Upon waking up, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the rain had stopped entirely. Already a significant improvement. My morning was similar to the one before. Dojima had left before I got downstairs again, and Nanako and I didn't have much to talk about as we munched on a filling breakfast. The morning passed without me tripping over my own tongue, and I was satisfied with that.
After saying my goodbyes to Nanako, I walked down the bank of the river that I had learned was called the Samegawa.
'With any luck, I won't be the center of attention today.' It was a comforting thought. The comfort it brought was mitigated by my cynical inner voice doing the mental equivalent of rolling its eyes and whispering 'In your dreams' at me, but I took what I could get. I needed some mood-boosters to get through the awkward explanation I would probably have to give Chie about what happened to me yesterday. That was not going to be fun.
I suddenly got the strangest sense of déjà vu. I wasn't entirely certain of the source of it, but the answer soon became obvious when a familiar bike carrying a familiar boy raced by me at top speed. He sped around a corner, and I heard a yell and a crash.
'Oh dear, again?,' I thought dryly, and ran after him.
When I turned the corner, the sight before me was so absurd that I didn't even know how to react. The bike had fallen onto the ground, but the boy was somehow stuck in a trash can and completely upside down, with his squirming legs sticking up in the air. 'How on earth did he manage to do that?' An annoyingly feminine giggle rose up inside me at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation. I tried to stop it, but was only partially successful, as it was admittedly very funny.
A muffled plea came from inside the can. "Hellooo? Someone out there?" There was a pause. "Please help me."
Forcibly wiping the smirk off my face, I rushed over the trash can. 'Alright, Naoto. This time you'll actually do something about it instead of acting like a deer in headlights.' "Uh, hold on a second," I said, and he stopped moving his legs as not to kick me.
'Hmmm, but how am I gonna do this?' I thought, pondering my options. 'It's pretty obvious I can't just yank him out by the ankles, and tipping it over would probably hurt him. But getting the thing horizontal is the only realistic way, so I guess I'll try to set it down slowly.'
I grabbed one of the side handles of the can, and said "I'm gonna try to let you down slowly, so try not to move." He grunted affirmatively.
The trash can was quite heavy from his weight, at least for me, so I would have to push pretty hard just to get it off its base. My plan was to grab on to the handle and push it just enough for it to get balanced on the edge, then switch positions to pull up on the handle as soon as it started to fall on its side. This would slow the fall enough for me to gently lay it down.
It was a perfect plan.
So naturally, I dropped the damn thing, and the boy with it. It hit the ground with heavy clang, landing hard on its side after I proved completely unable to stop the downward momentum with my pathetic upper-arm strength. This was immediately followed by a yelp of pain from within.
"Ow!"
"Ah!" This yelp was in fact mine, as a result of every feeling of inadequacy I had ever felt suddenly becoming painfully accurate. "Oh my god, I'm so sorry! Are you okay?" I blurted out, horrified.
A muffled and strained voice came from within the trash can. "I'm fine. Don't worry about it." His reassurances were mitigated by the fact that their speaker sounded like he had just had a bowling ball dropped on his stomach.
"I'm very sorry!" I said, bowing before realizing that he couldn't even see me. "Uh, lemme get that for you." I reached down for the can.
"No no, I got it," he said, still out of breath. It was clearly difficult, but he finally managed to wriggle himself out and sat up. "I swear this town is trying to kill me," he muttered darkly, rubbing his head.
"So, a-are you okay?" I asked hesitantly.
He sighed and said, "Yeah, I'm fine." He looked up at me, and his eyes widened. "Hey, you're that new transfer student."
"Oh, uh, y-yes I am," I said, surprised, before bowing once more. "I'm really sorry." 'God, I just make any situation worse don't I? I'm such an idiot.'
To my surprise, he laughed it off and stood up. "Don't worry about it, seriously. You really helped me out. Thanks. I owe ya' one."
My mind halted. '...Huh?'
I flushed at this unexpected display of gratitude. 'W-why is he thanking me for dropping him?' With my mind a jumbled mess, it scrambled to come up with a response for his confusing statement. 'Uhh, just… go with the script for this sort of thing.'
