Editing City Series:Volume7 Layer 1 (section)

===Record 92: But I More or Less Understand===

'''11/05/1998

'''6:07

I was really tired on the morning of the school festival’s fifth day. I was glad to see the sun rising in the clear morning sky when I looked out the lobby window. After preparing the night before, we had played some late-night gamble bungee. It had been cloudy then, so it had been a mystery whether or not the sun would actually rise in the morning sky.

I sipped sleepily at my can of coffee as I looked around the large lobby.

The tile-floored lobby was fifteen meters in each direction and it was filled with attractions for the school festival. I occasionally saw some music or video on the way to their attraction. Their melody, light, or tail would be wagging as they crawled along the floor and went outside. They had it tough so early in the morning.

I noticed a metallic sound sitting next to me on the sofa.

It looked up at me greedily, so I smacked its nose, which opened its mouth with a single sound. I poured the rest of my coffee into its mouth. Once it finished drinking, it crawled out while making a high-pitched metallic sound.

I didn’t know which class it belonged to, but it seemed to have a somewhat Western flavor.

Then I heard a loud sound outside.

I looked up to the top of Building 2 and saw the Professor and the science club desperately pulling on a rope dangling from the sky.

But the rope seemed really tough, so a few of the students in lab coats were dangling down from it.

As the rope gradually lowered, the sky turned to night starting from the east. The sun descended as well.

''Oh, c’mon. I just drank my morning coffee.

As soon as I left the lobby to get after them, the sky pulled back with a great force.

By the time I nodded to myself, I was sitting cross-legged on Building 2’s roof. Bicycles, trees, cases of beer, small stones, and other objects were scattered around me. The Professor was right in front of me and he pushed up his glasses.

“Yeah, sorry about that. There seem to have been some side effects.”

“You were trying to turn back time because the Science Research Club wasn’t ready yet, weren’t you?”

“That’s because your gamble bungee took up too much time. I’ll pay back the kindness eventually.”

I sighed and looked up at the lab coat students dangling from the sky.

“So why are you reenacting The Spider’s Thread to buy time?”

“An important material fled from us in fear, even though we’re so harmless. We searched and searched but couldn’t find it.”

“…Was it a metallic noise?”

“This sounds promising. Where did you see it? If you don’t spill the beans, something incredible might happen to you.”

“It left the lobby. It wasn’t very sharp, so it might be near Building 3.”

When the Professor heard me, he instructed some nearby lab coat students to head out. Then I spoke to him.

“You should probably prepare some green tea…no, some bonito soba broth or some soy sauce would be better.”

“Why?”

“I gave it coffee.”

“What have you done!? …Hey, add three more people to the rope! We need to pull even harder!”

'''Author Comment:

The atmosphere of the early morning cafeteria or lobby comes from my life at college. There was a tacit understanding you would spend the night when preparing for the school festival, so the mornings tended to be like this.

I was the head of the art club and I often spent the night during that time of year.