the people inside the cafe?” she pants. 

 

“It’s us or them. We can’t save everyone, that’s just how it is.” Joy stops in front of a van, gets in and Seulgi follows. As if she has done this all her life, Joy starts the car, speeding away. Soon, Seulgi hears the unmistakable sound of explosions and sirens. Distraught screams along the sidewalks. Joy grunts, eyebrows knitting.  

 

“Damn that yandere. Always out to kill me.” Seulgi is beyond confused at this moment. Everything is happening so fast. Meeting Joy again. Leaving the building in a hurry. The cafe exploding. 

 

“What’s going on?” Seulgi grips the edge of her seat as Joy drives like mad, weaving through the streets. Determined to distance themselves from the scene of the explosion. 

 

“You aren’t the only one who can tell the future. There are others who can too and we’re all screwed. You’ve heard about the Hunger Games?” Joy says listlessly, keeping her eyes on the road. 

 

“The book with KatPee or PeeN—” A hand is slapped over , spreading a light stinging sensation. 

 

“Do not talk about ship names in my presence,” Joy warns, one hand still steering the wheel. Seulgi nods, scared to aggravate the girl. The hand is removed and Joy smirks, satisfied.

 

“I’ll keep it simple. We’re in a fight to the death, like the Hunger Games, but it’s called Survival Games. Whoever wins gets to be overlord of the universe.” 

 

“That explains nothing.” 

 

“Well excuse me, you joined late, and missed the meeting with Deus, the God of Time and Space!” Seulgi can feel eyes burning into her soul and she almost feels apologetic; thus, there’s only one suitable reaction to Joy’s outburst. 

 

“Huh?” The van screeches to a halt. 

 

“I’ll keep it even simpler for you. Me. You. Good. Yandere. Pink hair. Useless boy. One-eyed pirate. C4s. Laser beam. Crotch. Bad.” She can’t help, but feel Joy’s jazz hands are mocking her. If what Joy says is true, she has to cooperate with the other girl to survive.

 

“Ok.” 

 

“Don’t ask me about the laser beam incident. That yandere has been watching too many James Bond movies.” Seulgi isn’t curious about it. She can imagine plenty already. 

 

The van lurches back to life and Joy continues to drive haphazardly. Speeding over speed bumps, running over manholes, driving onto the curb. Seulgi grips her seat tighter, turning pale. 

 

“I saw you at the car crash, what were you doing there?” Seulgi says carefully. A grunt.

 

“Murdering a diary owner, what else?” Joy’s tone is too casual for Seulgi’s liking. It’s uncomfortable, how the girl speaks about it. 

 

“By crashing your car into his?” Seulgi exclaims, voice raising. 

 

“He was going to crash his into mine first!”

 

“Ok, then how did he die?” With one hand off the wheel, Joy scratches her nose, and veers to the left. Screams from the pedestrians spur her on. She snickers while they dodge her van and poor Seulgi can only continue to grip her seat tighter.

 

“The impact fractured his phone and poof, he gave himself the D-word.” Seulgi blinks, face reddening. Joy doesn’t notice.

 

“He’s dead. He died because his ‘diary’ was destroyed,” Joy adds. 

 

“Is it the same for us?”

 

“Why don’t you find out? Give me your sketchbook.” They veer to the hard right, squishing Seulgi against the glass window. The high-pitched cackle further grates on her nerves.

 

---

 

A step into the janitor’s closet and she doesn’t know what she was expecting earlier. The space is cramped with shelves against the walls. Mops are propped up in the corner, a ladder is beside them, and two buckets of water are sitting in the sink. She supposes that she’s lucky there are two sleeping bags on the floor so they don’t have to share. 

 

“Welcome to my casa. Feel free to explore as I plot the death of my next victim,” Joy whistles. The girl grabs two cans of tuna off the shelf and tosses one to Seulgi. Hands barely catching it. 

 

“Why are you helping me?” Seulgi questions. Joy sits on her sleeping bag, peeling her can open, inviting her to sit down beside her.

 

“All the ‘diaries’ given to us by Deus have special powers. Mine is that I can tell the future of anyone in my contacts, but I’m limited to a single person every day.” 

 

“Then why me?” 

 

“I learned about you through the dead guy’s diary. He was stalking you for a couple of days.” Joy shrugs, pouring tuna into . Shivers run through her spine at the girl’s remark. 

 

“I guess you’re pretty dumb if you didn’t know. He was going to kill you the night of the car crash.” Seulgi swallows thickly. 

 

‘I just… had no idea. I didn’t even know ‘future diaries’ existed back then!”

 

“You better get used to it. Now tell me your diary’s power.” 

 

“I think I’m able to see the future for three specific times of the day?” Joy huffs, disappointed. She grabs Seulgi’s tuna can out of her hands and peels it open. Seulgi seizes it back in a flash. 

 

“Bor-ing. You have the same power as the home alone child. Now that was an unpleasant kill. What a creepy five year old with his poison gas.”  

 

“What about the other’s powers?”