"Um, you're welcome?" I said, sounding more perplexed than I had intended.
"Well, anyways, I'm Yosuke Hanamura. I transferred here a while back, so I've kinda been in the same boat as you," he said, and went to pick up his bike.
I forced a reply out, "... Naoto Seta, though you, uh, probably know that already." I was starting to babble, I realized.
He looked back at me and grinned. "Well, you sit right in front of me, so yeah, I know your name."
My eyes went wide. 'Oh, goddammit Naoto.' A strong urge to get out of this exceedingly uncomfortable conversation seized me, and I turned to leave. "I think I should, uh, get going now." I said quickly, and started to walk away at a healthy pace.
He didn't make a response, but quickly caught up to me while pushing his bike, which was surprisingly still functional. "Hey, class is almost starting," he said, walking beside me. I looked at my watch and grimaced; he was right. "Want a ride on the back? Might be a bit shaky, but it's better than being late."
'W-wait, is he…?' My mind froze yet again as I futilely tried to process exactly what he just said. When I hit upon a rather unsettling implication, I felt my face grow red again. The majority of my brain shouted a resounding 'NO.' The few opposing factions were quietly pulled into a dark alley and were never seen again. "N-no thanks," I squeaked, and turned my head to stare at the ground in front of me, picking up my pace a bit.
Yosuke soon caught up with me again. "Well, we're gonna have to run then, aren't we?" he said, breaking out into a run.
Before I even realized what was happening, I too was running up the street after him. 'Clearly,' I rationalized, 'I do have to hurry to get to class, so it makes sense to run. As to why Hanamura is running with me instead of using the bike he's pushing, well... he finally realized that riding it again would only lead to further injury, so he decided to run on foot.'
Yes. Clearly.
And so, that was how I found myself literally running to school next to some boy I had just found in a trash can, with some part of me still feeling thoroughly confused about the recent turn of events.
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Mr. Morooka reviewed the mathematics material of the previous year in a way that just seemed arbitrarily aggressive. It was as if he was daring us all to challenge his authority on the subject, when he probably could've insisted that 2 + 2 = 5 and not received any backtalk from us. Other than his hair-trigger temper, though, he was actually fairly competent at presenting the material. But the fact remained that he did have both a temper and an extreme dislike for my entire age-group. Had I needed the refresher, his general demeanor would've made things a bit more difficult. I didn't need it though, as math was one of my favorite subjects.
As attention-demanding as his booming voice was, concentrating on him was getting increasingly difficult.
'...I really wish Chie would stop glancing at me. It's extremely distracting.' I still had no idea about how I was going to deal with her and Yukiko, and how I was going to explain anything that had happened. And she just kept looking at me.
'I suppose that I won't be able to get away with never speaking to her again. Unfortunate, really.' I frowned at the unbidden thought. This was going nowhere.
Entrenched in my own thoughts, I did not hear anything that Morooka was saying until he specifically said my name. "Seta!" he barked.
I jerked back into the real world, and quickly stood up. "Y-yes?" I said.
Morooka smirked at me knowingly. "Maybe you would like to come up and write down the answer," he said. Oops. I glanced at the board and saw it held a semi-complicated quadratic equation with the traditional instruction to find 'x'.
I briefly considered my options. Morooka was obviously calling me out by trapping me with a problem I hadn't known was there. The obvious action would be to admit that I didn't know, but...
My response came surprisingly quickly. "Yes, sir." I said, and stepped out into the aisle. My awareness of my surroundings shrank as my feet walked closer to the chalkboard.
'... move to one side… probably just two separate bubbles... hmm.' My mind raced, juggled the puzzle of the equation, and attacked it from multiple different angles in an attempt to reduce the equation to its components. A small but insistent voice in the back of my head alerted me that I had nearly arrived at the chalkboard. Finally, it clicked, and I quickly picked up a piece of chalk and wrote the answer deftly.
x = -0.5, 2.5
I knew from the raised eyebrow on Morooka's face that I was correct, and I felt a quiet flush of pride.
