Chapter 1 — August 12th (Part 4)
The famed English author H.G. Wells wrote The Time Machine over one hundred years ago. Since then, tales of machines which can travel through time have been told and retold countless times by countless people.

Why does the idea of a time machine captivate us so?

The reason lies in the fact that time is the most cardinal mystery of humanity, the sole confinement from which none can escape. Each person, no matter how great or small, is allotted the same 24 hours each day, and scream and shout as you might, never will the sand flow back into the top of the hourglass, or a bygone summer ever return. That is why the dream of a machine that travels through time has persistently fascinated us so. To leap through time—to defy that inexorable tyranny, to obtain a power equal to that of God—that is the ultimate freedom.

So what was such an amazing device doing here?

Hanuki whistled. “That means that Ozu’s a time traveler!”

According to Ozu, the newly minted time traveler, the transportation was instantaneous. Right as he had pulled the lever he had closed his eyes, and the next time he opened them he was in yesterday.

Akashi got in the time machine and examined the control panel.

“Ozu, what time was it when you arrived in yesterday?”

“Like I said, it was right before I toppled the kappa statue…”

It was currently 2:30 P.M., and Ozu had knocked over the statue yesterday around the same time.

“So that means that you’ll arrive at roughly the same time as you depart,” Akashi theorized. “And there isn’t a dial to set the time.”

I crouched beside Akashi and looked at the panel. The year dial only went up to 99. That meant that the furthest back you could go in a single leap was the Showa period, though I presumed that once you arrived at your destination you could simply make another leap, skipping back in time like a stone over a pond. And the same was likely true of the future. I snuck a glance beside me at Akashi, whose eyes were gleaming with excitement.

“Maybe that person from before made it.”

“Who?”

“You know, the lame looking guy.”

I realized she was talking about the guy I had been talking with earlier. No matter how positively I tried to spin it in my head, all I could imagine him being was a lovable loser who had tried and totally failed to remake himself for his college student debut. But you can’t judge a book by its cover. Perhaps that dorky lameness was merely a facade that concealed a hyper-intelligent, once-in-a-generation prodigy.

Footsteps began to tap towards us from the end of the hallway.

My mind immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was the owner of the time machine, but instead I heard a reedy voice drawl, “My my, we are having fun.” Walking towards us was Aijima, Jōgasaki’s right hand man in the Misogi Movie Circle and the actor who had portrayed the protagonist, Ginga Susumu, in the film shoot yesterday.

“Would you care to tell me, Jōgasaki, what this is all about?”

“Nah, we’re just, you know, chilling,” Jōgasaki said evasively. “What are you doing here?”

“I have a prior appointment with this fellow,” Aijima said, pointing at me. “Have you discovered the whereabouts of my glasses?”

“Glasses?”

“Yes, my glasses!”

But Aijima was already wearing glasses. When I pointed this out, he hissed impatiently, “I explained it yesterday, did I not? These are the glasses I use for performing. I have a separate pair for normal wear, which I lost here yesterday. And you promised me you would look for them!”

Once again, things were not adding up. I felt that same sense of unease return.

“I knew I was wrong to rely on you!”

Aijima’s stream of complaints lasted for a minute or two, but then his gaze fell upon the time machine. Immediately he let out a gasp. “This! This is it!”

“You’ve seen it before, Aijima?” Akashi asked.

Aijima rushed up to it. “I saw it yesterday, at this very spot. I was unsure whether it was merely an illusion, yet here it is! A time machine, is it not?”

“That’s right. It’s a time machine.”

“Ah, but what marvelous craftsmanship. Who built it?”

Aijima seemed to be laboring under the impression that it was a movie prop. Even after Akashi informed that it was a real, working time machine, his surprise only lasted for a moment. “This is one of those…pranks, yes?”

“No, nothing like that. It’s really a time machine.”

“I’m afraid I’m not so fond of these sorts of diversions, ganging up on someone and telling them lies.”

