Chapter 9: The Jump

Kameyama-san’s father was a physicist.
Apparently, his research dealt with spacetime.
Which meant he might actually be able to solve my problem.
I talked to Kameyama-san and had him introduce me to his father.
Naturally, he was surprised.
And confused.
But in the end, he agreed.
Apparently people like me showed up once in a while, because his father was famous enough to be the kind of scientist who could win a Nobel Prize.
I also tried casually asking Kameyama-san whether he happened to be some kind of spacetime agent.
That only confused him even more.
In this world line, he wasn’t an agent.
So he really was different from my Hiroki.
The laboratory was behind a shutter labeled:
First Spacetime Laboratory
Honestly, warehouse would have been more accurate.
It was a huge, bare, industrial-looking space.
Inside stood several enormous machines so tall I had to crane my neck to see the tops of them.
I had no idea what any of them were for.
The whole place reminded me a little of a museum.
There was even a crane mounted on the ceiling for lifting heavy equipment.
“So. You’re the girl who said she wanted to cross world lines, are you?”
Kameyama-san’s father had white hair, wore a lab coat, and looked exactly like the sort of person you would expect to call a scientist.
His back was slightly hunched, but he seemed incredibly energetic.
A huge contrast to my classmates, who were young and still somehow looked exhausted every single day.
“Yes, but... um, why am I sitting in this machine?”
The chair I was sitting in was built into a massive device.
The moment I entered the lab, I had been told, Please sit here.
I had thought it was strange.
But apparently not strange enough to stop me from sitting down without much suspicion.
I was already regretting that decision.
A safety bar like the one on a roller coaster had locked my body into the chair.
I grabbed it and shook it.
It didn’t budge at all.
“W-What are you going to do to me?!”
“Why, send you across a world line, of course.”
Wait.
Hold on.
My brain had not caught up.
Was he telling me they had already figured out how to cross world lines...
and I was currently sitting inside the experimental machine that did it?
“It is still in the experimental stage, though.”
“Could you stop calling me ‘you’ like that...? Wait, what? Is this even safe...?”
“Ho ho ho.”
He smiled and laughed his way out of answering.
“This is what people call human experimentation, isn’t it?! I’ll report you to... whoever I’m supposed to report this to!”
“The academic community is quite supportive.”
“What kind of academic community supports human experimentation?!”
“Ha ha ha. Half of that was a joke.”
“Only half?!”
I wanted all of it to be a joke.
I looked toward Kameyama-san.
There was obviously something deeply wrong with this situation.
He just shrugged.
“Hamori-san, it’s fine. I’ve tried it before too, so just go along with it.”
“You can’t talk about crossing world lines like it’s some casual favor!”
Had this old man used his own son as a test subject?
Wasn’t that way too mad scientist?
With a heavy clunk, the machine activated and the chair began to move.
It rotated forty-five degrees, then stopped.
A rail-like structure stretched out in front of me.
It looked like a roller coaster.
Some instinct told me that I was probably about to travel along it.
The rail was surrounded by an enclosure whose inner walls were lit with LEDs.
It looked like some kind of tunnel.
“I haven’t even agreed to participate in an experiment yet! We haven’t even properly introduced ourselves!”
“You may call me Doctor. Now then, do you understand what it means to cross a world line?”
“Wait, you’re seriously going to start lecturing me while I’m strapped into this thing?”
The Doctor started talking before I could stop him.
I had been planning to marry Hiroki someday, but now I was beginning to worry about what his relatives might be like.
“There was once a man who dreamed he was a butterfly. The dream was extraordinarily vivid. When he awoke, he could no longer tell whether he had been a man dreaming he was a butterfly... or whether he was now a butterfly dreaming he was a man.”
“Could we maybe talk about reality instead of dreams?”
“FOOL!”
“Too loud!”
I covered my ears.
The safety bar got in the way, so I couldn’t react fast enough.
For a second, I thought he had blown holes through my eardrums.
“I am explaining something important!”
“I can’t absorb anything you’re saying under these circumstances!”
“To cross a world line is nothing more than choosing a new dream to observe.”
“Hm...?”
Apparently he actually was saying something important.
“Of course, moving through time also means moving through space. But the thing that observes and recognizes such movement is the individual brain. And the individual brain is often distorted. Misaligned. Human society is what corrects those distortions.”
“R-Right...”
I could tell it sounded important.
I just had no idea what he meant.
“Then one might also ask this: Is human society what makes a dream into reality? I say no.”
The Doctor declared:
“Attachment. That is what does it. Dreams and reality are fundamentally the same thing. The one to which you are more strongly attached is simply the one you choose to call reality.”
That part, at least, made a little sense.
I had been extremely attached to my first kiss.
I had thought of it as something I would remember for the rest of my life.
Even after a year, the sensation of that kiss had never faded.
I still remembered it.
That was why I was trying to cross world lines in the first place.
