Chapter introduction:
Hey everyone! Thank you all for reading chapter one and special thanks to the ones who commented/reviewed for their words of support.
Here's chapter two, enjoy! More detailed author's notes are at the bottom of it.
Disclaimer: I don't own Steins; Gate.
Kurisu had no idea how long they stood there. The door opened and immediately closed again behind them at some point, the visitor apparently not wanting to disturb them. She didn't particularly feel like giving it much attention and she assumed Okabe didn't either.
Eventually she calmed down enough to just enjoy the tranquility of the moment, not really thinking of anything.
But then…
'So… are you feeling okay now?' Frontal Lobe asked her fellow brain part.
'Much better!' Limbic System chirped. "Did I miss anything important during my breakdown?'
'Well, he did say he loves us.'
'Oh, that's nice… WAIT WHAT? OH MY GOD! QUICK! GIVE ME LOTS OF RANDOM SCIENTIFIC FACTS AND QUOTES WE CAN USE!'
'Eh? Why?'
'TO COVER THIS UP WHILE WE PANIC!'
'Really? THAT's your plan?'
'DO YOU HAVE A BETTER ONE!?'
'Pfff. How about we just keep calm and ask for more info, so we can start making more sense of this?'
"Okabe? What did you mean by ' you think I loved you' ? Weren't you sure?" Kurisu asked, breaking the silence.
It was, all things considered, definitely not the most pressing issue. But curiosity got the better of her.
"Well… the only real proof I have is that you kissed me."
"A-Ah. So… Um… but…"
'Great - super eloquent responses there! Well done me, truly worthy of a genius!' she sarcastically congratulated herself.
Hold on-
Her eyes narrowed. "Wait, you say I kissed you but still doubted whether or not I loved you back? Are you saying you think I'm the kind of person who would go out randomly kissing just anyone!?"
He looked away from her accusing stare. His response was calm, though, and quiet – earnest enough that it was hard for her to hold onto indignance. "No. You just never got to finish your confession. At least, I think you were confessing and that it wasn't my brain playing tricks on me while the worldline warped. But… I'm not completely sure. Maybe what I saw and heard was just a manifestation of my own guilt."
'Wow, could that be any more ominous?' Frontal Lobe wondered.
"What does that mean? What happened, exactly?" Kurisu asked him, ignoring the internal commentary.
"I'm sorry, Kurisu. I'd… rather not say. Some of the things that happened… well, two of them, were the most painful. This is one of those. I'd rather not recall this at all. Having a perfect memory of the other worldlines isn't always a good thing."
"In that case, can you at least tell me why?"
"'Why?' Why what? You'll have to be more specific, assistant."
Somewhere in the depths of her brain, Limbic System roused herself from her panic by virtue of pure annoyance. So they were back to this now, were they?
"I'm not your assistant!" she insisted. She would have pushed him away right there and then, but… dem hugz. Gah. And dat sadness in his eyes, though. She could feel herself becoming emotionally confused all over again.
"You know, never mind. I no longer want to know why you love me," she weakly mumbled across his chest. It was just less embarrassing to not look at him as she said it.
"You do, or you don't? You're being confusing."
She sighed. "You figure it out, Okabe. You're a time traveler, right? Aren't you supposed to know me well enough?"
"Then… I guess so, since neither of us is very direct with our feelings. But does something like that really need an explanation?"
"W-Well… from my perspective, a complete stranger just walked in and dropped that bomb on me," she said. "Imagine some unknown woman came out of nowhere and suddenly told you she loved you? It's a little random and unsettling. So… I'm just… 'not sure if serious', you know?"
She could feel him lift his head, gazing out over the room. "There were a lot of things," he said. "I don't think I can even name everything right now. For starters… your intelligence. Your confidence. The cute way you tried to hide your closet-otaku side, only to hopelessly fail and stammer excuses when it showed. But most of all, I suppose, is that we were a team. Whenever I got stuck and didn't know what to do, you were there for me, even if I probably didn't deserve your help. You were always calm. You always had a plan, no matter the situation. Without your guidance, I'd have failed. It was also only because of your brilliance and skill that we succeeded at making the time leap machine, and by extension, that we managed to save everyone in the end. So… for that, thank you, Kurisu."
"Ah…"
His chin angled downwards. She knew his eyes were on her, obviously waiting for an answer.
She could feel the proverbial clock ticking, making her out to be less in-control with every passing moment; a very ironic thing considering what he'd just said.
Always calm and always with a plan, huh? She'd wish!
'Don't look at him, just don't look at him. Let's take our sweet, SWEET time to come up with something and not do anything rash,' Frontal Lobe reasoned.
She looked straight up, right into his beautiful eyes. His breath gently tickled her nose. They were still embracing each other and their faces were mere inches apart.
She froze.
He froze.
Crap.
'Limbic System, why? Just, why?'
'What? I thought it was a good time. I mean, that was really sweet, we're already hugging and there's no one else around,' the emotional center of her brain replied. 'He's a bit annoyingly tall, though. We'd probably have to both draw him closer and go tip-toe...'
"W-Wait, what!? No, I'm not ready! Am I? I mean, there are probably dried tears all over my face, so I must look like a mess! AND anyone could walk in on us! AND we've technically only known this guy for mere hours! AND we STILL don't know anything about that day!"
'So? Aren't you curious? It's just a kiss. Go for it!'
Was it her imagination, or was there even less distance between them now? Was he moving closer? Was she moving closer?
It was really tempting to just close her eyes and-
'Don't listen to her! Just calm down and stall!'
"D-don't distract me!" she blurted out, pushing him away and hastily stepping back. "You owe me an explanation first! Tell me about this ' operation Skuld'!"
He blinked, obviously confused. His arms hung in the air for a comical second, embracing the empty air she'd suddenly abandoned before falling limply to his sides.
'Smooth, Fronty. Very smooth. That was a perfect moment killed so dead it puts the 'kill' in Kill la Kill, twice. I hereby rate this an 'epic fail out of ten'," Limbic System commented.
'O really? What happened to this guy being an infuriating idiot? Who was it that said this again? Oh right, YOU did, like… less than an hour ago? I'm so, so sorry for trying to protect us from weird mind-control-like effects from alternate universes that are making us do or think things we'd normally never, EVER consider under similar circumstances! And let me tell you, you're not making things any easier!' Frontal Lobe countered sarcastically.
'Would it kill you to be a bit less worrisome, for once?'
'Would it kill YOU to be less of a loose cannon, for once? You're way too impulsive!'
"Operation Skuld… right…" Okabe said, rousing her from her internal debate. She tried to ignore the wistful sound of his voice and the lingering feeling of her own regret.