We all told him what had happened with Ozu’s time travel just a moment ago, even showing him proof in the form of the video. But Aijima’s eyes narrowed behind his spectacles, and he only smiled coldly. I couldn’t blame him. Our time traveler, Ozu, was one of the most untrustworthy lifeforms on the face of the planet, and videos could always be edited.

“Why don’t we activate the time machine one more time?” suggested Akashi. “Then would you believe us?”

“Well, perhaps if I see it with my own eyes I may reconsider,” said Aijima, but his frosty smile did not waver.

◯

“Well then, my good fellows. Whither shall we go?” said Higuchi Seitarō.

Akashi raised her hand first. “Why don’t we go see the future? Maybe ten years or so?”

To see the yet-unseen future before anyone else: therein lies the great allure of the time machine. But there is one problem: there is no guarantee that the world of ten years hence will be the world one wishes to see.

“It’d kinda be a drag to find out that you’re dead though, wouldn’t it?” Hanuki said glumly.

Discovering such a fate would certainly sap one’s lust for life. You might lose your motivation to study, be forced to retake another year, and eventually drop out. With each passing moment bringing you closer to that immovable deadline, you could very well end up holing up in your room, doing nothing but eating and drinking enormous quantities every day to escape that existential horror, only to keel over ten years to the day, a victim of your own self-fulfilling prophecy.

“I think we’d be better off avoiding the future.”

“That’s a good point.”

“How dull to see the path that lies ahead,” proclaimed Higuchi. “The future is what you make of it!”

The second proposal was Ozu’s suggestion to return to the Jurassic period to play with dinosaurs. The Jurassic period was roughly 150 million years ago. On the other hand, our time machine could only jump 99 years backwards at a time. That meant it would take roughly 1.5 million leaps to reach our destination; even if one were to operate the machine 24 hours a day one would likely expire before ever getting close.

The third proposal was my own, to return to the spring of two years earlier. I intended to discreetly aid my first-year self, showing him the way towards the rose-colored campus life. Above all I had to prevent him from ever meeting Ozu. But Ozu soon apprehended what I was trying to do, and quickly suggested, “Then I’ll go with you, and make your past self even more of a loser!” The idea of us two continuing our battle across time and space was soundly rejected by the rest of the group.

It was turning out to be more difficult to pick a destination than I had imagined.

“Why don’t we just make it real simple and just go to the Edo period?” Hanuki said. “Like, wouldn’t it be awesome to see samurai and stuff?”

“There’s an idea,” I agreed. “It’d only take two jumps, too.”

“Well then, my good fellows, what say you we travel to the Bakumatsu!” Higuchi enthused.

It was quite a splendid idea. In the Kyoto of the Bakumatsu, we could find the actual Sakamoto Ryoma and Saigo Takamori and the Shinsengumi prowling the streets in the real world of Slayers of the Bakumatsu. If we brought equipment we could film as much as we wanted, and get some shots that you could never get in the modern day no matter how big your budget was. “Can I go back and get the equipment?” Akashi asked, her eyes shining.

But Jōgasaki put a damper on the proceedings. “Don’t you guys have any sense of danger?”

“What do you mean, Jōgasaki? It’s not like you’re going anyways, right?” Hanuki frowned.

“Hell no,” snorted Jōgasaki in reply. “Let’s take a step back and assume that time machine is real. How do you know it’s going to keep working? What happens if you get to your destination and it breaks down? You just gonna live the rest of your life in the Bakumatsu, huh?”

“That bridge will be crossed when we get there,” said Higuchi loftily. “Man adapts himself to his environment…or his times.”

Maybe a cunning tengu like Higuchi might be able to survive in the chaos of the Bakumatsu, skirting the conflict betwixt the Shinsengumi and the masterless rōnin. But for the rest of us coddled children of the modern age, survival in that time period seemed like a much dicier proposition. Everyone besides Higuchi exchanged glances.

