Chapter 2

Recoil Conundrum

Hisakawa Akira pushed open the small door to her one man apartment. She kicked off her shoes, and walked stocking footed into her tiny living space. After setting her folders on the very cluttered desk on the other side of the room, she flopped heavily on the couch, sighing with relief. Leaning her head back, she closed her eyes.

Her day had ended up being more eventful than she had realized. More eventful than she had wanted. First, a presentation, the press conference. And then…

Akira sat up. "I wonder…" she began feeling around the couch cushions for her TV remote. "..If there is any news on the murder at the Radio Building." She muttered to herself. After a minute of digging under the pillows, she extracted the remote from between the seat cushions and turned the TV on.

"-At approximately noon today, an object believed to be a space satellite came crashing in Akihabara." A reporter's matter-of-fact voice came on the speaker as an image of the Radio Building showed up. "As you can see, even from the ground.."

Akira sat up. "When did this happen? I was nearby at the time, and I heard nothing crashing and I saw nothing falling? And…" She frowned in confusion. "I was at Dr. Nakabachi's conference at that time. How could the conference go on and this satellite crash at the same time? Both couldn't possibly have happened at noon."

Her phone buzzed. Still pondering this weird occurrence, Akira answered it. "Hello? This is Akira."

"Hisakawa-san! It's Akidawa Nikari. Did you see it on the news? The satellite crash?" A loud bubbly voice resounded from the mobile device's speakers, making Akira wince as she turned her volume down.

"Yes, I just turn on the TV and saw it." She replied.

"I guess it's a good thing Dr. Nakabachi's conference was canceled after all. You'd have been squashed like a bug!"

Akira blinked. "No, wait. Back up. The conference was canceled?" She asked incredulously.

"You were the one who complained about it. You were so miffed that I got an earful from you ranting about how there were possibilities of discussing time travel wasted because the doctor bailed."

Akira shook her head, even though she knew Akidawa couldn't see her. "Wait, I was at that conference. I just got home from it five minutes ago."

"Are you talking crazy?" Akidawa's laugh was piercing over the phone, prompting Akira to turn the volume down even lower. "That meeting never happened, Akira. You must have been imagining things. Maybe you should take a break from your research and give your mind a rest. You've been overworking lately and I don't think-"

Akira was no longer listening. Her mind raced, trying to make the connections between what she had just been told and what she remembered. She HAD been at the Radio Building at noon: during the press conference. The press conference that was...canceled? If it was canceled, why was she even remembering the eccentric student pointing out the scam it had been, and then the murder? The murder!

"Akidawa-san! What about the murder?!" Akira blurted out, interrupting her friend's consistent babble.

"What murder?"

"The murder at the Radio Building! I was there when they evacuated the building!"

"There was no murder today at the Akihabara Radio Building. Just the satellite crash." Her voice filled with genuine concern. "Akira, are you okay? You don't feel sick do you?"

She hesitated. Then took a short breath, collecting herself. "No. No don't worry." Akira responded, trying to sound nonchalant. "You're right. I've been working a lot, so maybe I should rest."

Another laugh reverberated from the phone, but this time, it sounded more forced and worried. "I'm glad you're taking my advice Aki-san. Call me if you do feel ill and I'll head right over, okay?"

"Sure thing Akidawa-san. Take care."

Akira ended the call. Her stomach was turning and she felt rather uneasy. She bit her lip agitatedly and leaned her elbows on her knees, trying to think.

"Why are there such big inconsistencies in my memory?" She rubbed her forehead, brushing her bangs from her eyes, then took off her glasses, rubbing the lenses clean on her shirt. "Maybe Akidawa-san is right. The stress of preparing for today probably made me tired." She balanced her glasses back on her nose, then got up to check what food she had available for a dinner.

With a nerve grating squeal, her cupboard doors opened, revealing practically nothing at all but some unopened soy sauce, a bag of rice, and dried nori snacks. Perusing the fridge yielded the same result of nothing meal worthy.

Akira sighed. "I suppose I'll have to head out to the convenience store and get something that would go well with rice. Maybe I could make a stir fry?" She pulled off her lab coat and grabbed her sweater, but something about her lab coat made her look again.

She squinted at it, wondering why she felt like something was off. Then she realized it. Her teacher name tag ID was gone! Had she taken it off by the front door when she got in? She rushed to her doorway and scanned the floor. Not here.

"Ugh, where could that have gone? Did I put it on my desk with the folders...?"

Akira checked through her folders twice and cleaned off her whole desk. Her efforts still revealed nothing.

She groaned in frustration. "I need that ID tag! Going to the University lab will be impossible without it!" She irritably slammed her folder shut and glared at the wall.

Her heart stopped.

She ran her hands on the glass of the picture frames on her wall. She couldn't believe it. This was where she had kept her credentials. Her college diplomas and professor's certificate were here...or at least, supposed to be here. Her master's degree and honors were gone. Now all that the photo frames held were photos of her parents and a bachelor's degree in physics.

Akira stepped back, her hand dropping uselessly to her side. "Impossible." Her fingers twitched. "They're gone. All my credentials...vanished."