He sat himself back down on the table as he started explaining. "I'll stick to the basics then. In the end I, or more like we - the two of us working together, had undone everyone else's D-Mails. But then I realized something. If I used the IBN5100 to erase the first D-Mail, mine, then I'd return to the Beta Worldline. However… that was also the one in which I found your body in a pool of blood. I'd been so focused on the immediate problems in front of me that I failed to consider this until the very end, when I'd already sacrificed everyone else's happiness to try and save Mayuri. You once said I was bad at-"
"-Strategic thinking," she finished for him, blinking away an image of a RaiNet gameboard, of all things. What was up with these random visions?
He nodded, smiling sadly. "I knew I'd end up in the Beta worldline weeks after your death. And since you already died, there would be no you to make a time leap machine. That would mean I couldn't go back in that worldline anymore, if there was even a point, considering the workings of attractor fields. And I couldn't send a D-Mail either since that would just repeat SERN learning of the existence of our time travel technology, which would then return us to the Alpha worldline. That meant I'd be stuck accepting the established result."
"Then, since you knew I was dead… you had to choose between Mayuri and me?"
His gaze fell to the floor and remained there. "…Yes."
"And there was no other way?" she asked.
He glanced out the window, taking in the sunset through the shutters. Stripes of yellow-golden light fell across his features. "…No," he eventually half-whispered.
That one word spoke entire volumes of pain and despair.
"Couldn't you have asked me how to make the time leap machine, and then made it yourself once you reached the Alpha worldline?" she asked, improvising an idea.
"…Maybe I could have. I should have, probably, " he admitted. "But that wouldn't bypass the attractor field problem. And you'd have had to teach me how to make it, which you probably wouldn't. By then, you were pretty insistent on stopping resorting to time travel altogether. Even if you… I…"
He didn't need to finish it; Kurisu didn't need to be a genius neuroscientist to figure out the rest. It heavily implied that they'd both essentially given up.
"How often, Okabe?" she asked softly. "How often did you watch Mayuri die before it came to this?"
And how was he still in one piece?
There was a shudder, a sharp intake of breath. He moved his hands over his eyes.
She didn't even want to begin imagining what he was seeing in his mind.
Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe she shouldn't have asked.
Unfortunately…
"I… lost count," he replied. "Dozens of times, at least. I tried everything I could possibly think of. Usually I just tried to flee, to take her somewhere I thought was safe. Later I instead tried to actively protect her with interventions. Neither approach worked. Sometimes she was stabbed. Sometimes SERN agents slit her throat right when he sat beside me in a taxi. Sometimes she was shot, like the first time. I can remember this instance where she was shot right in the head and somehow still managed to whisper my name as she died."
She could picture it. A blue-dressed, black-haired girl. Faceless, but with a bloody hole in her forehead. She fell in slow motion. Kurisu only caught a glimpse of the wound, but it was enough.
She automatically recalled all sorts of horrible information she didn't want to know. How a bullet from a typical handgun like that would travel faster than any nerve cell could relay an action potential along its dendrites and axon. Thus, the bullet outpaced the speed of information being relayed. That meant it would theoretically happen too fast for Mayuri's brain to process it. But even if that hadn't been the case, it might not have been able to anyway, since with that trajectory, the bullet itself and the resulting internal shockwave ripping through Mayuri's grey and white matter would have heavily damaged if not completely destroyed both the frontal and parietal lobes, among many other critical structures. Which, in turn, would respectively take away Mayuri's ability to process information and her sense of pain, along with just about everything else that had made her able to function as a human being.
The person that was Mayuri was effectively dead before she even hit the floor.
It had taken less than a second yet she'd be gone forever.
No more comfortable silence of two friends sitting on the couch together. No more cooking together, nor working on cosplay outfits that they'd now never get to wear.
But most of all, no more cheerful Mayuri to show her what it was like to have an actual friend. Not a supervisor that probably harbored feelings of inferiority, but an actual, no strings attached best friend.
Someone screamed. Maybe it was Okabe, holding Mayuri's body, maybe it was her. Maybe it was both of them; it didn't really matter at this point. They were helpless to the armed men and woman in front of them and those had already killed once.
But then it got worse.
'Oka… rin…'
Mayuri, somehow, despite having a completely ruined brain, still managed to say something.
Neuro-scientifically, that was nothing short of a miracle.
It was still the most horrible thing she'd ever seen.
'Please, stop this. Please… someone…'
And then Okabe made to move for the woman who'd shot Mayuri.
He was going to die, too.
No! She had to stop him!
Kurisu snapped back to reality and reached for him, continuing the phantom motion from the dream. "Okabe-"
He didn't hear her.
He kept going with ever increasing frustration, his voice getting louder and more panicked by the second. "She was pushed in front of a train by a little girl. She was hit by a car multiple times. She was turned into jelly by SERN. She was shot by a police officer who mistook her for a terrorist. Her, a terrorist!?" he emphasized while slamming his fist into a table. "A 17-year-old ditzy, cosplay-loving, harmless girl eating dinner with me in a restaurant!? Over and over it happened and I still couldn't save her and-!"
"Okabe! Stop! You don't have to say it!"
"Sometimes she just fell to the floor, like a doll whose strings had been cut. She was… She was…!"
His voice caught and he shrugged helplessly. All the anger flowed out at once, leaving his tone dead again, which was even more distressing to hear. "In the end I kept asking myself: 'Why? What went wrong this time?' That's all it was to me. I was so used to it that it stopped affecting me emotionally. I was afraid I was losing my humanity. Maybe I did. I horribly failed at predicting how the murder attempt on you would have affected you, since to me, something like that wasn't anything out of the ordinary anymore. I had to deal with actual deaths on a near-daily basis. You had two whole months to recover and no one around you had even died, so what was the harm, right? I thought that maybe you'd still be angry at your father, but you'd obviously be fine by now, right?"
He sighed. "How could I even think like that? You told me it was all you'd ever worked for and I expected you to just shrug it off because I had seen that much worse," He closed his eyes. "Tell me, Kurisu… what does that say about the person I've become?"
Silence stretched from second to agonizing second.
He sat there, broken. She stood there awkwardly, arm halfway there, frozen in place.
"I… don't know what to do. What can I even do?"
'Oh, I don't know, might I suggest LEAVING?' Frontal Lobe replied. 'This is something for a professional psychiatrist. Also, he just told us he's used to violence. That makes him legitimately dangerous. I say we have enough of an explanation, crazy as it is. We can probably piece the rest of it together on our own; we don't have to stick around anymore.'
'That's really cold. He was there for us when we needed him, twice,' Limbic System countered. 'He's in obvious pain; we can't just leave him like this!'
'Then what's your plan? And no, I am pre-emptively vetoing anything involving physical contact.'
'...I really don't think it was that bad of an idea. I mean, it worked for us?'
'You're hopeless.'
