As the sun began to set, I got on my bike and began pedaling.
The final checkpoint was near Nagato's apartment complex, the long bench inside the park.
Inside the dim, empty park, the bench that was brightly illuminated by the street lamps was empty. Even after parking my bike and walking into the park, there was not a single person in sight.
I sat on the icy-cold bench and said towards the air,
"Are you there, Asahina-san?"
A rustling noise was heard from the bushes behind the bench, and the person I was waiting for walked around the bench and made her appearance,
"Is it okay for me to sit down?"
Of course it is, we may even chat for a long while.
"Hee hee, I'm afraid I might have to make things brief."
Asahina-san's (big) elegantly beautiful figure was now sitting on the empty space beside me. Wearing winter attire, Asahina-san was no different from anyone else, save that frost-melting beauty of hers.
After inhaling the cold air of winter, I breathed out some white vapors and said,
"Can you explain everything now?"
"Now where should I start?"
"You can start from the first prank which the little Asahina-san and I had to carry out like an errand."
The prank where a poor man had to go to hospital for getting his foot injured after kicking a can that was nailed to the ground. It now felt like ages ago when I mentioned it again.
"Was that really necessary?"
Asahina-san tilted her head and smiled softly,
"Kyon-kun, please think carefully. Whether it be a few years ago or a few decades ago, if you could go back to the past..."
She carefully chose her words,
"And witness history in the making. Yet when that history is different from what you remember, what would you do?"
"What do you mean by 'different?'" I didn't understand what she was getting at.
"Let's say if you went back to one year ago today, what were you doing then?"
Probably shut up in my room playing video games. I don't remember getting giddy over someone sending me chocolates then.
Asahina-san nodded her head slightly,
"Now try to imagine a situation that's different from that version of the past. When you travel back to your home one year ago, but find that you weren't living there. Instead of your sister or your parents, the place was now occupied by another family. Even your relatives have become different from the ones which you knew, living a totally different life in another place..."
How is that possible?
"When, after traveling to the past we find out that history is slightly different than it was as we knew it, do you know what we from the future would think? If every moment in history depended on interference from the future, then our future would never be able to exist if we did not interfere, and everything would change..."
Asahina-san's voice began to stray away, as though feeling nostalgic about something.
"A past where someone dies when they're supposed to live; or where two people have never even seen each other when they're supposed to be good friends; if we leave these situations alone, then our future would never arrive..."
Her lonely smile was now cast in a lonely shroud,
"I'll get to the point. The person who got injured kicking the empty can that you placed will meet a certain lady in the hospital. Afterwards, they get married and have children, and pass the torch to the next generation. This was all because he went to the hospital that day, otherwise those two would never have met in their whole lives."
An image of the man smiling uncomfortably while looking up at me and Asahina-san flashed before my eyes.
"The memory device was the same, it was necessary to deliver the data in that condition. Someone may have stumbled on similar data by coincidence, only this coincidence didn't exist in the past, perhaps it was erased. That was why we had to deliver the data ourselves, and try our best to make it look like a coincidence."
"Someone picks up a memory device from a flower bed, and just happens to send it to someone else at the right address." - She continued to explain.
I didn't know how to respond. That sure wasn't coincidental, not to mention the freak that appeared then, and handed the memory device to us. If he had decided to create trouble, then how would things turn out?
"He wouldn't dare, that piece of data means everything to the existence of his future as well. That was why he came to this time period,"
Asahina-san elaborated in simple terms.
"For us future time-travelers, that is a predetermined event; but for you and the recipient of the data, it's a coincidence. That's how time works,"
"..."
I feel a bit dizzy, maybe it's because the dialog had broken through the boundaries of my comprehension with so much ease.
"It was also coincidence that the boy had seen the turtle. He will always remember the little turtle he obtained from a young man and young woman, as well as the ripples caused by the young man dropping the turtle into the water, and how the ripples slowly disappear as they dispersed from the center. As turtles live very long lives, every time he picks up the turtle he would always think of the scene he saw then. Though there were many other factors, but it all came from this event, which would inspire him to formulate a set of basic theories."
Could it be... while feeling dizzy, my imagination began to go wild. Perhaps that boy would one day become the inventor of the time machine, and the one who inspired him to think about the turtle turns out to be me, causing changes in the future. Thanks to my unconscious interference, that boy and the future of this world has...
A memory from a corner of my brain was suddenly awoken. It was a few days before the school festival, something that Nagato said to me at a time when I was mightily busy while shooting the climax of the movie,
In order to stabilize the future, it is necessary to input the correct value. Asahina Mikuru's mission is to adjust that variable to an acceptable value.
Now was not the time to be feeling giddy about how good my memory was. The ambiguous phrase "in order to stabilize the future"... "There could only be one future, whether it was stable or not, right?" I had long since abandoned that idea.
Could the future be unstable?
In other words, could there exist other futures apart from Asahina-san's future?
It would make sense if that's the case, but only a little. If the future really diverged into many different branches, then there once existed two futures where the boy survives in one and is now dead in the other, it's just that I've killed off the possibility of the latter from ever happening.
That means thanks to my help, I had destroyed one future completely.
I didn't know if that was the correct answer. Even though this deduction was so weak that if I were to say "Here's a problem for our readers to discuss", I'd probably be condemned as an idiot; but it wasn't easy trying to dispel a wild thought that I had just formulated. When I thought about this, I just didn't know what to say. Was there more?