"Take your seat," he said sharply. And none too soon, because the adrenaline had already started to fade and my previous confidence was dwindling rapidly. I felt the eyes of the classroom on me, and I quickly complied with Morooka's demand and shuffled back to my seat.
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Later that day, I wondered whether my own choices had any actual impact on what happened to me. Was there some invisible hand moving me around like a chess piece? I certainly hadn't planned or wanted it to happen, but there I was, sitting at a table in the local Junes cafeteria with my two classmates, Yosuke and Chie.
It was Chie's fault, I concluded. She was the one who roped me into coming along. Apparently, she had originally wanted Yosuke to buy her a steak dinner to make up for her busted DVD. But after overhearing Yosuke when he thanked me for 'helping' him earlier, she immediately latched onto the conversation like a shark and demanded that he treat her, myself, and Yukiko to a meal. The young heiress wisely declined, and I wanted to do the same, but my mouth didn't seem to work properly in the face of Chie's enthusiasm. Before I knew it, we were out the door and walking towards the commercial district. Which led to now.
"Jeez, Yosuke. What kind of dinner is this?" Chie complained. Yosuke had just brought back a soda and sub sandwich for each of us, and this was clearly not up to her standards.
"Yeah, well, in case you forgot," Yosuke bit back from across the table, "I still haven't gotten my paycheck for this month, so I can't exactly be very generous if you want your precious DVD back anytime soon."
Chie blinked at that, a surprised expression flickering across her face before it morphed into a scowl. "You still didn't have to take us to your place," she said, but with not nearly as much energy as before. His response seemed to have taken some of the wind from under her sails.
'Fascinating,' I thought. 'It seems that even she can be tamed.' I was watching their conversation with rapt attention, as it was the only thing I really had to do at the moment. "Your place?" I said before realizing that I spoke aloud, and clamped my mouth shut hard. I looked at Yosuke to find he was already looking at me.
He smiled. "Remember how I said that I moved here a while ago? It was so my dad could manage this place. Being the manager's son can be a pain sometimes, but I do get pretty good discounts, and this place isn't so bad."
"Not everyone agrees," Chie pointedly added from across the table. "Lotta shops over in the local Shopping District have gone out of business since Junes showed up."
Yosuke glared at her. "That's hardly my fault," he said.
Chie sighed. "That's not what I... aaah," she smiled wryly as she looked behind Yosuke. "Look who it is, Yosuke-kun."
Puzzled, he turned his head around, and suddenly stood up. "Sorry guys, I gotta go chat with Saki-senpai. Be right back!" he said, and hastily left, heading towards a girl sitting down a couple of tables away from us.
Chie giggled. "Aww, just look at him go," she said, and looked at me conspiratorially. "That is Saki Konishi. Third year student at Yasogami, daughter of the owners of Konishi Liquors, part-time worker at Junes, and the subject of one painfully obvious crush."
I looked back over at this 'Saki Konishi.' She had long, light-brown hair, and was decked out in the faded tan apron of a Junes employee. She looked… actually pretty exhausted, her body sagging deeply into her chair, but she smiled genially at Yosuke as he approached her. They started talking, but I wasn't close enough to hear what they were saying.
I looked back at Chie, suddenly remembering something that I would've really rather forgotten. 'But I do owe her this much.' I considered with resignation. 'And we're alone now, so I don't have anymore excuses.' I mustered my courage.
"I'm, uh, s-sorry for yesterday." I said.
Chie blinked. "... Huh?" she asked after a moment's delay.
"For leaving so suddenly. It was… rude." I wasn't sure of how much she noticed when I had my episode, but was most certainly not going to risk telling her more than she already knew.
She sighed, as if in relief, and said flippantly, "Oh, don't even worry about that. Sheesh, you had me all confused for a second there."
"O-oh. Sorry."
"It's fine, it's fine," Chie said dismissively, and refreshed her smile as she bit into her food. Not knowing what else to do, I followed suit, and we ate in silence.
"Hey, Naoto-san?" she eventually said, a small amount of hesitance showing in her voice. "What, uh, happened yesterday? With you?"