Honestly, it really wasn't such a bad plan, Kurisu mused. Not helping him wasn't an option, and that feeling of being held had been really comforting. Maybe it was the same for him? But…
"I agree with Frontal Lobe here," she thought. "We need a more lasting solution. I think something is seriously wrong with his cognitions. A simple hug probably isn't going to cut it in the end."
Well, that, and there were some very uncomfortable questions associated with the other route, such as if it was wrong to want to be held by a stranger this much and whether doing that now would count as taking advantage of him and his emotional state.
'Thank you, me!'
'Then I'd like to hear YOUR plan, instead,' Limbic System cut in, annoyed. 'Don't tell me you're going to just 'logic' your way out of this.'
'…Actually, that's not such a bad idea.'
'Wait, what?'
She took a deep breath and crossed her arms. "Okabe, look at me."
He did, slowly.
"You say you're afraid you lost your humanity," she began, "but 'humanity' isn't a scientific concept. It can't be measured. It's not even defined in any clear way. The closest thing to a 'lack of humanity' is antisocial personality disorder, meaning in short that the well-being of others doesn't matter to you. But I don't need a PET-scan of your brain to know that it does. If anything, I'd say you care too much, proven by how you just offered to go to jail sorely for my sake. You were serious about that, weren't you?"
"…Yes."
"Then I'd say tormenting yourself over this is pointless, not to mention wrong. If what you say is true, don't you think you've already suffered enough?"
"You wouldn't say that if you knew everything."
"Oh? Then out with it. What am I missing?" she challenged.
"I never gave up trying to save Mayuri. It was you who forced me to stop trying."
"Meaning… what? That I pushed you to sacrifice me in favor of Mayuri?"
"Yes. And I did," she could see his hands gripping the edge of the table beneath him with increasing force. "I… let you die, twice."
"So?" she shrugged.
"…'So'? Don't you care that I'm responsible for your deaths!?"
Kurisu shook her head. "Firstly, I'm alive. Secondly, based on what you've told me, it was an impossible choice. I don't think anyone would have the right to judge you. And if it came down to you choosing a worldline as an observer, then you're not even responsible for the potential death of my alternate self. You just chose to place yourself in a worldline that didn't have me in it anymore."
"But I-!" he began, but apparently reconsidered. Kurisu mentally noted that he was at least emotional now instead of downright depressed, which was a step up in her book. "Never mind," Okabe continued. "It's the same argument you made to comfort me then. From my point of view, that's just semantics. Since I was the one choosing, whether or not I was directly responsible for your death doesn't matter. I still had to erase one person from both my life and the world I'd have to live in."
She took a moment to consider that. Something about what he'd just said bothered her, but she could understand his point of view. There were other avenues of attack, though. "Okabe, you told me we saved everyone in the end. Does that or does that not mean Mayuri is alive as well?"
"…In this worldline, both you and Mayuri are alive. All other lab members are, too. Well, except Suzuha, who hasn't been born yet."
"Then I still fail to see how any of this excessive guilt tripping is helping anyone. Isn't it the result that matters?" she asked.
"…"
Kurisu sighed. How was that not enough? Was there something she was still missing? Did she need more information? "Okabe, tell me more about my bond with Mayuri. Were we close?"
"…Yes. You were the best of friends, pretty much from the start. I'm not sure if you would have come back to us if she hadn't been there, despite the phonewave. Daru… was Daru to you and I probably treated you even worse."
"And in the Beta worldline, based on what we knew back then, the future wasn't a dystopia, as it was in the Alpha worldline?"
"…Yes. That turned out to be an oversight, but yes."
"Then you shouldn't feel guilty. It was the life of your childhood friend, who was presumably my best friend too, and the future of humanity itself against just me," she reasoned. "Any decent person would have made that choice."
It was the wrong thing to say.
"'Just you?' 'Any decent person?'" he asked quietly, then suddenly started shouting. "How can you even say that!? Do you know what it's like, to have to see your sister die over and over, brutally murdered in any number of ways and that you can't stop it!? To see your friends get what they always wanted from time travel, and then have to take it from them personally, one by one? To have them crying into your back as you do it, or worse, staring at you with empty eyes? And only after you do it, after you break all of them, to not have them be angry at you, since they don't remember?"
"All of that guilt goes with you," he continued. "It festers. It grows worse every time you're forced to do it. That was horrible enough. But no, when you then reach the end, when you think there could be a happy ending to all of that, you're faced with it. That choice. To still let your sister die, after you've taken everything from your friends to prevent just that, or you, someone who had supported me throughout all of this. The only reason I made it to the end. My… my partner, the woman most important to me. And not just to me, either – an entire WORLD WAR was waged over your research after you died. How could you, someone that important and loveable, sacrifice yourself so easily!? It's like you think your life doesn't matter! And maybe I'm not a decent person for thinking so, BUT DON'T YOU DARE SAY IT'S 'JUST YOU'!"
That was also the wrong thing to say.
That shout, it was the same noise as back then. The same voice – his voice. The same volume.
She could feel it coming, the déjà-vu starting to trigger.
With it came the panic. It easily drowned out the half-formed phantom answer, of having been lonely and that she couldn't sacrifice her friend, or him.
She could hear him screaming her father's fake name as he ran in with the knife.
The room warped into a closed off room of the Radi-Kan building. Her father came at her, armed with a screwdriver. In turn, Hououin Kyouma was coming for him from behind him, armed with the weapon he'd gotten by somehow disarming her father.
Her breathing became shallow. Her hands started shaking. She wanted to run, to do anything that could stop what happened next.
"No! Not now!"
She moved.
A sharp, all-encompassing pain.
Her own blood on her hands. A burst of it flowed through her fingers with each weakening beat of her heart. It kept trying to pump even though there was a knife stuck in it. Every beat of it hurt like nothing she'd ever experienced before. And with every one of those, her own heart cut itself open more along the edge.
And with that, more and more of her blood spayed onto his lab coat.
There was too much of it.
A lingering sensation of suffocating - not enough oxygenated blood to the brain. It secreted noradrenaline in a desperate attempt to correct this, which she knew quickened the heart rate and thus only worsened the damage, further lowering the blood flow, strengthening the same process.
It was a vicious cycle that could only have one outcome.
She was dying.
Even if someone called an ambulance right now, it wouldn't be enough.
She collapsed into him, the one who'd murdered her.
He screamed. There was so much pain in it that some remnant cognitive ability decided not to blame him – he'd tried to save her. But she'd thrown herself on his knife to save her father, who would have stabbed her anyway if this man hadn't interfered.
There was some very dark irony in that. Like it had been some inevitable fate, which had only ended up worse by his attempt to help her.
The pain was dulling. His voice became muted. Thinking was difficult.
She was afraid.