“So, maybe not the Bakumatsu?” mumbled Hanuki.

After a short silence, Akashi suggested, “Why don’t we test it with a short hop?”

“Let’s just go with yesterday,” I said.

“That’s a good idea. That way if something goes wrong it won’t be hard to come back.”

This new plan was decidedly less ambitious, but every journey begins with a single step.

It was currently a little past 2:30 P.M. If we went back to yesterday now, the filming at the landlady’s house should still be going on. We had wrapped up filming and vacated the premises at about 3:30, so the apartments should be empty until then. We left for Oasis just past 4, and after beating a strategic retreat at the used book fair I had returned to the apartment at 6, and then the Cola Catastrophe had…

I had a sudden eureka moment.

“Hey, I’ve just had a brilliant idea!”

This time yesterday, the remote control hadn’t been broken yet. So if we went back in time and took the remote, didn’t that mean that we could turn the air conditioner in room 209 on again? There couldn’t be a better way to use the time machine than this.

“Intriguing…” ruminated Higuchi. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“That’s a great way to use the time machine. Very impressive!” Akashi glowed.

The question now was, who was going to go?

We tried all piling in, but in order to do that we would have needed to be as flexible as a troupe of Chinese acrobats, and worst case someone might be flung out in the midst of the time leap. We settled for sending three people to yesterday, holding a rock-paper-scissors tournament to decide who would go.

As a result of the tournament, the members of expedition #1 were determined to be Higuchi, Hanuki, and Ozu.

“Dammit,” Akashi scowled, looking crestfallen as she stared at the scissors she had just thrown. “I’m terrible at rock-paper-scissors.”

“Oi, Ozu, you’ve already gone. Let Akashi go instead.”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to decline that proposal. See, I’m the only time traveler in the whole wide world and that makes me the pilot of this here machine. I’m simply indispensable.”

“We’ll just nip over for a quick look and be right back,” said Hanuki, comforting Akashi.

“Thanks, don’t worry about me. Bon voyage, everyone!”

The members of Expedition #1—Higuchi, Hanuki, and Ozu—boarded the time machine. Ozu sat and fiddled with the control panel, then turned and looked at us.

“Good day to you all. We’ll be right back.”

“Once you’ve got the remote control, you come right back here,” I insisted. “The us from yesterday will be back in half an hour.”

“It is with a heavy heart that I admit the pain I have caused you on this occasion. I am most contrite indeed for my mistake with the remote control. But now we have a time machine. I shall return with the remote control, even if it costs me my own life. So I beg you, worthy sir, await my return with great expectation.”

“Yeah, yeah, hurry and get going!”

“By your leave,” said Ozu, pulling the lever, and there was a flash and a great gust of wind. The time machine disappeared with all of them on board, leaving the rest of us standing there.

Only the wind chime continued to tinkle.

Thus Ozu and his crew set off for yesterday, but from the moment I watched them go, an inexplicable seed of doubt in my heart had begun to sprout.

Should we really have let them go? Higuchi Seitarō, Hanuki, and Ozu: now that I thought about it, that was the worst possible team we could have selected.

◯

The tinkling of the wind chime died away, and the hallway was quiet again.

Now that Ozu and the others had gone with the time machine, it felt like the apartment had returned to normal. All at once I felt the broiling afternoon heat return.

“Jōgasaki,” Aijima gasped, a quiver in his voice. “What is the meaning of all this?”

“Looks like we’ve got a real time machine on our hands, dude.”

“Surely not. After all, we’re not in a sci-fi movie…” He looked like he might faint any second now.

“Aijima,” Akashi said. “That might be a dangerous spot to be in when the time machine comes back.”

Aijima yelped and leaped backwards.

We all camped out at a safe distance from the spot where we thought the time machine would reappear. I was not planning on accidentally merging with Ozu into some sort of demonic human-Ozu hybrid like this was some sort of horror flick.

