Chapter 2 - "School Trip"
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The rest of the morning dragged by in a blur of lectures I didn't pay attention to. Math, history, English—they all blended together into a soup of boredom and existential dread.
Lunch was the usual affair. I bought a melon bread from the cafeteria and ate it on the roof by myself while scrolling through my phone. Social media was full of people having fun, going places, doing things. Meanwhile, I was sitting on a concrete ledge, picking crumbs out of my lap.
"Maybe I should get a cat," I muttered to myself. "At least then I'd have someone to talk to."
The afternoon classes were somehow even more tedious than the morning ones. By the time the final bell rang, I was ready to go home, boot up my PC, and lose myself in the digital void for the rest of the evening.
But no. The field trip. Right.
We all piled onto buses and headed to the National Temporal Research Laboratory, which turned out to be a sleek, modern building on the outskirts of the city. It looked like something out of a sci-fi movie—all glass and steel and probably funded by some government black budget.
"Stay together, everyone," Nakamura-sensei called as we filed off the buses.
I immediately started plotting my escape route.
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The tour began in a massive lobby with high ceilings and holographic displays showing timelines and equations that made my head hurt just looking at them. A scientist in a white lab coat—a woman in her thirties with sharp eyes and an even sharper voice—greeted us.
"Welcome to the NTRL," she said. "My name is Dr. Fujikawa, and today I'll be showing you the cutting edge of temporal physics research."
I was about to tune out completely when I noticed them—another school group standing on the opposite side of the lobby. Their uniforms were different from ours, some prestigious private academy judging by the fancy crests on their blazers.
And then I saw her.
She stood slightly apart from her group, near one of the holographic displays, her attention focused on the swirling equations and timelines. Her silver-white hair caught the artificial lighting, making it shimmer like moonlight on water. It was tied back in a simple ponytail, a few loose strands framing a face that was...
I blinked.
Okay, no. Stop. Don't do this, Kaito.
But I couldn't help it. My eyes stayed fixed on her.
She wasn't like the popular girls at my school—the ones who wore their skirts too short and laughed too loud and knew they were pretty. There was something different about her. Something quiet. Her posture was straight, almost rigid, like she was carrying something heavy on her shoulders. Her expression was serious as she studied the display, her dark eyes moving across the projections with genuine interest.
She pushed a strand of that silvery hair behind her ear, and I felt something stupid flutter in my chest.
"Great," I muttered under my breath. "Now I'm developing a crush on a random girl I'll never talk to. Peak performance, Kaito."
But I kept looking.
There was something almost... sad about her? No, not sad exactly. Lonely, maybe. Like she was surrounded by people but still somehow separate from them.
I knew that feeling.
"Is everyone paying attention?" Dr. Fujikawa's sharp voice snapped me back to reality.
I tore my gaze away from the silver-haired girl and tried to focus on whatever the scientist was saying.
She launched into an explanation about time dilation, wormholes, and something called the "Novikov self-consistency principle," which I'm pretty sure was just fancy talk for "time travel might be possible but also it's really complicated."
I tuned her out after about thirty seconds.
Instead, I focused on the vending machine I'd spotted in the corner. It had those fancy chocolate bars—the expensive ones with the gold wrappers. If I could just slip away for a minute...
My eyes drifted back to the other school group. The silver-haired girl was still there, still studying the display like she was trying to memorize every detail.
What was her deal? Was she into science? A nerd? No, that didn't seem right. There was something too intense about the way she looked at those equations, like she was searching for something.
"And now," Dr. Fujikawa said, her voice rising with excitement, "we'll take you to see our most significant achievement—the Prototype Temporal Displacement Device."
Everyone perked up at that.
Even I had to admit, "time machine" sounded cooler than "vending machine."
We were led down a series of sterile white hallways, passing through security checkpoints and laboratories filled with blinking machines and people in lab coats typing furiously on computers. The other school group followed behind us, and I found myself glancing back every few seconds, trying to catch another glimpse of that silver hair.
Finally, we entered a massive chamber.
And there it was.
The time machine.
It was... honestly kind of underwhelming. I'd expected something out of a movie—glowing portals, spinning rings, maybe some lightning effects. But this was just a large circular platform surrounded by metallic rings and covered in cables and sensors. It hummed faintly, like a really expensive refrigerator.
"This device," Dr. Fujikawa explained, "can theoretically create a localized temporal distortion field, allowing for forward displacement through time."
"So... you can go to the future?" someone asked.
"In theory, yes. We haven't tested it with a living subject yet, but our simulations have been promising."
I stared at the machine, feeling a strange mix of skepticism and curiosity.
What would I even do if I could go to the future? Would my life be any better? Or would I still be the same loser, just with better technology?
"Alright, let's move to the observation deck," Dr. Fujikawa said, gesturing toward a staircase.
That's when it happened.
A loud alarm blared through the facility. Red lights flashed along the walls.
"What's going on?" Nakamura-sensei asked, his voice tight with panic.
"Everyone remain calm!" Dr. Fujikawa shouted, but she didn't sound calm at all. "We have a—"
She didn't finish her sentence.
Because that's when the explosion happened.
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