The next day, she'd be in some coroner's drawer, identified as body number X of murder investigation Y. Would this guy be caught by the police and go to prison for it? No, it had to be Nakabachi – she had to get Kyouma to leave before it was too late.
She tried to tell him, but couldn't remember how to speak…
The next week, she'd be buried somewhere, leaving behind only her thesis and a dated copy of her memories in the university's databanks.
Was that really all she'd ever achieve…? Had that been worth it?
The next year, everyone save her mother and maybe Maho would have forgotten her.
Fragments of half-formed thoughts, regrets and fears went by.
A flash of Maho in the lab, of her mother, of the university. A funeral with very few attendees. Of her father, smiling at the grave.
She was losing the last bit of coherent control. That realization gave rise to a massive spike of fear, which brought one final moment of clarity.
She asked the man holding her, Kyouma, to help her.
And then… nothing.
Not even a breath.
"Kurisu? What's wrong?"
His voice was unsure, tentative.
She took a shuddering breath and looked down.
No blood.
She blinked, and the vision from the nightmare overlapped reality, fighting it for dominance.
Blood through her fingers. Then no blood. Blood. No blood.
No, she couldn't let that get to her: she was breathing, therefore alive.
With those wounds, she couldn't be alive, but she was. She wasn't fainting. She was standing on her own strength. The rapid pace of her heart told her that was also functioning fine. Therefore, the blood had to be false.
Yes - hang on to logic.
No blood. Breathing. Alive. She repeated the mantra over and over to calm herself.
"Kurisu? I'm sorry – I shouldn't have yelled like that. Are you okay?"
His voice - not important.
Important: He hadn't stabbed her. And he wasn't carrying a knife.
Wasn't he? How could she know for sure?
She couldn't – but he'd never stab her.
Wouldn't he?
He wouldn't.
Why not? He'd already done it once, if that just now had been real.
If it had been real…yes. But then it was an accident.
Did that really matter?
Yes. Because –
And then she saw it. How it fit together.
The way he'd flinched when she'd told him about how she'd experienced dying in the nightmares. How there were two things he didn't want to talk about. How he'd let her die twice. His feelings for her. How guilt was weighing him down.
But most importantly, the huge flaw in his assumptions.
Okay... she knew what she had to do. She could do this.
She could be in control. She had to be, not just for herself. It was about fixing HIM now. She wasn't going to let herself be indebted to anyone, and she wasn't going to let nightmares and panic attacks get in the way of doing it!
Deep breaths. Slow breaths. Alive. "I'm fine."
She wasn't – it took a lot of willpower to stop the trembling in the hands, to keep her voice steady. But it was enough for now.
"Okabe… how did I die, exactly?" She asked. "I want to know. What did you mean by 'letting me die twice?'"
He couldn't meet her eyes. The silence that followed told her enough.
"Letting me die is something other than killing me. But… is that really what happened?"
"…No."
"You said two of the things that happened were too painful for you to talk about. Were those my deaths?"
"Pieced it together with barely any information, " he answered, again staring ahead. "I really shouldn't have expected anything less. Though I suppose this one wasn't that hard."
"Okabe, I need to know if your version matches mine. Please. Tell me what happened when you first tried to stop Nakabachi. This was the second attempt, wasn't it?"
It had to be, since she'd died. If time travel was possible, then this worldline was the obvious redo. And if his story matched the vision, that was proof for what he said.
"I… I stabbed you." He almost choked on the words, another glimpse of that same overwhelming pain she'd noticed before. "It was an accident. I was aiming for him when he tried to attack you, but then you moved in front of him at the last second. I was too surprised to compensate the aim… I'm sorry."
It matched. It was a breakthrough, the first objective proof. Either they'd conveniently had the exact same nightmare, or that event had happened. Her mind was spinning - the scientific implications and possibilities of time travel were endless! Her theory had been right!
She wondered if something was wrong with her for being excited over someone essentially just having conformed her death. Wait, what did that make her, someone who'd died but was still showing signs of life? Did that mean she was the first actual zombie? Why was that thought both annoying and amusing?
Anyway, that could wait for later.
"And you feel you're to blame for this – why?"
He shrugged. "I held the knife. Only I knew what was going to happen; I knew what the attractor field would try and make me do. And if I hadn't been so afraid, If I hadn't been rushing in blindly, I could have easily accounted for unexpected events. So if not me, then who?"
Kurisu prided herself on being stoic in the face of absolute stupidity. She'd regularly seen the depths of human ignorance and depravity on the 4channel boards, and had done battle with many an idiot there without a second thought. She was such a hardened veteran that it took a lot to rile her up.
But that made her want to facepalm SO hard.
"Oh, I don't know, ME, when I threw myself in front of you when you were only trying to help me? I'm sorry, but that version of me was objectively an idiot," she scoffed.
"…"
"Okabe, like I've said before, I don't blame you. And I'm alive."
She said it as kind and gently as she possibly could. She even put up a smile, which was highly unusual for her.
"Shouldn't you?" Okabe asked, completely unaffected. "I got you involved with us. I told Daru to hack SERN. I was the one who let everyone send the mails, and I was the one who carelessly invited Moeka, a SERN agent, into the lab. I was the one who couldn't give you an alternative at the end, even though I technically had an endless amount of time to come up with something. I left you with no choice but to sacrifice yourself. And then, when I'd finally reached this timeline, I thought I'd managed to save you – that you could be happy, at least, even if we'd never meet. But instead I find out that you've still been suffering because of me - even though we didn't even know each other."
"You must have figured it out by now, Kurisu," he continued. "All these visions you've been suffering from are memories from other worldlines – which ultimately exist only because of me. So how can you forgive me for that? How can you not blame me?"
"Because, in the end, you fixed everything. We're both here now, and you're obviously conflicted over what you had to do for it. The point of you caring too much still stands," she argued.
"Caring too much? I was willing to sacrifice everyone on the planet if it could save both you and Mayuri."
Wait, what?
She blinked. "You were willing to sacrifice seven billion people? Jus- Um, for us?"
He calmly nodded. "Almost six billion of them were going to die in the Alpha worldline, according to Suzuha. The rest would have to live in a world of misery. But if that meant you got to live, I didn't care. That means I also didn't care about what would happen to any of my friends, like Daru, Suzuha, Faris, Lukako, my own parents or even me, myself. I didn't care about any of that when I had to choose. I can't even tell if that's changed since then, if I wouldn't make the same choice if I had to. Do you still think I'm not antisocial?"
'That's still sweet of him, in an incredibly stupid way. Sacrificing the entire world for the ones he loves? There's definitely something romantic about it,' Limbic System pondered.
'Though impossible to justify, from both a moral and utilitarian standpoint. I can see why we'd supposedly pushed him to not do that,' Frontal Lobe added.
"Yes," Kurisu replied, gradually getting over that idea, "Because none of that changes anything in this argument."