It was certainly a strange feeling. Higuchi and Hanuki and Ozu had disappeared from the world of today, and were now in the world of yesterday. That meant that there had been two copies of each of them running around this time yesterday.

“It feels sort of funny,” Akashi murmured. “Ozu and the others used the time machine today to go to yesterday. But at the point in time when they arrived in yesterday, we hadn’t even discovered the time machine.”

“Gives you the jitters, huh?”

“It really does.”

“What is all this business with the time machine, anyhow?” Aijima asked. “What was such a thing doing here?”

“How are we supposed to know?” I replied.

“How are you supposed to know? How are you supposed to know?” he repeated wildly. “And yet you use it with no concern whatsoever?”

“Dude, that’s what I’ve been saying,” Jōgasaki said wearily.

“Ah, ‘scuse me,” came a diffident voice from the end of the hall.

We all stopped talking at once and looked that way simultaneously. The person addressing us seemed a little intimidated. He looked like a real dweeb with his smooth, mushroom-like bowl cut, and his short-sleeved shirt tucked neatly into his trousers. It was Mr. Lame again.

Aijima addressed him as if they were already acquainted. “You again? What are you still doing here?”

“A friend of yours?” asked Akashi in surprise, but unexpectedly Aijima looked back in confusion.

“I introduced him when we met yesterday, did I not?”

“You did?”

“Ozu’s cousin, no?”

Needless to say we were all taken aback. Ozu had never so much breathed a word about this.

“You’re here to visit the school over summer break, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said, that’s not why I’m here.”

“Come now, of course it is. You said so yourself yesterday!”

“I’ve never seen you before in my life. And I’m not Ozu’s cousin, whoever he is.” What he said next was impossible to ignore. “After all, we’re not even from the same era.”

Not from the same era: the implication was immediately apparent.

Akashi shoved Aijima aside. “What does that mean?”

A knowing smile came to Mr. Lame’s face. “Now folks, don’t be alarmed by what I’m about to say.”

Then he frowned. “Huh?” he muttered in disbelief, jogging up to the pile of trash. “I don’t suppose any of you saw a strange machine here? It was about the size of a tatami mat, had a lever and a control panel…”

“You mean the time machine?” I asked.

His eyes grew wide. “You know about it?”

“You—you might say that…”

Mr. Lame beamed with pleasure. “That’s how I came here, you see. I’m from 25 years in the future!”

◯

“My name is Tamura,” Mr. Lame introduced himself politely. The way he spoke and acted seemed so innocent, which made sense given that he was a first year in college, albeit from 25 years in the future. Not only that, but he actually lived in the very same Shimogamo Yūsuisō, and even in the same room as me, room 209. The building was already a ruin, so to hear that it was still standing a quarter-century from now was quite good news, if a little hard to believe.

“Are time machines common in your era?” I asked, to which Tamura proudly puffed out his chest.

“No, not at all. We made it ourselves.”

“We?”

“Yes, the residents of Shimogamo Yūsuisō.”

In May 25 years from now, the landlady (still hale and hearty) had summoned all the residents to undertake a massive operation to clean out the storeroom on the second floor. After the operation was complete, they’d been having a celebration with the beer the landlady had paid them with when a grad student in the physics department started talking about how to make a time machine.

This grad student was always spouting some crackpot theory, to the point that he’d practically been banned from his own lab, but nevertheless he insisted that it was possible to construct a time machine. It was a tall tale to swallow, but the more he rambled the more excited everyone became, until at last they all agreed to give it a go.

Everyone spent their precious summer holiday running around gathering materials and fiddling with the parts under the grad student’s supervision, instead of going home like they ought to have done. I could go on about their travails—being abandoned by compatriots who chose love over friendship, having trouble scrounging up cash for the parts, being hounded by the landlady for rent, recruiting foreign grad students from the engineering school—but as these things have no relevance to our tale I shall omit the details.

On August 12th, after three months of blood, sweat, and tears, they finished building the time machine. And the person they chose to be the first pilot was none other than Tamura.

