“Ever since the ‘God of Destruction’ crashed into Seokjin’s life, his life is [has been] shattered.”

In this particular case, Namjoon entered Seokjin’s life some time in the past, hence it would be inappropriate to use the present simple tense ‘is’ to describe Seokjin’s life as it has been ever since that moment in time. The correct expression would be ‘his life has been/had been shattered’, to reflect the ongoing state from the moment of intervention (when Namjoon crashed in) till the present time. As the rest of your blurb is written in present tense, you would then choose to use the present perfect tense ‘has been’ over the past perfect ‘had been’.
 

In the second line, the loose usage of the pronoun ‘he’ to refer to first Namjoon (in the first sentence) and then Seokjin (in the second sentence) could be slightly confusing. The ‘he’ in the second sentence could be taken to refer to Namjoon instead of Seokjin. Extra attention needs to paid to the use of pronouns in stories where both the leads are of the same gender in order to make it clear to the reader which ‘he’ you are referring to. That said, I also wondered why you placed two sentences in this particular line, when all your other lines are restricted to only one sentence each. There did not seem to be any significance in there being two sentences in this line, and the first sentence would in fact have flowed better if it had been placed in the first line instead of the second, since those two sentences both make reference to Namjoon.

Plot
The main storyline that traces the relationship between Seokjin and Namjoon following Namjoon’s departure was interesting because of the way the story has been structured. I liked that throughout the story there were hints that something was amiss with Seokjin’s world, beginning with the changes to his reflection in the mirror and then the shimmering edges of the buildings, which make the reader constantly speculate about the true state of things in Seokjin’s life. The way Namjoon’s departure had been portrayed made it appear as though he had simply moved away and left Seokjin behind, which was the intention I suppose, before the grand reveal at the end about who was actually alive and who had passed on. One part that I felt could have been better developed was when Seokjin made the decision to move on with life, as shown through his packing of Namjoon’s belongings into boxes on Day 31. Up till that point, Jin had been moping around being angsty about Namjoon’s departure, so the sudden change in attitude came across as a little sudden. Juxtaposed against Taehyung’s contrasting attitude towards the packing, the awkwardness of Jin’s change in emotional state became even more stark, because one would have expected Jin to have taken a longer time to come to terms with reality given his close connection to Namjoon. The ending about Namjoon having not forgotten Jin after all came across as slightly cliched and predictable, because everyone would expect that given the amount of angst that Seokjin initially exhibited towards having been abandoned by Namjoon. However, the plot twist was largely a good one and I reckon things became quite clear at 1825 days.
 

One thing that I was confused about with regard to the main storyline was whether or not Seokjin knew from the beginning that he was dead. At the start, it seemed as if he didn’t know, because he was still having discussions with Taehyung about why they couldn’t leave for America with Namjoon as if they were both still alive. His cluelessness about the mirror reflections and the shimmering building edges also made it seem as though he had no idea he had transited into a different world. However, when the memories started to fade, it felt as though it no longer made sense if Jin didn’t know about his own demise. At Day 365 when Taehyung was shown to have forgotten Namjoon completely, Jin was not puzzled by his memory loss (which would have been the case if he believed them to still be alive) but instead vowed never to forget Namjoon in the same manner, as though he knew about his own impending loss of memory. When Namjoon returned, Jin simply watched on as if he knew he was a ghost and that Namjoon couldn’t see him. To add to the confusion, some of the side characters that appeared in the story behaved as if they knew they were dead (like the woman walking the dog) while others didn’t (like the crazy cashier lady), so it was odd that the knowledge of being in the afterlife didn’t seem to be uniform across the board. Especially for Jin, I felt that it would have been better if the story was written in a way that would allow the reader to know clearly whether or not Jin was aware of his state of existence as that would have influenced the way he reacted to this state of being.
 

On the whole I felt that the story tried to touch on too many themes and, because it is a one-shot, the limited length makes it difficult to develop all the themes to their fullest, making most of them somewhat lacklustre. Other than the main relationship line that was discussed above, the other themes such as the near extinction and continued survival of the human race, and the exploration of society’s attitudes towards homouality were fleetingly mentioned but not to sufficient detail that made them worth the while. In fact, bringing them up only raises more questions in the reader’s mind about some of these topics and not having those questions answered leaves one rather unsatisfied. If the focus of the story is on Seokjin and Namjoon’s relationship and the revelation that Jin is the one who died, perhaps it might be better to leave out the parts about Namjoon’s children (and him being forced to make babies as part of the government’s strategy to replenish the human population) and Namjoon’s reluctance to marry Jin because of his worries regarding society’s reaction towards a homoual union. These points were only surfaced in the final section at Day 1825, which was definitely too late for them to be developed to a satisfactory level. Introducing a new conflict in the form of Namjoon’s wife and children right at the very end also complicated matters and distracted from the main conflict that had been portrayed throughout the rest of the story, which was Jin’s inner struggle with himself to come to terms with Namjoon’s departure.
 