"Except that my 'caring too much' applied to just two persons and my 'not caring at all' applied to everyone else in the world," he pointed out.
Objection!
Her face slid into a smirk; finally, something to nail him on! "Then if your priorities are THAT skewed, you should care more about what Mayuri and I tell you over everyone else in the world. And in my opinion, you are a good person," she concluded.
Hah! Flawless logic that no amount of self-depreciation could penetrate!
Then she realized how that sounded. "U-Um, m-morally, of course. Don't go reading too much into that!" she quickly added.
"…"
No reaction.
"Okay, I'm starting to lose my patience. It feels like he's severely depressed… any ideas on how to get him out of it? What I say won't matter if I can't reach him," she thought.
'Oh, oh, I can think of a few!' Limbic system replied enthusiastically.
Frontal Lobe sighed. 'Which ones of those don't include us losing our virginity?'
'Rude, miss Pervert! I was thinking more along the lines of romantic things, like, making him feel your pulse while you look at each other?'
' Cliché, but I'll admit it gains you some decency points. Some, mind you.'
With neither of her anatomical advisors really helping, she decided to just drop the subtlety.
"Okay, Okabe. I get it. You're really sorry. And I can see why you feel that way, but I hereby officially forgive you, AGAIN. Now can you please stop moping? This isn't like you. It… it kind of hurts to see you like this."
She wasn't entirely sure what made her add the last part, but it felt true. Looking back on it, the man in front of her was indeed a very far cry from the Hououin Kyouma she'd known for like fifteen minutes.
"Hah, that's probably true," he admitted, and for the first time in what felt like forever, there was a hint of an actual smirk. Seeing that was immensely relieving; maybe he wasn't that far gone yet. Maybe he was just being a stubborn idiot instead, and she'd just have to push harder.
"I'm sorry," he said, "I guess part of me still feels like I deserve some kind of punishment. That would be easier to accept than your forgiveness."
That sparked something. From the depths of her being rose a feeling of pure sadistic, vindictive glee. It was disproportionally powerful and totally inappropriate for the situation.
In other words, it was perfect!
"Oh, so you want to be punished? Well, we can do that, too," she chirped, already crossing the distance to him.
"W- wait, Kurisu? What-"
*SMACK*
The impact of her fist on his cheek sent him sideways.
He tried to reflexively brace himself on the table only to find he was too close to the edge. His arm found empty air, and right after that, the ground found him. It definitely wasn't the most tender or dignified of interactions between man, floor and gravity.
She didn't particularly care. There was something extremely satisfying to seeing him squirm beneath her.
…That could have been phrased better. She'd probably have blushed if she hadn't been so busy settling the score. What score that was, she wasn't entirely sure, but the drive was definitely there.
'Aaaah, that felt SO liberating!' Lymbic system crooned in what could only be described as absolute ecstasy. 'It's like I've wanted to do that FOREVER. Like the most annoying and aggravating itch ever just got scratched. Can we do this again? Please? PRETTY PLEASE!?'
Frontal Lobe was curiously silent, as if she'd suddenly decided she wanted to be part of a different neural circuit and was out prospecting.
"What the hell, Kurisu!? Could you have hit me any harder!?" he asked, clutching the spot she'd just struck him on.
"Oh? Is that a request? Do you like getting punched in the face?" she asked, smirking. "Masochist Okabe, confirmed!"
She took another couple of steps forward as he scrambled back.
"A-ah, definitely not! And could you have slapped me instead, at least? This is definitely going to leave a nasty bruise…"
"Oh, I definitely *could* have; I just didn't want to."
He gave her a flat stare from his now sitting position. "You're so cruel."
"…and you're okay with that?" she asked, amused.
"No way; my jaw disagrees too much."
"Pfff. Shake it off, you wuss. Haven't you been through much worse?"
"I thought we established that having been through worse didn't make a bad experience any less bad, assistant!"
"Well, at least you're talking like yourself again. Maybe you really are a masochist? Do you have a history of being hit on by girls, the painful way, by any chance?"
"You're enjoying this way too much," he grumbled, trying to get back on his feet.
She didn't let him. A simple push made him fall back, which worked only because of the timing and him being too surprised to offer any resistance.
"No, you don't get to stand up yet," she stated, daring him to disagree. "I didn't hit you for nothing, Okabe. This is a lesson and I'll repeat this as often as needed to get it through your thick skull, so pay attention!"
He blinked, confused. "Er, a lesson?"
"Yes; a lesson about choice. I could have chosen not to punch you, to slap you instead. I could have done it less hard. I could have walked away, to leave you here to your pity party by yourself. But I didn't. Do you know why?"
"Um… which answer will spare me from more abuse? Wait - is this a trick question? I'm having serious trouble discerning what I'm supposed to learn from this other than the feel of your knuckles, Christina!"
Normally that name would have pissed her off, but for now she was just happy to see him temporarily back to his usual self.
"Actually, the answer is simple: I didn't because I chose not to," she explained. "It were my choices. Mine. And that's the problem with everything you're saying: just because you might have had foresight, doesn't mean that your choices are the only ones that matter. Knowing what might happen does not make you responsible for everything that DOES happen, nor does having the potential opportunity to stop something that might happen make you sorely responsible for it still happening. ESPECIALLY not if there is some kind of universal will in place working against you, being the attractor fields."
"I'd like an example to clarify what you're trying to say," he answered. "Apologies, I'm somewhat tired and in a lot of physical pain at the moment."
"Sure. So you were too slow to dodge my strike, even if you knew something was up. Does that make you completely responsible for being hit, even if I threw the punch?"
"No, but your example makes no sense – I didn't have foreknowledge this time. If I did have, then I'd be more to blame."
"I disagree, because then it becomes an issue of compensating for your actions on my end. Suppose I was an expert martial artist that was much more skilled than you at unarmed combat. Do you think any defense you'd have put up would have stopped me?"
"Maybe."
"Okay. Now imagine there are hundreds of me, attacking you in every possible way from every possible direction at the same time, with the intent of scoring a single hit on you. Does that change your answer?"
"That's a ridiculous situation. But okay, I'll humor you, assistant. No, in that case there's nothing I could do."
"Yet that's basically the way attractor fields work, and you still blame yourself," she pointed out.
He blinked. "Um… well… I see your point. Where are you heading with this?"
"Tell me, Okabe. Do you believe in free will under the assumption that attractor fields exist?"
"There has to be free will, otherwise there wouldn't be divergence. But since an attractor field reduces divergence among critical points in time to zero, choice stops mattering near those," he reasoned.
"And since we were near one of those points, you're no more to blame than us, since that alone would mean the outcomes of all our choices were already set by an external force and none of us would have had any real control over the established outcome. That's INCLUDING you, regardless of your foreknowledge of future events," she replied.