“None of them wanted to be the first person to take it for a spin. And, you know, I was the new blood.”

“So you mean you were a test subject, like Laika the space dog.”

“Exactly, exactly!”

Tamura didn’t seem to mind having been made into a guinea pig.

So it was that Tamura, the first time machine pilot in the history of humankind, arrived here in the apartments at 10 in the morning on August 12th, precisely 25 years earlier than he had departed.

It had been very quiet, which was appropriate considering that it was the morning after the all-night wake for the air conditioner. The few people who remained here had all been snoring like logs.

“I knocked on all the doors, but no one answered!” claimed Tamura. Now that he mentioned it, I seemed to remember having heard a knocking sound somewhere in that hazy realm between wakefulness and sleep.

“Yeah, that was my bad.”

“I was expecting more of a welcome, you know? But there wasn’t much I could do about it, so I decided to take a look outside. I was interested in what the Kyoto of 25 years ago was like. I’d just come back after walking around when I met you all earlier.”

“Why did you run away?” Akashi asked.

Tamura grinned dolefully and scratched his head. “Well you see, when I saw the Master I was just so shocked.”

“By Master, you mean Higuchi?”

“I thought he’d come here in a time machine, too. He still lives here in Shimogamo Yūsuisō 25 years from now…ah, maybe I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”

“Dude’s still here 25 years from now?” Jōgasaki snorted. “Unbelievable.”

According to Tamura, Higuchi Seitarō was still living in room 210, was referred to in hushed tones as the Fallen Tengu or the Guardian of the Tatami, and was revered as the most venerable student in this apartment. In other words, he hadn’t changed a bit.

“I just thought that he was repeating a year, so I wasn’t expecting to see him in this era too. He never said anything about this.”

“But why’d you have to run away?”

“Guess I just lost my head, haha,” Tamura chuckled. “I guess I do have that side of me, don’t I.”

“Shouldn’t we keep this from the Master?” Akashi asked. We all thought about it. Even if Higuchi Seitarō were to learn that his fate was to still be living in this apartment a quarter century hence, he’d probably do nothing more than stroke his chin and say, Well, isn’t that grand. Then again, it felt like meddling to tell him something that he hadn’t asked to know. We all agreed to keep it a secret from him.

“By the way, where is the Master?” inquired Tamura.

“Oh, he’s just, uh, gone to yesterday,” I told him.

“We used the time machine,” Akashi said. “I’m sorry, we don’t know it was yours.”

“Ah, I see. That makes sense.”

“I’m really very sorry for using it without asking.”

“Hey, it’s no skin off my nose.”

“But won’t people worry if you don’t come back soon?”

“Not to worry. It’s a time machine! All you’ve got to do is go back right after you left. That way, hardly any time will have gone by over there.”

“Can you even set the time of day on that machine?” I asked. If it had such a dial, I hadn’t seen it.

“Can’t you?” Tamura sounded surprised.

“There are only controls for year and day.”

“Well gosh, I hadn’t noticed that.” Tamura’s jaw hung open for a moment, before he bounced right back. “Welp, guess there’s no helping that.”

“You’re awfully casual about all this.”

“I guess I do have that side of me, don’t I, ha! I guess for now I’ll have to wait right here,” chuckled this lame time traveler from the future, plopping himself down on the sofa.

◯

It was quiet for some time. From far away I could hear the cries of the cicadas.

“‘S hot, isn’t it?” Tamura finally murmured, wiping away sweat with an arabesque-patterned handkerchief. His personality was really lacking in the futuristic-time-traveler department. There was no question that we all shared this impression, but Aijima in particular didn’t even try to hide his skepticism.

“You really are lame, aren’t you?”

“Am I really?”

“You don’t look like a time traveler. No, definitely not.”

“But I am one, don’t you see?”

Even the way he talked seemed slightly out-of-date, let alone his fashion sense.