"The divergence points are mostly concentrated in this time period, though a lot would end up the same, anyway; but the things that you have done the past few days, if not done, would create divergences that would lead to all sorts of futures..."
Asahina-san's charming voice began to grow weak,
"Very soon you will be faced with a great divergence, a choice that would cause a great change to the future... If you chose the other side, then it... um... it wouldn't be good for our future."
I suddenly felt stiff for no reason, and I had wanted to turn and face Asahina-san. Damn, why can't I turn my face!?
"But it doesn't matter, because I can trust you, right?"
My consciousness began to blur, a familiar image begins to form in my dizzy mind, two curvy lines criss-crossing each other. The figure on the white board rotated in my mind, and in this whirlpool I saw two spots marked "X". There were two X's, that's what Koizumi said.
The past can never be completely erased. After being amended, history would simply be rewritten over its original time-space.
This triggered another memory - we had experienced being in that never-ending two weeks of summer vacation for thousands of times already.
Except for Nagato, the rest of us only remembered what happened in the final two weeks, the previous thousands of times were as though they never existed. Then the answer became obvious.
The past can be erased, in fact it wasn't a question of whether it existed or not. Even if it did, it's as good as non-existent if no one had noticed it. So in order to achieve that...
One would need to erase all memories of that past.
If all my memories of my experience between December 18th and 21st, as well as leaping back three years ago and getting stabbed by Asakura were all erased, what would have happened to me when I woke up in the hospital bed? I would probably have believed what Koizumi had told me - that I merely tripped down the stairs and knocked my head, then lain unconscious for three days.
Nagato the Literature Club member, Asahina-san the Calligraphy Club member, Haruhi with her surprisingly fitting ponytail, and Koizumi as a completely normal person. If my memories of these people were each erased, then one would not have to worry about any time loops or traveling back in time to fix history.
Yet, things just wouldn't fit that way.
In the early morning of the 18th, after being attacked by Asakura, as I came close to death, I saw myself from the future. I realized then that I had to go back to that time. The only person who could provide a remedy to the astray Nagato was Nagato from three years ago, and the person to execute that remedy was the Nagato from January 2nd. Only these were essential.
After that, time was rewritten...
I felt myself shivering. Haruhi knew absolutely nothing about this, neither did Taniguchi or Kunikida. The only ones who knew about this were me, Nagato, Asahina-san, and Koizumi who had heard about it.
If that's the case, it's not impossible that I could already be in Haruhi's position. I might or might not be aware that history was being rewritten; if I did not possess the original memories, then the "truth" would never exist.
Besides, it's possible that while I was worrying about all these considerations in the present, my past could be rewritten in another time period. My present self would cease to exist, my past self would move towards another future, and this was all because of the alteration in that time period.
"Erase all your memories concerning this incident."
"No one can guarantee that something that hasn't happened would ever occur."
The Asahina-san from a week later once guaranteed that she has never seen herself, so I went to great lengths to make sure they never see each other. If they really do meet, I don't suppose much harm could be done.
That's because the problem could be solved simply by erasing the present Asahina-san's memory, so that when she travels back to the past a week ago she wouldn't have remembered a thing. So it doesn't make much of a difference whether they met or not.
I felt a surge of negative feelings coming from my chest, this being the same feeling that I vented against the Integrated Data Sentient Entity when lying in the hospital bed last time, but this time those feelings were towards Asahina-san (big).
She had been toying with her past self, that is Asahina-san (small), in the palm of her hand. Making this Asahina-san play the role of a clumsy and unreliable cute elder-sister. Yeah, I know you had no choice, but to allow your past self to experience history as you had remembered it. This must be what Koizumi was saying about the future doing something about the past. But couldn't you come up with something better?
The curse that was constraining my head was finally released, I nearly spent an hour just trying to get out of this dizziness. Yet by the time I wanted to say what I was feeling, I found there was no one standing beside me.
Asahina-san had vanished into thin air just next to me, only I remained sitting on the bench under the dimly lit street lamps. However, in Asahina-san's place on the bench was a small box.
It was a delicately wrapped, square-shaped box with a ribbon on top.
It even came with a card. Placing it under the light, I found a single line that said, "Happy Valentine."
A box of chocolate that could be found anywhere, without any flavors or styles from the future. Are chocolate recipes the same throughout the ages? Or did she make this chocolate according to the recipes of this time period?
"But Asahina-san..."
You can't just keep me quiet like that. Yeah, you did make an exception and provided information, but that's not good enough. Leaving aside the fact that you said nothing about you getting kidnapped, but you were obviously hiding the truth behind Haruhi's treasure hunting and the gourd-shaped rock on purpose! That's right, there's something fishy about this. Haruhi could have buried the chocolates anywhere, for what reason must it be buried by that gourd-shaped rock? And why did it have to be moved in the first place?
Could this all be within the calculations of Asahina-san (big)? Has she clearly listed everything that I would do in her pre-determined list?
"Everything is now over..."
Looks like it's still too early for that. There'll come a day when I would come to this place again, I might very well bring everyone from the SOS Brigade then, so you'd better come up with a satisfactory explanation for Koizumi and Haruhi! I'm just a mere observer, after all.
