Trapped in a Strange New World
Steins;Gate
Chapter One

2012.07.21 - 7:45 AM JST
Saturday

The morning sun slowly crept onto the surface of my eyelids as I laid in bed after a rough sleep the previous night. A few minutes later I finally built up the energy and willpower to open my eyes to the outside world, just to get assaulted by the same blinding light that was responsible for waking me up in the first place. Thankfully, it only took only a few seconds for my eyesight to adjust to this over abundance of sunlight. This revealed the bedroom of my Tokyo apartment. I rented this place from time to time as my stays here in Japan became longer and more permanent as time went on. It wasn't quite as nice as a hotel, but it made much more economic sense. It was at about this time when that major headache first hit me. The pain felt strangely familiar… I just couldn't place it. Fearing what could have happened, I tried thinking back to the day before. My memory seemed to cut off at about 8 PM. My spine shook with terror.

"No… Okabe didn't get me drunk did he…?" I muttered this thought under my breath. I never even considered this a threat before. I clenched my left hand into an iron fist. "That man… that… that… IDIOT!" I yelled at the top of my lungs.

I swiftly got out of bed and pulled out my cell phone. My plan initially was to have a good long chat with Mr. El Psy Kongroo and give him a piece of my mind… while also hopefully scaring him half to death in the process. I went ahead and opened my contacts list to call Okabe and froze at what I saw. Right at the top of the list, it read "Papa" in big bold capital letters. I continued to stare at my phone is disbelief. I hated my father so much to the degree that I never actually kept his number on my phone. It was a simple act of repulsion. Even under the influence of alcohol, I am under the firm belief that I would pass out long before I would become stupid enough to do something like this. I did memorize his cell number at one point in case of an emergency. I still remember it all these years later. However, the sad truth is that man is the last person I'd call in any such situation.

After I calmed down a bit, I had some time to think more clearly. I picked up my phone once more and spent a good twenty minutes simply browsing the enormous collection of names and numbers. Things got weird very quickly. There were plenty of people missing from the list that should be there as well as people added to the list that I don't remember ever meeting. I also managed to find a few of the lab members in my contacts too. This included Okabe. I sighed in relief when I saw this. Clearly, everything wasn't what it seemed. At this point in time, it appeared to be a very likely possibility that I had somehow landed in another worldline. The headache helped support this theory. I just have no idea how this happened as according to Okabe, the Phone Wave got disassembled almost two years ago. Regardless, this certainly did look like an alternate worldline. If this is true, I needed all the help I could get. However, this good news about Okabe failed to fully free me from the uneasy feelings I was still experiencing. I scrolled my phone cursor back up to the top of the list to check on something that had caught my eye. Unsurprisingly, it was still there. In the third contact slot, the name "Violet" was displayed. What made this such a big deal is that as a general rule I usually try to organize the first ten entries of my contacts list in order of convenience. The more frequency I have to call someone, the higher up I put that person on the list. Most often this category includes some close friends as well as my Mom and maybe the occasional coworker. This is why I felt so weird seeing this. I had literally no idea who on earth this could be referring to. I don't think I've even met anyone with that name before and if I did it was in one of those short flyby conversations you completely forget five minutes afterwards. At least I knew who my father was, regardless of how little we talked. This is why in the strangest way, I felt awfully tempted to give this "Violet" person a call. I mean, I have her phone number right in front of me. It wouldn't be that hard. All I have to do is press talk. What's the worst thing that could happen?

After over five minutes of arguing with myself over the pros and cons regarding this decision, I finally had enough and just pressed the button to start the call. The other phone rang for a few seconds before the person on the other end picked up. An enthusiastic female voice then began speaking over the phone.
Could this be her?

"Hey, Kurisu! What's up?" Violet spoke in perfect English with a clear American accent. Despite her English name, this was something I wasn't really expecting from a Japanese cell phone number. The surprise threw off me slightly causing my voice to become a bit weak and shaky. Since she used my name, I decided to reply using hers.

"W-well not much, Violet." I said crossing my fingers that I didn't sound too suspicious. "I-Is there anything wrong with giving you a call once in awhile to see how you're doing?"

I silently cursed myself for saying something so dumb and cliche. I don't know anything about Violet other than her name and that could be just a nickname or something. I don't even know how close our relationship is. Why did I think this was a good idea? I could hear Violet sigh with one heavy exhale before speaking again. I braced myself for her response.

"Not much I guess…" She said with a more serious tone. "We do call each other quite often. It's just rather rare I get to hear from you on a Saturday morning… at quarter after eight no less."

Wait… how the heck does Violet know anything about my Friday night sleeping habits? Only my parents are aware of this stuff. Exactly how close are we? Childhood friends or something? Did we have some kind of sleepover sometime in the past? I decided to stop thinking so hard. I needed to play along with this for now.

"Right… I am a bit of a sleepy head on weekends." I admitted.

"Exactly." Violet so bluntly put it. "Look I would love to talk more, but you kinda called me at a bad time… I start work in under five minutes, you know?"

"Really? I'm so sorry about that. We can end our conversation right here if you like."

"I think it would be the best if we did that. On a slightly different note, I would really enjoy the opportunity to see you again. These phone calls are nice, but it's not the quite same as talking in person."

"Okay… where do you want to meet up?"

"If I remember correctly, there's a MgRonalds a few blocks away from your apartment. Would you be able to make there for say around noon?"

I knew which restaurant she was referring to. Truly it wasn't a terrible distance away, especially for Japanese standards. I blindly agreed.

"Yeah. I don't see any problems. That should work."

"Fantastic!" Violet bounced back to her previous happy state from when she first picked up. After that, there were a few seconds of silence before she continued speaking. "Wow it's 8:17 already, I really need to go now." She said with a touch of stress.

"Understood. I'll see you later then."

"Remember, sis. Twelve o'clock. Be there."

With that final statement Violet hang up her phone and the called ended.

That was probably the most intense conversation I had ever partaken in. It was nice now to be able to take a breather after such an event. Also pleasantly, some good did come out of this. In just a few hours, I'll actually get to meet this person I've been so curious about. Now that I got that over with, in the meantime, I should really get over to the lab ASAP. Hopefully, Okabe will aware something is wrong thanks to his Reading Steiner ability. From there the two of us can work together and fix this mess. I walked over to my main suitcase to pick out a new outfit to wear for the day. As I was scouring through my wardrobe, what Violet said at the very end of the call suddenly registered. I nearly fell over in shock. I did quickly consider the fact she could have simply meant it in a sang context. However, my judgment had become clouded at the time due to all this confusion so I wasn't really thinking straight. Plus I did think this conclusion made a lot of sense after reflecting a bit on her behaviour towards me. This worldline was becoming more and more bizarre every second I stayed here. This could very well be the truth. That possibility really frightened me for some reason I couldn't get quite grasp on. No one had died or anything. To most people, this would actually be GOOD news, but I still felt very uneasy thinking about it. This was one question I really wanted an answer to. Actually no… I needed an answer to this. With no one around to hear me, I finally spoke this question aloud.

"In this worldline… I have a sister?"

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(Chapter Two: Out Now!)