The final thing that I will touch on with regard to plot is the science behind your post-apocalyptic setting. While the opening paragraphs depicting the end of the world were all very grand and dramatic, which could definitely work well as an opening to hook readers in, I had some issues with the scientific accuracy of the setting. It would have been fine if your story was meant to be set in an AU where the laws of physics don’t apply, but after reading the entire story I felt like you were trying to portray a more realistic sort of apocalypse that would be relevant to our existing situation, especially with the mention of global warming and all (do you happen to live in Indonesia with the forest fires and haze disasters?). Firstly, while a lightning storm is entirely possible, lightning ‘slicing through the mantle of the Earth’ is not, else we would already have a shattered Earth core every time there is a thunderstorm. Next, the ozone layer being dyed red isn’t exactly realistic even though it does paint a dramatic scene. Our ozone layer is indeed being depleted right now and that is leading to negative ramifications such as more incidences of skin cancers and crop damage, but the cause of that is the increased presence of chlorofluorocarbons in our atmosphere and is not directly linked to global warming or any of its causes. Also, as the ozone layer absorbs red light, it would never appear red to our eyes because the colour we perceive comes from the wavelength of light that is reflected from a particular surface, and not light that is absorbed. Buildings raining cement sounds terribly scary, and I would not ever wish to see that day arrive, but I am not entirely sure how this will ever occur. Acid rain? I appreciate the effort made to dramatise the end of the world in order to make it seem like a truly horrific apocalyptic scene, but unfortunately being a science student, I get antsy about inaccurate scientific portrayals. I would suggest that instead of combining all possible end of the world scenarios in one giant mixing pot, you simply focus on one possible cause of world destruction and expound on that using some research done on the consequences of that natural phenomenon. For example, if you wanted global warming to be the trigger, then some possible end of world scenes would be flash floods, droughts, crop failures and species extinction, but not the ozone turning red.

Characterisation
The main character that we see for most of the story is a very emotional and angsty Seokjin who is trying to come to terms with his loss of Namjoon. The portrayal of his emotional breakdown as a result of his circumstance has been relatively well done, especially when it is contrasted against how he used to be before the traumatic event. Using his reactions towards little situations (e.g. his encounter with the woman and her dog, his reaction towards the mother and child) to showcase the inner workings of his mind was a good strategy to employ! What could be refined further would be the transitions between his different emotional states as we progress through the story, to reflect how he slowly walks out of his grief and emerges at the other end of the tunnel. In coping with the loss of a loved one, psychologically there are certain stages that a person typically goes through, namely denial and isolation, followed by anger, then depression, and finally acceptance. In the story there was mostly depression that could be observed, followed by acceptance, with the transition between these two states being a little sudden and unexplained (as mentioned in the plot section). If more of these stages of grief could have been explored and the transitions between them subtly engineered, then Seokjin’s character could have gained more depth and become even more realistic.
 

As for Namjoon, the reader only gets to interact with him through Jin’s flashbacks and then at the final section when he returns, so the room for development of his character is fairly limited. However, given the limited space that you had to work with, I felt that Namjoon’s character came across quite clearly as the more casual and carefree of the two, in contrast to Jin’s more highly strung personality. I thought it would have been icing on the cake if Namjoon had cracked some sort of wry joke during his monologue at the end while he was talking to Jin’s picture, to show that he hadn’t lost all of his original personality as a result of his loss.

Language
Overall the language used in this piece was alright and your use of descriptive prose was effective in many instances. However, there were some recurring grammatical issues that were littered across the story that detracted from the reading experience. Given that you have chosen to use present tense to write this piece, extra care will need to go into ensuring consistency in the usage of tenses throughout the story as there is the tendency to lapse into the incorrect tense at times and any action that happens in the past would still need to be addressed with past tense instead of present.
 

There were some issues with your usage of singular and plural words here and there, where you would incorrectly use either or in your writing. I would suggest that you look through the entire piece again to pick out these instances as they are easily rectified.   

E.g. “The room spins and swirls into shapeless pattern [patterns] around him” If you wanted to use ‘pattern’ in singular, then it would have to be ‘a shapeless pattern’, if not then the plural should be used in order for the sentence to make grammatical sense.

E.g. “He feels familiar arms around his broad shoulders that gives [give] him security.” In this case, ‘arms’ are plural so it should be matched to the verb ‘give’ instead of ‘gives’, as the latter would be used with a singular term instead.