My reality was on the other side.
Was that what he meant...?
“That chair will take you toward the place to which your attachment is strongest.”
“Attachment...”
A warning alarm began beeping from the equipment the Doctor was operating.
“It appears we are short on time.”
“You turned it on without asking me, and now we’re short on time?!”
“The machine can only be activated during a limited window once per year. The coordinates must be aligned according to the Earth’s rotation and revolution.”
“...Wait. Can I actually come back?”
If the machine could only operate at certain times, then it would also need to be active when I tried to return.
The Doctor answered with a smile.
“The academic community is quite supportive.”
“LET ME OUT!”
What kind of lunatic strapped someone he had just met into a machine without even knowing whether she could come back?
“In the worst case, you may die.”
“See?! I knew it!”
“However, this young woman with her whole future ahead of her seems quite determined to reach another world line.”
“Ugh...”
He was right.
I wanted to see Hiroki.
I would do anything if it meant seeing him again.
Anything if it meant becoming his girlfriend.
That feeling had not changed.
“Now! Shout the thing you are attached to!”
“What?! Why do I have to do that?!”
“I told you. This spacetime transfer device travels toward the thing a person is attached to. By putting it into words, you make that attachment definite within yourself. Stronger. Therefore, you must shout it!”
“Th-That’s incredibly embarrassing!”
How did things end up like this?
But if I had to do it...
then I’d do it.
It was fine.
My feelings were real.
There was nothing false about them.
I had already learned over the past year how painful it was to be stranded on this world line, unable to see Hiroki.
Stranded.
That was exactly it.
I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be here.
I wanted to see him.
I wanted to see him right now.
That feeling alone could carry me anywhere.
“If you truly cannot do this, I can still let you out right now.”
“No. I’m going. Please let me go.”
I took a deep breath.
Filled my lungs completely.
And shouted louder than I ever had in my life.
“I LOVE HIROKIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!”
“BEGIN THE EXPERIMENT!”
With a violent BANG, the chair shot forward.
My head and back slammed against the seat as my entire body was pinned down.
“Ghh—!”
The machine accelerated through the tunnel.
Within moments, we had already traveled farther than the dimensions of the laboratory should have allowed.
The world in front of me began to distort.
The white LED lights lining the tunnel shifted into rainbow colors.
Even the safety bar at the edge of my vision changed into strange psychedelic shades.
“S-Stop...”
The acceleration continued.
I could barely force my voice out.
And even then, it wasn’t reaching anyone.
It simply scattered into the air.
Assuming there even was air here anymore.
Shouldn’t they have put me in some kind of spacesuit?
Wasn’t there a special suit for dealing with G-forces?
Wasn’t that something people wore?
I had imagined something more like the time machine from that robotic-cat cartoon.
Something relaxed.
Something gentle.
Reality was more like a roller coaster whose launch acceleration never stopped.
And it was still getting faster.
My consciousness began to fade.
Blood was being forced down into my lower body.
My brain wasn’t getting enough oxygen.
I tried to breathe.
I couldn’t even tell if I was actually getting any air.
Every breath came out shallow.
“H-Hiroki...”
The last thing I thought of was his face.

When I came to, I was lying on the floor of a school hallway.
“Nngh...”
The linoleum cooled my cheek.
No one was around.
Evening sunlight streamed through the windows and fell across my body.
Still half asleep, I stared at the window and tried to remember what I had been doing.
I felt like I had been dreaming for quite a long time.
But what had the dream been about?
More importantly—
why was I sleeping here?
Then the memories suddenly rushed back.
Had that really been a dream?
Or reality...?
At the same time, my mind snapped fully awake.
“W-What time am I in?!”
I looked into a nearby classroom and checked the calendar.
The date written on the board was one year ago.
The day Hiroki and I kissed.
My heart slammed against my chest.
I had made it back.
“Hiroki...!”
I started running without even thinking.
I could finally see him.
Just thinking about it made my chest feel like it might burst.
I ran all the way down the hallway.
There wasn’t another person anywhere.
Where exactly had that place been when we kissed?
It had looked like a classroom.
But it had also felt like some kind of separate space.
Something so strange it barely seemed to belong to this world.
I glanced outside.
Debris was falling upward into the sky.
The same scene as before.
I couldn’t contain the pounding in my chest.
I reached for the door to my classroom—
then stopped.
Well, technically it wasn’t my classroom yet.
At this point in time, it belonged to the third-years.
I quickly fixed my badly messed-up hair with my fingers as best I could.
Then I peered through the glass.
Someone was waiting inside.
A figure standing with his back to me, looking out the window.
The boy I had spent so long watching.
The boy I had wanted to see.
He was there.
I opened the door.
““Kameyama-kun...!””
Something felt wrong.
Our voices had overlapped.
It was as if another version of my own voice had spoken from somewhere else.
Naturally, I turned toward it.
There was another me standing there.
And she was staring at me too.