 

“The useless boy can tell the future of everything happening around him in a certain radius. I haven’t figured out the exact radius yet.” Joy chucks her own empty can into the far corner. Frowning, mouth shut, staring at who knows what.

 

“Keep on going?” Seulgi prompts. 

 

“No. I feel angry whenever I talk about whiny, useless boy and his diary’s unknown radius. My therapist told me to avoid bad-mouthing cowards.”

 

“Seriously?” 

 

“No, but I wish I had a therapist. If I win this and become overlord, you bet I will assign free therapy sessions for everyone in the universe.” Seulgi shakes her head, pinching her forehead. The other girl shrugs and pats her back. 

 

“The yandere can only keep tabs on the useless boy. Quite fitting she has the perfect diary for a stalker. And the pirate’s diary comes up with escape routes for her. An escape diary, if you will.”

 

“So she’s the hardest to catch?” A slap on the back, Seulgi coughs from the force. 

 

“Precisely! I always knew you were smart."

 

---

 

“With our luck, if everything stays the same, the yandere will kill the one-eyed pirate. A shame that she’ll die, she’s really y with her purple hair,” comments Joy, peering through her binoculars. Watching the confrontation. Seulgi rolls her eyes, preferring to monitor her sketchbook instead.

 

“Useless boy is hiding somewhere inside the school. Should we go after him?” 

 

“No, he’ll run away with the help of his diary. We’re not well-armed either and whose fault is that?” Joy retorts in a faux sickly manner.  

 

“Fine. What’s your plan then?” 

 

“We’re going to set a trap for whoever’s left alive with the help of dead creepy child’s leftover gas grenades. Pew pew. In with the gas. On with the masks. We win.”

 

“Great plan.” 

 

“Thanks. It took me three seconds to come up with it.” Seulgi snatches the binoculars from Joy.

 

“I was watching the hot girl’s last moments,” protests Joy. Seulgi is often unsure whether to take her seriously. The girl constantly jokes around. She supposes Joy is just an anomaly, the personification of wit, sarcasm and bravado.  

 

“Figure out a better plan instead of watching the hot girl.” 

 

“I met you two weeks ago and my plans have been saving your plump cheeks. Don’t rely on me every time.” Her tongue clicks in annoyance. Joy is right, once again. Sharp pressure digs into her ribs, persistently in intervals.

 

“Hey, I’m only teasing,” says Joy lightly. Seulgi buries her face into her sketchbook.  

 

“I hate this game. Have I set fire to Deus’ holy temple, grilling all of his uncooked s, in my previous life? Is this why I have to murder everyone in a competition?” Seulgi groans.

 

“Don’t blame yourself. Blame Deus for giving us the diaries. We don’t even have control over our futures.” 

 

“I have to consult a sketchbook for our every move. Can you believe it?” They grin in tandem, laughter flowing out of disbelief.

 

---

 

Bombs exploding here and there, flying hatchets, massive machine guns. The countless attempts on her life. She wouldn’t have survived this month if Joy wasn’t by her side, saving her almost every time. But today, this will all end. Today is the perfect day to execute their plan.  

 

“The trap wire goes here, the cannister here… Seulgi, do you have your gas mask ready?” Joy mutters. 

 

“Yes,” she replies, hands shaking a bit. She can’t calm her nerves. Grabbing her sketchbook, she flips through the pages, making sure the sketches are still there. The clock striking 6 pm. Two figures collapsing in a heap on the stairs.

 

“Don’t worry, we’ll be fine up here. We’re on the rooftop, far far away from them.” Seulgi wishes she has Joy’s confidence. She glances at the other girl, tinkering with the canister. Then she focuses back on her sketchbook. tightens. To her horror, the image of the dead bodies are gone. Replaced with Joy’s body, motionless on the ground, the clock striking a quarter to six at sunset. The words are stuck in , refusing to leave. 

 

“They’ll be here in 5 minutes.” Joy stops moving, her smile wiped off her face. Panicked eyes meet her own, all mirth disappearing. 

 

They’re trapped on the rooftop.

 

“What? I need more time!” Seulgi wishes Joy had another response. Another plan to get them out, but there’s none. Joy, who has been so reliable, her pillar to lean on, cannot be relied on anymore. 

 

There must be another option. She sees the leftover poison gas grenades rolling on the floor, forcing her to think. To choose. They had planned to not use them, to save them as a last resort, but Seulgi knows what she has to do. Everything has been confusing since the car crash. But for once, the answer is clear, it has come to her mind quickly so Seulgi smiles. 

 

She rises to her feet.

 

 

 

AN: I watched Mirai Nikki (Future Diary) a couple years ago, but I never finished it. I think I gave up after five or six episodes because I thought the anime was pretty bad. The idea of a diary that tells the future was interesting enough, so here I am, having written an au based on the anime. 

 

I would’ve definitely written a full-fledged Mirai Nikki chaptered au if I wasn’t being dumpstered by papers. Curse myself for badly planning out my winter term courses.

 

The writing style for this one is a bit different from the rest of my oneshots, incorporating more slang. Thank you for reading and please let me know your thoughts on this mess of words.