E.g. “Some people have no discreet to hide their happiness.” The word ‘discreet’ is an adjective, hence it should be used as a qualifier for a noun or noun phrase. For example, you could describe a cough to be a discreet cough, thereby giving the reader more information about the noun in question. In this case, the word you would need is ‘discretion’, which is a noun.   

E.g. “Then a sympathetic look belongs to a mother suddenly breaks onto the woman’s skin like a chameleon.” This sentence didn’t quite make sense in the way that it was structured, mainly because of the underlined section. It should have been ‘a sympathetic look belonging to a mother’ for it to have made grammatical sense, but even then it comes across as awkward because it sounds as if only mothers are entitled to a signature sympathetic look which is hardly true. Perhaps eliminating the phrase ‘belongs to a mother’ would be better.   

E.g. “Who is left on Earth to consult Seokjin’s shattered soul?” The word ‘consult’ here seems like an inappropriate word choice, and the word that would have been more suitable could have been ‘console’? Why would anyone want to consult (i.e. seek advice from) a shattered soul?  

There are certain writing conventions that would need to be addressed, such as the usage of the articles ‘a’ and ‘an’ and the spelling out of numbers in full. With regard to articles, there was a line in the story that read ‘eternity isn’t an unit’, which would make logical sense as you are supposed to use ‘an’ when the following word begins with a vowel. However, this rule applies when the word begins with a vowel sound, and not just any written vowel. For the word ‘unit’, the word is pronounced as ‘yew-nit’, hence it is treated as a word beginning with a consonant sound and not a vowel sound. Therefore, it should be accompanied by the article ‘a’, making it ‘a unit’ instead of ‘an unit’. For the writing of numbers in full, care has to be taken in placing of hyphens where appropriate. In the same section, there was the phrase ‘four-thousands-three-hundred-twenty eternities’, where it should have been ‘four thousand three hundred and twenty eternities’. Hyphens should only be placed when spelling out numbers ranging from 21 to 99 and not anywhere else. For example, if I were spelling out 54,000, then it would have been written as ‘fifty-four thousand’. In the example from your story though, all the numbers didn’t fall within the range, hence it was not necessary to hyphenate anything.     
 

The last language point to highlight would be the use of commas in between two dialogue segments. In general, when you use a comma to end off the sentence parked between the dialogue segments, it means that those two segments are rightfully meant to be one joint sentence. If that is not the case and the second dialogue segment is the start of a new sentence in itself, then the comma should be replaced by a full stop instead.
 

E.g. “D… Oh, !” a hint of panic seeped through the phone, “Sorry, honey. I’ll come right over.” In this case the second dialogue segment is the start of a new sentence, hence a full stop should follow after the word ‘phone’ instead of a comma.

Structure and Style
The overall structure of this entire piece was unique and I liked the way it flowed. The flashbacks were also inserted at appropriate moments so they made sense and didn’t appear like a bolt from the blue. One point that I felt could have been addressed was the labelling of one flashback as ‘Day 1 With Namjoon’, because there was a following non-italicised chunk that jumped back to the present time (Day 3), hence it seemed awkward that the chunk also fell under the flashback section header. The use of italics already clearly highlights the segment as a flashback, so I felt that it was perhaps not necessary to give the flashback its own separate header, especially when the subsequent flashbacks didn’t come with their own headers. The sudden transitions were already mentioned above so I shan’t belabour the point.
 

As for writing style, you are definitely developing your own style and there is good interlacing of descriptive paragraphs with dialogue in order to flesh out the story. I can also get the sense that you are trying to show the reader the emotional turmoil that your lead character is going through by describing the different little events that he encounters in his daily life, and that really helped to give more depth to the story. Many writers fall into the trap of telling readers what they’re supposed to think, instead of letting the reader interpret things for themselves by painting them the pictures they are supposed to imagine in their minds. It’s great that you haven’t gone in that direction, so keep it up! If you continue working on your syntax and sort out the language issues, it would definitely help to improve your writing even further.     

Personal Enjoyment
Science aside, I rather enjoyed the story and the premise upon which it was written. I think that the plot in general has great potential and could be much improved with a closer look at the way you choose your words and phrases. Also, removing the unnecessary themes would help, unless you are open to expanding the story into a multi-chaptered one which would then provide more room to discuss some of these themes in greater depth.

Reviewer’s Comments: I hope the review was helpful, I tried to put down whatever I thought might be useful to help improve the story. Science fiction is not easy to attempt, because while being all futuristic and hypothetical, it still needs to be grounded in some sort of realism in order for it to work well, so kudos to you for trying! On a sidenote, Jin being the one dead? I can totally see the Run parallel here (I read your A/N)! But I’m in the camp that believes he’s the one alive!  

The permanent copy of your review can be found here: x.