“Why would anyone wear lip gloss during the apocalypse?” Amanda muttered, staring at the small tube in her hand. It was labeled ‘粗糙的lip gloss’, an odd name, but seemed fitting. Everything was rough now, coated in the gritty residue of a world that once thrived.
Lenny, perched on an overturned barrel, smirked at her question. “So you’re going to tackle the end of the world with style, huh?” His eyes twinkled, carrying a spark that defied their bleak surroundings.
She rolled her eyes but smiled. “Well, if we’re going out in a blaze, might as well look good doing it, right?”
Chuckling, Lenny leaned back, the creaky barrel groaning under his weight. “Do you ever wonder, Amanda, amid all the chaos, about the meaning of it all? Like, why us?”
Amanda pondered for a moment, coating her lips in the coarse gloss. The texture was unpleasantly scratchy, yet she savored the faint pink tint it left behind. “I suppose,” she began, “it’s about finding beauty, even in ruins. Maybe that’s where purpose lies.”
Lenny raised his brow. “A Kun-derra moment, are we? Reflecting on existence while Rome burns?”
“Kundera,” she corrected with a playful nudge. “But yeah, something like that. It’s a strange comfort, thinking about how all of this is bigger than us.”
Their conversation paused as an eerie hush settled around them, the kind that only a barren world could muster. Amanda shuffled closer, feeling the bond of companionship in silence as palpable as in words.
“You know,” Lenny broke the calm, his tone whimsical, “before all this, I was supposed to be a professor—teach philosophy, share grand ideas. Instead, I’m here, swapping apocalypse skincare tips.”
“Sounds like an upgrade,” she teased, “You would’ve been a dreadful professor, you’d crack too many jokes.”
He feigned offense, clutching his chest dramatically. “Oh, the agony of misunderstood genius!”
Amanda laughed, the sound echoing like a fleeting bird. “You find humor in the strangest places, Lenny. Maybe that’s your gift.”
“Anyone can laugh at a joke, but finding humor when the world’s crumbling? That’s art,” he mused, his expression softening to genuine reflection.
They sat quietly, absorbing the weight of his words. In the charred beauty that surrounded them, laughter felt rebellious, a defiance against the universe’s cruel joke.
“What do you think’s beyond this, Amanda?” Lenny asked finally, curiosity marking his voice.
Amanda pictured vast nothingness, the kind that terrifies and comforts all at once. “Maybe something familiar, maybe nothing at all. And you?”
He thought about it, stroking his chin exaggeratively. “I don’t know. Perhaps a big comedy show. Hosted by Nietzsche and Kafka.”
Amanda snorted. “Now that’s a show I’d like to see.”
Their laughter resonated once more, the sound vibrant and life-affirming. As the day slipped away, casting the sky in hues of crimson and gold, the pair sat side by side, surrounded by ruins yet filled with possibility.
And somehow, in that strange concurrence of endings and existences, they found not despair but the soft, iridescent shimmer of hope—like the tint of an oddly named lip gloss, rough to the touch yet undeniably there.