With what could only be described as an uncanny sense of timing, Yosuke chose that exact moment to arrive back at the table with Saki right beside him. To my surprise, Saki was looking straight to me and smiling a bit differently than when she was talking to Yosuke.
"Hey, are you the new transfer student?" she asked cheerfully. I nodded, and her smile widened. "Cool! My name's Saki. What's yours?"
"... Naoto Seta." I said with only a little trepidation. 'This girl doesn't seem nearly as tired as she looked a minute ago.'
She responded without missing a beat. "Naoto, huh? How you like the town so far?"
I struggled to keep up with this up with the girl's sudden enthusiasm, and thought about the question for a brief moment. Honestly, I'd had a pretty terrible experience so far, but there was at least one thing I liked about Inaba. "It's... quiet." I said.
Saki chuckled. "That's a nice way of putting it, I guess. Hey, if you ever want a tour of the town, lemme know, okay? I'll usually be either around here or at my family's shop when I'm not at school, so that's where you can find me." She looked at her watch, and sighed. "Well, I have to get back to work since my break's almost over. Nice to meet you, Naoto-san. Later guys!" she waved as she walked away. I was too dazed to think of waving back.
"Uh, later Senpai!" Yosuke yelled belatedly as if having just remembered to do so. He sat back down, still smiling slightly. "That's Saki-senpai for you," he said to me. "Having her show you around would be a great idea. She knows this place really well."
Chie didn't say anything for a second, having an abstracted look on her face before she shook herself back into the present and put on a sly smile. "Oooh, you wish that she'd show you around town, dontcha?" she said to Yosuke, who rolled his eyes, but receded into his chair a bit.
"I told you it isn't like that." he said defensively.
"Aww, poor thing. Well, I know something that might cheer you up." She looked at both of us with a gleam in her eye, and said, "You ever hear of the Midnight Channel?"
I shook my head. Yosuke did the same, a puzzled look on his face.
Chie continued on with barely restrained eagerness. "Apparently, if you look at a TV that's turned off on a rainy day, exactly at midnight, you see it. The TV doesn't turn on, but the screen starts showing things anyway. It shows a person, and that person is supposed to be your eternal soul mate." She cut off dramatically.
…
I tried very hard not to let my entire body slump in disappointment, even though I didn't think that I'd even been anticipating anything in the first place. Just a stupid, small-town, urban legend. That wasn't even sort of interesting.
Yosuke, as it turned out, shared my feelings exactly. "Are you kidding me?" he said with incredulity. "You actually expect me to believe something like that? That's just some stupid urban legend."
'Wow, that's actually a bit scary.
Chie frowned, and said hotly, "Well, if you're so sure, then you'll have no problem checking it out for yourself. It's raining tonight, so we should all try it out." While I had to admit that she did have the right idea in regards to using experimentation in order to find the truth of something, I was also fairly certain that most scientists were a little more selective in what they actually tested.
And furthermore, I was not a scientist. Experiments were not my job, and staying up until midnight in order to stare at a blank TV simply did not seem at all tempting.
Yosuke spoke up first, resignation already in his voice. "And you'll never stop hounding me until I agree, right? Ugh, fine, I'll do it. Gives me a decent excuse to stay up late, if anything." He grinned, "And I can rub it in your face when it turns out to not exist."
Chie, apparently, decided to ignore everything after Yosuke's agreement, and looked expectantly to me. And despite all of my previous thoughts, and how deeply I knew just how much of a waste of time and energy it would be, I found myself nodding.
"Then it's settled!" Chie announced triumphantly.
'Goddammit.'
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Later that night, dinner was a rather somber affair. First of all, it had started goddamn raining again. Also, Dojima still hadn't come home, and Nanako was sullenly picking at her food. The TV was on, but she wasn't really paying attention to it, which was a bit unusual for her. I declined to say anything about it, as I would undoubtedly say something stupid and make it worse.