As I stared at this decidedly un-futuristic time traveler, I began to think about the world of the future, 25 years from now. What was my life like? Assuming I was still alive I’d be halfway through my forties. I’d probably be a socially accomplished Renaissance man, with a wife and a kid and a respectable amount of life experience under my belt. That was all well and good, but the problem was that I couldn’t see how my current life, cooped up in my 4½ room, could possibly lead to that one. Of course, everything was Ozu’s fault.

“What’s the Kyoto of the future like?” asked Akashi.

“That’s a fine question,” replied Tamura, squinting into space. “It really is not so different. They still have the used book fair at Shimogamo Shrine, and the Kamo River and Mt. Hiei look just the same as ever. The Gozan no Okuribi is coming up soon, isn’t it? That’s the same for us, too.”

“That’s Kyoto for you,” I said.

“Ah, but there was one thing that brought a tear to my eye. There’s that bathhouse called Oasis across the Takano River, isn’t there? In my time, it’s turned into a convenience store. Gosh, how happy it made me to see the real thing with my own eyes! My old man used to go there a lot, see?”

“Your father lived in Kyoto?”

“That’s right,” said Tamura, leaning forward. “And that was right around this era, too!”

According to Tamura, he had only come to live in Shimogamo Yūsuisō because his father had picked it for him during registration. I could easily imagine how much more dilapidated this place would be in 25 years. As Tamura reluctantly stood at the entrance to Shimogamo Yūsuisō, his father had whispered but one thing in his ear.

“Sink or swim, kid.”

You had to admire the principle of it.

I thought about the shoe cubbies at the entrance, but I didn’t recall seeing the name Tamura there.

“He may have been living at a different apartment,” said Tamura. “Anyways, mom and pop must be hanging around somewhere nearby.”

“Just a second,” interrupted Akashi. “Your mother’s here too?”

“They met during their college days. But they’re always lying about all sorts of things, so I don’t know if that’s really what happened. So when I got in the time machine, I decided I’d come to this era. I wanted to find out how they really met.”

“Sounds interesting. Alright then, let’s go find your dad!”

Once again, it was Jōgasaki who poured cold water over the proceedings.

“Don’t do it. His parents catch one glimpse of lameass over here, they’ll probably swear off ever having a kid.”

“How could you even say that?” Even Tamura couldn’t help but get offended at that. “They’re my own parents! They’d never think something so awful!”

“Okay, look dude, you haven’t even been born yet. Your parents are in college, so they’re not even ready to think about having a kid. You wanna be a time traveler, you gotta have a sense of danger. You do something stupid and split your parents up, you’re gonna poof out of existence!”

“Me? Poof? But why?”

“You change the present, you change the future. Duh!”

Jōgasaki suddenly seemed to come to a horrible realization. “Hold up,” he muttered, staring into space. As I looked at him an ominous feeling began to spread through my chest.

Akashi suddenly jerked up. “The remote!”

That was where the ominous feeling came from.

Ozu and the others had gone back in the time machine to yesterday. If they retrieved the remote before it was broken, the flow of time would change. Today, which had come about as a result of the remote control being flooded in cola, would cease to exist, which meant that all of us here would also wink out of existence.

“We’re all going to disappear,” I stated.

“You don’t say!” Jōgasaki grabbed me by the collar. “This was all your idea, dumbass!”

“Yeah, but what am I supposed to do about it?”

“Hold on. That might not even be the end of it,” Jōgasaki muttered direly, thrusting me away. “Let’s say they get the remote. We don’t know what that’s gonna do to the timeline, but anything could happen. Say, getting the remote sets off a chain reaction of tiny changes that ends up getting the Ozu from yesterday killed in an accident. That means that Ozu died yesterday, so he never would have been able to get in the time machine and go back to yesterday. And that becomes a huge paradox, right? If Ozu couldn’t go back to yesterday, then he wouldn’t have died in the first place.”

Akashi frowned and murmured, “That is a paradox. It breaks the laws of space and time.”