She staggered backward and collapsed on her desk chair, her vision spinning. What was going on today? Was she going mad? Everything that had happened was suddenly backwards. She went to a press conference that had never existed, and now, apparently, she had never graduated with honors from her University and never gotten a job at the Tokyo Electronics University. She wasn't the prodigy schoolgirl that taught about relativity relating to time travel in her first lecture this morning. She was a nobody.

Akira sat there, staring at the wall that had once proudly displayed her identity, presented her hard earned diplomas, and proclaimed who she was. Anxious sweat made her shirt cling to her back as it pressed against the back of the desk chair.

"What is going on?" She clutched the side of her now throbbing head with her left hand. "This feels like a nightmare… I couldn't possibly have just imagined everything."

Her stomach growled. "I'll never sort this out if my energy is low...I might as well go out and get something to eat." She reasoned, trying to collect herself.

She pulled on her sweater, which she had dropped in the confusion before, and headed out. It didn't take her long to get to the small convenience store nearby. As the sliding doors opened, she saw a few of the students she had taught- well, had met before wandering around too. She supposed most of them lived in this area, since lots of University students lived here.

Perusing the shelves, she managed to find the items she was looking for. As she searched for one final ingredient, she overheard some of the students talking.

"-said nothing since we got back from class. Are you feeling okay?" A young man's voice was talking now.

Akira shrugged and tried to mind her own business.

"Etsuko-kun, really. Is this some sort of prank? Why are you writing down your answers on paper?"

Her ears perked up. Etsuko? Oh! Etsuko was the student with the speech impediment she had met earlier! Was his companion picking on him out of some sort of meanness? She hadn't meant to eavesdrop before, but now this had caught her attention and slightly bothered her.

"If you aren't why won't you talk to me?" The friend sounded annoyed now. "Seriously, just stop with this weird game you're playing."

Something made Akira mad. Maybe it was the stress from the sudden shocks she had received, but something inside her snapped. Angrily, she marched around to the opposite aisle where the boys were standing to give his friend a piece of her mind.

"Excuse-" she began, addressing Etsuko's friend. As they both turned to face her, her foot slipped on the tile floor. Time seemed to slow down. The background music in the store decelerated in speed, each note drawing itself out as Akira pitched forward. Both the boys gasped and made a grab for her arms to break her fall.

"Watch out!"

The voice barely registered her mind as the ground rushed up to meet her. She fell face first on the tile, both boys narrowly missing her. Her basket holding her groceries tumbled across the floor, spilling the items inside.

"Oh shoot." The friend said. "Are you okay miss?"

Akira groaned and pushed herself on her knees. "Y-yeah, sorry. I-"

"Glad you're okay. At least it got Etsuko talking." The boy cut in over her, quickly helping her to her feet.

Akira looked over at the bespectacled boy she had met before. His face was a mask of shock. His eyes stared into nothingness and he raised a shaky hand to his mouth.

"W-what?" His voice was trembling.

Akira recognized the voice that had called out the late warning as she had fallen. But...he couldn't speak. He couldn't possibly have spoken! His voice was gone! Or at least, it was supposed to be. She took a sharp breath and glanced over at his friend, wondering if he had noticed this.

"Geez dude, I would have thought you were suddenly struck dumb. Why weren't you talking earlier?" The friend looked rather harassed and held his hands in a questioning gesture.

Etsuko licked his lips nervously before slowly replying. "I-I just didn't really...feel like talking." His brown eyes met Akira's and she saw a spark of recognition flash across his face.

"You could have just said so." The friend grumbled, shoving his hands in his pockets.

Etsuko's eyes pulled away from Akira's face and saw the groceries on the floor that had scattered during her spill. "You go on ahead. I'll catch up." He said, waving his friend towards the registers. The boy shrugged and slouched off toward them, muttering irritably about tricks and annoying things. Etsuko and Akira both knelt down to gather the things she had dropped.

Akira frantically began tossing things in her grocery basket, embarrassed that she had fallen and now for the second time today, dropped something all over the floor. At least, to her it felt like her second time.

"Sorry." She blustered. "I just keep making a mess of things today."

Etsuko shook his head. "No, it's no problem." He placed some frozen vegetables in her handcart. "I don't mind helping you again."

Akira looked up sharply. "Again?" She echoed. "What makes you say that?"

Etsuko blinked, then bit his lip. "Sorry, nevermind. I was mistaken. I was thinking of something else."

Akira was puzzled, then a thought occurred to her. Maybe...just maybe…

"You remember the lecture, don't you." She said, in a low voice.

Dean's head shot up. "The lecture! You remember it?"

Akira nodded, placing her last item in her handcart. "I remember everything. From the lecture up till the conference at the Radio Building. But no one else seems to recall anything from what I remember happening. And you...your speech impediment…"

"That's the same with me. It's as if it never happened...as if my voice was never…" He trailed off and his eyebrows furrowed together. "I...I never thought I'd ever say this again...or ever say anything again...but can I talk to you?"

Akira bobbed her head quickly. "Yes. My apartment is only a few minutes away. We can discuss things there privately."

He returned her nod and waited patiently for her to check out her groceries before they both left the store and went up the street. They traveled in silence, not exactly sure what to say. One thing was clear to both of them: they had shared a strange experience and they wanted answers. The same thought had crossed their minds. Perhaps through shared experience, they could puzzle out what had happened to change their situations entirely.