"Even if that's true and I had no control over the outcome of my actions, I'm still objectively more responsible for starting all of this than-"
"You're still pushing the selfish, egotistical angle," she cut in and immediately continued, not given him a chance to respond. "I guess more practical examples are needed. Let's see. I could have chosen not to stay with the lab, or not built the time leap machine. Any one of us could have chosen to stop you from conducting the time travel experiments at all. My alternate self could have chosen not to jump in front of someone who'd tried to kill her just seconds ago. Any one of us could have chosen to also start time travelling."
Their glares met. She held it without the slightest hesitation, demanding him to submit. It was only inevitable that he looked away first. "Even if you expect yourself to be above a universal will, which is extremely unreasonable, and even if you reason that fate gave you a bad lot but that you're still responsible for what it made you do, you're still in the wrong. Because if you say you're the only one responsible for this mess, or even that your choices matter significantly more than ours, you're basically implying that you can't trust us to make our own decisions or that you have to fix whatever we do or did. That's straight up insulting; do you really think so little of us? Of me?"
He didn't reply – he couldn't, since he couldn't both defend that and claim he loved her at the same time. It was cruel to use that against him perhaps, but it was for a good cause.
"Now… are you going to stop acting like an idiot or do I need to punch you again?" she asked.
"I-"
"No. Just, no. Shut up and take my logic," she insisted. "No matter how you're going to try and approach this, you simply aren't a bad human being. You're no more responsible than I am. And I choose to let the matter rest. Now… please choose to forgive yourself, too. And… If you can't do it for yourself, then do it for me."
She extended her hand. It was cliché, and it was embarrassing, but it felt like it was the right thing to do.
Okabe, in turn, was silent for a while.
Then, suddenly, he let out a chuckle - a genuine one. And with that, she knew she'd definitely won.
It was impossible to stop the rising feeling of elation.
"I suppose I should have seen this coming," he said. "I always did tend to lose these arguments with you."
He linked his hand with hers.
"And don't count on that ever changing!" she boasted, helping him up.
"Heh, we'll have to see about that!" he countered. "I don't plan on just giving you those wins, Kurisu. And just so you know, you're wrong. There is no absolute fate, this I know for sure."
"Oh? And what makes you say that?" she asked, intrigued.
"Because we managed to deceive it - you're alive. So we can have these discussions whenever we want. And you'd better prepare yourself for a lot of rematches!"
"Haha. Well, any time you need some sense slapped into you, I'll be ready, you idiot. It's a promise."
They stood there for a while, smiling yet unsure what to do now.
The silence started to stretch.
She started to fidget.
He looked away.
Screw it.
She hugged him.
It became mutual.
"Ah, and what's this for?" he asked, amused. "I should do that more often."
"That's for saving me," she admitted, snuggling into him.
"I take that back. Getting stabbed wasn't exactly fun."
Visions of that horrible day forcefully cut their way through all the mushy thoughts and brazen ideas of what could have potentially followed this.
"Way to ruin the mood, you idiot," she sighed, disentangling herself from his grip.
"I guess that makes us even?"
Point taken.
"If you're going to bring that up now, you might as well keep going. Tell me everything about the day of the press conference. Everything, no more delays or distractions."
He nodded and began explaining…
By the time he'd finished, she was in a considerably worse mood.
"Okay, let me get this straight," Kurisu stated. "Are you seriously saying you gambled both my life and the fate of humanity itself on the workings of a toy gadget that you didn't even test beforehand!? And that's in addition to just assuming I wouldn't move from being unconscious, which I wasn't, since you forgot to do any proper research on the stun gun!?"
The tone of her voice made it VERY clear that the explanation for this had better be REALLY good.
"Um, it was a rush job?" Okabe tried, awkwardly scratching his head.
Somewhere deep inside her psyche, part of her sanity suffered a fatal wound and suffered an agonizing and very slow death.
"A rush job? THAT is your reasoning!? How could something THIS important warrant a RUSH JOB, Okabe!?"
He nervously took a step back and shielded his face. "W-Well, we couldn't leave the time machine on the roof too long so I just went with what came to me first? And it worked!" he quickly pointed out.
"Only because you critically injured yourself, which isn't something you should have needed to do! Oh gods of science, am I really alive only because of this idiot and sheer luck?" she whined, facepalming.
"Hey now, if you're going to criticize my methods, then it's only fair to share your solution, miss genius," he countered.
But of course! It only took-
Well…
Hmmm. Maybe this was slightly more complicated than it had seemed.
How to perfectly recreate that scene in a way that fooled everyone who saw it at a first glance? Visually creating the illusion of blood wasn't a problem. It could go from red dyes mixed with water, maybe adding some clay component that could fake the coagulation effect of the blood? But the real problem was the scent; how to get a strong smell of fresh blood in the room without anyone being injured?
Maybe she could have thought of something if she'd had more time. But she VERY grudgingly had to admit that there was something to be said about how long they could realistically keep a time machine hidden when it was immobile on the top of an occupied office building. And faking a crime scene wasn't anywhere near her field of expertise.
Plus, he had been operating under the same limitations and had probably been a lot more stressed out then than she was now.
However…
"Didn't your future self, who worked on this opportunity for fifteen years, give you any more clear instructions on what to do?" she pointed out, side-stepping the issue.
"Actually… no. He gave me the time machine and some motivation and that was pretty much it. Now that you mention it, that does seem a bit strange."
"Just a bit!?" she asked, exasperated. "'Hey, I've worked fifteen years for you to get you this one chance to save the world. Now here is your equipment, have fun figuring things out on your own?'"
"…Maybe I knew myself well enough to know I'd be good at improvising? Or maybe I knew there was no way to do it other than stabbing myself – maybe I didn't say that because I didn't want to risk that I'd be too afraid to do it," he pondered, pacing back and forth.
"So in other words, your future self was counting on your inability to think ahead and plan things out to make this work," she concluded. "That's deep, I guess. Insane, but it fits you."
"Did you really have to put in like that?" he asked, annoyed. "And I am a mad scientist, so of course every plan I come up with is crazy!" he boasted.
She shook her head. This guy…
"Anyway, I'd like to see that video message on your phone, the one from the future," she said.
"Sorry, I deleted it," he replied. "At that point, I'd succeeded and the message itself was worthless. I didn't want to risk anyone getting their hands on it and having any evidence for the possibility of time travel. It was the only way to guard this worldline."
"So you're basically admitting that you have no physical proof of what you'd just said," she stated.
"Not physical, no. But… do you really need more proof, Kurisu? You keep saying stuff like 'if what you're saying is true,' but don't you already believe me?"
His eyes were pleading. It didn't need to be said that this was obviously important to him.
When it came down to it, if she took the time to consider everything objectively, could she really accept all this insanity as the truth?