Soon enough, dinner was over and the dishes were washed. I had begun to fall into a routine with Nanako, who confessed to me that she liked having someone to do the little chores with. Afterwards, I would've retreated up to my room, but the sight of Nanako glumly resting her chin on the table, watching some home renovation show and constantly glancing towards the front door guilted me into staying in the living room with her. It wasn't like I said anything to her or did anything with her, I actually just grinded through my homework, but I made a guess that the company would be welcome.
It had gotten considerably late when the front door finally swung open and the elder Dojima walked in. Nanako perked up considerably.
"I'm back," he said. "Anything happen while I was gone?"
"No," Nanako shook her head, and pouted. "You're late again."
Dojima sighed as he slumped onto the couch next to me. "I'm sorry, Nanako. I've been busy at work. Do you think you can put on the news for me?"
Nanako opened her mouth to speak, but closed it again. She wordlessly changed the channel to the news.
"Thanks, sweetheart." He smiled at Nanako, and turned to me with a more serious expression. "You doing okay, Naoto?" His words were soft, but his gaze was steady. I knew exactly what he was talking about.
"Yes. I'm, uh, fine now."
He looked at me for another second, then nodded. "That's good to hear." And with that, Dojima signalled the conversation to be over. It seemed that he wouldn't ask me to talk about it anymore, which was something that I was exceedingly grateful for.
The news anchor then began his segment on yesterday's murder, and I took that as my cue to leave. Dojima gave me a concerned look when he saw me get up, but didn't say anything. Saying goodnight to them both, I slogged up to my room. All I wanted to do was to go to bed, and I was about to do just that before I remembered something.
'Oh wait, I forgot. I told Chie I would watch the Midnight Channel tonight. But… the bed...'
I briefly considered just ignoring the request entirely, and apologizing once again to Chie the next morning with the explanation that I had accidentily fallen asleep while waiting. While the idea was certainly tempting, an annoying voice in my head kept insisting that such a thing was 'wrong.' And so, as ridiculous as I still thought the whole idea was, I resigned myself to staying up in the futile hopes of seeing this 'Midnight Channel' that Chie seemed so convinced of.
Sighing heavily, I opened up my laptop, ensured my power supply was plugged in, turned off the light, sat down, and settled into my game.
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I heard it before I saw it.
A faint glow lit up the previously dark room with a gentle hiss of static accompanying it. Both originated from the object sitting on the dresser across from me.
I was staring at a computer screen at the time, so my eyes were maladjusted to catch the subtle changes in the lighting. I was also a couple of hours past what I considered the ideal bedtime, so my mind was not especially sharp or focused.
I had muted the computer, however. I had long since discovered that, when I was alone in the pitch black of night, I greatly preferred the near-total silence over any music that I usually used to shut out the world. Without the outside noise, the music simply had nothing to shut out and became more of a hindrance than a refuge. In Osaka, the sounds of the city's night life had been annoying, but I soon learned to just filter it out as background noise. In Inaba, however, the silence of night was about as full as I'd experienced in a very long time, besides the faint pitter-patter of rain outside my window.
So, I heard the hiss. It was very weak at first, dancing at the edges of my perception, but steadily it grew. When I first truly noticed it, it was quieter than a whisper, but still louder than the relative absence of sound that preceded it. I tore my attention from my game, distracted by the sound, and my eyes were magnetically pulled toward the screen of the television sitting on the dresser in front of me.
It was glowing a faint yellow light that brightened as each moment passed.
Before any conscious thought could form, my eyes whipped to my left wrist, to my watch. Some part of me, even before the watch confirmed it, knew that I would see 12:00 AM shining back at me in a blue neon light.
'I'll be damned.' The laptop was quickly set aside as I stood up. 'This ridiculous folk tale actually has a grain of truth in it.' I shushed my brain. It was far more important to see what happens next.
Finally, the screen reached its full brightness, and a blurry and laggy piece of footage began to play. The background was dominated by tall and rectangle-shaped objects that were quite bright - 'Vending machines?' I thought, - and in front of them was a girl. The picture was far too blurry to see who it was, but she moved across the screen in a choppy manner. It was like a slideshow being played, as the footage cut out in between positions. Her body moved back and forth across the screen, and it almost looked like she was dancing. As soon as that thought popped into my head, the video was over, the television screen faded far faster than it had first brightened, and I was left alone in my dark bedroom once more.