I finally understood what Jōgasaki had been getting at all along.

◯

I’d like my readers to think back to the movie, Slayers of the Bakumatsu.

The changes in the timeline brought about by the time traveling college student Ginga Susumu eventually resulted in the catastrophic destruction of the entire universe. At first glance it seemed like a throwaway plot twist, but that was the logical conclusion all our theorizing had led us to.

Let us say that the Meiji Restoration was thwarted by the actions of Ginga Susumu. In that case, he never would have had that accident during one of his experiments and traveled back in time, invalidating the premise that he had brought the Meiji Restoration to a halt. If we took this reductio ad absurdum further, the logical conclusion was that it was impossible to build a time machine. But the film relied on the premise that it was, indeed, possible—otherwise, there wouldn’t have been a plot to film.

How then to resolve the paradox of a time machine?

Akashi and I had debated hotly about this point. I will spare the details, but the conclusions we came to are as follows:

Time machines exist
Time machines fundamentally bring about paradoxes
Therefore the universe we live in (in which time machines exist) is completely broken
This was the logic that had led to the tragic outcome of Slayers of the Bakumatsu. Even if the reasoning was sound, it did force one to question whether it was good filmmaking, which was why I had asked Akashi so many times whether she was sure about making it.

It was easy to see the frightening parallels with the situation we currently found ourselves in. True, as far as scale was concerned the Meiji Restoration and an air conditioner remote were orders of magnitude apart. But the possibility of bringing about a fundamental paradox remained the same.

The universe now teetered on the brink of annihilation.

◯

Jōgasaki had gone white as a sheet. “That’s why I told you not to mess with it!”

“What is everyone so worried about?” Aijima sniffed. “It’s not even a real time machine, anyways.”

“Shut up, just shut up!” Jōgasaki roared, cowing Aijima into silence.

“This certainly seems like a pickle,” observed Tamura.

The way he said this, as if none of this was his concern, rubbed me the wrong way. “Shouldn’t you be a little more worried about this?” I said reproachfully.

He looked bewildered. “Why, I’m not even from this era.” He didn’t seem to be aware that he was the source of all these spacetime woes. All I could say is that he was severely lacking in the ethics department when it came to the spacetime continuum.

He continued, “I only came here in the time machine to observe this era. It wasn’t me that decided to take it for a joyride, right? Why is this my fault?”

I had to admit he had a point.

All those discussions with Akashi, and yet when faced with a real time machine I hadn’t stopped to think for a moment, blinded by my own greed. I had placed the entire cosmos in peril, all for the sake of a single remote control. It wasn’t Tamura who lacked ethics, it was me.

“I don’t think we should give up just yet,” Akashi said calmly. “Once Ozu gets back with the remote, we’ll go right back to replace it. It only got soaked with cola after you all came back from the bathhouse, which if I’m not mistaken was just past 6. If we can replace the remote before then without being seen, then everything will be back the way it was.”

But Ozu and the others didn’t come back. The minutes ticked steadily by. It was quiet, as if we were awaiting the end of the world, and the surroundings began to feel like they were frail as glass.The sultry heat of the apartment, the tinkling of the wind chime, the faraway cries of the cicadas: none of it felt real.

I glanced at Akashi. She was sitting up, her back straight, staring resolutely at the spot where the time machine was supposed to arrive. As usual, there wasn’t a single bead of sweat on her face. If the universe was destroyed, this singular individual, too, would disappear.

Not thinking twice I called out to her.

“Akashi!”

The very moment she turned to look, a sound of thunder reverberated through the hallway. Thinking that the Ozu expedition had finally returned, we all rushed over to the time machine, only to stare at each other, aghast. The time machine was empty.

“But why?” Akashi murmured. “Did something happen over there?”

Looking at the seat I noticed a sheet of paper stuck there. On it was written, in a hand which resembled the unintelligible scribblings of a tengu, the following message:

 

Come join the fun
 

Higuchi Seitarō