In the end, it came down to either trust or not trust him.
So she took a decision.
"Honestly? The less insane explanation for all of this would be that you're a creepy stalker who did a lot of research on scientific fringe theories in some messed up attempt to impress me, then got lucky enough to be on the scene when my dad attacked and is now spinning some crazy tale around that," she said, gazing over the evening street outside the window.
"W-wait, I have more proof!" he immediately blurted out.
He was so easy.
It was endearing in a way.
"Okay, let's hear it. Convince me everything you said is real."
"I knew what your favorite food and drink was."
"You're only part right," she replied. "The food is correct. I sort of like Doctor Pepper but it's not really a favorite."
"Really? Huh. I guess you must have grown to appreciate it more during your stay with us."
"Maybe," she admitted, possibly like a certain someone right in front of her. "Regardless, the food's something any stalker could know from just casual observation. You'll have to try harder."
"Sure. We both knew what happened when… well… when Nakabachi attacked you the first time. My version of your death obviously matched your memory."
"You're forgetting that I told you I'd had visions of being stabbed by either of you, and dying. Your version could have been a lucky guess based on that information," she countered.
"That sounds unreasonable, but okay," he replied. "I'm just getting started. Your username on 4channel is Kurigohan and Kamehameha."
"Correction, a stalker who is also a hacker."
"Fine! You gave me a passcode. You said what you wanted most was 'your fork' and that you already had 'your spoon'."
W-wait, what? Had she really…? .
"…who is also a psychic…?" she tried, trailing off.
His flat stare bored into her. "Really? This, coming from a scientific prodigy like yourself?"
"Sigh. Ok. Yes, that was what I wanted most once, and there's pretty much no way you could possibly know that unless I told you, which I never did."
But could my alternate self have perhaps picked a less embarrassing secret to share!?
"Wait, what do you mean 'once?'" he asked, unusually pensive. "You mean it's changed? You always accepted it up until now! At some point you even stopped asking for it."
"Considering what happened recently, it's obviously not that anymore."
"'Obviously?' I wouldn't know. You never explained to me what it meant. Whenever I tried asking you, you got all flustered and said it was too private," he explained, walking to her side by the window.
Kurisu sighed. "So you really have no idea?"
He shot her a nervous glance before answering. That alone should have told her something was up - that what was coming was something she didn't want to hear.
But morbid curiosity kept her listening.
"Well… I… er… did Gobble it once," he hesitantly answered. "The only thing I could find on it, other than the actual physical fork, was in an urban dictionary. It said it was a… um… bedroom position. I thought Mayuri was the spoon and that you wanted me to be the fork, so the three of us could… well…"
Her brain fed her all the wrong visual details.
Or, well, tried to.
'How does that even work, spatially speaking?' Frontal Lobe wondered, trying to form that construction of bodies for visual evaluation. 'Is this the from-behind version of forking or the sideways one, as in, 'spooning leads to forking?' And where does that leave Mayuri? Who's in the middle? And is any of that really practical? I mean, it seems like the ones on the outer ends couldn't reach each other that well? Would that still be enjoyable, then?'
'DOES ANY OF THAT EVEN MATTER!?' Limbic System shrieked. 'FOCUS, WOMAN! WHY AREN'T YOU PANICKING!?'
'Because I'm curious about the finer workings of-"
"NO. JUST, NO. And for the record, let it be known that you will forever be the pervert between the two of us!"
'…?'
It took Kurisu a full ten seconds to recover from the shock. "I. WHAT. S-SHUT UP, YOU PERVERT! Why would you even bring this up!?"
"Because you seemed disappointed and-!"
"That was a sigh of relief, not disappointment, Okabe!"
"How should I know!? And IT WAS SHOCKING TO ME TOO. Oh god! My brain will never be innocent again! Why couldn't you just explain it? Did you know how awkward it was to keep telling you that passcode and how often I'd had to do it after knowing what it could mean!?"
"Did you really think an innocent girl like me would suggest something that perverted as a passcode!?"
"'Innocent?' Well, it would have been less a credible theory if you hadn't taken a shower with Mayuri less than a day before that, Christina, you perverted genius girl! And that was with me set to return to the lab at any minute, no less!"
The response came automatic. "It- It wasn't like I wanted to! I tried to refuse but she kept looking at me with those big disappointed eyes and I felt like I was lobotomizing a puppy and - Wait. What am I saying?"
Okabe just smiled at her; the heat of the argument was suddenly completely gone, as if he'd been waiting for it to happen. "I missed this."
"These words I just used…" she said, blinking away the déjà-vu. "Are they-?"
"Reading Steiner," he confirmed. "That's still my strongest piece of evidence. I slowly began realizing that everyone has the memories from the other worldlines to some degree, though in varying strengths and they usually need some kind of push to be aware. And with that just now, I've proven that both our shared memory of the first Nakabachi attack isn't a fluke, and made it highly likely that your visions are indeed related to this, as I said earlier."
Okay, maybe he wasn't that easy.
"A push…? Wait. Were you just intentionally egging me on this whole time?" she asked, glaring daggers at him.
"Kind of," he shrugged. "In my defense, it could have been worse. I could have called you an 'insatiable perverted experiment-loving zombie celeb-17 assistant girl' instead. But that seemed a bit overkill."
Anger. Rage. Brains that had be destroyed. Definitely his, preferably in very creative fashions.
"Okabe, I'm going to temporarily suppress the urge to murder you and ask why you steered us to this particular memory," she said through gritted teeth.
"B-Because you once told me that highly emotional memories offered to the hippocampus were very hard to forget, m-meaning it would have a high chance of working," he stammered, edging away from her.
"And this one was highly emotional for me, because?"
"Er, no reason?" he tried, blushing and looking away.
She tried to picture it.
What came was an overwhelming feeling of anger, embarrassment and disappointment.
No. No way. Right? Surely not.
"Did. You. See. Us?" Every word, she poked him, forcing him further back until his back was to the wall. "Look at me in the eyes and tell me you didn't see us!"
"I… well... I… um… didn't see you?"
Urge to kill, rising!
"W-wait! I'd just gotten a text of a severed head from SERN so I was just really worried and ran back to check if you were fine!" he quickly added.
She carefully searched his face for the slightest trace of a lie.
…No, she didn't do it longer than strictly necessary, totally didn't get distracted by his stubbles or that there was something cute about the way he blushed.
Which, in turn, only made her more annoyed.
"Okabe, I'm not going to lie. Part of me wants to scrape out your cerebellum with a rusty spoon, spin it into a cord and then strangle your comatose body with it! But ONLY because I think what you just said MIGHT be true, I won't."
"A-Ah, now that's the Kurisu I know and love! Welcome back."