For a second, the room was quiet.
'What on ear-' .
That was as far as I got before an absurdly loud noise boomed through my skull, and brought with it a disabling spike of pain. I gripped my head tightly, trying very hard not to cry out. I felt myself falling, and desperately tried to stop myself from plummeting to the ground.
My flailing arm managed to blindly grab onto something, and I kept myself upright, unlike last time. The pain was just as intense and unbearable as before, except that it felt louder somehow. It was like my brain was filled with static with the volume turned all the way up.
And within the midst of that static, something resembling a human voice struggled to make itself heard. The voice was female in pitch, and was calm, serious, and, unfortunately, weak and subtle compared to the booming noise now inexplicably filling my eardrums. I did not consciously register this voice, as I was in no fit state to do so, and focused merely on weathering the storm.
The pain left me almost as quickly as it had arrived, and I opened my eyes, feeling sweat dripping down my face. I gasped for air; my thoughts were frantic and jumbled.
'What the hell was that?'
It took about a minute to calm down enough to answer my own question. 'That' was a very oddly timed headache that felt like a foghorn going off inside my skull. And it happened immediately after a turned-off television showed a fuzzy video of someone exactly like a ridiculous, small-town urban legend said it would. My thoughts were starting to get disorganized again at that point, and I took another deep breath.
'I'm going to have to apologize to Chie again. I have to admit, this is an extremely interesting mystery. Now, what is the explanation?'
I thought rapidly of what it could be. 'Possibility #1: TV is getting remotely hacked, and it affects all TV's in a radius, around Inaba. It turns on TV's remotely and shows a pre-recorded video. Cons: I'm sure if such a thing is even possible on an analog TV, but I must do more research in order to confirm this. Even if it is possible, I just can't think of any plausible motive for doing this. If it is true, it means that someone went to a huge amount of trouble in order to follow, or create, an urban legend about figures being shown on televisions, at midnight, on rainy days. Also, I-'
I stopped, suddenly getting a nagging sense that something was wrong. Something about… my left hand. I realized my body hadn't yet moved from its position since I had recovered. 'Oh, guess I better-'
I stopped abruptly again as I looked to my left, but for another reason entirely. The TV screen was now filled with ripples like a pond after a stone was tossed in. Those pure white ripples were centered around the bottom frame of the screen.
Where my hand currently was currently grabbing onto.
And my fingers were gone, ending just after the knuckle at the point where they met the rippling screen.
I could've run a probability check that my fingers had severed themselves without me noticing. I could've checked whether my fingers were actually disconnected from my hand. I could've stopped to investigate what was almost surely a visual trick.
What I did do, however, was let out a panicked scream, yank my hand out with enough force to send me tumbling backwards, and slam the back of my head on the edge of the unfortunately-placed coffee table.
Another sudden roar of pain completely filled my awareness and overwhelmed any thoughts of missing fingers and strange television broadcasts. I hissed in pain and clutched the back of my head futilely. I felt wetness on my fingers; the wound was bleeding, badly. It only took several more seconds for the pain to subside to a manageable level, and soon after that I heard a knock on my door.
Nanako's voice came from the other side. "Are you okay? I heard you yell." She sounded rather alarmed.
It took me several seconds to even think of replying, as I was somewhat pre-occupied by the sight of my bloody fingers, as they decidedly in a state of not-being-cut-off and were fully functional without so much as a scratch. I started making a reply that came from reflex, not any mental decision.
"I'm o-" That was as far as I got before I caught myself. I reconsidered briefly, as I was most certainly not okay. Other than… whatever just happened there, I did definitely have a head wound, and dammit, it hurt.
I did a brief mental tally and thought about what would be the best course of action in this situation. My head hurt like hell and it was bleeding. There were two completely unknown and unexplained phenomena: the Midnight Channel and my apparently disappearing fingers. It was obvious that I shouldn't say a word of that to any other human soul. For the time being, at least. I made my decision quickly.
