A JOURNEY TO UNKNOWN

Prologue

A/N: Warning! Those of you who have not watched The Girl Who Leapt Through Time movie, better watch it first if you want to understand this fanfiction. That movie is one of the best anime movies with a slight flaw at the very end. The cliff hanger. My fanfiction will go forward from that point on and I will try to unhang the story from the cliff. But you must watch it first before reading my story. That's why I wrote author's note at the beginning instead of end.

The Prologue is basically my version of summary of the movie from Chiaki's POV. Again, you won't get it until you see the movie.

Kindly use the review option at the end of the page. It's given there to be used, you know, and not as an ornamental piece. ;)

He was not the only one to travel back in time; not by a long shot. And he knew it, too. It was only that very few of his time were ever really interested in the past, in the history, in their origin. It was mostly for that reason he never met any of them during his time spent in past, not that he wanted to. The other reason was how wrongly they were taught about their past; the Great War that consumed the whole world in its wrath, the old videos of mutilated bodies; burned to bones, slaughtered, bleeding, the smoking cities, the images of misery. They were told it was a world of monsters; people slaves to their greed. Weapons of mass destruction; a race to seek the quickest way to make themselves extinct, were created, millions of resources wasted on them. Money. Labor. Brains and wisdom. A mad hunt for more resources, the ever growing greed. Lies, hypocrisy, government policies. It all went to chaos in the end. All hell broke loose. It came to the point where it was all about who releases the weapons first, who wipe the population out of the other country before it wipes theirs first.

The survivors were the quickest to press their buttons. They were guilty of pulling the trigger of that race. The people of his time were descendents of murderers. They were not proud of it either. It was mainly that guilt that equally resides in them that made them try to make things better.

They were told it was not safe in those times and it killed any possible wish they could have for going back to the past, any remnant of curiosity, any seed of interest. People wanted to be safe more than anything.

He knew it was not all lies. He knew The Great War separated their present world from the one of past, of a century earlier. But he also was one of the very few who believed that it's not the complete truth anyway. There must be something before the war, people living normal lives, doing simple things, living happily before everything crashed around them. He went to test his theory.

He was not disappointed.

Spending several years in the past, decades before the Great War, he had grown to love it. That life was a simple one; a time when nature was still very much alive. Not like his time when trees are guarded like treasure, animals secured in enormous artificial habitats, flowers encased in a protective case where they were out of reach of any human and can grow freely. All to grow the nature back to its beauty, to bring back the world of nature and greenery and birds.

It was not like that in the past. He was fairly surprised to see the kids climbing the trees, plucking the flowers, making bracelets of them. And there were so many of them too. Trees lining the roads, in the parks, an occasional potted plant peeking out the apartment balcony. Then there were animals. Cats, dogs, squirrels, butterflies, worms; it was all too much for him to swallow. People live with them, feed them, walk them. The concept of an animal in home was too alien to him. He was only used to seeing a glimpse of them when passing the boundaries of a habitat and now there were too many of them, within touching distance, alive and real and warm.

Then there were people; so many of them. Crowding the streets, schools, parks, wherever he look. The school system had specially baffled him. So many people of young age. All in one place. It was like a constant bubbling of enthusiasm everywhere. The very air thrummed with the young energies. It was contagious.

But his memories were mostly filled by Makoto and Kosuke. They never left him even when he went back to his time, their memories engraved in his mind. Kosuke's frown, his smirk, his nerdy glasses, his loud laugh, his frustration at their non-serious behavior, the way he would give them a disapproving look after they do something silly (which was most of the time when he was with Makoto), his nervousness about his exams, how he teased him getting school late, everything.

Then there was Makoto. Loud, bold, boyish but somehow beautiful in a strange, innocent sort of way. He missed her the most; her laughter, the strained look on her face when she studies (which was hardly ever), her whining complaints about Kosuke's long hits when she had to chase the ball, her anger over small things that bother her, but most of all making every moment with her twice as funny whenever he recalled them. Something about the way she would make a sarcastic comment when tempers were already running short and they were in a tough situation would make him laugh whenever he recalled those times and he missed her even more. He also missed how she used to act angry when she was really embarrassed and flustered. The way her eyes spark with a smile over small things of her interest. She was the only person who could smile and grin and cry and show every other emotion from her eyes just as well as by her face or words. Her eyes were alive in a strange way.

She was the first one to accept him as he introduced himself as a foreign student. She was all energetic and excited about his country and initially he found it hard to answer her questions without searching for everything online first. Kosuke was not exactly happy to have yet another non-serious person as his friend but he soon got over it. Still, some of his most cherished memories were the pranks he and Makoto pulled, mostly on Kosuke, but sometimes on other students and teachers. That was mostly her way to pay back for a test she failed or some student making fun of how she plays baseball.

Baseball. It was a strange sort of game. Makoto had dragged him to few of the local matches when he first came and he was overwhelmed by the amount of crowd, of people cheering and shouting and making so much noise. Then he started playing with Makoto and Kosuke and got addicted to it. It was something too physical and noisy and free for his own time. Something about how far he can shot the ball gave him a sense of independence, something that was not too abundant in his time. Or maybe it was the way the ball looked against the empty sky that was not hidden behind skyscrapers like he knew it will be.

Then something has changed in him the day Kaho approached Kosuke, asking him out. He realized how they were growing up. How Makoto was growing, to be exact. And it gave him a new, a very confusing feeling. Or maybe the feeling was already there and he was only acknowledging it then. He didn't know. He tried telling her, but she had suddenly changed, started avoiding him. He was frustrated.

It was about a week later he became suspicious of her time travelling. He had no regrets coming back in time, meeting his friends but his device was lost and he was starting to panic. The only relief was that no one would understand what it does even if they find it since time travelling was still a dream then. But Makoto's behavior scared him. It took a few more days for him to realize that she was really, in fact, time travelling and that she must have found his device. Under no circumstances was he willing to go back to his time but that was strictly tied with his possibility to find the device before Makoto used all the counts. He became suspicious that she was travelling a lot, for no good reasons either, and he had no choice but to ask her. She must have time travelled then too because he found himself asking a completely different question then the one he intended to. And then it happened. Kosuke's death. He saw her turning into a breathing corpse as she blamed herself again and again, hair fisted tightly, screaming in frustration and anger and self loathing, not eating, not sleeping. He couldn't see her like that. Kosuke was her childhood friend and with a sick feeling at the pit of his stomach, he realized that Kosuke's presence might be more important to her than his own. He decided to use his last jump, if it could stop her from punishing herself.

They had that whole conversation where he told her about him and his reality. She tried to stop him. But she had no idea that it was out of his hands by then. He could not exist in time he was not supposed to exist without a way back to his time. He vanished then.

Later, Makoto saved him. Somehow. Brought him back. Gave him a chance to go back. It was a strange good bye. There was so much left to be said, so many feelings, experiences, confessions. They both were too proud or embarrassed to say them aloud. It happens after such strong friendship as theirs. It was hard to put into words how he didn't think of her just as a friend anymore. She got angry as usual to hide her embarrassment and frustration. He had to leave, and soon. He didn't know what instinct overcame him when he heard her crying after him. But he wanted her to smile. Even as he was pulling her around for a hug, he wanted so badly to never let her go. But he had to. In the end he could think of only one thing to say. Hoping furiously against all the odds of the Universe, he had whispered to her softly.

"I'll be waiting."