That stupid smile. It made her warm and weak, unable to pin him down with just the withering gaze. And that bruise did look kind of nasty. Maybe she had gone a little overboard…
"I just – you – gah! Did you really have to resort to such underhanded, base methods to make your point?"
She told herself she totally wasn't pouting.
"'Underhanded methods?' You were the one who asked for proof AND tried to casually toss aside my most valuable piece of it. This one is on you, assistant. And why are you so hung up over that, anyway? All is fair in love and war, they say."
Okay, he really wasn't that easy. At least, when he wasn't being an idiot. She could settle for that.
"Fine, fine. But you know, I'd have believed you anyway," she said, taking back the initiative. "All you had to do was point to the crime scene. There was plenty of proof right there. Plenty of journalists saw the arrival of that strange machine. Afterwards, no one knew where it went or what that had been. And your blood trail let back up to that location, where it vanished along with that thing. Your escape from that building's roof in your heavily wounded state, in broad daylight and without anyone from the adjacent crowded street noticing, should have been impossible. And when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, has to be the truth."
"That's… actually a really good point. Why didn't I think of that?"
"Probably because you were too busy being outclassed by your own assistant," she said, smirking.
"Progress! That's the first time you've ever spontaneously admitted it!" he cried.
"Jeez, look at this idiot," she said, shaking her head. She wasn't sure if she was annoyed, amused or both. Maybe that was just part of his charm.
"Hey, do you have any more questions, Kurisu? If you don't, there's something important I need to ask you," he asked, suddenly completely serious.
She reflexively tensed and asked the first thing on her mind. "U-Um, well, do you have an explanation for why your ability to be aware of other timelines is so much better than that of others?"
"Sadly, I'm not sure," he admitted. "You could make an argument that me being the only one using the time leap machine was what would make me more aware, but that doesn't make sense. I had perfect recall from the start, from the very first D-mail that was sent. The only thing that would make sense is that it's a genetic trait, and that I inherited good 'observer genes' from my parents by chance. This seems to be reinforced by that there are clear differences in strength between individuals. Daru has never shown any awareness, and I think Suzuha didn't either, who is his future daughter. That suggests their family didn't have the required genetic makeup. Mine was perfect, and the other lab mems, including you, were somewhere in the middle. Of course, it might be that others were hiding their actual aptitude at it and that I simply didn't pick up on it. That's my best guess."
"Huh. I wonder what Darwin would say about how the potential existence of such 'alternate timeline awareness' genes fits into the survival aspect of the theory of evolution?" she wondered.
That made him smile. "Good question. It's a very 'you' thing to say."
"W-well, I can't help but wonder. Being a scientist, that sort of thing makes me curious. It's not that special."
"Yes it is."
There was a certain smoldering intensity to that statement and look that made her both embarrassed and happy at the same time. She broke eye contact because she totally wasn't blushing - no way, and not her.
He then took a deep breath. A step closer. Not that he needed to - he towered over her anyway. Plus there wasn't that much space between them left regardless, which was kind of her own fault for semi-pinning him to the wall with her finger jabs.
It really wasn't that hard to figure out what was going to happen next.
He took a deep breath.
She swallowed nervously, but held her ground, suppressing the urge to fidget.
Okay, so what was it again? If he leaned in then she'd pull him in further to compensate for the height difference and then she'd just have to aim carefully so-
"Right… Kurisu, if you really don't blame me for what happened, then can you return my feelings? I don't want to assume things without hearing your answer."
Oh. Well, that could happen too.
It was the million dollar question, wasn't it?
Could she?
By now, it was pretty clear to her that she was attracted to him. It should have been easy to just say yes.
But there was one glaring problem…
"I… well… I want to. I really do," she started, "but it's complicated. I think these feelings I have for you are real, but I'm not entirely sure what they're based on. I only have snippets of memories, so I'm not entirely sure how I, or my other self, came to feel this way. That's… a bit unsettling. It's hard for me to accept that I love someone without completely understanding WHY I love that person. So… It would be easier for me to say 'yes' if I actually remembered everything."
His face fell. "Ah. Well, I understand. I guess it was too much to realistically hope for."
She immediately shook her head. "No! Don't misunderstand, you idiot. I just thought that… well… maybe we could put this on hold until I got the memories back? There has to be something that would help. This 'push' you talked about. What do you think would work best? There have to be other important memories we could use."
His obvious relief changed into a strange blush, after which he suddenly whirled away from her. He mumbled something that sounded suspicously like 'not that one, not yet.'
"…Okabe?"
"Sorry, I was temporarily distracted," he said, a bit too quickly. "Um, sure, good idea. I suppose most of the memories related to this took place in or near the Future Gadget Lab. So that would be the obvious next stop."
She nodded; it did seem like the best option.
"I'll just call Mayuri and tell her we have a special visitor," he said, taking out his phone. "She'll be-"
He suddenly stopped.
"What? Is something wrong?" Kurisu asked nervously.
"The time - it's well after eight. That's more than two full hours after this café closes," he explained, after which he ran into the hallway.
It was forebodingly dark and quiet out there.
He came back carrying a grim expression.
"…We're locked inside, aren't we?"
She suddenly remembered the visitor that had briefly opened the door to the office they were in some time ago. Had that been the cat girl, coming to warn them they were closing? But she wouldn't just leave them there for the night, would she?
Actually, scratch that. The rice omelet had read 'Nice catch, Kyouma-san' and the girl was probably crazy, so she totally would.
His gaze fell to the windows.
She instantly caught the meaning: they'd just have to climb for it, and hope that they'd succeed without getting in trouble for doing so, such as by triggering some kind of alarm.
"Great... I guess I'll go first, then," Kusiru said, reluctantly making her way over there.
Progress to next chapters:
Chapter 3: Posted!
Chapter 4: 5000 words/10000-ish: What was left of the original chapter 3 before it started its exponential growth.
Chapter 5: Script.
Author's notes:
Very long chapter, I know. I kept thinking of stuff to add in and I wanted to include everything I liked, which probably ended up being too much. Oh well, more food for the readers? I hope it's to everyone's enjoyment.
I'm considering adding a 'Tips' section near the bottom of the chapters to give more information on the more technical terms, like the actual visual novels. Would people be interested in those? If so, I'll try adding them somewhere in between now and chapter 3.
It seemed like this story didn't get that many views or attention in general so far – I wonder if it's the story summary? Maybe I should change it to something else, does anyone have any ideas?
Yeah, about the spoon and fork thing, Okabe's reaction to it here was my own reaction when I read that the first time in the virtual novel, lol. I was like 'wow, that's some kinky proposition there, Kurisu,'. I guess I'm corrupted too much to interpret something like that literally. Does that officially make me a pervert? :)
There are a lot of other things I could have talked about here but I'll leave it at this for now considering the length. If anything is unclear then I'm always open to questions, I'll try to respond to every review or PM.