"Actually," I said, "I, uh, hit my head on the coffee table. Can you tell me where the first aid kit is? I can clean it myself." Nanako squeaked wordlessly, and rushed off to grab it for me.
Beyond a slight dizziness in the first couple of minutes, I didn't seem to be suffering any adverse effects, like a concussion, which was a great relief to me. The next several minutes were painfully slow as I washed and re-washed my wound until it finally stopped bleeding. The mindless activity gave me quite a lot of time to think.
I eventually concluded that there were actually three mysteries I needed to solve: the Midnight Channel, my sudden splitting headache, and my disappearing fingers. The headache was probably entirely medical in nature, but its timing was just plain weird. It hit immediately after the Midnight Channel broadcast ended, and my hand was somewhere it really should not have been when it ended. The hand could be easily explained by me merely misinterpreting what I saw, but I felt in my gut that it wouldn't be so simple. I had read several scientific articles in the past about how gut feelings were almost never as trustworthy as they pretended to be, but I just couldn't shake that feeling.
I finally convinced Nanako to go back to her room after a hundred assurances that I was fine. Even then, she hadn't looked fully convinced, but she finally relented. Admittedly, my heart hadn't really been in it. To say I was a bit distracted would be an immense understatement.
And now, I was in my room, glaring daggers at my traitorous TV that dared to defy what I thought it should be able to do.
Huffing, I marched forward and extended my hand. I hesitated momentarily, but the rest of me forced my hand further forward to the screen, even if I felt stupid doing it. 'Idiot, stop going so fast, you're gonna break...'
My arm sank in and made white ripples spread across the screen, like I had just inserted my hand into a pool of mercury. Even more strangely, it didn't feel like my hand had touched anything. If I had closed my eyes, I wouldn't have even noticed that I had just done something impossible.
Not being able to help myself, I reached in as far as I could go, until I got all the way to my shoulder.
I still felt nothing.
I jerked my hand back, and quickly confirmed that the length of the television was about half the length of my arm.
It was getting more difficult to ignore the small part of my mind deep within me that was still screaming about all of this.
That simply did not make sense.
I cursed aloud, unable to stop myself, and thought furiously. 'Okay, my arm is going where it really shouldn't be able to, even if this was some kind of fake screen. There HAS to be a rational explanation for that. If there's something that doesn't make sense, find a hypothesis that fits what you already… know...'
A completely irrational and very scary thought popped up from the deep recesses of my brain, and I froze. 'But… no, that can't be possible. No.'
I slowly turned my head back to the couch, a sense of dread building up in the pit of my stomach.
Upon the couch sat my laptop computer, which laid abandoned after I set it aside.
That laptop was dutifully continuing to run a harmless little puzzle game I had been playing. A game with a very particular concept and name.
Portal.
Instantly, the pieces fell into place.
My television screen was a portal. It fit everything that I had observed thus far.
I shook myself, feeling stupid again. 'Stop. You are not going to hijack a science fiction trope and use it as an explanation for reality. Something is going on, find out exactly what it is.' A thought sprung from my mind, a memory of books I had read long ago. 'What is the proper procedure when you don't understand something?'
The answer was obvious.
You experiment until you do.
My mind calmed quickly at that, and my thoughts organized as I recalled the steps of the scientific method.
I fished a notebook and pencil out of my backpack. My thoughts were still a bit frantic and writing would help me sort them out. Plus, I remembered that all experiments had to be written down.
"First step, ask a question. Why does this my hand pass through the television screen as if it isn't there?"
"Second, gather data. What do I know? I know this TV works, it was showing the news just yesterday. According to the local legend of the 'Midnight Channel,' televisions in Inaba show a special broadcast showing the 'soulmate' of the watcher at midnight on rainy days when the television is turned off. Tonight, all of these conditions were met, and a broadcast did appear as the legend stated it would. It was short and blurry, and I did not recognize the girl that was shown, but the television was never turned on by me or anyone."
"On a possibly related note, I experienced a very severe and sudden headache immediately after the broadcast ended. This mirrored the one that I had two days earlier, though this one was more intense. It is likely to be a purely medical issue, but its timing is suspicious. I also suffered a head wound shortly after the following events, which must be noted."
"I discovered that my fingers had gone completely into the computer screen as if it were not there at all, and the screen itself was rippling like it was a pond of water. An informal experiment performed shortly afterwards confirmed those perceptions."
Writing everything that had happened felt extremely surreal, better suited to a fantasy novel than a science report. Unfortunately, it did not contradict any of my memories, so I forged on and tried to locate a suitable hypothesis.
"The most pressing concern is the screen itself. I would have heard about a TV with a literally incorporeal holo-screen if they had been invented, and a police detective in the countryside of Japan would probably not have a secret prototype, if they existed. In addition, it looks and functions exactly like a regular TV, including the sub-par video quality of an older television. Holo-screens that, when turned off, are explicitly designed to look like a normal screen that is turned off is also implausible. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that the TV was designed for this."
"In the previously mentioned informal experiment, I inserted my entire arm into the screen, straightened, and failed to touch the back of the television. A quick check confirmed that the length of the television is about half of the length of my arm. That should be impossible even if it was a holographic screen. The one and only explanation that I have come up with thus far is that the screen is acting as a portal, but that is significantly more unlikely. What my senses tell me contradicts what should be possible in reality."
My mouth became a bit dry, and I swallowed. I didn't like where this train of thought, but it was worse than useless to censor myself.
"It must be stated that it is quite possible that my senses cannot be trusted, and that I am experiencing a thorough hallucination. While everything my senses have told me seems consistent and completely genuine, this cannot be trusted completely, as my ability to judge its validity would also be compromised. The splitting headache experienced directly after the apparent 'Midnight Channel' broadcast and subsequent head wound throw my own perceptions into further doubt. This is one explanation for events, and seems to be the most likely at the moment."
My hands started to shake. Could this be true? Was I experiencing a schizophrenic breakdown? I hadn't allowed myself to think about the possibility before I started writing everything out bit by bit, but I couldn't really deny how likely it really was. I hurriedly continued on before I got too personally distracted to remain objective.
"While the previous theory is highly troubling, the other obvious theory is troubling on a much more fundamental level as a rational person. The possibility exists that I have encountered a phenomenon unexplainable, as far as I know, by the human race's current scientific model of the universe. It would be absurd to label it as "supernatural" as that is an inherent misnomer, as the fact that I don't know the explanation does not imply that there is none, so it can at least be said that it is an unexplained scientific phenomenon. That is the second possible theory: that my senses are accurate and I have encountered something of massive significance. All other theories that I can think of at this moment fail to explain both mysteries at once."
"To summarize, either my senses and memories of those sensations are accurate, or they are not. Speaking from personal belief, I find it highly unlikely that I have developed an extremely sudden case of schizophrenia or another related mental illness with no previous symptoms to speak of. However, that does not hold much objective weight when compared to the much more unlikely scenario that I have discovered a radical scientific phenomenon that happens to turn my television screen into a portal, with all the exact same functions that a portal is expected to have, or something very similar to one."
I set down my notebook onto the table. I was starting to sweat more now that I had written out exactly what might be happening here. 'Either the 'portal' on my television screen is real, or it is not. Either my senses are accurate, or they are not. Either I've made an incredible discovery thought to be impossible, or I desperately need to check myself into a mental hospital as soon as I'm able to.'
I reached for the coldness again, as it was starting to slip away, and it sealed off my worries the best it could when it returned to me.
My clarity returned with it. I had already asked my question. I had already consolidated everything relevant that I knew and could reason to be true. I had two directly opposing hypotheses, and a need to distinguish which one of them most closely resembled reality.
It was time to do some experiments.
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A/N: With this chapter, having one of my favorite scenes so far, my story is tentatively starting to enter into the realm of rational fiction, which is one of the coolest genres out there. It probably won't be anywhere near the level of "Methods of Rationality," but I'll do my best. Speaking of "Methods," you need to read it. Right now. It is on the home stretch as I write this, and will be completed on March 14th, which is also Pi Day.
Beta for this chapter is Unnegated Positive. Kudos to him.